We compared Graylog and IBM Security QRadar based on our users' reviews in five categories. We reviewed all of the data, and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: Graylog stands out with its exceptional search functions, seamless integration with Elasticsearch, and real-time data access. QRadar users say the solution provides extensive information and helpful leads for locating pertinent data. Reviews praised QRadar for its comprehensive network visibility and strong SIEM capabilities. Graylog could benefit from additional customization options and an improved rule-creation process. 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.
Service and Support: Graylog's customer service is generally well-regarded, with reviewers noting effective solutions and satisfactory experiences. While response times may differ, Graylog's support is considered superior compared to that of other products. Some QRadar customers have had trouble connecting with knowledgeable support staff and experienced delayed responses.
Ease of Deployment: Some Graylog users said the setup was easy. Other reviewers faced challenges, but these were easily resolved with help from the vendor’s support staff. Graylog is easier to set up in smaller environments, but it could get complicated in large clusters. QRadar's initial setup can be complex for users without expertise, and the difficulty may vary depending on the size of the data set.
Pricing: Graylog offers an enterprise edition and an open-source option with a daily capacity restriction. Some users said that data costs can be expensive. QRadar can be costly because users need to buy new hardware to upgrade.
ROI: Graylog can offer some cost savings. The precise ROI may vary depending on the organization’s size and use case. QRadar delivers a high return on investment, improving security through its advanced user behavior analytics.
"Message forwarding through the in-built module."
"The best feature of Graylog is the Elasticsearch integration. We can integrate and we can run filters, such as an event of interest, and those logs we can send to any SIEM tool or as an analytic. Additionally, there are clear and well-documented implementation instructions on their website to follow if needed."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."
"I am very proud of how very stable the solution is."
"The ability to write custom alerts is key to information security and compliance."
"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."
"Allowing us to set up alerts and integrate with platforms we already use, such as Slack and OpsGenie to alert users of these errors proactively, is also a very useful feature."
"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."
"We can easily monitor many things using this tool."
"It integrates very easily with other solutions. The solution is flexible. We can add anything to it, as it is a good companion to other tools."
"I have found IBM QRadar to be stable."
"There are other third-party plugins that we can use."
"The product has plenty of features and capabilities."
"When it comes to QRadar, they can do the correlation and not only in networks but also endpoints. This is one of the good features that we have noticed."
"Network-Based Anomaly Detection (NBAD): Using NetFlow, JFlow, SFlow, or QFlow (all 7 layers), offenses are detected as a response when a rule is triggered."
"We get events and make the correlation, or rules. In IBM, we can implement our customer's rules. We can have very clear status threats and severity of antigens."
"Elasticsearch recommendations for tuning could be better. Graylog doesn't have direct support for running the system inside of Kubernetes, so it can be challenging to fill in the gaps and set up containers in a way that is both performant and stable."
"Dashboards, stream alerts and parsing could be improved."
"Over six months, I had two similar issues where searches were performed on field "messages". It exhausted all the memory of the ES node causing an ES crash and a Graylog halt."
"I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."
"I would like to see a date and time in the Graylog Grok patterns so that I can save time when searching for a log. I like how the streams and the search query work, but adding a date and time will allow me to pull out a log in a milli-second."
"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
"With technical support, you are on your own without an enterprise license."
"We ran into problems with Elasticsearch throwing a circuit-breaking exception due to field data size being too large. It turned out that the heap size directly impacted this size in a high-throughput environment, causing unexplained instability in Graylog. We were able to troubleshoot on the Elasticsearch size, but we should have been able to reference some minimum requirements for Graylog to know that our settings weren't sufficient."
"The architecture could be improved. I got stuck for a long time trying to understand the architecture, as it is quite challenging."
"I'm not sure about the stability just yet. We've observed a few issues and we raised a supporting ticket for it."
"The tech support is not that good."
"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."
"A lot of information that we receive for the devices is IP-based, but it would help if we could have a default dashboard in which we can add more details about the assets for which we are receiving the information. For example, if it is a Windows or Linux device, we only get the IP for that particular device. We don't really get the name and other details of that particular device. For that, you have to drill down into your own asset management system. It would be good to have a place where we can probably add this information so that we don't have to look into other tools."
"Do your research before implementing it, because it is tough to implement."
"I would like the rule creation interface to be much more user-friendly in the next release."
"In a future release, the solution could provide malware analysis."
IBM Security QRadar is a security and analytics platform designed to defend against threats and scale security operations.
Graylog is ranked 11th in Log Management with 18 reviews while IBM Security QRadar is ranked 6th in Log Management with 197 reviews. Graylog is rated 8.0, while IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Graylog writes "Great detailed search features and easy Java integration, but needs improvement in integration with Python". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Security QRadar writes "A highly stable and scalable solution that provides good technical support". Graylog is most compared with Grafana Loki, Wazuh, syslog-ng, Splunk Enterprise Security and Datadog, whereas IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Microsoft Sentinel, Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM and Elastic Security. See our Graylog vs. IBM Security QRadar report.
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