Microsoft Sentinel vs Netwrix Auditor comparison

Microsoft and Netwrix are both solutions in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category. Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3, while Netwrix is ranked #33 with an average rating of 9.0. Microsoft holds a 7.4% mindshare in SIEM, compared to Netwrix’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Netwrix users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Sentinel

Read 91 Microsoft Sentinel reviews

13,318 Views
8,289 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Netwrix Auditor

Read 7 Netwrix Auditor reviews

244 Views
148 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Sentinel

Netwrix Auditor

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Netwrix Auditor and Microsoft Sentinel are both prominent tools in the realm of IT security and compliance management. Users tend to favor Microsoft Sentinel for its extensive feature set and perceived value.

Features: Netwrix Audit users highlight features such as comprehensive auditing capabilities, ease of generating compliance reports, and affordability. Microsoft Sentinel is commended for powerful threat detection, integration capabilities, and perceived value.

Room for Improvement: Users of Netwrix Audit suggest enhancing real-time alerting, integration with other tools, and support. For Microsoft Sentinel, users wish for a more intuitive setup process, better documentation, and lowered complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Netwrix Audit is praised for its straightforward installation and responsive customer support. Microsoft Sentinel’s deployment is considered more complex, but its customer service is positively reviewed.

Pricing and ROI: Netwrix Audit users find its pricing reasonable and reflective of good ROI, particularly for smaller enterprises. Microsoft Sentinel is seen as worth the cost due to its comprehensive security features, despite being more expensive.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Sentinel vs. Netwrix Auditor Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. Netwrix Auditor

April 2025

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Helped 848,253 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)

Netwrix Auditor

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

33rd

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

GRC (10th), Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (18th), Active Directory Management (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.4%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netwrix Auditor is 0.3%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

KrishnanKartik

Cyber Security Consultant at Inspira Enterprise

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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Mohamed Tantawy

IT Technical Support Deputy General Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Can track every admin action in large environments and includes AI modules to detect and prevent unauthorized changes

The initial setup of Netwrix Auditor was straightforward. Some functions require agents while others are agentless, simplifying implementation. It consumed minimal server and client resources, and the wizard-based console made it simple to deploy with the help of architectural teams. All required ports were in place, and they covered all critical services and databases effectively. I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as a nine out of ten. The deployment of Netwrix Auditor took around three weeks, mainly due to the preparation of the environment and servers. The deployment process involved actions such as preparing virtual servers and building databases. Once deployed, it took only about a week to complete. Third-party consultants assisted us with deployment. Only one or two engineers were needed for deployment and maintenance, which could be handled remotely with minimal complexity.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Another area where it is helping us is in creating a single dashboard for our environment. We can collect all the logs into a log analytics workset and run queries on top of it. We get all the results in the dashboard. Even a layman can understand this stuff. The way Microsoft presents it is really incredible."

"What is most useful, is that it has a good connection to the Microsoft ecosystem, and I think that's the key part."

"Microsoft Sentinel has helped by streamlining our security. We have a nine-member network team, with three members managing security for the city, and Sentinel allows us to operate an unofficial SOC."

"Mainly, this is a cloud-native product. So, there are zero concerns about managing the whole infrastructure on-premises."

"The machine learning and artificial intelligence on offer are great."

"The in-built SOAR of Sentinel is valuable. Kusto Query Language is also valuable for the ease of writing queries and ease of getting insights from the logs. Schedule-based queries within Sentinel are also valuable. I found these three features most useful for my projects."

"The Log analytics are useful."

"The pricing of the product is excellent."

More Microsoft Sentinel pros

"The most valuable features of Netwrix Auditor are its affordability compared to similar products and its comprehensive monitoring of admin activities."

"I am impressed with the tool's reporting feature and notifications."

"The most valuable feature is the real-time monitoring."

"I have found user behavior analysis and the ability to run risk assessments important features. Additionally, the interface and online documentation are very good."

"Netwrix provides features that no other solution on the market does."

"It maintains audit logs for the duration of time that you wish, as long as you have the storage capacity to do so."

"What I find the most valuable about Netwrix Auditor is the way it shows risk. The reports are very clear."

Cons

"Its documentation is not so simple. It is easy for somebody who is Microsoft certified or more closely attached to Microsoft solutions. It is not easy for those who are working on open-source platforms. There isn't a central point where everything is documented, and there is no specific training or certification."

"The performance could be improved. If I create 15 to 20 lines for a single-use case in KQL, sometimes it takes more time to execute. If I create use cases within a certain timeline, the result will show in .01 seconds. A complex query takes more time to get results."

"They can work on the EDR side of things... Every time we need to onboard these kinds of machines into the EDR, we need to do it with the help of Intune, to sync up the devices, and do the configuration. I'm looking for something on the EDR side that will reduce this kind of work."

