Microsoft Sentinel vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager comparison

Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager

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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

Microsoft Sentinel

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)

SolarWinds Security Event M...

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

21st

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.2%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

KrishnanKartik

Cyber Security Consultant at Inspira Enterprise

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

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Alex Kinyanjui

Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom

A stable and scalable solution that provide 24/7 monitoring

We have to protect customer data, including any PII, accessed via the internet terminal. Additionally, we need to monitor events from network devices and servers that may raise suspicion, allowing us to analyze them and determine what is occurring. SolarWinds affected your overall security costs. Considering the nature of our traffic, it has been very effective. We have proactively identified and addressed issues before they escalate into incidents. I've noticed a reduced investment in handling event-related cases with SolarWinds Security Event Manager. This reduction includes reducing human resources and the time required for teams to provide 24/7 monitoring. Consequently, there has been a significant decrease in costs. Additionally, the platform enables us to address issues before they escalate into incidents, thus preventing revenue leakage. As a result, the organization experiences reduced costs and avoids revenue leakage. Since the SolarWinds Security Event Manager implementation, the total budget allocated to security has been reduced by close to five percent. Initially, there was a heavy investment in that aspect, but we have observed this reduction in the allocated budget for the security team. Since implementing SolarWinds Security Event Manager, the team members' pressure has been reduced. They can now concentrate on more critical tasks and development, promoting growth within their department rather than solely focusing on incident monitoring. I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having your logs put all in one place with machine learning working on those logs is a good feature. I don't need to start thinking, "Where are my logs?" My logs are in a centralized repository, like Log Analytics, which is why you can't use Sentinel without Log Analytics. Having all those logs in one place is an advantage."

"We feel safe knowing that we have a solution that we can use to react in case of an emergency."

"It is always correlating to IOCs for normal attacks, using Azure-related resources. For example, if any illegitimate IP starts unusual activity on our Azure firewall, then it automatically generates an alarm for us."

"The most valuable feature is the performance because unlike legacy SIEMs that were on-premises, it does not require as much maintenance."

"Microsoft Sentinel comes preloaded with templates for teaching and analytics rules."

"Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it."

"We’ve got process improvement that's happened across multiple different fronts within the organization, within our IT organization based on this tool being in place."

"I believe one of the main advantages is Microsoft Sentinel's seamless integration with other Microsoft products."

More Microsoft Sentinel pros

"The product's most effective part in improving security stems from the fact that the solution is deployed for event management, log viewing, and information management."

"The most valuable feature is the reporting."

"The graphical user interface is very user-friendly. SolarWinds is a hybrid solution so you can use it across many platforms."

"SolarWinds' stability is fine. I don't think we've had any software issues."

"This tool is simple to use."

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is the analysis and the knowledge about the incidence that we trace."

"It performs network behavior monitoring, log monitoring, and disaster recovery monitoring."

"Some of the rules are most valuable because you can be notified about various things, such as spyware or things that are going on in the internal network."

More SolarWinds Security Event Manager pros

Cons

"Sometimes, it is hard for us to estimate the costs of Microsoft Sentinel."

"I would like Microsoft Sentinel to enhance its SOAR capabilities."

"We'd like to see more connectors."

"It would be good to have some connectors for third-party SIEM solutions. Many customers are struggling with the integration of Azure Sentinel with their on-premise SIEM. Microsoft is changing the log structure many times a year, which can corrupt a custom integration. It would be good to have some connectors developed by Microsoft or supply vendors, but they are not providing such functionality or tools."

"Not all information shows up in Sentinel. Sometimes there are items provided in 365 and if you looked in Sentinel you would not see them and therefore think they do not exist. There can be discrepancies between Microsoft tools."

"When we pass KPIs to the governance department, there's no option to provide rights to the data or dashboard to colleagues. We can use Power BI for this, but it isn't easy or convenient. They should just come up with a way to provide limited role-based access to auditing personnel"

"I would like Sentinel to have more out-of-the-box analytics rules. There are already more than 400 rules, but they could add more industry-specific ones. For example, you could have sets of out-of-the-box rules for banking, financial sector, insurance, automotive, etc., so it's easier for people to use it out of the box. Structuring the rules according to industry might help us."

"The dashboards can be improved. Creating dashboards is very easy, but the visualizations are not as good as Microsoft Power BI. People who are using Microsoft Power BI do not like Sentinel's dashboards."

More Microsoft Sentinel cons

"I imagine we will have to develop our own reports soon, this seems to be more cumbersome."

"The reporting could be more robust. It can be a lot more granular and that will make it a lot more useful in comparison to how it is incorporated at the moment."

