IBM Security QRadar vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

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Microsoft Logo
32,763 views|18,195 comparisons
92% willing to recommend
IBM Logo
21,353 views|13,050 comparisons
91% willing to recommend
SolarWinds Logo
3,102 views|1,180 comparisons
80% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Security QRadar and SolarWinds Security Event Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed IBM Security QRadar vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It is always correlating to IOCs for normal attacks, using Azure-related resources. For example, if any illegitimate IP starts unusual activity on our Azure firewall, then it automatically generates an alarm for us.""The AI capability is one of the main features of the solution because I believe that in the market, there are few solutions that are providing security solutions based on AI and machine learning.""The Log analytics are useful.""The automation rules and playbooks are the most useful that I've seen. A number of other places segregate the automation and playbook as separate tools, whereas Microsoft is a SIEM and SOAR tool in one.""I like the unified security console. You can close incidents using Sentinel in all other Microsoft Security portals, when it comes to incident response.""It is able to connect to an ever-growing number of platforms and systems within the Microsoft ecosystem, such as Azure Active Directory and Microsoft 365 or Office 365, as well as to external services and systems that can be brought in and managed. We can manage on-premises infrastructure. We can manage not just the things that are running in Azure in the public cloud, but through Azure Arc and the hybrid capabilities, we can monitor on-premises servers and endpoints. We can monitor VMware infrastructure, for instance, running as part of a hybrid environment.""The machine learning and artificial intelligence on offer are great.""Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it."

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"I think the QDI is very good.""QRadar UBA's most valuable feature is the risk rating of users depending on their behavior.""The most valuable feature currently is security behaviors and the pdf files.""The most valuable feature is the QRadar Vulnerability Manager which provides vulnerability scans. In addition, I like the way QRadar generates alerts.""It has very rich functionality.""Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""The initial setup of QRadar is not complex because we have done it before and we are used to the development. It is getting easier all the time.""The correlation and the parsing are important features, since it is very important for a SIEM to have a good scalability and performance."

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"It performs network behavior monitoring, log monitoring, and disaster recovery monitoring.""It's easy to build rules and actions based on the logs and event types we collect with the software.""Some of the rules are most valuable because you can be notified about various things, such as spyware or things that are going on in the internal network.""SolarWinds is effective for server, network, and log monitoring. It's also good for IP address management. We also have a patch manager, but we're still working on getting that operational.""The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is the analysis and the knowledge about the incidence that we trace.""The solution helps me to go back in time and search for different events. For example, if you wanted to know who activated an account; you could go back in time and find out.""It has in-depth monitoring capabilities and an easy way for setting up dashboards. I can expand in various areas, or I can reduce areas. It supports different types of breakdowns, filters, and rules. It is very simple for an out-of-the-box type of product. It doesn't take a lot of time to figure it out, which is unlike some of the solutions that I have looked at. It meets all the aspects.""It supports high availability, which is very helpful."

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Cons
"The data connectors for third-party tools could be improved, as some aren't available in Sentinel. They need to be available in the data connector panel.""When we pass KPIs to the governance department, there's no option to provide rights to the data or dashboard to colleagues. We can use Power BI for this, but it isn't easy or convenient. They should just come up with a way to provide limited role-based access to auditing personnel""The interface could be more user-friendly. It''s a small improvement that they could make if they wanted to.""The KQL query does not function effectively with Windows 11 machines, and in the majority of machine-based investigations, KQL queries are essential for organizing the data during investigations.""The product can be improved by reducing the cost to use AI machine learning.""They should integrate it with many other software-as-a-service providers and make connectors available so that you don't have to do any sort of log normalization.""Sentinel still has some anomalies. For example, sometimes when we write a query for log analysis with KQL, it doesn't give us the data in a proper way... Also, the fields or columns could be improved. Sometimes, it is not giving the desired results and there is a blank field.""It could have a better API to be able to automate many things more extensively and get more extensive data and more expensive deployment possibilities. It can gain some points on the automation part and the integration part. The API is very limited, and I would like to see it extended a bit more."

