

IBM Security QRadar and Splunk SOAR are leading competitors in the cybersecurity space. IBM Security QRadar holds the upper hand in threat intelligence and scalable log management, while Splunk SOAR shines with its automation and integration capabilities.
Features: IBM Security QRadar is known for its strong log management and SIEM functions, with advanced threat intelligence and scalability making it ideal for large environments. It offers ease of integration through its App Exchange and provides out-of-the-box rules that users appreciate for their comprehensive nature. Splunk SOAR is praised for its exceptional automation features, allowing for easy creation of playbooks and customizable workflows. It integrates seamlessly with an extensive range of tools, catering to dynamic incident response needs.
Room for Improvement: Users of IBM Security QRadar suggest enhancements in UI design, integration fluidity, and reporting capabilities. Improved API support and additional automation features are also desired. For Splunk SOAR, there is a request for better cloud technology integration, enhanced case management customization, and a revised pricing model benefiting smaller businesses. Users express the need for more refined playbooks and debugging capabilities.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Security QRadar generally requires on-premises setup, although hybrid deployment options are available. Technical support is regarded as good, but inconsistencies and delays exist. Splunk SOAR offers flexible deployment options with availability in public and private clouds, as well as on-premises. Experiences with customer support vary, with some users facing challenges in responsiveness and issue resolution.
Pricing and ROI: IBM Security QRadar is perceived as a premium product, with costs potentially restrictive for smaller organizations, yet it ensures a strong ROI for large-scale implementations. Splunk SOAR, though also expensive, offers a scalable pricing model based on users, making it attractive for medium to large enterprises looking for efficient security orchestration and automation. The ROI is justified by its ability to expedite incident response and enhance security operations.
With SOAR, the workflow takes one minute or less to complete the analysis.
AWS gives the chance to implement a solution out of the box with use cases that are already in IBM Security QRadar.
I have seen a return on investment; I can share that it includes time saved, money saved, and fewer employees needed.
We've seen a decrease in false positives and a significant increase in our containment.
Monthly, around 300 hours of effort, it is saving with Splunk SOAR.
They assist with advanced issues, such as hardware or other problems, that are not part of standard operations.
Support needs to understand the issue first, then escalate it to the engineering team.
The support is really good; for instance, if a critical ticket is submitted, you will get paged right away as it gets logged, and their analyst will look into it, letting you know as soon as possible so you can work on it.
Discovering different troubleshooting methods is harder to do with Splunk SOAR than with Enterprise Security or other Splunk services.
We always have a customer support representative who will come in the picture and help us to direct any ticket or any issue that we are facing to the right team.
Splunk's technical support is very good and generally not needed often due to the stable environment.
For EPS license, if you increase or exceed the EPS license, you cannot receive events.
IBM Security QRadar's scalability is great; you can have a new collector to deploy if you have increased EPS per second.
It can be extended and adapted as necessary.
Splunk SOAR has the ability to scale quite significantly.
On cloud, you don't see any disconnections or instability.
I think QRadar is stable and currently satisfies my needs.
The product has been stable so far.
We have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues.
We have not seen any impact in the work that we do with Splunk SOAR or the SIEM platform.
Splunk SOAR provides a stable environment and technology.
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.
If we start ingesting those data to Splunk SOAR or SIEM with some sort of integration with threat intelligence feed, that will also improve our detection and prediction method or help us with the investigation.
Although it enhances alert handling, it still has a journey to compete with Palo Alto SOAR and FortiSOAR.
Splunk's Unified Platform does help consolidate networking security and IT observability tools.
Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
It was costly mainly because of the value you can get right now compared to other solutions.
It depends on how much you want to spend.
Splunk SOAR is moderately priced, neither cheap nor overly expensive.
I am familiar with the pricing aspect, setup cost, and licensing cost of Splunk SOAR, and it is pretty much similar to what industries are offering these days.
Splunk SOAR is affordable cost-wise only.
Recently, I faced an incident, a cyber incident, and it was detected in real time.
