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ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs Microsoft Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.9
ArcSight ESM can offer high ROI through threat detection, compliance, audits, and brand protection despite its costs and implementation challenges.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Sentinel enhances security and efficiency, offering cost savings and quick returns through automation and advanced analytics.
Microsoft Azure was not fitting for short-term cost savings but promised a better ROI over three to five years for medium to large companies.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.7
ArcSight ESM customer service is mixed, with efficient initial responses but inconsistent, often slow technical support causing dissatisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.7
Users mostly praise Microsoft's responsive Sentinel support but note delays and access issues for advanced technical assistance.
If I raise a P1 or P0 ticket, the response time is often delayed by four to eight hours.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
When my team needs to escalate issues to Microsoft, especially for Microsoft Sentinel, the response is fast through their French entity.
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
ArcSight ESM offers scalability and cloud support but faces high costs and EPS licensing challenges for growing event volumes.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Sentinel provides scalable, flexible security solutions with cloud-based efficiency, praised for cost-effective data integration and workload management.
It lacks some capabilities compared to other tools available in the market.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
ArcSight ESM is stable with configuration efforts, though deployment challenges and occasional issues arise under high-load conditions.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Sentinel offers reliable performance with minimal downtime, efficiently managed maintenance, and occasional issues during extensive customization.
The stability of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is not very robust.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
In the past two years, our team hasn't encountered any issues with the stability of Microsoft Sentinel from an operations perspective.
Sentinel's stability is great.
 

Room For Improvement

ArcSight ESM needs interface updates, better integration, improved performance, reporting, scaling, error handling, and enhanced technical support.
Microsoft Sentinel needs better user-friendliness, integration, documentation, and cost-efficiency to enhance usability, scalability, and adoption.
The integration aspect of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) needs improvement.
Currently, we are happy to have a way in the middle with not so much cost, but it would be nice to have the ability to enhance the automation of workflows based on learned incidents.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
We choose other solutions for basic monitoring due to better cost opportunities.
 

Setup Cost

ArcSight ESM is costly but justifiable, with pricing based on EPS, scalable features, and possible bulk discounts.
Microsoft Sentinel's pay-as-you-go model suits enterprises on Microsoft but raises cost concerns for others, especially with data ingestion.
ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is very cheap compared to other tools.
Microsoft Sentinel offers more capabilities than Bastion, with a more intuitive experience.
We already had the necessary licensing for Sentinel, so we didn't need to spend extra money.
 

Valuable Features

ArcSight ESM offers seamless integration, scalability, customizable features, real-time monitoring, and extensive analytics for effective threat detection and response.
Microsoft Sentinel excels with SOAR playbooks, AI automation, and integration, enhancing threat detection and response in a unified interface.
The ability to interpret data is highly valued.
Custom workbooks are valuable. It is one of the crucial points in dealing with potential security threats in an automated way without requiring too much manpower.
The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection, response, and the knowledge base for investigation.
 

Categories and Ranking

ArcSight Enterprise Securit...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
26th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is 1.1%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.5%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Ramnesh  Dubey - PeerSpot reviewer
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
The first limitation is with the ArcSight Data Storage Manager (ADSM). ArcSight's total capacity is currently capped at 12 TB. This becomes an issue if a customer needs a longer real-time data retention period, such as exceeding 90 days or reaching a year or even ten months. Increasing the disk space beyond 12 TB is not currently possible. So, increasing the storage capacity is one area for improvement. Additionally, the real-time data retention is limited due to the 12 TB restriction. Depending on the Events Per Second (EPS) you receive, you might only be able to retain data for seven to ten days. Overall, the 12 TB limit is the main issue we face in terms of maximizing real-time data storage. Moreover, there are a few improvements I would like to see in future releases. My main suggestion for ArcSight is to simplify the deployment process. Currently, the installation process is quite complex. There are various components involved, including transformations, multiple installations, and containerization for various components. Ideally, I'd recommend that ArcSight allow the entire installation, including the ESM and database, to be completed within a single unified setup process for a streamlined experience. Additionally, having readily available and well-organized documentation for the step-by-step installation process would be incredibly helpful. I would also like to see better support.
KrishnanKartik - PeerSpot reviewer
Every rule enriched at triggering stage, easing the job of SOC analyst
It's a Big Data security analytics platform. Among the unique features is the fact that it has built-in UEBA and analytical capabilities. It allows you to use the out-of-the-box machine learning and AI capabilities, but it also allows you to bring your own AI/ML, by bringing in your own IPs and allowing the platform to accept them and run that on top of it. In addition, the SOAR component is a pay-per-use model. Compared to any other product, where customization is not available, 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. Other vendors charge heavily for the SOAR, 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 SOAR engine also uniquely helps us to automate most of the incidents with automated enrichment and that cuts out the L1 analyst work. And combining M365 with Sentinel, if you want to call it integration, takes just a few clicks: "next, next finish." If it is all M365-native, it is a maximum of three or four steps and you'll be able to ingest all the logs into Sentinel. That is true even with AWS or GCP because most of the connectors are already available out-of-the-box. You just click, put in your subscription details, include your IAM, and you are finished. Within five to six steps, you can integrate AWS workloads and the logs can be ingested into Sentinel. When it comes to a third party specifically, such as log sources in a data center or on-premises, we need a log collector so that the logs can be forwarded to the Sentinel platform. And when it comes to servers or something where there is an agent for Windows or Linux, the agent can collect the logs and ship them to the Sentinel platform. I don't see any difficulties in integrating any of the log sources, even to the extent of collecting IoT log sources. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has multiple components such as Defender for Servers, Defender for PaaS, and Defender for databases. For customers in Azure, there are a lot of use cases specific to protecting workloads and PaaS and SaaS in Azure and beyond Azure, if a customer also has on-premises locations. There is EDR for Windows and Linux servers, and it even protects different kinds of containers. With Defender for Cloud, all these sources can be seamlessly integrated and you can then track the security incidents in Microsoft's XDR platform. That means you have one more workspace, under Azure, not Defender for Cloud, where you can see the security incidents. In addition, it can be integrated with Sentinel for EDR deep-dive analytics. It can also protect workloads in AWS. We have customers for whom we are protecting their AWS workloads. Even EKS, Elastic Kubernetes Service, on AWS can be integrated, as can the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). And with Defender for Cloud, security alert ingestion is free
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Comparison Review

VS
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best SIEM tool for a mid-sized financial services firm: Arcsight or Securonix?
In my market, a lot of financial companies had or have an ArcSight installation. Just because in former times it was pretty good. Now a lot of them are looking for a more effective solution due to ...
What do you like most about ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
We utilize ArcSight ESM for real-time threat detection in our organization. We have custom rules that we've developed on top of the WAN services, along with scheduled licensing activities.
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus ArcSight, HPE ArcSight, ArcSight
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lake Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bank AlJazira, Banca Intesa, and Obrela.
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.