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IBM Security QRadar vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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
7.5
IBM Security QRadar is praised for efficiency, affordability, and high ROI, acting as essential protection against security threats.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR boosts security efficiency, saves time, reduces breaches, despite high licensing costs, enhancing overall organizational security posture.
Investing this amount was very much worth it for my organization.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
IBM Security QRadar's customer service is excellent but has inconsistent support quality and response times varying by region.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Defender XDR support excels in premium tiers but has mixed reviews for basic service response times and expertise.
They assist with advanced issues, such as hardware or other problems, that are not part of standard operations.
The problem escalates through level one to level three, and then the process starts over with Novo again.
I received very good support, possibly due to a good relationship with IBM.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Security QRadar is renowned for its scalability, smoothly managing large loads with hardware integration and license upgrades.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is scalable and cloud-based, with positive user feedback, but may face network and licensing challenges.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
IBM Security QRadar is stable with proper deployment, though some users face issues from misconfigurations or high log volumes.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is highly stable and reliable, with users rating it 8 or 9 out of 10.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
The product has been stable so far.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Security QRadar requires enhanced UI, integration, and AI, as it's complex, costly, and has suboptimal support and dashboard features.
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scans, improved integration, intuitive dashboards, cost-effective licensing, better automation, and broader environment support.
We receive logs from different types of devices and need a way to correlate them effectively.
If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules.
Improving the integration with IBM Server for MetaMask for correlation rules would be beneficial.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
 

Setup Cost

IBM Security QRadar is a high-cost SIEM solution ideal for large enterprises, offering strong features and negotiable pricing.
Microsoft Defender XDR pricing opinions vary, with some appreciating bundled savings and others finding standalone costs high.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
There are no issues with pricing, but sometimes, the clarity in licensing is a concern.
 

Valuable Features

IBM Security QRadar excels in scalability, integration, real-time threat detection, and supports diverse environments with customizable dashboards and analytics.
Microsoft Defender XDR offers integrated tools, enhancing threat detection, management, and automation, simplifying security tasks for enterprise environments.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
IBM is seeking information about IBM QRadar because a part of QRadar, especially in the cloud, has been sold to Palo Alto.
The scenarios we could write regarding the compliance-related issues were quite helpful.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
It's because endpoint management is my primary focus, and this feature integrates well with my other skills.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
17th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
208
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.0%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 7.0%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time incident detection and user-friendly dashboard benefit daily operations
There are many types of AI, and this AI is very limited in SQL and features. There may be potential for improvement. So far, it seems very limited. It shows some good features in the correlation part, but I think there is room for improvement. For instance, when creating rules, it can suggest more rules, reducing the effort needed. If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules. Sometimes logs I receive don't mean anything, and I need technical stakeholders to share or forward logs, but these are sometimes inadequate. Keywords can help identify insufficient logs. I often lack time to verify logs. Sharing false positive results could be reduced to help my team.
Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
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 in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
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, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
The cost depends. The price I negotiated varies by region and relationship with the OEM. Cost is not shared due to another procurement team handling negotiations, but it was reasonable as far as I ...
What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
It would be beneficial to reduce the number of clicks required to navigate between blades, as the current navigation and breadcrumb system can be a bit confusing. Some inconsistencies exist between...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.