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"QRadar's performance has room for improvement because it cannot handle the volume. I need massive amounts of logs from various devices in our existing network architecture. IBM needs to improve QRadar's capacity to handle more logs.""It would be better if it were more stable and more secure. The price for maintenance could be better. It's too high. In the next release, I think they should focus on the price and the operation.""In terms of what could be improved, I would say the script which we have to create for custom actions. QRadar needs to improve that feature. Additionally, QRadar has to provide the playbooks designing features.""I would like for them to develop a detection management solution. It does not have a detecting management solution in it, you have to buy it as it is, on top of the extended solution.""The technical support is poor. Mostly because when I open a PMR for IBM, I am stuck with Level 1 staff. As an engineer, nothing that I am bringing them does not require Level 2 or Level 3 support.""Some of the cloud apps need improvement.""The threat intelligence functionality can be better. In addition, it can have more monitoring capabilities.""They need to improve their threat intelligence feed and they need to improve their user behavior analytics modules."

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"I would like to be able to dig deeper into the visibility of events or incidents to determine whether they are malicious, such as by doing behavior analysis.""The product should improve the ease with which you can create event alerts. They are not as hard now but you need to have an easier way.""SolarWinds should improve its correlation capabilities. The correlation does not automatically detect and reduce the events fast enough. You have to manually do a correlation report, which means the tool is not scalable in many ways.""We used the support from SolarWinds Security Event Manager and they are knowledgeable but challenging to get in contact with them.""There are no multiple dashboards which would allow you to see information side-by-side.""There is no correlation made between log entries, so no threat information is presented.""Under the new system, it is not upgradable the way they say. When you try to do an upgrade, it doesn't really work unless you dump everything and start from scratch. You lose a lot of your nodes. Whenever you set your nodes up and everything else, they don't want to bring those nodes back in, so you have to really go back and restructure all your nodes. I went from version 6.5 to version 6.6 and then to version 6.7. I then went to version 2019, and now it is version 2020. It would be good if we can upgrade without having to delete everything and start from scratch. They can maybe build more KPIs and other things for the dashboard. Some of the other systems already have built-in KPIs. SolarWinds is starting to catch up, but it is not there yet. They can include some of the business or industry standards for tracking the time, that is, the meantime to detect (MTTD) and the meantime to resolve (MTTR). They can also find a way to build a KPI that measures the number of instances of port scans experienced in a week or a month.""I would like to have a more customizable dashboard."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It comes with a Microsoft subscription which the customer has, so they don't have to invest somewhere else."
  • "It is a consumption-based license model. bands at 100, 200, 400 GB per day etc. Azure Sentinel Pricing | Microsoft Azure"
  • "Good monthly operational cost model for the detection and response outcomes delivered, M365 logs don't count toward the limits which is a good benefit."
  • "I have had mixed feedback. At one point, I heard a client say that it sometimes seems more expensive. Most of the clients are on Office 365 or M365, and they are forced to take Azure SIEM because of the integration."
  • "It is kind of like a sliding scale. There are different tiers of pricing that go from $100 per day up to $3,500 per day. So, it just kind of depends on how much data is being stored. There can be additional costs to the standard license other than the additional data. It just kind of depends on what other services you're spinning up in Azure, or if you're using something like Azure log analytics."
  • "I am just paying for the log space with Azure Sentinel. It costs us about $2,000 a month. Most of the logs are free. We are only paying money for Azure Firewall logs because email logs or Azure AD logs are free to use for us."
  • "Sentinel is a bit expensive. If you can figure a way of configuring it to meet your needs, then you can find a way around the cost."
  • "Azure Sentinel is very costly, or at least it appears to be very costly. The costs vary based on your ingestion and your retention charges."
  • More Microsoft Sentinel Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "found other solutions, with more features at the same cost or less. You don’t have to leave the Gartner Magic Quadrant to beat their price."
  • "Most of the time, it is easier and cheaper to buy a new product or the QRadar box."
  • "IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
  • "IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
  • "Go through a vulnerability assessment review for price breaks. A virtualized solution will also cut down on cost."
  • "It is expensive. It is not a product that I can provide for SMBs. It is a program that I can only provide for really large enterprises."
  • "The maintenance costs are high."
  • "Pricing (based on EPS) will be more accurate."
  • More IBM Security QRadar Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
  • "We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
  • "The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
  • "Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
  • "It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
  • "The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
  • More SolarWinds Security Event Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Vinod Shankar
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and… more »
    Top Answer:It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for… more »
    Top Answer:We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is… more »
    Top Answer:It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier… more »
    Top Answer:For tools I’d recommend:  -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is… more »
    Top Answer:The event collector, flow collector, PCAP and SOAR are valuable.
    Top Answer:The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux… more »
    Top Answer:The cost is exorbitantly high. The trial version lasts for thirty days, but I found a subscription plan priced at four… more »
    Top Answer:One of the drawbacks of being so flexible is that it is also a fairly complicated software application to install… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Azure Sentinel
    IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, QRadar, IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
    SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution that lets you see and stop threats before they cause harm. Microsoft Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response. Eliminate security infrastructure setup and maintenance, and elastically scale to meet your security needs—while reducing IT costs. With Microsoft Sentinel, you can:

