IBM Security QRadar vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
IBM Logo
21,075 views|12,899 comparisons
91% willing to recommend
Splunk Logo
24,689 views|20,244 comparisons
92% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Aug 21, 2023

We compared IBM Security QRadar and Splunk Enterprise Security across several parameters based on our users' reviews. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below:

  • Ease of Deployment: IBM Security QRadar’s setup can be more challenging and time-consuming compared to Splunk Enterprise Security. Some users found both solutions easy to install, but IBM Security QRadar took several weeks or even months, while Splunk Enterprise Security could be set up in just a day. 

  • Features: IBM Security QRadar is praised for its ability to detect threats and its ease of use. It provides customizable rules, real-time network monitoring, and competitive pricing. Splunk Enterprise Security stands out in its ability to capture and analyze various data streams. It offers valuable features like a search function, session reports, and graphing capabilities.

  • Room for Improvement: IBM Security QRadar could enhance its pricing, threat identification, plugins, and threat detection, EPS challenge, training, and technical support. Splunk Enterprise Security has room for improvement in its search algorithm, licensing model, technical support, AI capabilities, pricing, and machine learning algorithms.

  • Pricing: IBM Security QRadar’s cost differs based on the organization's requirements and structure. Certain users perceive it as reasonable, while others view it as costly. Similarly, Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is subjective, as some users find it expensive while others find it reasonable.

  • ROI: Both Splunk Enterprise Security and IBM Security QRadar are cost-effective solutions with a favorable ROI. QRadar offers user behavior analytics and employee profiling. Splunk enhances security measures and is known for its flexibility and ability to provide global observability.

  • Service and Support: Both IBM Security QRadar and Splunk Enterprise Security have received varying feedback regarding their customer service and support. Users have commended the staff's expertise and responsiveness for both products. However, there have been complaints about slow response times and a lack of expertise. 

Comparison Results: IBM Security QRadar and Splunk Enterprise Security have similarities in terms of setup complexity and value in detection capabilities and user-friendliness. IBM Security QRadar offers a wide range of features, including real network monitoring, security orchestration automated response, and risk scoring for user activity. Splunk Enterprise Security is praised for its search function, session reports, and graphing capabilities, as well as scalability and machine learning capabilities. IBM Security QRadar may have an advantage in features and pricing, while Splunk Enterprise Security may have an advantage in search capabilities and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Security QRadar vs. Splunk Enterprise Security Report (Updated: April 2024).
771,541 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: What SOC product do you recommend?
Answer: I haven't used these big-name ones like Splunk etc. but I feel they're overpriced. I think they charge an arm and a leg for each module. The ROI justification is not there. Why not try a cheaper and robust alternative like Elasticsearch?
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Providing real-time visibility for threat detection and prioritization - QRadar SIEM provides contextual and actionable surveillance across the entire IT infrastructure.""The threat hunting capabilities in general are great.""The solution is quite flexible.""IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson is a stable solution.""The most valuable thing about QRadar is that you have a single window into your network, SIEM, network flows, and risk management of your assets. If you use Splunk, for instance, then you still need a full packet capture solution, whereas the full packet capture solution is integrated within QRadar. Its application ecosystem makes it very powerful in terms of doing analysis.""The most valuable feature currently is security behaviors and the pdf files.""We are using the platform version, which I like.""It is a very optimized engine."

More IBM Security QRadar Pros →

"The initial setup is simple, not very complex. Initial deployment takes around 10 to 15 minutes to set up the entire base for Splunk including all three tiers.""The alerts are very effective.""It gives us the liberty to do more in terms of use cases.""The flexibility of the solution is quite good.""The initial setup isn't overly complex.""From the class that I took this week, being able to create notable events from whatever you find in the data set is pretty useful.""The indexing and data collection are valuable.""The integration is seamless with many devices and operating systems."

More Splunk Enterprise Security Pros →

Cons
"Their technical support is not good. We opened a lot of cases and from my experience, they are not complicated issues but it takes forever to get an answer.""The solution is difficult to understand in the beginning and has complex management configurations that can be improved.""The solution should include remote action capabilities.""There should be more opportunity for community kind of distribution where, for example, if there was a zero-day threat targeting companies.""They should provide more manual examples online so that I can learn it myself.""If you have too many events that occur, then the storage capacity becomes a problem. You need to have more storage.""There could be better integration with the solution.""We need more features in order to create rules to detect or to meet some requirements for other areas, for example, catching the event from other authentication tools."

