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IBM Security QRadar vs NetWitness Platform 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

IBM Security QRadar
Ranking in Log Management
5th
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
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)
NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
37th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
29th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.6%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

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.
MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand
The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six 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

"What I like the most about it is that you can very easily install and configure it. As compared to other SIEM solutions, for which you need to know and do a lot more to prepare your SIEM environment, QRadar is much simpler to install and configure. There are various options in the Admin console. In the Admin tab, you can design dashboards and view various graphs. It has a lot of attractive features, and you don't need to configure everything on your own."
"It's user-friendly when compared to other products."
"This solution has excellent security analytics."
"I think this is a good product for enterprises because of the performance and out-of-the-box rules and use cases. If they want to reach the maturity level early, they can use these out-of-the-box rules and use cases. That will help them a lot."
"The solution is easy to use, manage, and review all incidents."
"It has a logical, user-friendly GUI."
"The most valuable features are the AI assistant, which is good at detecting known types of behavior."
"There are a lot of great out-of-the-box features included."
"NetWitness Platform offers flexibility for deployment and robust integration capabilities."
"Possibility to investigate incidents based on logs and raw packets, such as extracting files sent over the network"
"The packet capture aspect of it is a valuable feature because it is quite different from a traditional SIEM solution that only carries out investigations based on captured logs."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to write rules and triggers for network communication, and then being able to investigate based on that."
"NetWitness can be highly beneficial for incident detection and response."
"It gives the ability to investigate into network traffic in the Net and the organization what we couldn't do before."
"Alerting Module: It provides real-time event processing language on all the logs/packets stream for advanced alerting, i.e., using SQL LIKE statements."
"The most valuable features are the threat prediction and network forensics."
 

Cons

"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."
"The implementation and configuration are not easy."
"The interface is very old. IBM should remake it into a more modern interface."
"I don't give it a 10 because it is something we have to request. I would love it if UBA was included out of the box like Microsoft."
"The user interface needs improvement."
"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."
"The solution should include remote action capabilities."
"There are areas in IBM Security QRadar that could benefit from improvement. Its ability to customize knowledge for specific purposes could be enhanced. Also, it lacks clarity in presenting details. It is also difficult to see the reports."
"Health monitoring of the event sources and devices."
"The implementation needs assistance."
"Lots of competing products have vulnerability protection built into their products, and this solution would be improved by including that support."
"The user interface is a little bit difficult for new users and it needs to be improved."
"It should have a monitoring feature. It would help us analyze the current state of attacks faster from a single platform."
"There are instances where you try to run the reports and then it does not give you the desired outcome."
"I'd like to see improvement in its ease of use. It's basically unusable. It's overly complex."
"The threat detection capability and centralizing and upgrading capability need to be improved. The threat alert capability needs to be improved as well because there is some lag time at present. They need to work on their database search too."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is also overly complex, as there is a need to buy the work load performance monitoring separately."
"The solution comes with a high price tag, while some of the competitors provide identical functionality in their offerings at no extra cost."
"It is cheaper than ArcSight."
"The pricing is good."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is based on the EPS model."
"The pricing is higher but cheaper than others and there are no additional costs."
"We use QRadar as a managed service and we pay licensing fees to the partner."
"Our license is for one year."
"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."
"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."
"The product is expensive."
"The new pricing and licensing mechanisms are fair. I would advise always to get the full solution (i.e., not only Logs)."
"It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."
"It is cheap."
"There is a licensing fee and the customer can choose whether he wishes this to be subscription-based or perpetual."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
RSA Security Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. NetWitness Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.