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IBM Security QRadar vs Proofpoint Insider Threat Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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 User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
219
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (17th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
Proofpoint Insider Threat M...
Ranking in User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (3rd), Insider Risk Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 6.8%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Insider Threat Management is 5.2%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM Security QRadar6.8%
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management5.2%
Other88.0%
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
 

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.
reviewer1271289 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Leader at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Good value, easy to use, and easy to deploy
In terms of what can be improved, that is a question I think the end users can tell you better. I'm not the end-user for this system. However, I can say that it needs to be more scalable. I think they already have a good value proposition in terms of being a hybrid model, and the reporting is okay, as well. It could have better integration with other SIEMs, but this integration has to come from the SIEM side, not ObserveIT.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson is a stable solution."
"think QRadar is great overall. We’ve had a positive experience with it and recommend it for deployment. However, there are areas for improvement. The technical support is good, and the documentation is valuable, but it could be enhanced, especially regarding integration with other systems. In terms of support and updates, QRadar’s capabilities are crucial for maintaining high security standards. Network and software administrators can monitor all traffic effectively, which reassures clients and drives further adoption."
"The solution is easy to use, manage, and review all incidents."
"The flexibility is good in terms of pulling log files."
"Most of the features are good. It is an excellent solution."
"I have found IBM QRadar to be stable."
"The most valuable features would have to be the products' ability to customize vulnerability management settings."
"It is a pretty solid product for the type that it is representing. It is a CM solution as compared to Splunk or ArcSight from HP. It is also user friendly. It comes with some internal AI as well, in which it automatically maps multiple lots from unrelated devices and makes a smart decision to link them back and create an offense based on that. It is a smart tool."
"ObserveIT is small, easy to use, easy to deploy, and is not complicated, so it's more generally suited for only SMBs. It's a good value with a cheaper price."
 

Cons

"The dashboard is pathetic and it takes a long time to perform a search."
"The AQL queries could be better."
"The architecture could be improved. I got stuck for a long time trying to understand the architecture, as it is quite challenging."
"The threat detection needs improvement, they have many false positives."
"IBM Security QRadar has many issues nowadays, particularly with WinCollect integrations and Windows-based WinCollect agent integrations. I was exhausted handling errors in WinCollect."
"Search capability and indexing still lag behind competitors. We also need to see improved rule based access controls and rule/event tuning."
"There is a lot of manual configuration required in order for the product to run smoothly, and I think that it could be made more automatic."
"The whole process for support is something that needs to be improved."
"ObserveIT is not scalable and it's not for the medium to large corporations. It's for the smaller environments. For the larger corporations, we have other scalable solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is very expensive."
"There are different types of subscriptions available. We were on an annual subscription, but our customers typically choose the two years subscription option."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is based on the EPS model."
"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."
"Most of the time, it is easier and cheaper to buy a new product or the QRadar box."
"It is costlier as compared to the other alternatives available in the market."
"The price could be better. I bought a subscription for three years."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) 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
No data available
Media Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise39
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.
Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
In addition to responsesfrom Xavier Suriol and reviewer1324719, also consider ObserveIT from Proofpoint.
Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
Hello All,I hope you had a merry Christmas.In this case it is as simple as it is.Just take Proofpoint ObserveIT - many companies in the public and financial sector have been using it for years.By ...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
ObserveIT
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Coca Cola, Allianz, Premiere League, Xerox, AIG, Cigna, Starbucks, Revlon, Toshiba, Nissan and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Proofpoint Insider Threat Management and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.