More IBM Security QRadar Cons →

"We had some connections issues with the solution at the beginning.""Its reporting can be improved. That's the only complaint I have heard. I don't need the reporting part, but I know that other people in the organization need it.""Splunk could have more built-in use case presets that customers can build on and customize.""You do need a lot of training and certification with this product.""The implementation and the scanning of the logs can be difficult.""The integration could be a bit better. They charge for certain integrations.""The ingestion happens quickly, so you can run up the data costs if you use the default settings. It isn't a problem for government agencies in the Saudi market, but many of the corporations in India are small or medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford that kind of ingestion system.""The user access control could be much more granular, so that the admins can control r/w/x access for specific features of the product like dashboards, etc."

More Splunk Enterprise Security Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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."
  • "Most of the time, it is easier and cheaper to buy a new product or the QRadar box."
  • "IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
  • "IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
  • "Go through a vulnerability assessment review for price breaks. A virtualized solution will also cut down on cost."
  • "It is expensive. It is not a product that I can provide for SMBs. It is a program that I can only provide for really large enterprises."
  • "The maintenance costs are high."
  • "Pricing (based on EPS) will be more accurate."
  • More IBM Security QRadar Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Pricing and licensing is quite expensive. But for the value the product provides, it seems at par in the market."
  • "Although Splunk is an expensive product, it is designed to be utilized across your organization in order to maximize your ROI and lower your TCO."
  • "It is not cheap."
  • "Splunk Enterprise becomes extremely expensive after the 20GB/month license."
  • "You will eat up whatever you purchase quickly. The level of insights that Splunk empowers is addictive."
  • "Splunk licensing model might seem expensive but with all the gain in functionalities you will have compared to traditional SIEM solutions I think it’s worth the price."
  • "Pricing is pretty fair."
  • "While licensing can be a concern, there are ways to reduce the licensing costs including filtering some events."
  • More Splunk Enterprise Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
    771,541 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Comparison Review
    Vinod Shankar
    Answers from the Community
    Navin Rehnius
    Jairo Willian Pereira - PeerSpot reviewerJairo Willian Pereira
    Real User

    Apache Metron, ELK, OSSIM, Splunk and Qradar (in cost/benefit order for starters).

    Tjeerd Saijoen - PeerSpot reviewerTjeerd Saijoen
    Reseller

    I have no experience with Rapid 7 or InsightIDR. 


    IBM Qradar works great but is not easy to install. If it is running it is a great tool. Also depending on the budget, Riverbed security is a tool to consider. Costs are lower than QRadar and easier to implement. 


    Or you can use our SaaS solution with QRadar and a lot more built-in. One holistic solution for your complete IT environment.

    Jack Callaghan - PeerSpot reviewerJack Callaghan
    Real User

    @Evgeny Belenky, ​ I found Stellar to be quite intriguing. 


    I would also recommend McAFee’s new console for centralizing and coordinating a well-deployed enterprise solution.

    Ishan Kukreti - PeerSpot reviewerIshan Kukreti
    User

    COMODO MDR 

    John Stanford - PeerSpot reviewerJohn Stanford
    Real User

    Disclaimer: ICE Consulting offers SOC as a Service to our Clients.


    For SOC Tools we use Securonix and other in-house developed solutions. Securonix provides an all in one package (SIEM, UEBS, & NTA) that we believe is competitively priced for the Small to Mid Market. Their Customer Service seems better than most and they are always highly rated in the Gartner MQ reports. Set-up is not difficult, but is time consuming for the first time, afterwards each client deployment we have added has seemed to get easier and quicker.


    Please contact several vendors and ask for demos, talk with the vendor engineers to ensure the solution will workfor your needs... We evaluated Rapid7, AlienVault (ATT Cybersecurity), QRadar, LogRythm, and Securonix before deciding on Securonix. 


    Also take your time in evaluating and re-evaluating the products, I took us about about 18 months and over $30K of working with what was utimately the wrong product for us, before moving to Securonix.


    Make sure training for the use of the service is included.  We have been able to provide entensive training to out team through the vendor and would not have been able to get out SOC offering off the ground without it.


    Good Luck!

    Ishan Kukreti - PeerSpot reviewerIshan Kukreti
    User

    COMODO SOC covers your entire network and also your email. It is very easy to deploy and is very effective for reports. 

    Ishan Kukreti - PeerSpot reviewerIshan Kukreti
    User

    I prefer the COMODO SOC solution because it is a very good and easy to deploy product.

