Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Microsoft Sentinel vs NetWitness NDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

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
7.1
Microsoft Sentinel ROI is mixed; challenges exist, but benefits include automation savings, enhanced security, and reduced staffing needs.
Sentiment score
8.0
Implementing NetWitness NDR enhances security, improves network visibility, reduces costs, and boosts efficiency and productivity for businesses.
If a customer is already using Microsoft’s ecosystem, the ROI can be positive due to seamless integration.
Microsoft Azure was not fitting for short-term cost savings but promised a better ROI over three to five years for medium to large companies.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Sentinel's support is praised for quick response, with premium tiers offering expert help and strong community resources.
Sentiment score
7.3
NetWitness NDR's customer service is generally efficient and highly regarded, though some users report occasional slow response times.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
Once familiar with the system, it becomes very straightforward.
When my team needs to escalate issues to Microsoft, especially for Microsoft Sentinel, the response is fast through their French entity.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Sentinel's cloud scalability enables effortless resource management and meets large-scale needs, making it ideal for extensive monitoring.
Sentiment score
7.0
NetWitness NDR is scalable for large enterprises, though some users report issues with scalability and agent migration.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
Being a SaaS solution, the scalability of Microsoft Sentinel is robust.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Sentinel is stable and reliable with 99.9%+ uptime; issues typically arise from external factors or misconfigurations.
Sentiment score
7.7
NetWitness NDR is generally reliable, providing real-time data and stability, though minor technical issues are occasionally reported.
I need to be aware of deprecated connectors as they may disconnect, but the data continues to be sent with a need for quick adaptation.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
In the past two years, our team hasn't encountered any issues with the stability of Microsoft Sentinel from an operations perspective.
 

Room For Improvement

Users recommend improvements to multi-tenancy, log ingestion, interface intuitiveness, and integration, with concerns over pricing and AI enhancement.
NetWitness NDR requires improvements in UI, scalability, detectability, integration, session times, pricing, training, and features, making it complex and slow.
There are complexities in calculating the right pricing tier for different customers, which makes it difficult for me as a consultant during upfront pricing.
Continuing to increase the number of third-party data connectors available is important.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Sentinel offers scalable, cost-effective pricing with discounts, especially beneficial for E5 users and high-volume data ingestion.
Setting up the right cost model for customers is intricate, requiring careful consideration of various components and licensing tiers.
The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost.
Microsoft Sentinel offers more capabilities than Bastion, with a more intuitive experience.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Sentinel offers seamless integration, AI-driven threat detection, automated responses, and scalability for efficient, comprehensive security management.
NetWitness NDR offers high detection rates, real-time malware response, third-party integration, and a user-friendly, interoperable interface with advanced analytics.
We can see not only what was impacted, but what has the potential to be impacted at a later date, and create additional hardening steps.
Microsoft Sentinel's ability to correlate data from multiple sources and its detection capabilities are essential.
Custom workbooks are valuable. It is one of the crucial points in dealing with potential security threats in an automated way without requiring too much manpower.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
NetWitness NDR
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (59th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (35th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (63rd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (20th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (36th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 18.8%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness NDR is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

KrishnanKartik - PeerSpot reviewer
Every rule enriched at triggering stage, easing the job of SOC analyst
It's a Big Data security analytics platform. Among the unique features is the fact that it has built-in UEBA and analytical capabilities. It allows you to use the out-of-the-box machine learning and AI capabilities, but it also allows you to bring your own AI/ML, by bringing in your own IPs and allowing the platform to accept them and run that on top of it. In addition, the SOAR component is a pay-per-use model. Compared to any other product, where customization is not available, you can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today. Other vendors charge heavily for the SOAR, but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer. The SOAR engine also uniquely helps us to automate most of the incidents with automated enrichment and that cuts out the L1 analyst work. And combining M365 with Sentinel, if you want to call it integration, takes just a few clicks: "next, next finish." If it is all M365-native, it is a maximum of three or four steps and you'll be able to ingest all the logs into Sentinel. That is true even with AWS or GCP because most of the connectors are already available out-of-the-box. You just click, put in your subscription details, include your IAM, and you are finished. Within five to six steps, you can integrate AWS workloads and the logs can be ingested into Sentinel. When it comes to a third party specifically, such as log sources in a data center or on-premises, we need a log collector so that the logs can be forwarded to the Sentinel platform. And when it comes to servers or something where there is an agent for Windows or Linux, the agent can collect the logs and ship them to the Sentinel platform. I don't see any difficulties in integrating any of the log sources, even to the extent of collecting IoT log sources. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has multiple components such as Defender for Servers, Defender for PaaS, and Defender for databases. For customers in Azure, there are a lot of use cases specific to protecting workloads and PaaS and SaaS in Azure and beyond Azure, if a customer also has on-premises locations. There is EDR for Windows and Linux servers, and it even protects different kinds of containers. With Defender for Cloud, all these sources can be seamlessly integrated and you can then track the security incidents in Microsoft's XDR platform. That means you have one more workspace, under Azure, not Defender for Cloud, where you can see the security incidents. In addition, it can be integrated with Sentinel for EDR deep-dive analytics. It can also protect workloads in AWS. We have customers for whom we are protecting their AWS workloads. Even EKS, Elastic Kubernetes Service, on AWS can be integrated, as can the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). And with Defender for Cloud, security alert ingestion is free
SupravatMaji - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial single unified dashboard, good native application integration, and high availability
My advice to those wanting to implement RSA NetWitness Network is they have to first do a little due diligence, such as the exact requirement based on their needs. That will give them a direction for their investment because otherwise, the bill of material or bill of quantity (BOQ) may be higher side. It is important to do good due intelligence on the environment, see the exact requirement, and then go ahead with the solution. The solution is perfectly stable. I rate RSA NetWitness Network a nine out of ten.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) solutions are best for your needs.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel
RSA ECAT, NetWitness Network
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
ADP, Ameritas, Partners Healthcare
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Sentinel vs. NetWitness NDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.