We performed a comparison between IBM Security QRadar and Fortinet FortiSIEM based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: IBM Security QRadar users say the solution provides extensive information and helpful leads for locating pertinent data. QRadar stands out with its comprehensive network visibility and strong SIEM capabilities. Fortinet FortiSIEM is praised for its advanced agents and effective correlation capabilities. Reviews say FortiSIEM excels at anomaly reporting and threat hunting. IBM Security QRadar could improve its rule deployment and lower its false positive rate. Users would also like expanded storage capacity, streamlined user management, and a more mature architecture. Fortinet FortiSIEM could benefit from better integration guides, more flexible reporting, and reduced resource consumption. Users also suggest adding more AI capabilities and improving database monitoring.
Service and Support: Some customers of IBM Security QRadar have had trouble connecting with knowledgeable support staff and experienced delayed responses. Some FortiSIEM customers consider Fortinet support to be satisfactory and efficient, while others were unhappy and thought the engineers could be more knowledgeable.
Ease of Deployment: IBM Security QRadar's initial setup can be complex for users without expertise, and the difficulty may vary depending on the size of the data set. Some FortiSIEM users found it effortless to install within a day or two. Nonetheless, others encountered difficulties regarding CPU and memory requirements, as well as a lengthier deployment time.
Pricing: IBM Security QRadar can be costly because users need to buy new hardware to upgrade. FortiSIEM is generally regarded as reasonably priced and competitive. However, FortiSIEM may still be deemed costly in developing markets.
ROI: IBM Security QRadar delivers a high return on investment, improving security through its advanced user behavior analytics. Fortinet FortiSIEM has consistently delivered a positive return on investment for businesses.
Comparison Results: Our users prefer IBM Security QRadar over Fortinet FortiSIEM. The advanced security features and overall strength of QRadar make it the favored option. Users like QRadar's extensive and actionable insights, user-friendly interface, and adaptability. QRadar offers a comprehensive overview of network activity and risk management.
"The automation feature is valuable."
"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."
"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."
"We have no complaints about the features or functionality."
"Sentinel also enables you to ingest data from your entire ecosystem and not just from the Microsoft ecosystem. It can receive data from third-party vendors' products such firewalls, network devices, and antivirus solutions. It's not only a Microsoft solution, it's for everything."
"What is most useful, is that it has a good connection to the Microsoft ecosystem, and I think that's the key part."
"Sentinel has features that have helped improve our security poster. It helped us in going ahead and identifying the gaps via analysis and focusing on the key elements."
"The most valuable feature is the performance because unlike legacy SIEMs that were on-premises, it does not require as much maintenance."
"Some of our customers who use this solution have seen improvement in their connection with load balancing on both connections."
"It is used as an alerting platform."
"The primary valuable feature is that it has replaced a whole lot of other products with one platform."
"It gives us the opportunity to generate notifications based upon rules that get triggered, and the rules could be specific to PCI, HIPAA, GIBA, NIST, and so forth."
"FortiSIEM provides a single PIN to monitor SOC and NOC. It's a nice tool for integration and monitoring. It provides multiple categories for monitoring based on security designations like low, medium, and high."
"There are things like dashboards and reports (pre-configured and custom) that let me know that things are operating the way they should be, and when they are not."
"The event correlation is pretty robust. The GUI is pretty good."
"FortiSIEM is a great tool for making security processes transparent."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with the GRD, for banking."
"IBM Security QRadar has significantly improved our incident response procedures."
"On the back-end, Watson helps me figure out an exact problem, sometimes giving me the result."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is its artificial intelligence component, Watson. Its contribution is pretty good from a machine-learning artificial intelligence perspective. This compliments the orchestration automation component, as well."
"It has a lot of good correlation rules. From a customer's point of view, it is one of the best solutions because you don't need to create correlation rules from scratch. You just review them and customize them as you want."
"This is a good tool to have because it gives you the ability to track what is currently happening in your environment."
"IBM QRadar is great help from its security event monitoring to data center and NOC troubleshooting of issues hard for other departments to spot."
"We can easily monitor many things using this tool."
"We have been working with multiple customers, and every time we onboard a customer, we are missing an essential feature that surprisingly doesn't exist in Sentinel. We searched the forums and knowledge bases but couldn't find a solution. When you onboard new customers, you need to enable the data connectors. That part is easy, but you must create rules from scratch for every associated connector. You click "next," "next," "next," and it requires five clicks for each analytical rule. Imagine we have a customer with 150 rules."
"Add more out-of-the-box connectors with other SaaS platforms/applications."
"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."
"The learning curve could be improved. I am still learning it. We were able to implement the basic features to get them up and running, but there are still so many things that I don't know about all its features. They have a lot of features that we have not been able to use or apply. If they could work on reducing the solution's learning curve, that would be good. While there is a training course held by Microsoft to learn more about this solution, there is a cost associated with it."
"If I see an alert and I want to drill down and get more details about the alert, it's not just one click. In other SIEM tools, you just have to click the IP address of the entity and they give you the complete picture. In Sentinel, you have to write queries or use saved queries to get details."
"They need to work with other security vendors. For example, we replaced our email gateway with Symantec, but we couldn't collect these logs with Azure Sentinel. Instead of collecting these logs with Azure Sentinel, we are collecting them on Qradar. We couldn't do it with Sentinel, which is a problem for us."
"They can work on the EDR side of things... Every time we need to onboard these kinds of machines into the EDR, we need to do it with the help of Intune, to sync up the devices, and do the configuration. I'm looking for something on the EDR side that will reduce this kind of work."
"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."
"The UI could improve in Fortinet FortiSIEM. Humans view the UI frequently for data and if it was more visually pleasing it would be beneficial."
"FortiSIEM is not a market leader in the SIEM space."
"The product does not have Security Orchestration and Automation Response, I would recommend adding this feature."
"Does not have load-sharing or high-availability, and these are important things to implement. I can do the same things in another way, but not naturally having these features makes it complicated."
"They need to integrate better with Cisco and Palo Alto."
"They could work on their documentation. If there's anything about the solution that needs improvement, it's that. For example, documentation already is on a very high level but specifically on the CLI there are tons of features which can be fine-tuned and thousands of commands are very difficult to document. If they could make this easier, it would improve the overall solution."
"Customer support service could be better."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM could improve by having a signature update."
"The weak signal detection with QRadar needs improvement. You can detect what you know, but what is unknown to the rule engine can't be detected."
"Its architecture is very complicated."
"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."
"The price of IBM Security QRadar is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The solution is difficult to understand in the beginning and has complex management configurations that can be improved."
"The reporting system could use some upgrading."
"IBM Security QRadar lacks automated response. With this feature, there's no need to visit VirusTotal or other sites for IP reputation. There should be a small plug-in where users can click to retrieve details about the reputation and organization of public IP."
"They should introduce some automation into the product."
Fortinet FortiSIEM is ranked 9th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 64 reviews while IBM Security QRadar is ranked 4th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 198 reviews. Fortinet FortiSIEM is rated 7.6, while IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiSIEM writes "It's cheaper than other solutions with the same features but lacks integration with many third-party vendors". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Security QRadar writes "A highly stable and scalable solution that provides good technical support". Fortinet FortiSIEM is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, ThousandEyes and PRTG Network Monitor, whereas IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security and ArcSight Logger. See our Fortinet FortiSIEM vs. IBM Security QRadar report.
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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.
