We performed a comparison between IBM Security QRadar and Microsoft Defender for Identity based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Microsoft Sentinel enables you to ingest data from the entire ecosystem and that connection of data helps you to monitor critical resources and to know what's happening in the environment."
"The AI capability is one of the main features of the solution because I believe that in the market, there are few solutions that are providing security solutions based on AI and machine learning."
"The initial setup is very simple and straightforward."
"The log analysis is excellent; it can predict what can or will happen regarding use patterns and vulnerabilities."
"Sentinel has features that have helped improve our security poster. It helped us in going ahead and identifying the gaps via analysis and focusing on the key elements."
"The Log analytics are useful."
"What is most useful, is that it has a good connection to the Microsoft ecosystem, and I think that's the key part."
"It has basic out-of-the-box integrations with multiple log sources."
"It integrates very easily with other solutions. The solution is flexible. We can add anything to it, as it is a good companion to other tools."
"It provides many options for searching. I can see devices from different vendors, like Cisco, in one interface, which is good for me."
"The scalability is good."
"There is a single dashboard that gives us a complete overview of what is happening around the globe."
"The threat protection network is the most valuable feature, because when you get an offense, you can actually trace it back to where it originated from, how it originated, and why."
"Flexible and valuable product that is modular, so you can easily set up a roadmap for your clients."
"It is incredibly easy to deploy. All the appliances are flexible in the roles that they serve and are all managed the in the same way."
"IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics's most important feature is its ease of use."
"This solution has advanced a lot over the last few years."
"The solution offers excellent visibility into threats."
"The feature I like most is that you can create your own customized detection rules. It has a lot of default alerts and rules, but you can customize them according to your business needs."
"One of our users had the same password for every personal and company account. That was a problem because she started receiving phishing emails that could compromise all of her accounts. Defender told us that the user was not changing their password."
"The best feature is security monitoring, which detects and investigates suspicious user activities. It can easily detect advanced attacks based on the behavior. The credentials are securely stored, so it reduces the risk of compromise. It will monitor user behavior based on artificial intelligence to protect the identities in your organization. It will even help secure the on-premise Active Directory. It syncs from the cloud to on-premise, and on-premise modifications will be reflected in the cloud."
"Defender for Identity has not affected the end-user experience."
"The most valuable aspect is its connection to Microsoft Sentinel and Defender for Endpoint, and giving exact timelines for incidents and when certain events occured during an incident."
"The basic security monitoring at its core feature is the most valuable aspect. But also the investigative parts, the historical logging of events over the network are extremely interesting because it gives an in-depth insight into the history of account activity that is really easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to export."
"The only thing is sometimes you can have a false positive."
"Some of the data connectors are outdated, at least the ones that utilize Linux machines for log forwarding. I believe that Microsoft is already working on improving this."
"Only one thing is missing: NDR is not available out-of-the-box. The competitive cloud-native SIEM providers have the NDR component. Currently, Sentinel needs NDR to be powered from either Corelight or some other NDR provider."
"Sentinel could improve its ticketing and management. A few customers I have worked with liked to take the data created in Sentinel. You can make some basic efforts around that, but the customers wanted to push it to a third-party system so they could set up a proper ticketing management system, like ServiceNow, Jira, etc."
"We are invoiced according to the amount of data generated within each log."
"Everyone has their favorites. There is always room for improvement, and everybody will say, "I wish you could do this for me or that for me." It is a personal thing based on how you use the tool. I do not necessarily have those thoughts, and they are probably not really valuable because they are unique to the context of the user, but broadly, where it can continue to improve is by adding more connectors to more systems."
"I can't think of anything other than just getting the name out there. I think a lot of customers don't fully understand the full capabilities of Azure Sentinel yet. It is kind of like when they're first starting to use Azure, it might not be something they first think about. So, they should just kind of get to the point where it is more widely used."
"It has been a challenge with Azure Sentinel to onboard the Syslog server from FortiGate. Azure Sentinel can work better on that shift between the Syslog server and a firewall."
"There could be better integration with the solution."
"The solution lacks vendor support."
"The price of IBM Security QRadar is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The user interface and configurability of IBM QRadar User Behavior Analytics can be improved. It has a lot of pre-configured settings and not many things can be changed. It also needs more integrations. Currently, User Behavior Analytics is integrated only with IBM QRadar. It could have deeper integrations. It can also have more complicated scoring models. Currently, it has a very simple linear scoring model for users."
"The initial setup was complex, and it took six months."
"The Indian tech support is not helpful."
"The custom rules could be simplified more or it should be possible to use a different language, other than the ones that the solution is already using. They should add other languages into the mix."
"They have to build more quantitative monitoring, profiling, and make it more predictive."
"Defender for Identity gives us visibility, but we often get false positives from Azure that take us down the garden path. We go through 30 incidents each day and most of those are false positives or benign positive alerts. Occasionally, we get true positive alerts."
"The solution could be better at using group-managed access and they could replace it with broad-based access controls."
"There is no option to remedy an issue directly from the console. If we see an alert, we can't fix it from the console. Instead, we must depend on other Microsoft products, such as MDE. That is a significant drawback. It simply works as a scanner, which can sometimes put enough load on the sensors. Immediate actions should be possible from the dashboard because. It can prevent issues from spreading further."
"The technical support needs significant improvement. Documentation for more minor issues in the form of guides or walkthroughs could help to resolve this issue. The number of tickets raised would decrease, removing some pressure from the support team and making it easier to clear the remaining tickets."
"When the data leaves the cloud, there are security issues."
"And when you are working in a priority IP address, Identity is not able to know that those IPs are from the company. It sees that the IPs are from Taiwan or from Hong Kong or from India, even though they are internal IPs, resulting in a lot of false positives."
"The impact of the sensors on the domain controllers can be quite high depending on your loads. I don't know if there's any room for improvement there, but that's one of the things that might be improved."
"An area for improvement is the administrative interface. It's basic compared to other administrative centers. They could make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
More Microsoft Defender for Identity Pricing and Cost Advice →
IBM Security QRadar is ranked 4th in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) with 198 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Identity is ranked 1st in Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) with 13 reviews. IBM Security QRadar is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender for Identity is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of IBM Security QRadar writes "A highly stable and scalable solution that provides good technical support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Identity writes "Offers robust protection from insider threats, but the customer support is poor". IBM Security QRadar is most compared with Splunk Enterprise Security, Wazuh, LogRhythm SIEM, Elastic Security and Fortinet FortiSIEM, whereas Microsoft Defender for Identity is most compared with Microsoft Entra ID Protection, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Entra Verified ID, Splunk User Behavior Analytics and BloodHound Enterprise. See our IBM Security QRadar vs. Microsoft Defender for Identity report.
We monitor all Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.