IBM Security QRadar gives the opportunity to improve the time to market of the releases with a great evaluation of cybersecurity breaches.
Compared to ArcSight, Splunk, or any other SIEM tools where you need their processing language such as structured query language, SPL, and in Sentinel there is KQL query languages, IBM Security QRadar doesn't require reliance on query languages.
Creating playbooks using the Playbook Editor in Splunk SOAR is easy. The editor is designed to be user-friendly with visual drag and drop features, allowing for easy workflows without writing any code.
Splunk SOAR saves time in threat response, and the time to solve an incident is currently the best in the market.
Splunk SOAR has improved our MTTD and MTTR both with the consolidation with a unified platform with Splunk.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Splunk SOAR | 7.5% |
| IBM Security QRadar | 6.6% |
| Other | 85.9% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 89 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 38 |
| Large Enterprise | 105 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 12 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 7 |
| Large Enterprise | 31 |
IBM Security QRadar (recently acquired by Palo Alto Networks) is a security and analytics platform designed to defend against threats and scale security operations. This is done through integrated visibility, investigation, detection, and response. QRadar empowers security groups with actionable insights into high-priority threats by providing visibility into enterprise security data. Through centralized visibility, security teams and analysts can determine their security stance, which areas pose a potential threat, and which areas are critical. This will help streamline workflows by eliminating the need to pivot between tools.
IBM Security QRadar is built to address a wide range of security issues and can be easily scaled with minimal customization effort required. As data is ingested, QRadar administers automated, real-time security intelligence to swiftly and precisely discover and prioritize threats. The platform will issue alerts with actionable, rich context into developing threats. Security teams and analysts can then rapidly respond to minimize the attackers' strike. The solution will provide a complete view of activity in both cloud-based and on-premise environments as a large amount of data is ingested throughout the enterprise. Additionally, QRadar’s anomaly detection intelligence enables security teams to identify any user behavior changes that could be indicators of potential threats.
IBM QRadar Log Manager
To better help organizations protect themselves against potential security threats, attacks, and breaches, IBM QRadar Log Manager gathers, analyzes, preserves, and reports on security log events using QRadar Sense Analytics. All operating systems and applications, servers, devices, and applications are converted into searchable and actionable intelligent data. QRadar Log Manager then helps organizations meet compliance reporting and monitoring requirements, which can be further upgraded to QRadar SIEM for a more superior level of threat protection.
Some of QRadar Log Manager’s key features include:
Reviews from Real Users
IBM Security QRadar is a solution of choice among users because it provides a complete solution for security teams by integrating network analysis, log management, user behavior analytics, threat intelligence, and AI-powered investigations into a single solution. Users particularly like having a single window into their network and its ability to be used for larger enterprises.
Simon T., a cyber security services operations manager at an aerospace/defense firm, notes, "The most valuable thing about QRadar is that you have a single window into your network, SIEM, network flows, and risk management of your assets. If you use Splunk, for instance, then you still need a full packet capture solution, whereas the full packet capture solution is integrated within QRadar. Its application ecosystem makes it very powerful in terms of doing analysis."
A management executive at a security firm says, "What we like about QRadar and the models that IBM has, is it can go from a small-to-medium enterprise to a larger organization, and it gives you the same value."
Splunk SOAR offers features like automation and orchestration of manual tasks, speeding up work, detection and response to advanced and emerging threats.
Automate manual tasks. Address every alert, every day. Establish repeatable procedures that allow security analysts to stop being reactive and focus on mission-critical objectives to protect your business.
Orchestrate and automate repetitive tasks, investigation and response to increase efficiency and productivity, and do more with the people you already have. Make a team of three feel like a team of 10.
Work faster with Splunk SOAR. Respond to threats in seconds. Lower your mean time to respond (MTTR) by automating security tasks and workflows across all of your security tools.
Take advantage of Splunk Enterprise Security and Splunk SOAR joining forces to provide a seamless and intuitive SecOps platform to prevent, detect and respond to advanced and emerging threats.
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