IBM Security QRadar vs NetWitness Platform comparison

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Microsoft Logo
31,886 views|17,713 comparisons
92% willing to recommend
IBM Logo
15,094 views|9,166 comparisons
91% willing to recommend
NetWitness Logo
1,135 views|701 comparisons
74% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Security QRadar and NetWitness Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Log Management 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. NetWitness Platform Report (Updated: April 2024).
771,157 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
"Sentinel is a SIEM and SOAR tool, so its automation is the best feature; we can reduce human interaction, freeing up our human resources.""Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it.""What is most useful, is that it has a good connection to the Microsoft ecosystem, and I think that's the key part.""The standout feature of Sentinel is that, because it's cloud-based and because it's from Microsoft, it integrates really well with all the other Microsoft products. It's really simple to set up and get going.""Sentinel pricing is good""We’ve got process improvement that's happened across multiple different fronts within the organization, within our IT organization based on this tool being in place.""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 Identity Behavior tab furnishes us with the entire history linked to each IP or domain that has either accessed or attempted to access our system."

More Microsoft Sentinel Pros →

"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics's most important feature is its ease of use.""I think it's a very stable product that provides much more visibility than the other product.""This solution provides me with various alarms, and I have found security issues with some of my other products.""It has improved my efficiency.""The ability to transition from microscopic to macroscopic view, instantly, is very good.""The threat hunting capabilities in general are great.""The most valuable features are log monitoring, easy-to-fix issues, and problem-solving.""QRadar shows very effective correlations. If you combine all the logins plus user behavior and the current intelligence, it gives a very good correlation for business. I think it reduces the false positives in user activity monitoring because there is a lot of social information to correlate with other data."

More IBM Security QRadar Pros →

"The most valuable feature is the ability to write rules and triggers for network communication, and then being able to investigate based on that.""The most valuable feature is the correlation. It can report in real-time and monitor the management.""The most valuable features are the integration and ease of use.""The product has a user-friendly interface and a valuable feature for threat intelligence integration.""I can have enterprise security, email security, next generation firewall security log, HIDS and NIDS logs, etc. all on the same dashboard. It makes it easy to pinpoint or correlate our server to this. I can find out if there is lateral movement. This is the biggest advantage of this solution.""The software is scalable to whatever is required, and you can also put a lot of resources in the cloud.""The most valuable feature is the security that it provides.""The newer 11.5 version that my team is using has found it to have good mapping."

More NetWitness Platform Pros →

Cons
"There is some relatively advanced knowledge that you have to have to properly leverage Sentinel's full capabilities. I'm thinking about things like the creation of workbooks, how you do threat-hunting, and the kinds of notifications you're getting... It takes time for people to ramp up on that and develop a familiarity or expertise with it.""I would like Sentinel to have more out-of-the-box analytics rules. There are already more than 400 rules, but they could add more industry-specific ones. For example, you could have sets of out-of-the-box rules for banking, financial sector, insurance, automotive, etc., so it's easier for people to use it out of the box. Structuring the rules according to industry might help us.""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.""Microsoft Defender has a built-in threat expert option that enables you to contact an expert. That feature isn't available in Sentinel because it's a huge product that integrates all the technologies. I would like Microsoft to add the threat expert option so we can contact them. There are a few other features, like threat assessment that the PG team is working on. I expect them to release this feature in the next quarter.""If you're looking to use canned queries, the interface could be a little more straightforward. It's not immediately intuitive regarding how you use it. You have to take a canned query and paste it into an operational box and then you hit a button... They could improve the ease of deploying these queries.""The playbook development environment is not as rich as it should be. There are multiple occasions when we face problems while creating the playbook.""Microsoft Sentinel is relatively expensive, and its cost should be improved.""The solution could be more user-friendly; some query languages are required to operate it."

More Microsoft Sentinel Cons →

"The biggest problem was built on top of the QRadar in the executive operations center network. The integration was not using the network security specialist properly, and all the incidents were inferior with QRadar. Its compatibility is not really good.""They need to improve their threat intelligence feed and they need to improve their user behavior analytics modules.""I think QRadar is very complex. It's a distributed system and IBM QRadar has an all-in-one solution which is not like that distributed solution but it's a good product. IBM needs to consider the user interface because if we compare it with AlienVault, the AlienVault user interface is fantastic but the IBM QRadar user interface is very complex. They should focus on how to make it easier for the client.""The features that could be improved include the licensing model and the dashboards and all those presentations. Overall, the user experience part can be improved.""Some UI enhancements would be nice, such as exporting custom event properties and the ability to export rules.""I think that the search speed of this solution could be improved.""I'd like them to improve the offense. When QRadar detects something, it creates what it calls offenses. So, it has a rudimentary ticketing system inside of it. This is the same interface that was there when I started using it 12 years ago. It just has not been improved. They do allow integration with IBM Resilient, but IBM Resilient is grotesquely expensive. The most effective integration that IBM offers today is with IBM Resilient, which is an instant response platform. It is a very good platform, but it is very expensive. They really should do something with the offense handling because it is very difficult to scale, and it has limitations. The maximum number of offenses that it can carry is 16K. After 16K, you have to flush your offenses out. So, it is all or nothing. You lose all your offenses up until that point in time, and you don't have any history within the offense list of older events. If you're dealing with multiple customers, this becomes problematic. That's why you need to use another product to do the actual ticketing. If you wanted the ticket existence, you would normally interface with ServiceNow, SolarWinds, or some other product like that.""We would like to see better instrumentation for debugging changes in the log flow."

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"The log system is a bit complex and has room for improvement.""An area for improvement would be better automation and more inbuilt use cases.""The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms.""Log aggregation is an issue with this solution because there are a huge number of alerts in a single instance.""The user interface is a little bit difficult for new users and it needs to be improved.""The multi-tenant capabilities are lagging compared to IBM QRadar.""The initial setup is complex. There are other solutions that are easier to implement.""The system looks like it is a mix of a bunch of different systems, and nothing looked like it was quite together."

More NetWitness Platform Cons →

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 →

  • "It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."
  • "The new pricing and licensing mechanisms are fair. I would advise always to get the full solution (i.e., not only Logs)."
  • "It is cheap."
  • "The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."
  • "This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
  • "We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
  • "Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."
  • "Our license is for one year."
  • More NetWitness Platform 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 product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
    Top Answer:The product price was reasonable for my region and the market.
    Top Answer:From an improvement perspective, the NetWitness Platform needs to release new features and improve in areas like log… 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
    RSA Security Analytics
    Learn More
    NetWitness
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    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."

    NetWitness Platform is an evolved SIEM and threat detection and response solution that functions as a single, unified platform for ALL your security data. It features an advanced analyst workbench for triaging alerts and incidents, and it orchestrates security operations programs end to end. In short: NetWitness Platform is all you need to run an intelligent SOC.

    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.
    Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
    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%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider24%
    Financial Services Firm24%
    Computer Software Company24%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Government10%
    Insurance Company6%
    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 Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise30%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business23%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise67%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Security QRadar vs. NetWitness Platform
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. NetWitness Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2024.
    771,157 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Security QRadar is ranked 6th in Log Management with 198 reviews while NetWitness Platform is ranked 19th in Log Management with 36 reviews. IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0, while NetWitness Platform is rated 7.4. 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 NetWitness Platform writes "Can find out if there is lateral movement, but integration and workflow need improvement". IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security and Sentinel, whereas NetWitness Platform is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, RSA enVision, Cisco Secure Network Analytics, Trellix Network Detection and Response and LogRhythm SIEM. See our IBM Security QRadar vs. NetWitness Platform report.

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

    We monitor all Log Management 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.