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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
216
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) (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) (15th)
 

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 6.0%, down 9.1% compared to last year.
IBM X-Force Exchange, on the other hand, focuses on Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP), holds 1.6% mindshare, down 1.8% since last year.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar6.0%
Wazuh8.3%
Splunk Enterprise Security8.0%
Other77.7%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM X-Force Exchange1.6%
Recorded Future9.7%
CrowdStrike Falcon6.1%
Other82.6%
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
IM
IT Infrastructure Security Lead at South Consult
Speed threat assessment ,security investigations leveraging on real time actionable threat intel integrated to your Security Intelligence Platform
The most valuable features I found include : The ability to add a vulnerability report Support for STIX and TAXII Threat Feed Manager- While viewing X-Force reports, users can enrich IP, URL and malware reports using threat intelligence So suppose you're investigating an a possible threat and you just found that there is an offense that is saying, one of your users had access to some honey port defined address You can quickly leverage X-Force to help you by doing an X-Force exchange look-up quickly. If you have an aspect of interest, such as an email, file , vulnerability data for, you can leverage X-Force to understand this in-depth.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a distributed application, meaning that a customer can stack small and then scale it so that they can expand pretty effectively. You can use, basically, the same product in an SMB or a large enterprise."
"The most valuable features are all the implementations, the plug-ins, and the User Behavior Analytics (UBA)."
"I have used IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics in a Cloud Pak on Amazon, and there it runs on top of it and is easy to assess. Additionally, I have installed processes and characters."
"The solution is reliable."
"Regarding the tool's ability to maintain high-security standards, I rate it ten out of ten."
"There are many things I appreciate about IBM Security QRadar; I haven't used any other SIEM before IBM Security QRadar, so for me, it is perfect."
"I have found IBM QRadar to be stable."
"The tool helps with infrastructure, application, and network monitoring."
"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

"The quoting and the dashboard session could be improved. It should be more user-friendly."
"The tech support is not that good."
"The technical support can be improved a little bit, and the price could be cheaper."
"The only challenge with products like IBM is the EPS. You just have to be really on the events per second, as that's where the cost factor becomes a huge issue."
"Technical support could be improved by a bit."
"We would like to see better instrumentation for debugging changes in the log flow."
"The playbook guide which specifies the rules for security use cases needs to be provided to support in case the organization needs help."
"It doesn't have a SOAR system by default. You need to purchase it additionally, which is the main problem with QRadar."
"We would like to have more AI capabilities to detect threats and improve its productivity from a cybersecurity standpoint."
"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."
"I would like to see better integration with other systems, solutions, and vendors."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As for licensing costs, I haven't seen the exact figures, but it is considered somewhat costly. On a scale from one to ten, where one is very expensive and ten is very cheap, I would rate it a six—it’s costly but worth the money."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
"The price of this solution is a little high."
"A good approach would be to begin with an On Cloud subscription, then later on do a more exact sizing."
"They can give us some scalability and flexibility on pricing. If its pricing can be reduced, it would help a lot of customers in bringing in a new SIEM environment and grow business in the market. If I start a license today and take around 10,000 EPS, and after a month, there is an increase in the number of clients on my platform, I can increase the number of licenses. I can add 5,000 EPS on a yearly basis."
"When compared with other SIM solutions, QRadar is considerably less expensive."
"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."
"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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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
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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
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
5%
Educational Organization
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business89
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise105
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?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is great compared to the other vendor.
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.
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