    - Collect data at cloud scale—across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-premises and in multiple clouds

    - Detect previously uncovered threats and minimize false positives using analytics and unparalleled threat intelligence from Microsoft

    - Investigate threats with AI and hunt suspicious activities at scale, tapping into decades of cybersecurity work at Microsoft

    - Respond to incidents rapidly with built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks

    To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

    IBM Security QRadar is a security and analytics platform designed to defend against threats and scale security operations. This is done through integrated visibility, investigation, detection, and response. QRadar empowers security groups with actionable insights into high-priority threats by providing visibility into enterprise security data. Through centralized visibility, security teams and analysts can determine their security stance, which areas pose a potential threat, and which areas are critical. This will help streamline workflows by eliminating the need to pivot between tools.

    IBM Security QRadar is built to address a wide range of security issues and can be easily scaled with minimal customization effort required. As data is ingested, QRadar administers automated, real-time security intelligence to swiftly and precisely discover and prioritize threats. The platform will issue alerts with actionable, rich context into developing threats. Security teams and analysts can then rapidly respond to minimize the attackers' strike. The solution will provide a complete view of activity in both cloud-based and on-premise environments as a large amount of data is ingested throughout the enterprise. Additionally, QRadar’s anomaly detection intelligence enables security teams to identify any user behavior changes that could be indicators of potential threats. 

    IBM QRadar Log Manager

    To better help organizations protect themselves against potential security threats, attacks, and breaches, IBM QRadar Log Manager gathers, analyzes, preserves, and reports on security log events using QRadar Sense Analytics. All operating systems and applications, servers, devices, and applications are converted into searchable and actionable intelligent data. QRadar Log Manager then helps organizations meet compliance reporting and monitoring requirements, which can be further upgraded to QRadar SIEM for a more superior level of threat protection.

    Some of QRadar Log Manager’s key features include:

    • Data processing and capture on any security event
    • Disaster recovery options and high availability 
    • Scalability for large enterprises
    • SoftLayer cloud installation capability
    • Advanced threat protection

    Reviews from Real Users

    IBM Security QRadar is a solution of choice among users because it provides a complete solution for security teams by integrating network analysis, log management, user behavior analytics, threat intelligence, and AI-powered investigations into a single solution. Users particularly like having a single window into their network and its ability to be used for larger enterprises.

    Simon T., a cyber security services operations manager at an aerospace/defense firm, notes, "The most valuable thing about QRadar is that you have a single window into your network, SIEM, network flows, and risk management of your assets. If you use Splunk, for instance, then you still need a full packet capture solution, whereas the full packet capture solution is integrated within QRadar. Its application ecosystem makes it very powerful in terms of doing analysis."

    A management executive at a security firm says, "What we like about QRadar and the models that IBM has, is it can go from a small-to-medium enterprise to a larger organization, and it gives you the same value."

    When TriGeo was acquired by SolarWinds, TriGeo SIM became known as SolarWinds Log & Event Manager. This product is a leading Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) product and log management solution, which provides log collection, analysis, and real-time correlation.

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
    Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
    NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Security Firm6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization18%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government7%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Educational Organization11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization68%
    Computer Software Company5%
    Government4%
    Financial Services Firm3%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business65%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise23%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise71%
    Large Enterprise19%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Security QRadar vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,578 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Security QRadar is ranked 4th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 198 reviews while SolarWinds Security Event Manager is ranked 21st in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 24 reviews. IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0, while SolarWinds Security Event Manager is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of IBM Security QRadar writes "A highly stable and scalable solution that provides good technical support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Security Event Manager writes "A comprehensive network security with robust technical capabilities, effective threat response, and centralized management". IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security and Fortinet FortiSIEM, whereas SolarWinds Security Event Manager is most compared with ManageEngine Log360, Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, Microsoft Defender XDR and LogRhythm SIEM. See our IBM Security QRadar vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager report.

    See our list of best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vendors.

    We monitor all Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.