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Fortra's Alert Logic MDR vs IBM Security QRadar comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 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

Fortra's Alert Logic MDR
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (28th), SOC as a Service (3rd)
IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Managed Detection and Response (MDR) category, the mindshare of Fortra's Alert Logic MDR is 1.1%, up from 1.0% 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 MDR1.1%
Other97.9%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2191746 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"We receive infrastructure security warnings from it. So, we know what is going on and what needs to be addressed."
"The solution was consistently available, and I cannot recall any instances where it was down."
"Notifications and the detail of notifications are most valuable. It is a user-friendly solution."
"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."
"It improves our security. Before, we didn't have anything scanning our containers. We had software scanning all the physical servers, but we had nothing to scan our containers. With Alert Logic, we can do that."
"Everything is in one dashboard; I'm notified when there's an incident and advised on what steps to take."
"What's most valuable in IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics is its higher availability than other tools."
"The most valuable features are the versatility of this solution and the variety of things you can do with it."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integration capabilities on offer."
"We have the abilities to monitor each instance which originates on the process along with the performance of each department."
"In addition to using this solution for our security operations center, we are using it for our other customers."
"Most of our clients are interested in automation. The automation part is good because they are able to detect threats and vulnerabilities in real time. It's very fast."
"A nice benefit is when we go to the process of selecting our youth cases, they go by building blocks. QRadar links it to building blocks."
"The product provides a complete platform for ingesting the log, doing the correlations and handling the runtime."
 

Cons

"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.""
"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."
"This product needs to mature more. While it is a good product, there are some areas where it needs work."
"As a user involved with the user interface, I believe there is a need to continue improving it based on feedback from our customers."
"The documentation, especially with the initial setup, needs improvement."
"We'd like to have triggered alerts sent to us so we see errors quicker."
"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."
"The product needs to mature. We don't want to be bombarded with unnecessary issues and have the real ones slip through."
"The product is good, but one feature they should have is an Elasticsearch. Currently, in QRadar, there are no Elasticsearch criteria."
"The price of IBM Security QRadar is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Maybe there should be more custom rules in the exchange. Basically, we are using a lot of threat rules, so maybe they'll develop something like that."
"AI is superb but need improvements."
"The biggest problem was built on top of the QRadar in the executive operations center network. The integration was not using the network security specialist properly, and all the incidents were inferior with QRadar. Its compatibility is not really good."
"They should provide more manual examples online so that I can learn it myself."
"The user interface is a bit difficult to get used to."
"The technical support is poor. Mostly because when I open a PMR for IBM, I am stuck with Level 1 staff. As an engineer, nothing that I am bringing them does not require Level 2 or Level 3 support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Almost any product that is on the AWS Marketplace is super easy to subscribe to."
"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."
"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."
"Alert Logic has better competitive pricing than some of its competitors."
"The pricing needs to be such that they are more competitive with other vendors."
"I feel that the price is reasonable but compared to other products that are on the market, such as an offering by Microsoft, it is more expensive."
"The maintenance costs are high."
"Go through a vulnerability assessment review for price breaks. A virtualized solution will also cut down on cost."
"Customers have to purchase a license based on the number of users, devices, and applications they want to protect. It allows you to take a license on a subscription basis for three years or five years."
"It could be cheaper, but the value itself is far more important for us than the price. Typically, our clients have yearly subscriptions."
"There are different types of subscriptions available. We were on an annual subscription, but our customers typically choose the two years subscription option."
"The solution comes with a high price tag, while some of the competitors provide identical functionality in their offerings at no extra cost."
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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
23%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Educational Organization
6%
Performing Arts
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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 Business89
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise102
 

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?
When comparing with Splunk, IBM Security QRadar's cost is reasonable. Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

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: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.