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IBM Security QRadar vs Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.5
IBM Security QRadar is cost-effective, enhancing security while reducing manpower, with positive feedback on financial returns.
Sentiment score
7.5
Sentinel enhanced efficiency, resource allocation, productivity, and financial gains with a user-friendly interface and robust functionality.
With SOAR, the workflow takes one minute or less to complete the analysis.
Investing this amount was very much worth it for my organization.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
IBM Security QRadar support is praised for expertise but criticized for slow response times and inconsistent service quality.
Sentiment score
8.0
Micro Focus technical support varies from needing multiple emails to being very good, while Microsoft's support is generally effective.
This process can result in outages lasting three to four hours.
They assist with advanced issues, such as hardware or other problems, that are not part of standard operations.
The problem escalates through level one to level three, and then the process starts over with Novo again.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
IBM Security QRadar is highly regarded for its scalability, with easy vertical and horizontal expansion and seamless cloud deployment.
Sentiment score
7.5
Sentinel's high scalability, cost-effectiveness, and seamless cloud integration make it popular among large enterprises, educational institutions, and SMBs.
For EPS license, if you increase or exceed the EPS license, you cannot receive events.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
IBM Security QRadar is reliable but stability depends on correct deployment, capacity, and system resources, with minor update issues.
Sentiment score
8.5
Sentinel is highly stable and reliable, supporting 5,000 events per second, but can experience occasional region-specific outages during fixes.
The product has been stable so far.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
 

Room For Improvement

IBM Security QRadar needs UI improvement, better integration, enhanced detection, streamlined operations, and customization for cost-effective functionality.
Sentinel requires enhancements in scripting, integration, security, user interface, customization, vendor support, and reducing region-specific outages.
We receive logs from different types of devices and need a way to correlate them effectively.
If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules.
IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.
 

Setup Cost

IBM Security QRadar is costly but efficient, offering flexible pricing, EPS discounts, and potential cost savings with negotiation.
Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
 

Valuable Features

IBM Security QRadar excels in log management, scalability, compliance, and integration, enhancing comprehensive security management with ease.
Sentinel excels in log monitoring, threat detection, automation, cloud security, and offers a user-friendly interface with advanced analysis tools.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
IBM is seeking information about IBM QRadar because a part of QRadar, especially in the cloud, has been sold to Palo Alto.
We have FortiSOAR and IBM Resilient for IBM Security QRadar orchestration.
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Security QRadar
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
Log Management (5th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (18th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 8.2%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sentinel is 3.5%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time incident detection and user-friendly dashboard benefit daily operations
There are many types of AI, and this AI is very limited in SQL and features. There may be potential for improvement. So far, it seems very limited. It shows some good features in the correlation part, but I think there is room for improvement. For instance, when creating rules, it can suggest more rules, reducing the effort needed. If AI-related support can suggest rules and integrate with existing security devices like MD, IPS, this SIM can create more relevant rules. Sometimes logs I receive don't mean anything, and I need technical stakeholders to share or forward logs, but these are sometimes inadequate. Keywords can help identify insufficient logs. I often lack time to verify logs. Sharing false positive results could be reduced to help my team.
JaideepSingh - PeerSpot reviewer
An automated solution that helped me detect threats in less than half the time it used to take
Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network. We also got multiple kinds of logs. By running some queries from the logs, we could find and fix the anomalies in the environment. Sentinel's threat visibility was great at telling us if we had something going on in our environment. We had to set up alerts in our environment based on the logs. If we had the right alerts set up, we got notified about threats and where security was lacking, so we could also take care of that. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped us prepare and take proactive steps for potential threats before they hit. Having preparation before a threat has helped our security operations. When I was using it, I used to keep going into my dashboards and looking for any threats on a weekly basis, or maybe two or three times a week. Based on that, we would recommend certain changes to the server and infrastructure teams to block or allow some ports. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped plan security against risks.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
University
6%
 

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 NetIQ Sentinel?
The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure.
What needs improvement with NetIQ Sentinel?
There are still a few vendor-specific devices for which Sentinel needs to work on integration, such as Netskope devices. Also, we often face region-wise outages during operation due to product team...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
NetIQ Sentinel, Novell SIEM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Faysal Bank, GaVI, Handelsbanken, ISC Mªnster, Lambeth Council, Swisscard, The Municipality of Siena, Tukes, University of Dayton, University of the Sunshine Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.