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IBM Security QRadar vs IBM Watson for Cyber Security 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

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)
IBM Watson for Cyber Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
57th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 7.7%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Watson for Cyber Security is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Elena Stefanovska - PeerSpot reviewer
Knowledgeable support, reliable, and useful compliance policies
IBM Watson for Cyber Security can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud and it is used as a SIEM solution The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We run 65 servers globally with just two people: an engineering person and me."
"The features that I have found most valuable are that it is very stable, easy to get going, and easy to manage. It is also easy to review all incidents."
"Most of the features are good. It is an excellent solution."
"The flexibility is good in terms of pulling log files."
"The correlation and the parsing are important features, since it is very important for a SIEM to have a good scalability and performance."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with the GRD, for banking."
"It comes with many rules disabled. You can tune them and modify them according to your enterprise needs and avoid false positives."
"The most valuable features are the versatility of this solution and the variety of things you can do with it."
"The customer support is very good."
"The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add them in the next release."
"The most valuable feature of this product is innovation, where the research and upgrading of technology never ends."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very stable."
 

Cons

"I think that the search speed of this solution could be improved."
"It would be better if it were more stable and more secure. The price for maintenance could be better. It's too high. In the next release, I think they should focus on the price and the operation."
"Technical support could be improved by a bit."
"The threat detection needs improvement, they have many false positives."
"Solution has too many menus that require going to two or three sub-monitors to enter the QRadar."
"For future updates, I'd like to see more advanced threat intelligence features integrated with AI. This would help with analyzing traffic patterns and improving protection. QRadar currently doesn't integrate with AI for threat analysis. However, AI could enhance its capabilities by learning traffic patterns and automatically blocking or quarantining suspicious traffic. This would be especially useful when administrators are not actively monitoring. AI could help by analyzing incoming and outgoing traffic and adjusting policies accordingly."
"Search capability and indexing still lag behind competitors. We also need to see improved rule based access controls and rule/event tuning."
"I would like for Yara to be supported by all components."
"This is an expensive product, so making it more cost-effective would be an improvement."
"They need to continue to build the AI capabilities."
"The dashboard could improve in IBM Watson for Cyber Security."
"In the future, I would like to see threat intelligence included."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When compared with other SIM solutions, QRadar is considerably less expensive."
"It's very expensive but it fits our budget."
"It would be great if this product were cheaper."
"The price could be better. I bought a subscription for three years."
"IBM QRadar is a little bit expensive compared to other products."
"QRadar UBA's price is a little more than street price and could be reduced."
"I think my company pays for the license yearly."
"It's too expensive."
"The price of this solution should be lower, although I understand why IBM charges a premium price."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very simple to license and is priced well."
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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
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Educational Organization
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. IBM Watson for Cyber Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.