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Binary Defense MDR vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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

Binary Defense MDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
8th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Binary Defense MDR is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Rich Ullom - PeerSpot reviewer
Worth the money, fantastic communication, and fast service with an average response time of about four minutes on an alert
This is my third SOC. I have never had anybody react as well. So, it's hard for me to provide something that they could do better because I'm really happy with them. I just signed another three-year contract with them. I don't find any downside to them, but if I have to put one, it would be consistent manpower or staffing. The only area where the solution can be improved is going to be with people. As they grow, they are struggling with the same thing that every other company is, which is getting talent and getting that talent to stay, but they've just revised their tiering system to go from a flat analyst and manager to a three-tier solution where it goes through two or three before it gets elevated. That seems to have worked out well, so if one level misses it, the next one picks it up, and it works out fine. Consistent staffing is the only challenge they have because when you're hiring level-one analysts, you go through them pretty quickly. You'll probably hire them at 50K or 55K, and after they do it for a year, they find out they can make 85K somewhere else, and they bounce. So, their turnover is a little high, but that's it.
Mahmoud Younes - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable installation and diverse use cases provide strong value
IBM Security QRadar has some areas for improvement. We have missed some DSM components. We need to customize logs where there is no DSM or connector for certain products. We can integrate but we have missed the DSM, which is the connector to pass logs coming from different applications. For example, with a university customer, we tried onboarding Canvas service. IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Among the valuable features are the agent, continuous reporting, and dashboard. It has all the features we need and we haven't had to customize it, other than turning on certain features that we wanted."
"The most valuable features are the SIEM and the ticketing function; the latter is very smooth and easy to read and understand. We don't have any issues looking at the ticketing information when we're trying to identify what's going on."
"With Binary Defense, we don't just get an alert, but also a detailed rundown of why they're alerting us on it. They tell us what was executed, or the username, script, or IP. That way, we're not wasting time investigating."
"The most valuable part of Binary Defense is its team of cybersecurity analysts. Their analysts filter out the noise and only forward the critical threats that require a response instead of false positives."
"The customization has been the most valuable aspect and was really the reason we ended up selecting Binary Defense. They worked with us to provide exactly the level of support, features, response, and collaboration we needed."
"Binary Defense is comprehensive. We see most of the questionable activity. Once you see things a couple of times and are familiar with the processes, you know what those are. The level of activity is definitely favorable."
"The most valuable feature is reviewing tickets and the notes added by technicians."
"Binary Defense's most valuable feature is the 24/7 monitoring and threat hunting. Their team checks the latest breaches and how they're done."
"It showed us where weaknesses were in our environment, so we could actively target those patches first."
"Currently, it is very stable."
"IBM Qradar's ability to simplify the number of events, not only on a technical level but by making that information easy to pan through the orchestration deduplication. It is very impressive given that we have hundreds of devices that send event logs through."
"Customer service is very good and very helpful."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The stability is good."
"This solution has allowed us to correlate logs from multiple sources."
"There are more than 120 extensions in QRadar, which are easy to install and configure. These can improve your analysis of events."
 

Cons

"While my understanding is that they're working on this, I would like to see some more of the quantification or reporting."
"Binary Defense MDR could be even better with additional features, like automatic scans and file quarantine."
"The only area I see for improvement with Binary Defense is their service portal. It could benefit from some enhancements."
"The only area for improvement that I can think of relates to statistical analysis for SLAs. They are in the middle of moving to a new product called D3 which is going to do some backend work for them. I know they are working to improve some of the help desk statistics, such as the time the tickets open and the time they are closed."
"The current reporting system could benefit from improvement."
"The most significant area for improvement is in support for non-English speakers; we're a global organization, so many of our users are not English speakers, which can make interacting with them a challenge. There's no Chinese language support, so we must rely on what we can do with the internet. We don't expect Binary Defense to build a language staff, but details can get lost in translation when we assume the whole world speaks English."
"If I were shopping for an MDR solution today, I would not only look for a company that has the ability to alert, detect, and remediate, but also the ability to integrate vulnerability management. That's a big thing that they're lacking today."
"It's hard to think of anything that they need to improve on, but just to point out something, I would like to see them provide advanced XDR."
"IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson could be more user-friendly. You need some skills and understanding of what you're looking at, especially if you're going to draw down specific information."
"The product is good, but one feature they should have is an Elasticsearch. Currently, in QRadar, there are no Elasticsearch criteria."
"I think that the search speed of this solution could be improved."
"QRadar needs a lot of fine tuning"
"The threat intelligence functionality can be better. In addition, it can have more monitoring capabilities."
"IBM needs to invest more into the collaboration with other vendors."
"Certain updates—especially when using Azure—don't apply directly. Our engineering team must invest additional effort to implement these updates. However, the tool's cloud-based version poses no issues. However, upgrading the product can sometimes be challenging for on-premises instances."
"QRadar's performance has room for improvement because it cannot handle the volume. I need massive amounts of logs from various devices in our existing network architecture. IBM needs to improve QRadar's capacity to handle more logs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Binary Defense has changed its pricing model from being primarily based on the volume of data to one based on escalations and incidents they handle."
"The pricing isn't that bad, it's very competitive. I don't feel that it's over-priced and I don't feel that it's under-priced."
"The solution's price is spot on; if anything, it's slightly below the norm for most services. Compared to building the same team internally, it would cost more to create the same amount of capability than what we get from an external team. Price-wise, Binary Defense is in a great spot."
"The pricing is very good. They are definitely competitive and they were lower at the time that we went with them."
"The pricing is on target. Working with their sales team on pricing negotiations was a pleasant process. They were very respectful of the constraints we had and I feel that we're paying a fair price."
"Binary Defense MDR is priced competitively and may be slightly lower than CrowdStrike."
"From the initial cost that Binary Defense came in with, we pared it down quite a bit over the course of 30 or 60 days. My leadership would say that their cost was high, but realistically, they were in line with the market."
"It's valued at the right price. Even with the number of endpoints we have, we don't feel that it's a lot more than any competitor. In fact, it might be less expensive when you look at the fact that you're getting a full flex SOC out of it along with the tools."
"We pay approximately $40,000 to use the solution annually. This solution is a lot less expensive than Splunk."
"IBM has subscriptions plans that run for one year."
"The price of this product is high."
"The product is expensive. We have purchased the perpetual license, but we pay for the support."
"It would be great if this product were cheaper."
"The pricing is good."
"Licensing is very expensive, IBM QRadar is a very expensive solution. If you want to minimize costs then IBM QRadar is not for you."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate the price a one, where one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is a cheap product."
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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
Computer Software Company
18%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Binary Defense MDR?
The most valuable feature is reviewing tickets and the notes added by technicians.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Binary Defense MDR?
It has been good. We have saved money, and we have a better product. We are a company that has become an enterprise from a small medium business in two years. Our company passed a certain dollar ma...
What needs improvement with Binary Defense MDR?
We are going to have a meeting with them the following Monday. It will be our first quarterly business review. Half of it is going to be looking at new products and new functions that they are brin...
What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
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 in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
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, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
When comparing with Splunk, IBM Security QRadar's cost is reasonable. Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

Also Known As

Binary Defense Vision, Binary Defense Managed Detection and Response, Binary Defense Managed Detection & Response
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Securitas USA, Black Hills Energy, Lincoln Electric,The J.M. Smuckers Company, New York Community Bank, State of Connecticut, NCR
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Binary Defense MDR vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.