Microsoft Sentinel vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (5th)
SolarWinds Security Event M...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
20th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 13.7%, down from 17.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.4%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Unique Categories:
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
20.2%
Microsoft Security Suite
5.3%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

Nagendra Nekkala - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 8, 2023
Provides a unified set of tools to detect, investigate, and respond to incidents and enables proactive threat hunting
We use the tool to help secure our cloud-native security solutions. By enabling us to secure our cloud environments, it acts as a single solution for attack detection and threat visibility for proactive hunting. The solution gives us a library of customizable content that helps us address our unique needs. It also gives regular patch updates. It helps us to be updated with the latest threats happening across the world. We use the Microsoft Sentinel Content hub. Integration with Active Directory is also helpful for us. The content hub enables us to see the latest features. We have Extended Detection and Response in SentinelOne. It provides effective protection for the platform. It provides more cybersecurity by providing more visibility and protects our enterprise. The content hub helps us centralize out-of-the-box security information and event management content. It discovers and manages the built-in content. It provides an end-to-end security for us. Microsoft Sentinel correlates signals from first and third-party sources into a single high-confidence incident. It can extract the information through the respective APIs of the third parties. It has increased our threat intelligence, monitoring, and incident analysis efficiency. We use Microsoft Sentinel's AI in automation. The generative AI features enable real-time threat hunting and detection. The solution has helped improve our visibility into user and network behavior. The generative AI provides better detection and response capabilities and faster response times with actionable intelligence. The product has saved us time. It helps us get various log files. When there’s an incident, it enables us to do investigations faster. The tool saves us three days in a week. It reduces the work involved in our event investigation by streamlining the processes and making automation effective. Event investigation is much faster. If someone is looking for a comprehensive solution, Microsoft Sentinel is a good choice. It will fulfill all our needs, including attack detection, threat visibility, and response. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
JT
Sep 19, 2022
The solution provides greater visibility into incidents and activities on the network.
I use SolarWinds for log and incident monitoring. More than 100 engineers at my company are currently using it.  SolarWinds has provided greater visibility into incidents and activities on the network. It's crucial to have visibility into user activities, logins, event field attempts, etc.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The part that was very unexpected was Sentinel's ability to integrate with Azure Lighthouse, which, as a managed services solution provider, gives us the ability to also manage our customers' Sentinel environments or Sentinel workspaces. It is a big plus for us. With its integration with Lighthouse, we get the ability to monitor multiple workspaces from one portal. A lot of the Microsoft Sentinel workbooks already integrate with that capability, and we save countless amounts of money by simply being able to almost immediately realize multitenant capabilities. That alone is a big plus for us."
"The native integration of the Microsoft security solution has been essential because it helps reduce some false positives, especially with some of the impossible travel rules that may be configured in Microsoft 365. For some organizations, that might be benign because they're using VPNs, etc."
"The most valuable feature is the alert notifications, which are categorized by severity levels: informational, low, medium, and high."
"The Identity Behavior tab furnishes us with the entire history linked to each IP or domain that has either accessed or attempted to access our system."
"Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it."
"The most valuable features in my experience are the UEBA, LDAP, the threat scheduler, and integration with third-party straight perform like the MISP."
"The initial setup is very simple and straightforward."
"The connectivity and analytics are great."
"SolarWinds is effective for server, network, and log monitoring. It's also good for IP address management. We also have a patch manager, but we're still working on getting that operational."
"We had to integrate with other teams, and the infrastructure deployment didn't take long. The integration involves learning with different teams, networking, and configuring various network devices and servers. Infrastructure deployment only took one or two days."
"SolarWinds' stability is fine. I don't think we've had any software issues."
"It performs network behavior monitoring, log monitoring, and disaster recovery monitoring."
"We did previously use a different solution, but SolarWinds is much better. It's easy to interact with SolarWinds. It's easy to operate, easy to configure and is generally easier compared to what we were working with before."
"It's extremely easy to deploy."
"It's easy to build rules and actions based on the logs and event types we collect with the software."
"The solution helps me to go back in time and search for different events. For example, if you wanted to know who activated an account; you could go back in time and find out."
 

Cons

"Sentinel still has some anomalies. For example, sometimes when we write a query for log analysis with KQL, it doesn't give us the data in a proper way... Also, the fields or columns could be improved. Sometimes, it is not giving the desired results and there is a blank field."
"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."
"It has been a challenge with Azure Sentinel to onboard the Syslog server from FortiGate. Azure Sentinel can work better on that shift between the Syslog server and a firewall."
"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."
"There are certain delays. For example, if an alert has been rated on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, it might take up to an hour for that alert to reach Sentinel. This should ideally take no more than one or two seconds."
"Microsoft should improve Sentinel, considering that from the legacy systems, it cannot collect logs."
"The troubleshooting has room for improvement."
"They're giving us the queries so we can plug them right into Sentinel. They need to have a streamlined process for updating them in the tool and knowing when things are updated and knowing when there are new detections available from Microsoft."
"There is no correlation made between log entries, so no threat information is presented."
"One of the drawbacks of being so flexible is that it is also a fairly complicated software application to install, configure, and maintain."
"The reporting could be more robust. It can be a lot more granular and that will make it a lot more useful in comparison to how it is incorporated at the moment."
"I imagine we will have to develop our own reports soon, this seems to be more cumbersome."
"There are no multiple dashboards which would allow you to see information side-by-side."
"It is a very technical program. They can simplify it so that it isn't so hard to deal with."
"We'd like more customization capabilities."
"We used the support from SolarWinds Security Event Manager and they are knowledgeable but challenging to get in contact with them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Sentinel is expensive."
"The are two native advantages for customers that use M365 Security and Sentinel. The first advantage is that the log or security-event ingestion into Sentinel is free. Cost-wise, they're saving a lot and that is a major advantage."
"Currently, given our use case, the cost of Sentinel is justified, but it is expensive."
"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."
"I have worked with a lot of SIEMs. We are using Sentinel three to four times more than other SIEMs that we have used. Azure Sentinel's only limitation is its price point. Sentinel costs a lot if your ingestion goes up to a certain point."
"Microsoft Sentinel requires an E5 license."
"The combination of the ease of accessibility and the free cost of the service is great. But we buy storage based on our events per second and on how many sources are integrated into the solution."
"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."
"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."
"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."
"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."
"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."
"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."
"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
70%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
3%
 

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 SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
The cost is exorbitantly high. The trial version lasts for thirty days, but I found a subscription plan priced at four thousand five hundred monthly, making it thirty-one thousand two hundred and s...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?
One of the drawbacks of being so flexible is that it is also a fairly complicated software application to install, configure, and maintain. Standardizing the monitoring configuration is difficult, ...
 

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel
SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2024.
787,779 professionals have used our research since 2012.