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Fortra's Alert Logic MDR vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

Fortra's Alert Logic MDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (31st), SOC as a Service (3rd)
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Alert Logic MDR is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar1.0%
Fortra's Alert Logic MDR1.0%
Other98.0%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2191746 - PeerSpot reviewer
President at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It's a highly mature, competitively priced solution that provides total visibility into your ecosystem. FORTRA's Alert Logic has the only Cybersecurity Platform that integrates XDR+WAF+VM+DLP in one.
Alert Logic offers total visibility into the client's IT ecosystem. The solution's intrusion detection system inspects 100 percent of the network packets and installs universal agents on all physical and virtual servers for log collection. Alert Logic also aggregates logs of the client's various 3rd Party security tools into a single pane of glass. All of the analytics from those data feeds got to a 24/7 SOC with sophisticated resources. Alert Logic has massive threat intelligence resources to provide additional context to the incident response declarations. They do all the heavy lifting for clients who lack the technology and resources to operate their own SOC. The client is solely responsible for the incident response component. The macro analytics resides on Alert Logic's cloud. You have the ECM response and business application team on the client side. Everything works in tandem, which is the only way you can deal with the advanced threats we face today, especially the ransomware families. If you don't respond in minutes, you're in trouble.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The quicker implementation of changes to our infrastructure from Alert Logic tell us if there are any problems."
"We receive infrastructure security warnings from it. So, we know what is going on and what needs to be addressed."
"Notifications and the detail of notifications are most valuable. It is a user-friendly solution."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The solution was consistently available, and I cannot recall any instances where it was down."
"It is a very stable product."
"It has the ability to install agents. It is pretty straightforward. You can automate the process pretty easily."
"The most valuable aspect of Alert Logic is its technology platform. They have SOCs in the US and Europe, giving them global visibility of the threat landscape. They detect and respond to threats in minutes. Their biggest value is human expertise. You're being attacked by a human, and you cannot respond to it unless you have a human on the other side. They have the human and technological resources to respond."
"The timeline and machine learning features are great."
"Search capabilities are sufficient for most tasks."
"Flexible and valuable product that is modular, so you can easily set up a roadmap for your clients."
"The features that I have found most valuable in QRadar are its data enrichment, use case creations, and adding references - those kinds of features are very good. Also QRadar's event filtration and device integration are perfect."
"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."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is its artificial intelligence component, Watson. Its contribution is pretty good from a machine-learning artificial intelligence perspective. This compliments the orchestration automation component, as well."
"Most of the features are good. It is an excellent solution."
"IBM Security QRadar has impacted my organization positively by helping me with many things, including catching attacks and moving quickly to reduce damage or risk from attacks."
 

Cons

"We'd like to have triggered alerts sent to us so we see errors quicker."
"The product needs to mature. We don't want to be bombarded with unnecessary issues and have the real ones slip through."
"Alert Logic needs to expand its SOCs to serve more markets, such as the Middle East and Asia. There should be infrastructure that covers more time zones. The company should also develop an EDR that is natively integrated into their solution. Currently, a client must buy another EDR solution like CrowdStrike or Sophos. I think Alert Logic is developing this. Built-in email security could also be developed and integrated."
"They have ideas and email you whatever they find, but they don't have a dedicated security team who will work on an attack or a specific security instance."
"Could be more of an endpoint protector."
"As a user involved with the user interface, I believe there is a need to continue improving it based on feedback from our customers."
"I would like to see it do initial scans and start capturing data, which it will truly analyze, not just be a reporting system saying, "Here is an email. Here is an email. Here is an email.""
"This product needs to mature more. While it is a good product, there are some areas where it needs work."
"There is a lot of manual configuration required in order for the product to run smoothly, and I think that it could be made more automatic."
"There is room for improvement in IBM QRadar in integrating features for SOC maturity and security levels directly into QRadar."
"I would like for Yara to be supported by all components."
"The architecture could be improved. I got stuck for a long time trying to understand the architecture, as it is quite challenging."
"In a future release, the solution could provide malware analysis."
"The dashboard and reports are not user-friendly or efficient so are of little help with threat hunting activity."
"Search capability and indexing still lag behind competitors. We also need to see improved rule based access controls and rule/event tuning."
"GUI needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our ROI would probably be zero. We don't even use it. It sits in there. We get emails and just delete them. Around the world, we don't even use it."
"Almost any product that is on the AWS Marketplace is super easy to subscribe to."
"Alert Logic has better competitive pricing than some of its competitors."
"Price of the solution was very reasonable considering the size of our organization at the time, and so it worked out perfectly."
"Its pricing is very reasonable considering what you get for what you pay. There is quite a good value there. Its licensing is also very logical. They've got the licensing price points at a reasonable level. It is on a monthly license but a yearly contract. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."
"Licensing can be costly depending on your architecture."
"The pricing needs to be such that they are more competitive with other vendors."
"The tool's on-premise version is expensive. However, it is cheaper than Splunk. The hybrid model offers shared instances for customers, which is not expensive. Customers with a limited budget can opt for it. You can get premium support with licenses. However, if you need customized integration, you need to buy it."
"When it comes to the initial pricing there can be a huge discount from there side and also I think they are open to competing with other products."
"The solution's pricing is based on the EPS model."
"Only enterprise businesses can afford the tool."
"It is cheaper than ArcSight."
"QRadar UBA's price is a little more than street price and could be reduced."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Performing Arts
6%
Outsourcing Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise105
 

Questions from the Community

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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?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is great compared to the other vendor.
 

Also Known As

Alert Logic MDR, Alert Logic Managed Detection and ResponseAlert Logic Threat Manager, Alert Logic Cloud Defender, Critical Watch FusionVM
IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortra's Alert Logic MDR vs. IBM Security QRadar and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.