"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."

"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."

"Microsoft Sentinel should provide an alternative query language to KQL for users who lack KQL expertise."

"Only one thing is missing: NDR is not available out-of-the-box. The competitive cloud-native SIEM providers have the NDR component. Currently, Sentinel needs NDR to be powered from either Corelight or some other NDR provider."

"While I appreciate the UI itself and the vast amount of information available on the platform, I'm finding the overall user experience to be frustrating due to frequent disconnections and the requirement to repeatedly re-authenticate."

More Microsoft Sentinel cons

"The solution lacks self-service on password reset. It also needs to improve its scalability."

"There is room for improvements when it comes to the licensing."

"The Linux compatibility of this solution could be improved."

"When there are issues I would like remediation to be in one place."

"I expect usability features to become more refined over time. I'm interested to see how it evolves and continues to improve."

"If you buy direct, there is a minimum of 150 licenses that must be procured. The price point and barrier of entry is a little bit higher than it would be if you purchased the solution from an authorized reseller partner, rather than buying it and managing yourself."

"An improvement would be if there was an another way to manage the logs besides email because it's not so practical."

"There is room for improvement with the introduction of AI functionality."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is kind of like a sliding scale. There are different tiers of pricing that go from $100 per day up to $3,500 per day. So, it just kind of depends on how much data is being stored. There can be additional costs to the standard license other than the additional data. It just kind of depends on what other services you're spinning up in Azure, or if you're using something like Azure log analytics."

"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 are charged based on the amount of data used, which can become expensive."

"Sentinel's pricing is on the higher side, but you can get a discount if you can predict your usage. You have to pay ingestion and storage fees. There are also fees for Logic Apps and particular features. It seems heavily focused on microtransactions, but they may be slightly optional. By contrast, Splunk requires no additional fee for their equivalent of Logic. You have a little more flexibility, but Sentinel's costs add up."

"For us, it is not expensive at this time, but if we start to collect all logs from our on-premise SIEM solutions, it will cost more than QRadar. If we calculate its cost over the next five or ten years, it will cost more than what we paid for QRadar."

"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."

"The current licensing is based on the logs that are being ingested on the platform. Most of the SIEM solutions utilize that pricing model, but Microsoft should give us a customization option for controlling the kind of logs that we feed into Microsoft Sentinel. That will be much better. Otherwise, the pricing is a bit higher."

"Currently, given our use case, the cost of Sentinel is justified, but it is expensive."

More Microsoft Sentinel pricing and cost advice

"The tool's price is fair."

"There is a license for this solution and we are on an annual license. The price is reasonable."

"This solution is reasonably priced. I would rate it a nine out of ten."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Netwrix Auditor?

The most valuable features of Netwrix Auditor are its affordability compared to similar products and its comprehensive monitoring of admin activities.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Netwrix Auditor?

The pricing of Netwrix Auditor varies based on the number of users and devices in our environment, but it is generally very cost-effective compared to other solutions. We don't pay for licenses sep...

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What needs improvement with Netwrix Auditor?

The solution currently meets my needs, but there is room for improvement with the introduction of AI functionality as suggested by the vendor. Additionally, expanding capabilities like database act...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 21% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 9% of the time

Cortex XSIAM vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 8% of the time

Wazuh vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 6% of the time

Google Chronicle Suite vs Microsoft Sentinel

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

ManageEngine ADAudit Plus vs Netwrix Auditor

Compared 13% of the time

SolarWinds Access Rights Manager vs Netwrix Auditor

Compared 13% of the time

Imanami GroupID vs Netwrix Auditor

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel

April 2025

Download Microsoft Sentinel product report

Buyer's Guide

Netwrix Auditor

April 2025

Download Netwrix Auditor product report

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution that lets you see and stop threats before they cause harm. Microsoft Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response. Eliminate security infrastructure setup and maintenance, and elastically scale to meet your security needs—while reducing IT costs. With Microsoft Sentinel, you can:

- Collect data at cloud scale—across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-premises and in multiple clouds

- Detect previously uncovered threats and minimize false positives using analytics and unparalleled threat intelligence from Microsoft

- Investigate threats with AI and hunt suspicious activities at scale, tapping into decades of cybersecurity work at Microsoft

- Respond to incidents rapidly with built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Netwrix Auditor is a security-focused solution that monitors IT environments by tracking changes, ensuring compliance, and enhancing visibility into user activities. It offers detailed auditing, real-time alerts, and robust reporting tools. Its intuitive interface and comprehensive features boost efficiency, productivity, and organizational growth.

Netwrix

Sample Customers

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

AT&T, SanDisk, Siemens, Verizon, Electrolux, Allianz, Societe Generale

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Sentinel vs. Netwrix Auditor

April 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Sentinel vs. Netwrix Auditor

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