We performed a comparison between IBM Security QRadar and ArcSight ESM 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. ArcSight ESM is praised for its well-designed dashboard, real-time reporting, and threat intelligence capabilities that leverage AI and correlation tools. Users also like ArcSight’s seamless integration and effortless management. 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. ArcSight ESM users have recommended improvements in training, speed, and data administration.
Service and Support: Some customers of IBM Security QRadar have had trouble connecting with knowledgeable support staff and experienced delayed responses. Some ArcSight ESM users have found the support to be responsive and helpful, while others have faced issues with slow response times and a lack of expertise.
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 said that ArcSight ESM is straightforward to set up, while others noted that integration with other systems can be challenging and requires specialized knowledge.
Pricing: IBM Security QRadar can be costly because users need to buy new hardware to upgrade. Users consider the pricing of ArcSight ESM to be reasonable and affordable.
ROI: IBM Security QRadar delivers a high return on investment, improving security through its advanced user behavior analytics. ArcSight ESM yields an ROI by helping clients achieve compliance objectives and prevent incidents.
"Sentinel pricing is good"
"The in-built SOAR of Sentinel is valuable. Kusto Query Language is also valuable for the ease of writing queries and ease of getting insights from the logs. Schedule-based queries within Sentinel are also valuable. I found these three features most useful for my projects."
"The scalability is great. You can put unlimited logs in, as long as you can pay for it. There are commitment tiers, up to six terabytes per day, which is nowhere close to what any one of our customers is running."
"I like the unified security console. You can close incidents using Sentinel in all other Microsoft Security portals, when it comes to incident response."
"You can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today... but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer."
"The ability of all these solutions to work together natively is essential. We have an Azure subscription, including Log Analytics. This feature automatically acts as one of the security baselines and detects recommendations because it also integrates with Defender. We can pull the sysadmin logs from Azure. It's all seamless and native."
"The AI and ML of Azure Sentinel are valuable. We can use machine learning models at the tenant level and within Office 365 and Microsoft stack. We don't need to depend upon any other connectors. It automatically provisions the native Microsoft products."
"It is easy to implement (turn on) - does need a skilled analyst to develop queries and playbooks."
"SmartConnector: Normalization parses raw logs and converts them into CEF (common event format). This is the core of the product."
"It gives better overall visibility. Before, we didn't have a unified system for managing security alerts. ArcSight introduced various alerts, giving us a better visibility of potential problems."
"The most valuable features of ArcSight ESM are the dashboards, ease of management for anyone, and simple for teams to provide reports related to cyber security. There are a lot of good features that are provided."
"We use ArcSight ESM for log analysis and security alerts. It warns us of threats and then helps us conduct a forensic investigation of a cyber attack or internal incident after it happens."
"The most useful features are directories, price, and live reporting."
"ArcSight is customizable. You can integrate just about anything. I also like the ease of use."
"ESM has valuable features for event prediction and security analysis."
"This process has helped to improve our organization because we have centralized the intra-group security equipment logs."
"The interface is good."
"I have found IBM QRadar to be stable."
"The scalability is good."
"It has very rich functionality."
"It's quite scalable. We have upgraded some solutions from 1000 APS up to 3500 APS to 5000 APS. It's a good solution, they have no scalability issues."
"Senses, tracks, and links significant incidents and threats."
"I really like the feature we have with the logs, that if there are any credit card numbers being used, like a PII, you can just use rejects and you can mask it. This is a really good feature in QRadar."
"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."
"At the network level, there is a limitation in integrating some of the switches or routers with Microsoft Sentinel. Currently, SPAN traffic monitoring is not available in Microsoft Sentinel. I have heard that it is available in Defender for Identity, which is a different product. It would be good if LAN traffic monitoring or SPAN traffic monitoring is available in Microsoft Sentinel. It would add a lot of value. It is available in some of the competitor products in the market."
"They're giving us the queries so we can plug them right into Sentinel. They need to have a streamlined process for updating them in the tool and knowing when things are updated and knowing when there are new detections available from Microsoft."
"If I can use Sentinel offline at home and use it on a local network, it would be great. I'm not sure if I can use Sentinel offline versus the tools I have."
"The playbook development environment is not as rich as it should be. There are multiple occasions when we face problems while creating the playbook."
"The product can be improved by reducing the cost to use AI machine learning."
"The solution should allow for a streamlined CI/CD procedure."
"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 could improve its ticketing and management. A few customers I have worked with liked to take the data created in Sentinel. You can make some basic efforts around that, but the customers wanted to push it to a third-party system so they could set up a proper ticketing management system, like ServiceNow, Jira, etc."
"It is quite complex and could use a better UI. So the improvement would be a simplification. It is pretty complicated to use. The architecture is not complex but the setup and use are."
"I would like to have a feature that gives us an entire report listing what devices are integrated."
"Its search part can be improved. When I go to the console and search for a few logs or something else, it takes a lot of time. When I try to search for three days or one week, it takes too much time. This is a major area of improvement. I wanted them to include features like SOAR, threat intelligence, and automation, and they seem to have included all these features in version 7.3 or 7.4."
"Currently lacks SOAR feature."
"The way that scaling is set up isn't very cost-effective."
"There could be more API features for extracting logs on different devices included in the product."
"There are several improvements that we would like to see, including: Building a system based on a log collection (SOC), a scenario for external encroachment, and Operator training."
"The stability isn't quite perfect. We occasionally run into problems."
"The quoting and the dashboard session could be improved. It should be more user-friendly."
"I have also been working with other SIEM solutions, and I have observed that they have extensive Linux-based and Unix-based integrations. They have been able to support some of the Linux-based agents, which is useful to investigate and process the information on the Linux and Unix side."
"The threat detection needs improvement, they have many false positives."
"I would like to see some artificial intelligence and alternative solutions."
"I would like for Yara to be supported by all components."
"The architecture could be improved. I got stuck for a long time trying to understand the architecture, as it is quite challenging."
"Some of the cloud apps need improvement."
"IBM needs to invest more into the collaboration with other vendors."
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ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is ranked 12th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 93 reviews while IBM Security QRadar is ranked 4th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 198 reviews. ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is rated 7.8, while IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) writes "Allows for monitoring logs according to industry standards within ESM but has a total capacity capped at 12 TB, limiting real-time data retention periods". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM Security QRadar writes "A highly stable and scalable solution that provides good technical support". ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, ArcSight Intelligence, Trellix ESM, AWS Security Hub and LogRhythm SIEM, whereas IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security and Fortinet FortiSIEM. See our ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs. IBM Security QRadar report.
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