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IBM Security QRadar vs NetWitness Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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 Security QRadar
Ranking in Log Management
5th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (15th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
37th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
29th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 3.6%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mahmoud Younes - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable installation and diverse use cases provide strong value
IBM Security QRadar has some areas for improvement. We have missed some DSM components. We need to customize logs where there is no DSM or connector for certain products. We can integrate but we have missed the DSM, which is the connector to pass logs coming from different applications. For example, with a university customer, we tried onboarding Canvas service. IBM Security QRadar does not support Canvas, so we had to create custom scripts and workarounds to pull logs from Canvas.
MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand
The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the graphical interface. It's so good and easy."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is how it monitors the real network. That is its leading security feature."
"The product has plenty of features and capabilities."
"The product can scale."
"The most valuable feature currently is security behaviors and the pdf files."
"I have found its network traffic log, network bit log, and QBI most valuable."
"I really like the feature we have with the logs, that if there are any credit card numbers being used, like a PII, you can just use rejects and you can mask it. This is a really good feature in QRadar."
"An engineer can live-monitor all the flow happening in real-time. This would help us a lot while investigating a case, and it would even help us with preventive actions."
"The packet capture aspect of it is a valuable feature because it is quite different from a traditional SIEM solution that only carries out investigations based on captured logs."
"Possibility to investigate incidents based on logs and raw packets, such as extracting files sent over the network"
"The product has a user-friendly interface and a valuable feature for threat intelligence integration."
"Performance and reporting are very good."
"The newer 11.5 version that my team is using has found it to have good mapping."
"Incident management is its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are the integration and ease of use."
"It's fully scalable. There is no limit. Of course, the license limits per day the number of terabytes. In my opinion, it's very flexible."
 

Cons

"Before we didn't have any security issues but recently a few of the user emails were hacked. We had to actually recreate their emails for them."
"The initial setup was complex, and it took six months."
"The tech support is not that good."
"The architecture could be improved. I got stuck for a long time trying to understand the architecture, as it is quite challenging."
"It would be good if the program allowed certain profiles to only see certain customer information."
"I think that the search speed of this solution could be improved."
"I would like to see some artificial intelligence and alternative solutions."
"Their technical support is not good. We opened a lot of cases and from my experience, they are not complicated issues but it takes forever to get an answer."
"There is no support for this product in this country, so problems have to be resolved through global technical teams."
"If we have the ability to run a dynamic analysis through malware in the same suite, it would be great to have a sandbox solution to analyze malware through dynamic analysis."
"The initial setup was complex because it takes a lot of time to complete the implementation."
"Log aggregation is an issue with this solution because there are a huge number of alerts in a single instance."
"The initial setup is very complex and should be simplified."
"I'd like to see improvement in its ease of use. It's basically unusable. It's overly complex."
"I believe that integrating the solution with other products such as Oracle would be beneficial."
"There are instances where you try to run the reports and then it does not give you the desired outcome."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It could be cheaper, but the value itself is far more important for us than the price. Typically, our clients have yearly subscriptions."
"The tool's price is high."
"The pricing is good."
"The price could be better. I bought a subscription for three years."
"When compared with other SIM solutions, QRadar is considerably less expensive."
"It would be great if this product were cheaper."
"The solution's pricing is based on the EPS model."
"It is cheaper than ArcSight."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."
"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."
"Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"The product is expensive."
"Our license is for one year."
"The new pricing and licensing mechanisms are fair. I would advise always to get the full solution (i.e., not only Logs)."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Log Management solutions are best for your needs.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Security QRadar?
When comparing with Splunk, IBM Security QRadar's cost is reasonable. Splunk is more expensive than IBM Security QRadar.
What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
RSA Security Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. NetWitness Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
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