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IBM Security QRadar vs IBM X-Force Exchange comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (4th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
IBM X-Force Exchange
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
8.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. IBM Security QRadar is designed for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and holds a mindshare of 6.5%, down 9.2% compared to last year.
IBM X-Force Exchange, on the other hand, focuses on Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP), holds 1.6% mindshare, down 1.9% since last year.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar6.5%
Wazuh9.3%
Splunk Enterprise Security8.7%
Other75.5%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM X-Force Exchange1.6%
Recorded Future12.6%
CrowdStrike Falcon7.3%
Other78.5%
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)
 

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.
JohnTamakloe - PeerSpot reviewer
A threat intelligence platform aiming to enhance its intelligence
It falls under the category of AI-embedded threat intelligence, which makes detection more efficient by reducing the rate of false positives and improving the overall detection rate. When the threat intelligence alone doesn’t provide enough information, we use other methods to verify the threat. For example, IBM has its threat intelligence team and tools. If the threat intelligence doesn’t yield much information, the tool has a framework that can identify suspicious activity. We then use our judgment and experience to implement compensating controls, whether for a potentially malicious patch, IP address, or any other threat. Customers benefit from it, even if they’re not directly integrating it. Through our service, they receive the benefits of the integration. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Senses, tracks, and links significant incidents and threats."
"The solution is relatively easy to use."
"It helps us discover any threats with their alerts and tracking."
"The timeline and machine learning features are great."
"It's built around Red Hat Linux, which is highly robust."
"On the back-end, Watson helps me figure out an exact problem, sometimes giving me the result."
"The monitoring and dashboards are great."
"The most valuable features are the AI assistant, which is good at detecting known types of behavior."
"The most valuable feature is you have the expertise of human experience directly involved. There is a team of experts."
"This product has helped to increase staff productivity."
"It's quite integratable so you can actually integrate and get IP malware and URL information. It also gives you some form of intelligence into what you're trying to investigate or what you're trying to understand."
 

Cons

"QVM is another instance where they need to revise the vulnerability scoring and the proper remediation details."
"The solution's technical support works, but sometimes, it can take quite a long time to get a solution from technical support."
"IBM technical support is always terrible."
"Their technical support is not good. We opened a lot of cases and from my experience, they are not complicated issues but it takes forever to get an answer."
"It is not app based."
"The initial setup requires that you have somebody with the proper skill set, and it would help if the configuration were easier."
"Pricing model could be more cost-effective."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the script which we have to create for custom actions. QRadar needs to improve that feature. Additionally, QRadar has to provide the playbooks designing features."
"I would like to see better integration with other systems, solutions, and vendors."
"You have to look for the new information from X-Force. X-Force will provide it but you have to look for it. We need clearer visibility."
"We would like to have more AI capabilities to detect threats and improve its productivity from a cybersecurity standpoint."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is overly expensive and overly complex in terms of licensing. They have many different appliances, which makes it extremely difficult to choose the technology. It is very difficult to choose the technology or QRadar components that you should be deploying. They have improved some of it in the last few years. They have made it slightly easy with the fact that you can now buy virtual versions of all the appliances, which is good, but it is still very fragmented. For instance, on some of the smaller appliances, there is no upgrade path. So, if you exceed the capacity of the appliance, you have to buy a bigger appliance, which is not helpful because it is quite a major cost. If you want to add more disks to the system, they'll say that you can't."
"IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
"IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
"QRadar is quite expensive. It wouldn't be worth it for a small business..."
"The product is expensive. We have purchased the perpetual license, but we pay for the support."
"The pricing needs to be such that they are more competitive with other vendors."
"The tool is priced in a competitive manner. The tool's price is dependent on the installation and the product size, but it is competitive in the marketplace."
"One of the fastest ways to cut costs is reducing staff, and this product can reduce staff by 70 percent."
"Cost is clearly a consideration, but the important thing is what we do with the data and how we protect it."
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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
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
7%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business90
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise103
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?
The pricing, setup cost, or licensing with IBM Security QRadar was costly. It was costly mainly for the things we used to use it for. The customers used to pay the price, but it was one of the prob...
What is your primary use case for IBM X-Force?
It's a threat intelligence platform, and we aim to enhance its intelligence by integrating additional security solutions.
What advice do you have for others considering IBM X-Force?
It falls under the category of AI-embedded threat intelligence, which makes detection more efficient by reducing the rate of false positives and improving the overall detection rate. When the threa...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
X-Force Exchange, X-Force
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Information Not Available
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