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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,… more »
    Top Answer:The event collector, flow collector, PCAP and SOAR are valuable.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we… more »
    Top Answer:There are a lot of third-party applications that can be installed.
    Ranking
    Views
    21,075
    Comparisons
    12,899
    Reviews
    29
    Average Words per Review
    487
    Rating
    7.6
    Views
    24,689
    Comparisons
    20,244
    Reviews
    69
    Average Words per Review
    930
    Rating
    8.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, QRadar, IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
    Learn More
    Overview

    IBM Security QRadar is a security and analytics platform designed to defend against threats and scale security operations. This is done through integrated visibility, investigation, detection, and response. QRadar empowers security groups with actionable insights into high-priority threats by providing visibility into enterprise security data. Through centralized visibility, security teams and analysts can determine their security stance, which areas pose a potential threat, and which areas are critical. This will help streamline workflows by eliminating the need to pivot between tools.

    IBM Security QRadar is built to address a wide range of security issues and can be easily scaled with minimal customization effort required. As data is ingested, QRadar administers automated, real-time security intelligence to swiftly and precisely discover and prioritize threats. The platform will issue alerts with actionable, rich context into developing threats. Security teams and analysts can then rapidly respond to minimize the attackers' strike. The solution will provide a complete view of activity in both cloud-based and on-premise environments as a large amount of data is ingested throughout the enterprise. Additionally, QRadar’s anomaly detection intelligence enables security teams to identify any user behavior changes that could be indicators of potential threats. 

    IBM QRadar Log Manager

    To better help organizations protect themselves against potential security threats, attacks, and breaches, IBM QRadar Log Manager gathers, analyzes, preserves, and reports on security log events using QRadar Sense Analytics. All operating systems and applications, servers, devices, and applications are converted into searchable and actionable intelligent data. QRadar Log Manager then helps organizations meet compliance reporting and monitoring requirements, which can be further upgraded to QRadar SIEM for a more superior level of threat protection.

    Some of QRadar Log Manager’s key features include:

    • Data processing and capture on any security event
    • Disaster recovery options and high availability 
    • Scalability for large enterprises
    • SoftLayer cloud installation capability
    • Advanced threat protection

    Reviews from Real Users

    IBM Security QRadar is a solution of choice among users because it provides a complete solution for security teams by integrating network analysis, log management, user behavior analytics, threat intelligence, and AI-powered investigations into a single solution. Users particularly like having a single window into their network and its ability to be used for larger enterprises.

    Simon T., a cyber security services operations manager at an aerospace/defense firm, notes, "The most valuable thing about QRadar is that you have a single window into your network, SIEM, network flows, and risk management of your assets. If you use Splunk, for instance, then you still need a full packet capture solution, whereas the full packet capture solution is integrated within QRadar. Its application ecosystem makes it very powerful in terms of doing analysis."

    A management executive at a security firm says, "What we like about QRadar and the models that IBM has, is it can go from a small-to-medium enterprise to a larger organization, and it gives you the same value."

    Splunk Enterprise Security is a SIEM, log management, and IT operations analytics tool. The solution provides users with the ability to secure their information and manage their data in the cloud, data centers, or other applications. Splunk Enterprise Security also offers visibility from different areas, levels, and devices, rather than from a single system, thus, providing its users with flexibility. Splunk Enterprise Security can monitor data and analyze, detect, and prevent intrusions. This benefits users as it provides alerts to possible intrusions, helps users to be proactive, and reduces risk factors. 

    Full visibility across your environment

    Break down data silos and gain actionable intelligence by ingesting data from multicloud and on-premises deployments. Get full visibility to quickly detect malicious threats in your environment.

    Fast threat detection

    Defend against threats with advanced security analytics, machine learning and threat intelligence that focus detection and provide high-fidelity alerts to shorten triage times and raise true positive rates.

    Efficient investigations

    Gather all the context you need and initiate flexible investigations with security analytics at your fingertips. The built-in open and extensible data platform boosts productivity and drives down fatigue.

    Open and scalable

    Built on an open and scalable data platform, you can stay agile in the face of evolving threats and business needs. Splunk meets you where you are on your cloud journey, and integrates across your data, tools and content.

    Sample Customers
    Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
    Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Security Firm6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization18%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Government9%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise30%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise57%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise68%
    Buyer's Guide
    IBM Security QRadar vs. Splunk Enterprise Security
    April 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2024.
    771,541 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    IBM Security QRadar is ranked 4th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 198 reviews while Splunk Enterprise Security is ranked 1st in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 244 reviews. IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0, while Splunk Enterprise Security is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of IBM Security QRadar writes "A highly stable and scalable solution that provides good technical support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Splunk Enterprise Security writes "It has a drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to know SQL or Java to construct a query ". IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Microsoft Sentinel, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security and Sentinel, whereas Splunk Enterprise Security is most compared with Wazuh, Dynatrace, Elastic Security, Microsoft Sentinel and Datadog. See our IBM Security QRadar vs. Splunk Enterprise Security report.

    See our list of best Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) vendors and best Log Management vendors.

    We monitor all Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.