

IBM Security QRadar and Digital Guardian are leading contenders in the cybersecurity sector, focusing on security intelligence and data protection, respectively. IBM Security QRadar is leading due to its comprehensive feature set and seamless third-party integrations.
Features: IBM Security QRadar provides comprehensive features like log management, SIEM, NetFlow, application monitoring, and vulnerability scanning. It offers user behavior analytics and integrates seamlessly with other IBM products. Digital Guardian excels with strong data loss prevention (DLP) and data classification capabilities, emphasizing monitoring data transfer and protecting sensitive information across platforms.
Room for Improvement: IBM Security QRadar requires enhancements in graphing capabilities, API integrations, and automatic updates. Users point out the need for improved UI and vulnerability scanner accuracy. Digital Guardian needs better agent stability, easier policy setup, and improved integration with Linux systems. Enhancements in cloud offerings and browser compatibility are also important.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both IBM Security QRadar and Digital Guardian support on-premises, cloud, and hybrid deployments. IBM offers robust global support with mixed feedback on responsiveness, whereas Digital Guardian is praised for technical support but could improve efficiency and support for complex issues.
Pricing and ROI: IBM Security QRadar is considered expensive, especially for smaller enterprises, with complex licensing. It provides substantial value through comprehensive features. Digital Guardian's mid-range pricing is justified by its capabilities, particularly in manufacturing. Both show good ROI, with IBM suitable for large enterprises, and Digital Guardian excelling in data security-focused environments.
With SOAR, the workflow takes one minute or less to complete the analysis.
AWS gives the chance to implement a solution out of the box with use cases that are already in IBM Security QRadar.
I have seen a return on investment; I can share that it includes time saved, money saved, and fewer employees needed.
For vendor support, such as Fortra support, I would rate it a seven because all the support comes from different parts that sometimes have challenges meeting time zones, and sometimes they reroute to distributors and rely on partners.
They assist with advanced issues, such as hardware or other problems, that are not part of standard operations.
Support needs to understand the issue first, then escalate it to the engineering team.
The support is really good; for instance, if a critical ticket is submitted, you will get paged right away as it gets logged, and their analyst will look into it, letting you know as soon as possible so you can work on it.
Regarding scalability, it is a 10 out of 10.
For EPS license, if you increase or exceed the EPS license, you cannot receive events.
IBM Security QRadar's scalability is great; you can have a new collector to deploy if you have increased EPS per second.
On cloud, you don't see any disconnections or instability.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
The product has been stable so far.
The issue is that it works only with users or companies with more than 500 users.
We receive logs from different types of devices and need a way to correlate them effectively.
If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules.
IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.
Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
It was costly mainly because of the value you can get right now compared to other solutions.
It depends on how much you want to spend.
Digital Guardian can easily integrate with this data classification solution and has a very granular level of configuration and policy tuning.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
IBM Security QRadar gives the opportunity to improve the time to market of the releases with a great evaluation of cybersecurity breaches.
Compared to ArcSight, Splunk, or any other SIEM tools where you need their processing language such as structured query language, SPL, and in Sentinel there is KQL query languages, IBM Security QRadar doesn't require reliance on query languages.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| IBM Security QRadar | 1.5% |
| Digital Guardian | 0.5% |
| Other | 98.0% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 10 |
| Large Enterprise | 3 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 91 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 39 |
| Large Enterprise | 105 |
Digital Guardian is proud to be part of Fortra’s comprehensive cybersecurity portfolio, and one of the Data Protection family of products. Fortra simplifies today’s complex cybersecurity landscape by bringing complementary products together to solve problems in innovative ways. These integrated, scalable solutions address the fast-changing challenges you face in safeguarding your organization. With the help of the powerful protection from Digital Guardian and others, Fortra is your relentless ally, here for you every step of the way throughout your cybersecurity journey.
IBM Security QRadar (recently acquired by Palo Alto Networks) 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:
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."
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