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Fortinet FortiSIEM 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:
 

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
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 Fortinet FortiSIEM is 3.3%, up from 3.0% 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

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…
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,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are things like dashboards and reports (pre-configured and custom) that let me know that things are operating the way they should be, and when they are not."
"We like the integration of all of these Fortinet platforms together. Everything is integrated well, and we are able to sell that as a service to our customers."
"It's a very nice solution to work with."
"The interface is very easy to use. The connector in the core has FortiSIEM support from the vendor."
"FortiSIEM is a great tool for making security processes transparent."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is less costly than other products and is available 24/7."
"We have many application systems, and I can set up Fortinet FortiSIEM for users to monitor their systems."
"Real-time monitoring makes life quite easy for me."
"The Log analytics are useful."
"The most valuable feature is the UEBA. It's very easy for a security operations analyst. It has a one-touch analysis where you can search for a particular entity, and you can get a complete overview of that entity or user."
"There are some very powerful features to Sentinel, such as the integration of various connectors. We have a lot of departments that use both IaaS and SaaS services, including M365 as well as Azure services. The ability to leverage connectors into these environments allows for large-scale data injection."
"It is quite efficient. It helps our clients in identifying their security issues and respond quickly. Our clients want to automate incident response and all those things."
"Investigations are something really remarkable. We can drill down right to the raw logs by running different queries and getting those on the console itself."
"Sentinel uses Azure Logic Apps for automation, which is really powerful. This allows us to easily automate responses to incidents."
"The most valuable feature is the performance because unlike legacy SIEMs that were on-premises, it does not require as much maintenance."
"Sentinel has an intuitive, user-friendly way to visualize the data properly. It gives me a solid overview of all the logs. We get a more detailed view that I can't get from the other SIEM tools. It has some IP and URL-specific allow listing"
 

Cons

"Sometimes, if there are changes made by a user on a database server, it can be difficult to get that information on the fly. I would like to see a situation where once I specify a user with the database server I need, and with the changes they have performed on that, I don't need to continue my search pattern to drill down just to get the information."
"FortiSIEM is not a market leader in the SIEM space."
"The solution's technical support didn't help our company a lot."
"The reporting feature is not very attractive for the upper management and I am not able to perform complex/nested queries."
"Their product support, in general, is not that great. The product support is in the same ecosystem. Their support is improving but it's not that great.vvv"
"Fortinet FortiSIEM could improve by having better integration and extensions. This would benefit by allowing us to give more rules."
"Creating parsers to try make unknown events or currently unsupported devices produce meaningful information is extremely cumbersome."
"The dashboard needs to improve."
"My primary improvement request would be for auxiliary logs, as they represent our biggest need."
"Microsoft Sentinel's search efficiency can be improved, especially for queries spanning large datasets or long timeframes like 90 days compared to competitors like Splunk."
"There is room for improvement in entity behavior and the integration site."
"In terms of features I would like to see in future releases, I'm interested in a few more use cases around automation. I do believe a lot of automation is available, and more is in progress, but that would be my area of interest."
"Multi-tenancy, in my opinion, needs to be improved. I believe it can do better as a managed service provider."
"The KQL query does not function effectively with Windows 11 machines, and in the majority of machine-based investigations, KQL queries are essential for organizing the data during investigations."
"The product can be improved by reducing the cost to use AI machine learning."
"Its implementation could be simpler. It is not really simple or straightforward. It is in the middle. Sometimes, connectors are a little bit complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortinet FortiSIEM is very cost-efficient compared to other SIEM solutions."
"They have a yearly subscription."
"Its price can be better. We are Fortinet partners, so we can get discounts, but its price can be an issue at the beginning for others. There is a licensing scheme for every case. There are three licensing schemes that we can choose from."
"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."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive. I rate the tool's price as an eight out of ten. Compared with Splunk or Oracle, Fortinet is cheap."
"We pay for a license for FortiSIEM. We pay for the license and renewal."
"The tool is really expensive. For what the tool does for our team, the price is fair."
"Manageable, however would be better as pay as you go versus CapEX."
"Microsoft Sentinel is expensive."
"It's costly to maintain and renew."
"From a cost point of view, it is not a cheap product. It's, like, an enterprise-level application. So if you compare it with a low-level application, it's expensive, but if you compare it with the same-level application, it's pretty much cost-effective, I think."
"It is certainly the most expensive solution. The cost is very high. We need to do an assessment using the one-month trial so that we can study the cost side. Before implementing it, we must do a careful calculation."
"The pay-as-you-go model is beneficial to customers."
"Sentinel is pretty competitive. The pricing is at the level of other SIEM solutions."
"Sentinel is a pay-as-you-go solution. To use it, you need a Log Analytics workspace. This is where the logs are stored and the cost of Log Analytics is based on gigabytes... On top of that, there is the cost of Sentinel, which is about €2 per gigabyte. If a customer has an M365 E5 license, the logs that come from Microsoft Defender are free."
"Sentinel is expensive relative to other products of the class, so it often isn't affordable for small-scale businesses. However, considering the solution has more extensive capabilities than others, the price is not so high. Pricing is based on GBs of ingested daily data, either by a pay-as-you-go or subscription model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
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

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...
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

FortiSIEM, AccelOps
Azure Sentinel
 

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.
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 Fortinet FortiSIEM vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.