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IBM Watson for Cyber Security vs Netsurion comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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 Watson for Cyber Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
51st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Netsurion
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
49th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (27th), SOC as a Service (13th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (36th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (43rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of IBM Watson for Cyber Security is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netsurion is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Netsurion0.8%
IBM Watson for Cyber Security0.8%
Other98.4%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Elena Stefanovska - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Account Manager at InTec System
Knowledgeable support, reliable, and useful compliance policies
IBM Watson for Cyber Security can be deployed on-premise or in the cloud and it is used as a SIEM solution The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add…
John-Berry - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager at ProfitSolv
The SOC center monitors, hunts, and notifies us of threats around the clock
I know they are working to resolve this issue, but Netsurion is currently unable to retrieve logs from S3 buckets. We use WP Engine for a lot of web hosting as well as AWS, and both of these platforms use S3 buckets. I would like Netsurion to be able to pull logs from Linux devices. We have some of that capability, and I believe they can do it. However, the way it works with Amazon is strange and glitchy. Therefore, working something out with Amazon would be great. Netsurion's SOC can be a bit too aggressive at times. We have asked them to adjust their playbook because I am tired of being notified about the same issue multiple times a day. I am aware of the issue, and it is not a cause for concern. Let's only take action on this issue if we see an actual problem.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very stable."
"The most valuable features of IBM Watson for Cyber Security are ease of use and out-of-the-box reports and compliance policies. Additionally, if there are aspects that are missing IBM add them in the next release."
"From what I have seen so far, this is an excellent product."
"The customer support is very good."
"The most valuable feature of this product is innovation, where the research and upgrading of technology never ends."
"If we need to do a search for user lockouts, we can go, search, and find locations where they have been locked out, then keep track of those events, historically."
"Netsurion's security operations center is critical for us because they provide 24/7 monitoring, we've never had another company meet the same need in the past, and it's a valuable tool to have."
"I like EventTracker's dashboard. I see it every time I log in because it's the first thing you get to. We have our own widgets that we use. For the sake of transparency, there are a few widgets that we look at there and then we move out from there... Among the particularly helpful widgets, the not-reporting widget is a big one. The number-of-logs-processed is also a good one."
"I really appreciate the fact that the dashboard breaks everything down into a pretty easy view for me... It shows what changes are happening to privileged user accounts, access and identity, what's cropping up. It shows application activity and whether we've got system resources that aren't online and being found anymore. It's a pretty simple, easy, quick hit and there are the supporting logs behind it. If I need to drill down further, I can do that quickly. It's very effective."
"Expediting incident response is really great."
"The product satisfies our compliance, and thus, all of our auditors."
"When I looked last week, we probably averaged about 20 million log entries a day. So, we certainly can't individually manage that. Just looking at the reports, then trying to go back and find anything that was questionable, was a challenge. Therefore, the managed service has been invaluable to us in terms of being able to narrow the scope of what really needs to be looked at and bringing those things to our attention to be dealt with."
"When it comes to threat detection and response, it does a very good job detecting and blocking on its own. And the SOC is a nice added value because they're doing analysis on things that aren't as obvious, on things that you can't just detect with a signature or behavior. Also, any SIEM will come with a lot of noise, so having them do a lot of the initial analysis to find out what's critical and what issues are false alarms is very good."
 

Cons

"They need to continue to build the AI capabilities."
"The dashboard could improve in IBM Watson for Cyber Security."
"In the future, I would like to see threat intelligence included."
"This is an expensive product, so making it more cost-effective would be an improvement."
"We get a report generated on a particular day of the week and we go through it, trying to mitigate problems and make sure we're seeing everything that's happening. It would be helpful if the SOC spent a little more time with us going through some of those reports."
"With version 8, there are quite a few things; the query tool was one of the big ones, and the query speed was one of the big ones, but they've made some great strides between versions 8 and 9."
"The EventTracker support said, "We do have that." However, that wasn't necessarily the case. It was primarily an eight to five type of thing."
"Communication is always something that can be improved, but I feel that any time we've had a communication issue, it's quickly addressed when we bring those up at the monthly meetings. Usually, it's an individual that wasn't clear in the communication, it's not the process per se. You always have to be able to segregate if the process didn't work or an individual either didn't say the right thing or my people didn't understand what they were being told."
"Netsurion's threat detection and response aren't quite mature. I would expect a little more."
"I would also like to have a dashboard that I can access anytime to review the real-time data from their website."
"With version 8, there are quite a few things. The query tool was one of the big ones, and the query speed was one of the big ones, but they've made some great strides between versions 8 and 9. There were also issues in version 8 around the ability to get the data back out. It's one thing to collect data, but it's a whole other thing to be able to present it or run it in a timely manner. The old tool, depending on how far back I was looking, might even time out and I would have to run it again."
"There are some issues with searches taking a long period of time, but they assured me that they have implemented a new search function that's available in version 9, but which requires a solid-state hard drive... Depending on how many logs you have it could take a long time to return the results if you're looking back prior to the last 30 days."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution should be lower, although I understand why IBM charges a premium price."
"IBM Watson for Cyber Security is very simple to license and is priced well."
"It is a bit expensive as compared to some of the other products that have come out in recent years. Expense-wise, the only downside is that it is not cheap."
"Our budget follows the calendar year. We just started a new budget year at the beginning of the month. We did budget for an increase in our threat management system selection. Therefore, we have the budget to implement and accommodate a threat management system change, including an increase for the quoted actions that we received to improve EventTracker. We are just waiting on our council to approve that budget, which might not be for a little while. Hopefully, when they do, we will be able to jump on doing something."
"We have seen time and cost savings. It prevents us from having to hire specialized people for this type of work. We would need to hire six staff members to accommodate the same service."
"Netsurion's pricing is competitive. At the same time, they're the only ones who do what we want to do the way we want it. I can't say we would've paid more, but we would've had to have come up with our own solution if they weren't providing that."
"EventTracker's subscription-based model is interesting as far as yearly license type stuff. It's nice because you know what it's going to be next year. We haven't really looked at any other solutions. The pricing at the time compared to the other solutions was a lot less. A couple of years ago, we actually looked at Splunk. The amount in Splunk's licensing model is based on 20 gigs a day, or something like that. Based on our number of logs and stuff that we were already generating, the costs would be substantially more for the amount of logs that we would be getting."
"Licensing is very easy. Our CIO takes care of the billing, but in terms of price point, he hasn't complained, so it must be good."
"The upfront costs have increased, and we have been locked into this contract. The cost of changing over from it is way too high."
"When we first got the EventTracker product, we were using SIEM Simplified. At the time they didn't call it that, but it was more of a service thing. So, there was a bit more hand-holding and getting stuff set up, along with failure reports, that they did during the first one to two years. Then, we decided that the the additional money to have someone do these daily reports wasn't terribly useful, so we discontinued that service."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise7
 

Also Known As

No data available
Netsurion Managed Threat Protection, Netsurion EventTracker
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
The Salvation Army, The FRESH Market, Pacific Western Bank, NASA, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), and Talbot’s Stores
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Watson for Cyber Security vs. Netsurion and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.