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Fortinet FortiSIEM vs Microsoft Sentinel 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

Fortinet FortiSIEM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (6th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiSIEM is 3.3%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 6.8%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Oliver Jackson - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems monitoring enhanced by firewall and intrusion detection features
My primary use case for Fortinet FortiSIEM is systems monitoring and alerting. I use it for standard functions like log monitoring, incident detection, and notification.  My customers are mostly medium-sized enterprises ranging from engineering companies, mining companies, independent schools, and…
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat detection and response capabilities enhance investigation processes
My security team has been using Microsoft Sentinel for around two years. We also have Bastion and SolarWinds as part of our monitoring tools. We use a three-way tool, alongside Microsoft Sentinel, in our environment The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It detects new technologies, vulnerabilities, and emerging threats on the internet."
"FortiSIEM is a great tool for making security processes transparent."
"It's a very nice solution to work with."
"There are things like dashboards and reports (pre-configured and custom) that let me know that things are operating the way they should be, and when they are not."
"The solution is very stable. It's run for years without the need to do anything except, add new patches when they are available, which are always a good idea to install."
"FortiSIEM sends an email or SMS notifications to admins when there are significant incidents. It's a highly efficient way of responding to incidents."
"Our customer did not have security monitoring in the first place. With this solution, it provided security posture management and visibility about the security landscape and threats that they had."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiSIEM are the SD-WAN, Global LAN, and application controls."
"The AI and ML of Azure Sentinel are valuable. We can use machine learning models at the tenant level and within Office 365 and Microsoft stack. We don't need to depend upon any other connectors. It automatically provisions the native Microsoft products."
"The Identity Behavior tab furnishes us with the entire history linked to each IP or domain that has either accessed or attempted to access our system."
"It has basic out-of-the-box integrations with multiple log sources."
"We have no complaints about the features or functionality."
"Sentinel has an intuitive, user-friendly way to visualize the data properly. It gives me a solid overview of all the logs. We get a more detailed view that I can't get from the other SIEM tools. It has some IP and URL-specific allow listing"
"The scalability is great. You can put unlimited logs in, as long as you can pay for it. There are commitment tiers, up to six terabytes per day, which is nowhere close to what any one of our customers is running."
"Microsoft Sentinel stands out among SIEM tools for its user-friendliness and powerful built-in query language."
"The native integration of the Microsoft security solution has been essential because it helps reduce some false positives, especially with some of the impossible travel rules that may be configured in Microsoft 365. For some organizations, that might be benign because they're using VPNs, etc."
 

Cons

"We expect the latest patch from Fortinet FortiSIEM to give the ability to work with signature files."
"Improvements include making it easier for users to create their normalizers. Fortinet FortiSIEM uses XML for normalizing and parsing, which can be tedious and time-consuming. A simpler way of using regex could be helpful."
"With FortiSIEM, the issue has to do with the ways we can generate a report. It's not as flexible compared to that with other SIEM tools, like Splunk."
"It lacks a "wizard" that shows a particular user's activity or particular circumstance. I think the interface is intimidating because there's so much information there."
"Its training can be improved. Its price also needs to be improved."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM should broaden its remediation part to include more features for incident management. Currently, to manage repetitive incidents or for remediation, I need to use a separate software called FortiSOAR."
"I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"Network detection and response is a separate product."
"I believe one of the challenges I encountered was the absence of live training sessions, even with the option to pay for them."
"My primary improvement request would be for auxiliary logs, as they represent our biggest need."
"Azure Sentinel will be directly competing with tools such as Splunk or Qradar. These are very established kinds of a product that have been around for the last seven, eight years or more."
"The AI capabilities must be improved."
"In terms of improvements, pricing, licensing, and overall cost could be better."
"They should just add more and more out-of-the-box connectors. It is quite a new product, and it has a lot of connectors, and even more would be good."
"We are invoiced according to the amount of data generated within each log."
"Sometimes, it is hard for us to estimate the costs of Microsoft Sentinel."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is acceptable for more than 90% of our customers, as they normally get discounts."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is cheaper compared to other products."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is very cost-efficient compared to other SIEM solutions."
"FortiSIEM's licensing is based on EPS, and its pricing is competitive in the market."
"The price is competitive."
"We pay for a license for FortiSIEM. We pay for the license and renewal."
"Please be cheaper and more simplified."
"Manageable, however would be better as pay as you go versus CapEX."
"Sentinel is expensive relative to other products of the class, so it often isn't affordable for small-scale businesses. However, considering the solution has more extensive capabilities than others, the price is not so high. Pricing is based on GBs of ingested daily data, either by a pay-as-you-go or subscription model."
"For us, it is not expensive at this time, but if we start to collect all logs from our on-premise SIEM solutions, it will cost more than QRadar. If we calculate its cost over the next five or ten years, it will cost more than what we paid for QRadar."
"The pricing is based on how much you ingest, so it's pretty straightforward. There are no tiers, and you pay for what you use unlike with other types of SIEM solutions that are usually based on tiers."
"The are two native advantages for customers that use M365 Security and Sentinel. The first advantage is that the log or security-event ingestion into Sentinel is free. Cost-wise, they're saving a lot and that is a major advantage."
"Microsoft Sentinel's pricing is relatively expensive and extremely confusing."
"I am not involved on the financial side, but from an enterprise-wide use perspective, I think the price is good enough."
"Pricing for Microsoft Sentinel could always be lower, but it's workable. The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost, but the licensing per Microsoft Sentinel is fairly straightforward and transparent."
"The current licensing is based on the logs that are being ingested on the platform. Most of the SIEM solutions utilize that pricing model, but Microsoft should give us a customization option for controlling the kind of logs that we feed into Microsoft Sentinel. That will be much better. Otherwise, the pricing is a bit higher."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiSIEM?
Fortinet FortiSIEM needs to provide better API integrations to users.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSIEM?
The pricing is reasonable, which is why it is preferred by government customers. Windows agent licenses cost around 3,000 Rupees per device per year.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSIEM?
Fortinet FortiSIEM should broaden its remediation part to include more features for incident management. Currently, to manage repetitive incidents or for remediation, I need to use a separate softw...
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...
 

Also Known As

FortiSIEM, AccelOps
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FortiSIEM has hundreds of customers worldwide in markets including managed services, technology, financial services, healthcare, and government. Customers include Aruba Networks, Compushare, Port of San Diego, Cleveland Indians, Infoblox, Healthways, and Referentia.
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiSIEM vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.