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Microsoft Sentinel vs NetWitness Platform 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

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)
NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
24th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 8.6%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.7%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

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
MdZaman - PeerSpot reviewer
Really scalable for enterprise customers
The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms. The API is nearly open and scalable, so the solution can integrate with many platforms. The solution has more than 200 log sources in the scalability to support, but this is its limit. Installation is pretty easy. However, there are a couple of modules involved, so it is not as easy as it could be. We are talking about a distributed module, not a single-module type. This is what makes things a bit complex, instead of easier. I rate it as a seven out of ten on its installation and configuration capabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product can integrate with any device."
"The main benefit is the ease of integration."
"While Microsoft Sentinel provides a log of security events, its true power lies in its integration with Microsoft Defender."
"The automation feature is valuable."
"The initial setup is very simple and straightforward."
"I've worked on most of the top SIEM solutions, and Sentinel has an edge in most areas. For example, it has built-in SOAR capabilities, allowing you to run playbooks automatically. Other vendors typically offer SOAR as a separate licensed solution or module, but you get it free with Sentinel. In-depth incident integration is available out of the box."
"The best feature is that onboarding to the SIM solution is quite easy. If you are using cloud-based solutions, it's just a few clicks to migrate it."
"It is always correlating to IOCs for normal attacks, using Azure-related resources. For example, if any illegitimate IP starts unusual activity on our Azure firewall, then it automatically generates an alarm for us."
"Possibility to investigate incidents based on logs and raw packets, such as extracting files sent over the network"
"Performance and reporting are very good."
"The most valuable feature is the hunting ability to work in a CERT."
"The most valuable features are the threat prediction and network forensics."
"What we are mainly using are the RSA concentrator, RSA Decoder, Archiver, Broker, and Log Decoder."
"The most valuable feature is the correlation. It can report in real-time and monitor the management."
"Incident management is its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are the integration and ease of use."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, we are observing large ingestion delays. We expect logs within 5 minutes, but it takes about 10 to 15 minutes."
"I would like to see more AI used in processes."
"In terms of features I would like to see in future releases, I'm interested in a few more use cases around automation. I do believe a lot of automation is available, and more is in progress, but that would be my area of interest."
"I would like Sentinel to have more out-of-the-box analytics rules. There are already more than 400 rules, but they could add more industry-specific ones. For example, you could have sets of out-of-the-box rules for banking, financial sector, insurance, automotive, etc., so it's easier for people to use it out of the box. Structuring the rules according to industry might help us."
"If I can use Sentinel offline at home and use it on a local network, it would be great. I'm not sure if I can use Sentinel offline versus the tools I have."
"I would like Microsoft Sentinel to enhance its SOAR capabilities."
"We do see continuous improvement all the time, however, I haven't got a specific feature that is lacking or not well designed."
"They only classify alerts into three categories: high, medium, and low. So, from the user's point of view, having another critical category would be awesome."
"Nowadays, their support is a little subpar compared to other solutions. I rate RSA support six out of 10."
"The tool's integration capability isn't so great."
"I believe that integrating the solution with other products such as Oracle would be beneficial."
"More customizability is required, which is something that they need to improve on."
"The initial setup was complex because it takes a lot of time to complete the implementation."
"It should have a monitoring feature. It would help us analyze the current state of attacks faster from a single platform."
"The system looks like it is a mix of a bunch of different systems, and nothing looked like it was quite together."
"Sometimes, it gives me static when integrating Windows-based systems. It should produce a precise log of sorts as to where the problem is. For example, a few days ago because of the McAfee application firewall, I couldn't get access to the particular Windows machine. So, my team and I had to figure out by ourselves that there was a virus responsible for the obstacle. This solution should trigger a meaningful log or message indicating the reason the user or implementer can't get into the machine."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft can enhance the licensing side. I feel there is confusion sometimes... They should have a single license in which we have the opportunity to use the EDR or CASB solution."
"Microsoft Sentinel is pretty expensive, and they recently announced that they will increase the price of all Microsoft services running in Azure by 11 percent. Luckily, I'm not responsible for the financial side. For one of my clients, the estimated cost is 880,000 euros for one year. There are additional costs for the service agreement."
"We only pay for the amount of data we bring in, which is fair."
"Microsoft Sentinel requires an E5 license."
"The pricing is fair... With a traditional SIEM, you pay a lump sum for licenses. But with Sentinel, it's pay-as-you-go according to the amount of data you inject."
"The pricing isn't very high. It depends on the number of logs you have. If you're expecting to ingest 50 to 60G in a day, but you're only ingesting 20 to 25G per day at first and you have a good team to analyze the logs, then you can segregate the ingestion at under 15G."
"Sentinel is a bit expensive. If you can figure a way of configuring it to meet your needs, then you can find a way around the cost."
"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."
"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."
"The product is expensive."
"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."
"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"The product price was reasonable for my region and the market."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets do not have a subscription model, it's a one-time purchase. There is only a perpetual license."
"It provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
17%
Insurance Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The product price was reasonable for my region and the market.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
From an improvement perspective, the NetWitness Platform needs to release new features and improve in areas like log correlation. The tool needs to have easier integrations with the cloud. Building...
 

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel
RSA Security Analytics
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
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