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IBM Security QRadar vs Proofpoint Insider Threat Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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 User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
217
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (7th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (16th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (4th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th)
Proofpoint Insider Threat M...
Ranking in User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (3rd), Insider Risk Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) category, the mindshare of IBM Security QRadar is 6.3%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Insider Threat Management is 6.3%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Security QRadar6.3%
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management6.3%
Other87.4%
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
 

Featured Reviews

HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Have managed daily asset and alert monitoring effectively but have encountered limitations with manual processes and interface usability
It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system. The accuracy is not there. The UI could be better when compared to Sentinels where we can use flags and tagging. It could be much more user-friendly. IBM Security QRadar has all features and is fully competitive with other SIEM tools, but when it comes to user-friendliness, a new user takes time to get used to it. More intuitive, user-friendly interfaces and more helpful documentation would be beneficial. The query searching and data fetching could be faster. In large to very large organizations with around 5,000 or 6,000 assets or beyond, even with proper configurations and RAM and hardware backing up, the query is fairly slow.
reviewer1271289 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Leader at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Good value, easy to use, and easy to deploy
In terms of what can be improved, that is a question I think the end users can tell you better. I'm not the end-user for this system. However, I can say that it needs to be more scalable. I think they already have a good value proposition in terms of being a hybrid model, and the reporting is okay, as well. It could have better integration with other SIEMs, but this integration has to come from the SIEM side, not ObserveIT.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are all the implementations, the plug-ins, and the User Behavior Analytics (UBA)."
"The threat protection network is the most valuable feature, because when you get an offense, you can actually trace it back to where it originated from, how it originated, and why."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"We've found the technical support to be very good."
"The best feature of IBM QRadar is visualization which shows you when there's a spike in the system, and this makes you realize that there's something wrong with the log."
"It's built around Red Hat Linux, which is highly robust."
"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."
"It's quite scalable. We have upgraded some solutions from 1000 APS up to 3500 APS to 5000 APS. It's a good solution, they have no scalability issues."
"Record videos that have a very small file size Management interface is very convenient and intuitive"
"Meta data search Alert generation."
"It resolved security issues of the organization by providing audit reports and records to our customers."
"ObserveIT is small, easy to use, easy to deploy, and is not complicated, so it's more generally suited for only SMBs. It's a good value with a cheaper price."
"Customer Service: The ObserveIT professional services team has been excellent, extremely engaged and genuinely concerned with our success."
"All my clients are very pleased with this product as it helps them to keep track of what partners and employees are doing on the servers."
 

Cons

"The solution is clunky."
"Its architecture is very complicated."
"It's still very manual and doesn't work on its own. It's still in an early stage and not on par where we can consider it a really successful detection system."
"The Indian tech support is not helpful."
"The usability of interfaces could be improved."
"I would like for them to develop a detection management solution. It does not have a detecting management solution in it, you have to buy it as it is, on top of the extended solution."
"The solution should include remote action capabilities."
"I would also like to see more integration with other vendors. IBM doesn't integrate well with products from China, like Huawei. Many Middle Eastern customers are switching to Huawei from American vendors like Cisco because of the price. In most RFPs, Huawei wins because it costs less."
"OCR capability, support for Mainframe, Ticketing and Incident workflow."
"Ticketing and issue management. Based on the new system, one needs to go through the sales people."
"The tool is still not providing records of tunnels established - we would like to see it in future versions."
"ObserveIT is not scalable and it's not for the medium to large corporations. It's for the smaller environments. For the larger corporations, we have other scalable solutions."
"I had some problems with an instance of ObserveIT in a Proof of Concept, when I installed ObserveIT with an SQL Express instance and the DB used all provisioned space."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license required for this solution and it is an annual payment. I have found all solutions in the category to be expensive, including Splunk."
"I feel that the price is reasonable but compared to other products that are on the market, such as an offering by Microsoft, it is more expensive."
"It would be great if this product were cheaper."
"Licensing can be costly depending on your architecture."
"IBM's Qradar is not for small companie. Unfortunately, it would be 'overkill' to place it plainly. The pricing would be too much."
"I think that the price is fair, but we can always say that the price could be cheaper."
"We use QRadar as a managed service and we pay licensing fees to the partner."
"The tool's on-premise version is expensive. However, it is cheaper than Splunk. The hybrid model offers shared instances for customers, which is not expensive. Customers with a limited budget can opt for it. You can get premium support with licenses. However, if you need customized integration, you need to buy it."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Performing Arts
9%
Media Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business91
Midsize Enterprise39
Large Enterprise105
No data available
 

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?
Pricing and the license of EPS were managed by the governance team. I was not responsible for managing those. I was supposed to put up the requirement of the license needed to integrate that amount...
Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
In addition to responsesfrom Xavier Suriol and reviewer1324719, also consider ObserveIT from Proofpoint.
Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
Hello All,I hope you had a merry Christmas.In this case it is as simple as it is.Just take Proofpoint ObserveIT - many companies in the public and financial sector have been using it for years.By ...
 

Also Known As

IBM QRadar, QRadar SIEM, QRadar UBA, QRadar on Cloud, IBM QRadar Advisor with Watson
ObserveIT
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Clients across multiple industries, such as energy, financial, retail, healthcare, government, communications, and education use QRadar.
Coca Cola, Allianz, Premiere League, Xerox, AIG, Cigna, Starbucks, Revlon, Toshiba, Nissan and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Security QRadar vs. Proofpoint Insider Threat Management and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.