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IBM Security QRadar vs Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
204
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (10th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (14th)
Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 10.2%, up from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sentinel is 3.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Muzzamil Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Is easy to integrate and doesn't require maintenance
One major drawback we are facing is in the area of IBM Security QRadar integration with flat file databases. IBM Security QRadar does not support flat file database integration. We are currently facing an issue with respect to the database, which you normally call a NoSQL database. There is no direct integration mechanism available with IBM Security QRadar. We have to approach IBM and generate a ticket so that they can develop a custom method for the integration. In database integration, we are facing issues with IBM Security QRadar. The solution does not support the integration of flat file databases. Certain organizations have flat file databases. IBM does not support direct integration with some databases. We had to create a plug, and we requested IBM to develop a parser, but it is taking IBM a couple of months to develop it. I think a flat-file database should be supported directly instead of developing a parser plugin. There should be a more refined threat intelligence platform, and cross-integration should be possible with locally available threat intelligence platforms.
JaideepSingh - PeerSpot reviewer
An automated solution that helped me detect threats in less than half the time it used to take
Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network. We also got multiple kinds of logs. By running some queries from the logs, we could find and fix the anomalies in the environment. Sentinel's threat visibility was great at telling us if we had something going on in our environment. We had to set up alerts in our environment based on the logs. If we had the right alerts set up, we got notified about threats and where security was lacking, so we could also take care of that. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped us prepare and take proactive steps for potential threats before they hit. Having preparation before a threat has helped our security operations. When I was using it, I used to keep going into my dashboards and looking for any threats on a weekly basis, or maybe two or three times a week. Based on that, we would recommend certain changes to the server and infrastructure teams to block or allow some ports. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped plan security against risks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found visibility very helpful for analytics."
"This solution provides me with various alarms, and I have found security issues with some of my other products."
"The interface is good."
"We get events and make the correlation, or rules. In IBM, we can implement our customer's rules. We can have very clear status threats and severity of antigens."
"No doubt about it, the solution is extremely stable."
"In addition to using this solution for our security operations center, we are using it for our other customers."
"This console gives you the entire view, which makes life easier and allows you to take precautionary measures."
"IBM QRadar is easy to scale, it doesn't affect the environment. In our office, we have around 40 - 50 users, but our clients have more users on their networks. Our organization has staff in the software department that manages IBM QRadar for us."
"The stability is phenomenal and we never had any issues with downtime or even had to restart."
"Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network."
"We can do advanced hunting queries and modify SQL queries to get desired results based on the rules triggering over the console."
"One of the most valuable features is the business intelligence engine. It's very important because it keeps track of everything that's happening and alerts us if something is different than expected. The first time I used it, I was shocked at how well it performed. Another valuable feature that I think makes this product worth the price you pay for it is that it connects to basically every system that provides some form of logging, and it's very easy to set up what triggers this."
"The tool is simple to use."
"The solution's Kusto Query Language (KQL) execution time is pretty good."
"It makes everything easier by automating some tasks and growing with our needs."
"The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure."
 

Cons

"The features that could be improved include the licensing model and the dashboards and all those presentations. Overall, the user experience part can be improved."
"I would like for Yara to be supported by all components."
"The whole process for support is something that needs to be improved."
"The solution is difficult to understand in the beginning and has complex management configurations that can be improved."
"While the interface is easy to use, it could be a little more responsive."
"IBM Qradar could improve the reporting. The tool is not designed to report. It's a great operational monitoring tool. You put it on a screen and you watch it. If you want to have analytics out of it, that's a whole different story. You're going to need more people and tools. What should be added is reporting and integration into Power BI, into some capability that produces analytical reports from the source data. IBM does not seem to care to add these features."
"I would like the rule creation interface to be much more user-friendly in the next release."
"Dashboards and reports could provide better visualization of SIEM activity."
"You need a lot of Unix scripting knowledge in order to manage the tool, which is one of the main issues that we faced."
"There are still a few vendor-specific devices for which Sentinel needs to work on integration, such as Netskope devices."
"There is no integration in the web-side of the tool."
"The solution does not allow outsourced authorizations."
"I would like to see a better reporting work structure on the dashboard."
"This product's connection to certain types of cloud systems could be improved. We can do Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, but there are a lot of other things happening in the cloud that we do not connect well enough to. This product could be improved with better connection to cloud-based solutions."
"Creating a drag-and-drop dashboard or workbook in Sentinel is a little more complex compared to other tools like LogRhythm and IBM QRadar."
"I rate Sentinel a six out of ten for scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is overly expensive and overly complex in terms of licensing. They have many different appliances, which makes it extremely difficult to choose the technology. It is very difficult to choose the technology or QRadar components that you should be deploying. They have improved some of it in the last few years. They have made it slightly easy with the fact that you can now buy virtual versions of all the appliances, which is good, but it is still very fragmented. For instance, on some of the smaller appliances, there is no upgrade path. So, if you exceed the capacity of the appliance, you have to buy a bigger appliance, which is not helpful because it is quite a major cost. If you want to add more disks to the system, they'll say that you can't."
"It is very expensive."
"The tool is priced in a competitive manner. The tool's price is dependent on the installation and the product size, but it is competitive in the marketplace."
"The product is expensive. We have purchased the perpetual license, but we pay for the support."
"This price is a little high, so it's an expensive product."
"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."
"We use QRadar as a managed service and we pay licensing fees to the partner."
"IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
"Sentinel's slightly on the expensive side."
"Sentinel is moderately priced."
"Sentinel is a subscription-based solution."
"The solution’s pricing is aligned with its competitors."
"We inquired about getting support from the vendor, Micro Focus, but the cost was very high."
"We receive a pricing discount because of our ongoing partnership with Micro Focus."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
824,053 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
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

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 do you like most about IBM QRadar?
The event collector, flow collector, PCAP and SOAR are valuable.
What do you like most about NetIQ Sentinel?
The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure.
What needs improvement with NetIQ Sentinel?
There are still a few vendor-specific devices for which Sentinel needs to work on integration, such as Netskope devices. Also, we often face region-wise outages during operation due to product team...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, QRadar, IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
NetIQ Sentinel, Novell SIEM
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Faysal Bank, GaVI, Handelsbanken, ISC Mªnster, Lambeth Council, Swisscard, The Municipality of Siena, Tukes, University of Dayton, University of the Sunshine Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.