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ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs Microsoft Sentinel 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.9
ArcSight ESM can offer high ROI through threat detection, compliance, audits, and brand protection despite its costs and implementation challenges.
Sentiment score
7.3
Microsoft Sentinel enhances ROI with improved security, cost savings, automation, and faster threat detection, benefiting organizations efficiently.
If a customer is already using Microsoft’s ecosystem, the ROI can be positive due to seamless integration.
We attribute our growth to Sentinel.
From a risk perspective, it's about mitigating risk, and as mentioned earlier, we haven't missed many things since we've had the offering in market—only a couple of minor incidents.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.7
ArcSight ESM customer service is mixed, with efficient initial responses but inconsistent, often slow technical support causing dissatisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Sentinel support is responsive and helpful, though basic support can be slow, with some preferring community resources.
If I raise a P1 or P0 ticket, the response time is often delayed by four to eight hours.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
When my team needs to escalate issues to Microsoft, especially for Microsoft Sentinel, the response is fast through their French entity.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
ArcSight ESM offers scalability and cloud support but faces high costs and EPS licensing challenges for growing event volumes.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Sentinel offers scalable, adaptable security solutions using Azure, ideal for various organizations with its flexible and updated features.
It lacks some capabilities compared to other tools available in the market.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
Being a SaaS solution, the scalability of Microsoft Sentinel is robust.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
ArcSight ESM is stable with configuration efforts, though deployment challenges and occasional issues arise under high-load conditions.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Sentinel is highly reliable, with 99.9%+ availability and occasional minor issues, maintaining stability across diverse environments.
The stability of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is not very robust.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
In the past two years, our team hasn't encountered any issues with the stability of Microsoft Sentinel from an operations perspective.
I need to be aware of deprecated connectors as they may disconnect, but the data continues to be sent with a need for quick adaptation.
 

Room For Improvement

ArcSight ESM needs interface updates, better integration, improved performance, reporting, scaling, error handling, and enhanced technical support.
Microsoft Sentinel users seek better integration, user-friendliness, documentation, AI capabilities, and customizable features with improved performance and pricing.
The integration aspect of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) needs improvement.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
Currently, we are happy to have a way in the middle with not so much cost, but it would be nice to have the ability to enhance the automation of workflows based on learned incidents.
There are complexities in calculating the right pricing tier for different customers, which makes it difficult for me as a consultant during upfront pricing.
 

Setup Cost

ArcSight ESM is costly but justifiable, with pricing based on EPS, scalable features, and possible bulk discounts.
Microsoft Sentinel's usage-based pricing offers strong value with extensive integration, but cost unpredictability concerns some users.
ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is very cheap compared to other tools.
Microsoft Sentinel offers more capabilities than Bastion, with a more intuitive experience.
Setting up the right cost model for customers is intricate, requiring careful consideration of various components and licensing tiers.
The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost.
 

Valuable Features

ArcSight ESM offers seamless integration, scalability, customizable features, real-time monitoring, and extensive analytics for effective threat detection and response.
Microsoft Sentinel provides AI-driven automation, robust threat detection, scalability, and seamless integration for comprehensive security operations within the Microsoft ecosystem.
The ability to interpret data is highly valued.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources and its detection capabilities are essential.
Microsoft Sentinel has improved cost efficiency, which is one of the key areas we're able to win business against the ability to have threat intelligence.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources enhances our threat detection capabilities beyond what is a simple data lake solution by filtering out the noise and consolidating the signal down to a meaningful level that is easier to investigate and see.
 

Categories and Ranking

ArcSight Enterprise Securit...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is 1.1%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.1%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Gaurav Ranade - PeerSpot reviewer
Excels at performing regression and correlation on the data
ArcSight is a legacy technology, and many customers want AI-powered technologies integrated with it. That hasn't been done yet, but ArcSight needs to catch up with the newer solutions and technologies available in the market. It can't just rely on the legacy technology from 2010 or 2012. You can't run that in 2024. It's a legacy technology with its own limitations. Customers often face issues that other software or newer solutions can resolve easily. That's the main challenge we face from customers right now. So, the only concerns are that AI needs to be integrated and scalability improved. Those are the main areas to be improved.
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat detection and response capabilities enhance investigation processes
My security team has been using Microsoft Sentinel for around two years. We also have Bastion and SolarWinds as part of our monitoring tools. We use a three-way tool, alongside Microsoft Sentinel, in our environment The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection,…
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 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
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best SIEM tool for a mid-sized financial services firm: Arcsight or Securonix?
In my market, a lot of financial companies had or have an ArcSight installation. Just because in former times it was pretty good. Now a lot of them are looking for a more effective solution due to ...
What do you like most about ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
We utilize ArcSight ESM for real-time threat detection in our organization. We have custom rules that we've developed on top of the WAN services, along with scheduled licensing activities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is very cheap compared to other tools. It is worth the investment if you are considering the cost.
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...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus ArcSight, HPE ArcSight, ArcSight
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lake Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bank AlJazira, Banca Intesa, and Obrela.
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.