"Under the new system, it is not upgradable the way they say. When you try to do an upgrade, it doesn't really work unless you dump everything and start from scratch. You lose a lot of your nodes. Whenever you set your nodes up and everything else, they don't want to bring those nodes back in, so you have to really go back and restructure all your nodes. I went from version 6.5 to version 6.6 and then to version 6.7. I then went to version 2019, and now it is version 2020. It would be good if we can upgrade without having to delete everything and start from scratch. They can maybe build more KPIs and other things for the dashboard. Some of the other systems already have built-in KPIs. SolarWinds is starting to catch up, but it is not there yet. They can include some of the business or industry standards for tracking the time, that is, the meantime to detect (MTTD) and the meantime to resolve (MTTR). They can also find a way to build a KPI that measures the number of instances of port scans experienced in a week or a month."

"The only issue is the pricetag. SolarWinds is a costly solution."

"There is no correlation made between log entries, so no threat information is presented."

"The company had to use a third party for the implementation of the solution."

"One of the drawbacks of being so flexible is that it is also a fairly complicated software application to install, configure, and maintain."

"SolarWinds should improve its correlation capabilities. The correlation does not automatically detect and reduce the events fast enough. You have to manually do a correlation report, which means the tool is not scalable in many ways."

More SolarWinds Security Event Manager cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft can enhance the licensing side. I feel there is confusion sometimes... They should have a single license in which we have the opportunity to use the EDR or CASB solution."

"In comparison to other security solutions, Microsoft Sentinel offers a reasonable price for the features included."

"It varies on a case-by-case basis. It is about $2,000 per month. The cost is very low in comparison to other SIEMs if you are already a Microsoft customer. If you are using the complete Microsoft stack, the cost reduces by almost 42% to 50%. Its cost depends on the number of logs and the type of subscription you have. You need to have an Azure subscription, and there are charges for log ingestion, and there are charges for the connectors."

"I don't know yet because they gave us a 30-day test window for free."

"Sentinel is fairly priced and pretty cost-effective."

"The combination of the ease of accessibility and the free cost of the service is great. But we buy storage based on our events per second and on how many sources are integrated into the solution."

"It comes with a Microsoft subscription which the customer has, so they don't have to invest somewhere else."

"The price is reasonable because Sentinel includes features like user behavior analytics and SOAR that are typically sold separately. Overall, a standalone on-prem solution would require some high-end servers, and there's a different cost. It is a cloud-based solution, so there are backend cloud computing costs, but they are negligible."

More Microsoft Sentinel pricing and cost advice

"The price of SolarWinds Security Event Manager is reasonable."

"The pricing model would benefit from having package deals with other SolarWinds products."

"We do a yearly license renewal. For a year, the solution costs roughly $500,000 USD. There are no costs beyond this yearly fee."

"Licenses can only be purchased in blocks of fifty at a time."

"Licensing is on devices, so if you have many, then this may be high."

"The tool is available at a good price for customers compared to other solutions in the market. I rate the product's price as an eight out of ten."

"It is in the appropriate mid-range. It is not as expensive as some of the other solutions. It is also not cheap."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

74%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

University

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...

What do you like most about SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?

The solution helps you monitor database instances, application instances, other customer application things, Linux servers, IBM servers, and Oracle servers.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?

The tool is available at a good price for customers compared to other solutions in the market. I rate the product's price as an eight out of ten.

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Security Event Manager ?

I think the customization area in the tool can be considered as an area of concern where improvements are required In the future, I want to see the tool have better customization abilities with som...

AWS Security Hub vs Microsoft Sentinel

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IBM Security QRadar vs SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Compared 11% of the time

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Product Reports

Microsoft Sentinel

Download Microsoft Sentinel product report

SolarWinds Security Event Manager

Download SolarWinds Security Event Manager product report

SolarWinds Security Event Manager report

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel

SolarWinds LEM, Solarwinds SIEM, TriGeo, Log and Event Manager

Overview

Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution that lets you see and stop threats before they cause harm. Microsoft Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response. Eliminate security infrastructure setup and maintenance, and elastically scale to meet your security needs—while reducing IT costs. With Microsoft Sentinel, you can:

- Collect data at cloud scale—across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-premises and in multiple clouds

- Detect previously uncovered threats and minimize false positives using analytics and unparalleled threat intelligence from Microsoft

- Investigate threats with AI and hunt suspicious activities at scale, tapping into decades of cybersecurity work at Microsoft

- Respond to incidents rapidly with built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

When TriGeo was acquired by SolarWinds, TriGeo SIM became known as SolarWinds Log & Event Manager. This product is a leading Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) product and log management solution, which provides log collection, analysis, and real-time correlation.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.

NetSuite, EasyStreet, Legacy Texas Bank, and Energy Federal Credit Union, to name a few.

Microsoft Sentinel vs. SolarWinds Security Event Manager