IBM Security QRadar vs syslog-ng comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between IBM Security QRadar and syslog-ng 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. syslog-ng Report (Updated: April 2024).
768,886 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
"What I like the most about it is that you can very easily install and configure it. As compared to other SIEM solutions, for which you need to know and do a lot more to prepare your SIEM environment, QRadar is much simpler to install and configure. There are various options in the Admin console. In the Admin tab, you can design dashboards and view various graphs. It has a lot of attractive features, and you don't need to configure everything on your own.""There are a lot of great out-of-the-box features included.""The threat protection network is the most valuable feature, because when you get an offense, you can actually trace it back to where it originated from, how it originated, and why.""Improves visibility and has a great new dashboard.""The most valuable feature is the QRadar Vulnerability Manager which provides vulnerability scans. In addition, I like the way QRadar generates alerts.""The most valuable feature is the searching capability and real-time operational use.""We've found the technical support to be very good.""This solution has excellent security analytics."

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"For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior.""Syslog-ng provides easy access to all my logs. It helps me show managers and other clients precisely where an incident occurred. I also like it because you can integrate syslog-ng with multiple solutions to allow real-time monitoring.""Syslog-ng has a separate config file in addition to the core configuration.""The ability to extract and store the logs is the most valuable feature of syslog-ng.""Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being."

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Cons
"There are a lot of things they are working on and a lot of technologies that are not yet there. They should probably work out a better reserve with their ecosystem of business partners and create wider and more in-depth qualities, third-party tools, and add-ons. These things really give immediate business value. For instance, there are many limitations in using SAP, EBS, or Micro-Dynamics. A lot of things that are happening in those platforms could also be monitored and allowed from the cybersecurity risks perspective. IBM might be leaving this gap or empty space for business partners. Some larger organizations might already be doing this. It would be very nice if IBM can make some artificial intelligence part free of charge for all current QRadar users. This would be a big advantage as compared to other competitors. There are companies that are going in different directions. Of course, you can't do everything inside QRadar. In general, it might be very good for all players to provide more use cases, especially regarding data protection and leakage prevention. There are some who are already doing some kind of file integrity or gathering some more information from all possible technologies for building anything related to the user and data analysis, content analysis, and management regarding the data protection.""The playbook guide which specifies the rules for security use cases needs to be provided to support in case the organization needs help.""The dashboard and reports are not user-friendly or efficient so are of little help with threat hunting activity.""We have had problems with networking.""SOAR is what is expected the most from QRadar. They have something called SOAR Resilient, and it would be great if that gets induced in SIEM. IBM QRadar (as well as McAfee ESM) should have analytics platform integration. Currently, SIEMs don't have full-fledged integration with analytics where we are able to dump our data in SIEM, and the same data can be called from different analytics applications. We should be able to bring this data to a platform like Hadoop for big data and run the analytics there. Currently, people are seeing the past data and taking some actions in the present, but when it comes to analytics, there should be futuristic data where you can predict something out of your present and past data. Apart from that, I would like to see a full-fledged ITSM tool in QRadar. It sometimes has some technical issues that need to be checked. It requires a dedicated QRadar engineer to completely manage it. It has different module sets, such as event collector and event processor, and some technical glitches come in between. It takes the log but doesn't exactly process it in the way we want.""The implementation and configuration are not easy.""The technical support is poor. Mostly because when I open a PMR for IBM, I am stuck with Level 1 staff. As an engineer, nothing that I am bringing them does not require Level 2 or Level 3 support.""QRadar UBA only keeps the data for a short while (it's refreshed every five minutes) and would be improved if this were extended to a week or month."

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"There is always the potential for additional integration and protocol extensions.""Syslog-ng has built-in features that we can use to create alerts for a SIEM solution. It isn't a true SIEM solution, but it's sufficient for the time being.""There is room for improvement in terms of observability.""The filtering has room for improvement.""It's hard to find people who know how to use syslog-ng. I often find problems with configurations, and solutions aren't integrated correctly with syslog-ng. For example, there might be data with extra decimals, or the collector agents are incorrectly named. It isn't a problem with the solution; it's a lack of professionals."

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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 →

  • "Syslog-ng is a free open-source solution."
  • "Syslog-ng is open-source."
  • More syslog-ng Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
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    768,886 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Vinod Shankar
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information… 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 asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also,… more »
    Top Answer:The event collector, flow collector, PCAP and SOAR are valuable.
    Top Answer:For us, the most valuable feature is the use of compound search for searching logs at a specific time, by a specific user, or specific behavior.
    Top Answer:The pricing is in the middle. I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with one being expensive and ten being cheap.
    Top Answer:There is room for improvement in terms of observability. Additionally, a possible new feature could be Kafka integration.
    Ranking
    6th
    out of 95 in Log Management
    Views
    15,293
    Comparisons
    9,299
    Reviews
    31
    Average Words per Review
    494
    Rating
    7.5
    17th
    out of 95 in Log Management
    Views
    4,265
    Comparisons
    3,428
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    378
    Rating
    8.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, QRadar, IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
    Learn More
    Overview

    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."

    Optimizing SIEM
    syslog-ng is the log management solution that improves the performance of your SIEM solution by reducing the amount and improving the quality of data feeding your SIEM.

    Rapid search and troubleshooting
    With syslog-ng Store Box, you can find the answer. Search billions of logs in seconds using full text queries with Boolean operators to pinpoint critical logs.

    Meeting compliance requirements
    syslog-ng Store Box provides secure, tamper-proof storage and custom reporting to demonstrate compliance.

    Big data ingestion
    syslog-ng can deliver data from a wide variety of sources to Hadoop, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, and Kafka as well as many others.

    Universal log collection and routing
    syslog-ng flexibly routes log data from X sources to Y destinations. Instead of deploying multiple agents on hosts, organizations can unify their log data collection and management.

    Secure data archive
    syslog-ng Store Box provides automated archiving, tamper-proof encrypted storage, granular access controls to protect log data. The largest appliance can store up to 10TB of raw logs.

    Sample Customers
    Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
    Tecnocom, University of Victoria, University of Exeter, Datapath
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Security Firm6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization18%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Government13%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise59%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Security QRadar vs. syslog-ng
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. syslog-ng and other solutions. Updated: April 2024.
    768,886 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Security QRadar is ranked 6th in Log Management with 198 reviews while syslog-ng is ranked 17th in Log Management with 5 reviews. IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0, while syslog-ng is rated 8.6. 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 syslog-ng writes "It's a user-friendly open-source solution that can replace or augment a commercial product in some cases". IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Microsoft Sentinel, Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM and Elastic Security, whereas syslog-ng is most compared with SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server, Graylog, Grafana Loki, Logstash and Nagios Log Server. See our IBM Security QRadar vs. syslog-ng report.

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    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.