

IBM Security QRadar and Microsoft Defender XDR are competitive in the cybersecurity sector, providing critical threat protection and management features. Based on the comparison, Microsoft Defender XDR has the upper hand due to its seamless integration with Microsoft's ecosystem.
Features: IBM Security QRadar provides log management, SIEM capabilities, and scalability, making it easy to analyze diverse logs and automate correlations. It effectively manages complex data environments. Microsoft Defender XDR integrates with Microsoft's ecosystem, offering extensive email protection, threat intelligence, and endpoint security. It excels in comprehensive threat protection across platforms.
Room for Improvement: IBM Security QRadar can improve its user interface, better integrate with APIs, and enhance incident response with more AI capabilities. Enhancements are needed in reporting, dashboard visualization, and cloud service integration. Microsoft Defender XDR could refine its licensing model, improve cloud and on-premises integration, and enhance threat hunting capabilities. Its threat intelligence and integration with non-Microsoft platforms also need development.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Security QRadar offers flexible deployment in on-premises, public, and hybrid cloud environments, but is mainly used on-premises. While its technical support is rated positively, it can be inconsistent and slow. Microsoft Defender XDR allows flexibility in public and hybrid cloud environments and integrates within Microsoft’s suite. Its customer service is satisfactory, but licensing clarity and customer education need improvement.
Pricing and ROI: IBM Security QRadar's pricing is considered high due to its EPS-based licensing model, making it more suitable for large enterprises. However, it offers great value in terms of data management and security integration. Microsoft Defender XDR is competitively priced, especially for organizations invested in Microsoft’s ecosystem. Although some licensing costs are high, the integrated suite decreases reliance on third-party solutions, providing significant value. Both platforms offer positive ROI, but the costs and savings dynamics differ due to pricing structures.
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 can quarantine and isolate a device within minutes.
Microsoft Defender XDR has saved me at least 50% of my time.
It helped stop multiple intrusion points where we would have had millions in lost revenue if the attackers got in.
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.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
Once issues are escalated to the second or third layer, the support is much better.
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.
My concern is about the scale of events and alerts being generated, and the product is doing a very good job of only surfacing the important items for us.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
Microsoft Defender XDR scales pretty well.
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.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
It provides high-fidelity signals.
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.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
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.
There are certainly savings when using Microsoft Defender XDR, which can range from 30%, 40%, and even up to 50%.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
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.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
Once we have it on the security dashboard, we can see a real-time storyline.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Defender XDR | 4.8% |
| IBM Security QRadar | 3.2% |
| Other | 92.0% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 91 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 39 |
| Large Enterprise | 105 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 47 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 25 |
| Large Enterprise | 38 |
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."
Microsoft Defender XDR is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect against threats in the Microsoft 365 environment.
It offers robust security measures, comprehensive threat detection capabilities, and an efficient incident response system. With seamless integration with other Microsoft products and a user-friendly interface, it simplifies security management tasks.
Users have found it effective in detecting and preventing various types of attacks, such as phishing attempts, malware infections, and data breaches.
Watch the Microsoft demo video here: Microsoft Defender XDR demo video.
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