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Fortinet FortiSIEM vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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

Fortinet FortiSIEM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiSIEM is 3.3%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 7.7%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Oliver Jackson - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems monitoring enhanced by firewall and intrusion detection features
My primary use case for Fortinet FortiSIEM is systems monitoring and alerting. I use it for standard functions like log monitoring, incident detection, and notification.  My customers are mostly medium-sized enterprises ranging from engineering companies, mining companies, independent schools, and…
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

"It's a very nice solution to work with."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM has its own validated and authentic IP database that marks malicious IP attacks against the firewall and generates an alert for the same."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiSIEM are the SD-WAN, Global LAN, and application controls."
"Technical support is helpful."
"The solution is very stable. It's run for years without the need to do anything except, add new patches when they are available, which are always a good idea to install."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM needs to provide better API integrations to users."
"The most valuable feature is auto-discovery. When you send logs from any device to port 514, it helps register those devices automatically."
"The Threat Hunting feature provides complete traffic analysis."
"There are other third-party plugins that we can use."
"The best feature of IBM QRadar is visualization which shows you when there's a spike in the system, and this makes you realize that there's something wrong with the log."
"IBM has everything you need in a cybersecurity solution. If you want to build a cybersecurity operation center version then I think QRadar is a perfect solution."
"The event collector, flow collector, PCAP and SOAR are valuable."
"The pre-canned rules and reports in this product are a huge plus."
"In terms of the most valuable features, the log collections and log processing mechanisms are good. They have good dashboards."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is it has very good data correlation."
"The timeline and machine learning features are great."
 

Cons

"The dashboard needs to improve."
"The built-in APIs in Fortinet FortiSIEM are somewhat lacking and could be improved for better integration with external ITSM products."
"The support of the product changed recently, and I don't think it's for the better. They should work to improve the support they offer to clients."
"If there is a configuration on the wrong side of the network or there are changes that result in harm to our IT infrastructure, the solution should immediately fix it."
"The UI could improve in Fortinet FortiSIEM. Humans view the UI frequently for data and if it was more visually pleasing it would be beneficial."
"FortiSIEM is a bit resource-hungry, so work should be done on hardware resource utilization to consume less hardware."
"Its training can be improved. Its price also needs to be improved."
"When compared with some competitors, in terms of performance, the CPU and RAM requirements and the capability of coordination with development all need some improvement."
"The dashboard and reports are not user-friendly or efficient so are of little help with threat hunting activity."
"The implementation and configuration are not easy."
"Pricing model could be more cost-effective."
"The tool is very complicated. One place for improvement would be to have a more user-friendly interface. Having better support in Spanish would be cool."
"The solution's technical support works, but sometimes, it can take quite a long time to get a solution from technical support."
"What needs to be improved in IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics is the user experience. It's not optimal. Some screens are a bit clunky. The solution needs to be more user-friendly."
"It's resource-intensive."
"There should be easier and wider integration opportunities. There should be more opportunities for integration with CTI info sharing areas. On platforms where you exchange CTI, there should be more visibility connected to what we share, what we can reach, or what options are connected to CTI info sharing. This is one area where they could add value because we cannot integrate it easily with QRadar. If a client has a legacy or already existing solutions for CTI, we cannot ask them to forget it because we cannot guarantee that QRadar is able to deliver everything connected to this area."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet FortiSIEM is very cost-efficient compared to other SIEM solutions."
"Please be cheaper and more simplified."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The free version license of the product is available for two months."
"They have a yearly subscription."
"Fortinet's products are not expensive, it is less than the competition."
"There are additional features that cost more than the standard licensing fees."
"The solution is available for both, perpetual and subscription licenses."
"The price of Fortinet FortiSIEM was reasonable compared to other solutions."
"Only enterprise businesses can afford the tool."
"Pricing (based on EPS) will be more accurate."
"They can give us some scalability and flexibility on pricing. If its pricing can be reduced, it would help a lot of customers in bringing in a new SIEM environment and grow business in the market. If I start a license today and take around 10,000 EPS, and after a month, there is an increase in the number of clients on my platform, I can increase the number of licenses. I can add 5,000 EPS on a yearly basis."
"There is an annual license required for this solution."
"Pricing is good."
"It is a perpetual license that we have for the event collector. The licensing is done based on the number of events and flows that you receive on this particular device. These are perpetual licenses, which means once you purchase them, they don't expire, which means that the support to IBM is definitely renewed after every one year. We have an enterprise agreement with IBM, which puts the cost in a totally different category as compared to someone who is not an IBM partner and is approaching IBM for this solution. We were able to get massive discounts. To give you an idea, we recently purchased 30,000 event licenses, and it costs around $480,000. It is definitely not a cheap product. We have licenses for about 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second. All the appliances and their events and flows are basically clubbed together and charged or rather calculated through a single source. The console receives all the details from all the event processes that we have globally. So, the license that we have is a single license for 270,000 events per second and 3 million flows per second, but that can be managed centrally. I was only part of the secondary purchase, which was 30,000 events per second for about $480,000. You can calculate how much we paid for 270,000 events. Reducing its price would be a compromise. We have already used a lower-priced product in the form of NNT, but we had to get rid of it because it was not doing the job that we actually wanted to do. You get what you pay for."
"QRadar UBA's price is a little more than street price and could be reduced."
"The pricing needs to be such that they are more competitive with other vendors."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
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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
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
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 Fortinet FortiSIEM?
Fortinet FortiSIEM needs to provide better API integrations to users.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSIEM?
The pricing is reasonable, which is why it is preferred by government customers. Windows agent licenses cost around 3,000 Rupees per device per year.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSIEM?
Fortinet FortiSIEM should broaden its remediation part to include more features for incident management. Currently, to manage repetitive incidents or for remediation, I need to use a separate softw...
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

FortiSIEM, AccelOps
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FortiSIEM has hundreds of customers worldwide in markets including managed services, technology, financial services, healthcare, and government. Customers include Aruba Networks, Compushare, Port of San Diego, Cleveland Indians, Infoblox, Healthways, and Referentia.
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiSIEM vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.