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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:
 

Categories and Ranking

ArcSight Enterprise Securit...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
18th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
96
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
89
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is 1.3%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 8.6%, down from 10.2% 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

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Usability is the most valuable feature. The accessibility is quite good."
"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."
"The reports that we are from getting from ArcSight are very valuable. The reporting in ArcSight is good. Our regulators ask us for the reports on a regular basis, and we have been able to provide the required data. Its overall functionality in terms of log analysis and the speed at which it does that is also valuable. It is very quick. Whatever alerts we had configured were extremely fast. We immediately get alerts when there is unauthorized access or unknown access, or even positive access. This is where we found the difference between ArcSight and other solutions."
"The most valuable feature is the correlation of different logs that are collected."
"The solution has gone beyond signature-based monitoring and analysis and is AI-powered. It is good enough to cover the full range of cybersecurity services."
"This process has helped to improve our organization because we have centralized the intra-group security equipment logs."
"It makes maintenance very easy."
"Stable solution with good customer service support."
"The solution offers a lot of data on events. It helps us create specific detection strategies."
"What is most useful, is that it has a good connection to the Microsoft ecosystem, and I think that's the key part."
"Sentinel is a SIEM and SOAR tool, so its automation is the best feature; we can reduce human interaction, freeing up our human resources."
"The log query feature has been the most valuable because it's very good. You can put your data on the cloud and run queues from Sentinel. It will do it all very fast. I love that I don't have to upload it to an Excel file and then manually look for a piece of information. Sentinel is much faster and is good for big databases."
"The Log analytics are useful."
"The Identity Behavior tab furnishes us with the entire history linked to each IP or domain that has either accessed or attempted to access our system."
"We can use Sentinel's playbook to block threats. It covers all of the environment, giving us great visibility."
"We are able to deploy within half an hour and we only require one person to complete the implementation."
 

Cons

"​In certain cases, this product does have false positives, which the company should work on."
"The initial setup is very complex. We had to architect a deployment which allowed us to incorporate an ever growing number of customers into our hosted instance of ArcSight."
"They also could improve the product by integrating user and identity behavior analytics."
"The biggest requirement is that there is no cloud solution for this product yet. They need to create a cloud version. It's the biggest thing they can do to make the solution better."
"We have pricing issues. ArcSight ESM may not be the most user-friendly option, and its interface is quite traditional. However, despite these aspects, we find it a good cybersecurity solution. It needs to improve the dashboards, documentation, and support as well."
"I am having issues with report generation with older versions. I don't know if this is because of compatibility issues, but report generation has been a little bit difficult in older versions. It is not similar to the newer and current versions. We are looking at moving to the cloud. It would be good if ArcSight ESM can move to the cloud. They already seem to be working on this. It would also be very helpful and great if we can integrate external threat intelligence, machine learning, and AI into this solution. It has good dashboards, but they can always be better. Its stability can also be improved."
"Currently lacks SOAR feature."
"They should try to include business logic vulnerabilities in the SIEM tool."
"For certain vendors, some of the data that Microsoft Sentinel captures is redacted due to privacy reasons."
"We do have in-built or out-of-the-box metrics that are shown on the dashboard, but it doesn't give the kind of metrics that we need from our environment whereby we need to check the meantime to detect and meantime to resolve an incident. I have to do it manually. I have to pull all the logs or all the alerts that are fed into Sentinel over a certain period. We do this on a monthly basis, so I go into Microsoft Sentinel and pull all the alerts or incidents we closed over a period of thirty days."
"We do see continuous improvement all the time, however, I haven't got a specific feature that is lacking or not well designed."
"The data connectors for third-party tools could be improved, as some aren't available in Sentinel. They need to be available in the data connector panel."
"There is room for improvement in entity behavior and the integration site."
"We'd like also a better ticketing system, which is older."
"Improvement-wise, I would like to see more integration with third-party solutions or old-school antivirus products that have some kind of logging capability. I wouldn't mind having that exposed within Sentinel. We do have situations where certain companies have bought licensing or have made an investment in a product, and that product will be there for the next two or three years. To be able to view information from those legacy products would be great. We can then better leverage the Sentinel solution and its capabilities."
"The reporting could be more structured."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Aggregation can help a lot in pushing down licensing costs."
"ArcSight can be a little bit expensive because of the area that we work in and the cost. Licensing is mostly on a yearly basis, not monthly."
"We have a license to use this solution. The price of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager is expensive."
"The pricing model is expensive compared to open-source alternatives."
"It's a good price, it's one of the cheaper solutions."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"Price-wise, ArcSight ESM was a bit high compared to competitors, which factored into our decision to switch to Splunk. It couldn't cover all our business needs for what we wanted to implement."
"The solution is super expensive. At our organization size and license model, I think the price is average to what anyone else would charge us."
"Cost-wise, Sentinel is based on the volume of information being ingested, so it can be quite pricey. The ability to use strategies to control what data is being ingested is important."
"We must have saved some money with this product. It is a cloud-native product, and the ingestion is per GB. Every GB costs a certain amount of money. That is how the license of Microsoft Sentinel works."
"Microsoft is costlier. Some organizations may not be able to afford the cost of Sentinel orchestration and the Log Analytics workspace. The transaction hosting cost is also a little bit on the high side, compared to AWS and GCP."
"Microsoft Sentinel can be costly, particularly for data management."
"I don't know yet because they gave us a 30-day test window for free."
"The combination of the ease of accessibility and the free cost of the service is great. But we buy storage based on our events per second and on how many sources are integrated into the solution."
"The solution is expensive and there is a daily usage fee."
"I'm not happy with the pricing on the integration with Defender for Endpoint. Defender for Endpoint is log-rich. There is a lot of information coming through, and it is needed information. The price point at which you ingest those logs has made a lot of my customers make the decision to leave that within the Defender stack."
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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
9%
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: December 2024.
831,369 professionals have used our research since 2012.