IBM Security QRadar and Elastic Security compete in the security monitoring category, with QRadar having a slight edge in comprehensive feature offerings.
Features: IBM Security QRadar is known for robust log and SIEM management, scalability, and user behavior analytics. It excels in extracting information from various log sources, including custom applications, which enhances its security monitoring capabilities. Users appreciate its ability to integrate well with other security products and provide comprehensive security insights. Elastic Security is valued for speed, scalability, and customizability, particularly in data indexing and search capabilities. Its open-source nature and cost-effectiveness make it appealing for organizations seeking flexibility and lower entry costs.
Room for Improvement: IBM Security QRadar needs enhancements in incident management, user experience, and reducing deployment complexity. Better integration with third-party tools and improved graphing capabilities are also needed. Elastic Security could improve by addressing integration challenges, simplifying its user interface, and adding more built-in analytics and reporting features. Enhanced training resources and support would streamline user experience.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Security QRadar supports on-premises, hybrid, and cloud deployments but can be complex, requiring significant infrastructure and expertise. Its technical support is knowledgeable but inconsistent in response time. Elastic Security benefits from being open-source, offering flexibility in deployments across different environments. Its community support is strong, though formal support could be more responsive.
Pricing and ROI: IBM Security QRadar is generally expensive, with pricing based on events per second (EPS), which can be costly for medium to large deployments. Its comprehensive features justify the expense but may be prohibitive for smaller organizations. Elastic Security provides a cost-effective solution with an open-source model, reducing financial impact. It is affordable and scales well, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious organizations.
It does not require hefty security budgets and can be deployed for enterprise security effectively.
With SOAR, the workflow takes one minute or less to complete the analysis.
Investing this amount was very much worth it for my organization.
Support is prompt and helpful.
Most of the time when my team encounters issues, they receive responses within 24 hours.
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.
It allows us to think about specific use cases, such as gathering malicious IPs in a single view and analyzing threats based on geolocation.
For EPS license, if you increase or exceed the EPS license, you cannot receive events.
In terms of stability, I would rate Elastic a solid eight out of ten.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
The product has been stable so far.
CrowdStrike and Defender have more established threat intelligence integration due to having a larger client base.
My security testing team continuously reports vulnerabilities, and we have to fix and update the versions frequently.
Elastic Security consumes a lot of resources, requiring a substantial deployment setup.
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.
The pricing is reasonable, especially for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), making it a viable option for businesses building their security infrastructure.
This is beneficial for SMEs as they do not need extensive budgets for security solutions.
Elastic Security is considered cost-effective, especially at lower EPS levels.
Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
Elastic Security offers good insight regarding alerts, reports, and cases.
Elastic Security offers advanced features such as machine learning and integration with ChatGPT.
We require rapid processing speed for alerts and event data, and Elastic Security is very efficient at handling this level of data.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
IBM is seeking information about IBM QRadar because a part of QRadar, especially in the cloud, has been sold to Palo Alto.
We have FortiSOAR and IBM Resilient for IBM Security QRadar orchestration.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| IBM Security QRadar | 7.2% |
| Elastic Security | 5.0% |
| Other | 87.8% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 40 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 11 |
| Large Enterprise | 14 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 88 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 36 |
| Large Enterprise | 102 |
Elastic Security combines the features of a security information and event management (SIEM) system with endpoint protection, allowing organizations to detect, investigate, and respond to threats in real time. This unified approach helps reduce complexity and improve the efficiency of security operations.
Additional offerings and benefits:
Finally, Elastic Security benefits from a global community of users who contribute to its threat intelligence, helping to enhance its detection capabilities. This collaborative approach ensures that the solution remains on the cutting edge of cybersecurity, with up-to-date information on the latest threats and vulnerabilities.
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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