We compared IBM Security QRadar and Microsoft Sentinel based on our users' reviews across several parameters.
IBM Security QRadar is praised for its advanced threat detection, customizable dashboards, and integration capabilities, while users mention concerns about its complex interface and lack of flexibility. Microsoft Sentinel is highlighted for its affordability, intuitive interface, and automation options, with users mentioning the need for improved customization and integration features. Users find value in both products, with IBM Security QRadar focusing on comprehensive features and advanced threat detection, while Microsoft Sentinel offers affordability and streamlined incident response capabilities.
Features: IBM Security QRadar excels in customizable dashboards and seamless integration with security tools, offering real-time threat detection. Microsoft Sentinel stands out for its advanced threat visibility and streamlined incident response with machine learning capabilities.
Pricing and ROI: IBM Security QRadar has a higher setup cost, with some users mentioning the need for experienced personnel. Licensing is seen as complex but offers flexibility. Microsoft Sentinel has affordable, minimal setup costs and flexible, easy-to-understand licensing options. With comprehensive features and an intuitive interface, IBM Security QRadar offers great value in detecting and managing threats. Users highlighted its ability to streamline operations and improve security posture. Microsoft Sentinel users also praised its positive impact on organizations, noting benefits like improved security, reduced incident response time, and enhanced threat visibility. Despite some initial setup complexities, they appreciate its ease of use and integration with other Microsoft products.
Room for Improvement: IBM Security QRadar could improve user interface intuitiveness, performance speed, customization flexibility, and support resources. Microsoft Sentinel users seek better platform usability, customization options, integration with other tools, enhanced reporting, and improved documentation.
Deployment and customer support: Users found IBM Security QRadar quicker to deploy and set up compared to Microsoft Sentinel, which, although quicker to deploy, had a more complex setup process, according to some users. IBM Security QRadar's highly knowledgeable and responsive customer service provides prompt assistance. Microsoft Sentinel's customer service is praised for its effectiveness and quick issue resolution, creating positive user experiences.
The summary above is based on 144 interviews we conducted recently with IBM Security QRadar and Microsoft Sentinel users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"I have found the most important features to be the flexibility, tech framework, and disk manager."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration capabilities on offer."
"The tool is already automated in many ways, but there are some additional functions which should be automated, like sending an email, mobile notification, and integration of XFS."
"This solution has allowed us to correlate logs from multiple sources."
"It has very rich functionality."
"We've found the solution to be scalable."
"I think it's a very stable product that provides much more visibility than the other product."
"We run 65 servers globally with just two people: an engineering person and me."
"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."
"Previously, it was a little bit difficult to find where an incident came from, including which IP address and which country. So in Sentinel, it's very easy to find where the incident came from since we can easily get the information from the dashboard, after which we take action quickly."
"Microsoft Sentinel comes preloaded with templates for teaching and analytics rules."
"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 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."
"The pricing of the product is excellent."
"Sentinel is a Microsoft product, so they provide very robust use cases and analytic groups, which are very beneficial for the security team. I also like the ability to integrate data sources into the software for on-premise and cloud-based solutions."
"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."
"IBM technical support is always terrible."
"We sometimes get an error about the hard drive. Approximately once in two months, we can't find the logs, and they go missing, which is a terrible issue. We are getting support for this issue from our support company."
"It needs more resilience and functionality."
"The threat intelligence functionality can be better. In addition, it can have more monitoring capabilities."
"I would like for Yara to be supported by all components."
"Do your research before implementing it, because it is tough to implement."
"There is a shortage of skilled individuals with knowledge about the solution. There is training required."
"I think that the search speed of this solution could be improved."
"When it comes to ingesting Azure native log sources, some of the log sources are specific to the subscription, and it is not always very clear."
"In terms of features I would like to see in future releases, I'm interested in a few more use cases around automation. I do believe a lot of automation is available, and more is in progress, but that would be my area of interest."
"Microsoft should improve Sentinel, considering that from the legacy systems, it cannot collect logs."
"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."
"Add more out-of-the-box connectors with other SaaS platforms/applications."
"If Azure Sentinel had the ability to ingest Azure services from different tenants into another tenant that was hosting Azure Sentinel, and not lose any metadata, that would be a huge benefit to a lot of companies."
"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 playbook development environment is not as rich as it should be. There are multiple occasions when we face problems while creating the playbook."
IBM Security QRadar is ranked 4th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 198 reviews while Microsoft Sentinel is ranked 1st in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 85 reviews. IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Sentinel is rated 8.2. 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 Microsoft Sentinel writes "Gives a comprehensive and holistic view of the ecosystem and improves visibility and the ability to respond". IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security and Fortinet FortiSIEM, whereas Microsoft Sentinel is most compared with AWS Security Hub, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Splunk Enterprise Security, Elastic Security and Wazuh. See our IBM Security QRadar vs. Microsoft Sentinel report.
See our list of best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vendors and best Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) vendors.
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