


IBM Security QRadar and Splunk SOAR are leaders in the security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) market. IBM Security QRadar appears to have an upper hand due to its versatility and advanced rule engine for managing complex searches and integrations.
Features: IBM Security QRadar offers advanced rule engines, comprehensive standard rules, and support from extensive content packs, making deployment more efficient. Its flexibility and ease in creating complex rules give it an edge over competitors. Splunk SOAR is robust, but users report difficulty in rule manipulation, which can hinder usability.
Room for Improvement: IBM Security QRadar users point out resource-intensive operations, convoluted licensing, and scalability challenges. Splunk SOAR faces criticism for its initial setup complexity and integration capabilities. Both require users to overcome significant learning curves related to their user interfaces.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Security QRadar primarily supports on-premises deployments and is backed by regional customer service, though response times can be slow. Splunk SOAR offers broader cloud capabilities but encounters integration hurdles. It also needs improvement in customer support, with noted delays in ticket resolution.
Pricing and ROI: IBM Security QRadar is a premium product with a pricing model based on events per second, perceived as costly but justified by its capabilities. Splunk SOAR utilizes a subscription-based, consumption-driven model and is viewed as having high but justified costs due to automation and integration efficiencies. While both provide substantial ROI, Splunk SOAR is noted for quicker payback due to streamlined automation.
Since we started working with Torq, I am handling much fewer alerts. It is becoming really easy for me to handle an alert.
By the time we officially bought Torq, we already had two workflows that were very helpful to us.
It pretty much took until we got to our first renewal where we said that this is the value we see, this is the things we want more, but that is the first place where we said we are happy enough that we want to renew.
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.
Investing this amount was very much worth it for my organization.
Since deploying Splunk SOAR, there has been a notable reduction in time spent on monotonous security tasks, which I estimate to be around 95%, enabling my team to focus on more strategic initiatives.
We've seen a decrease in false positives and a significant increase in our containment.
Monthly, around 300 hours of effort, it is saving with Splunk SOAR.
The speed and quality of their answers have been pretty good, as I usually get a response within 24 hours, and they follow up well.
We can always get an answer, and the support team are experts in their own system.
Nine out of ten times, they give me a solution even if it is not the solution I wanted, and I still can get to the result.
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.
Discovering different troubleshooting methods is harder to do with Splunk SOAR than with Enterprise Security or other Splunk services.
We always have a customer support representative who will come in the picture and help us to direct any ticket or any issue that we are facing to the right team.
Splunk's technical support is very good and generally not needed often due to the stable environment.
Our case management is super scalable.
In terms of scalability, you can do as long as you can build it, and they can support it.
Regarding the ability of the solution to grow in your work environment, if it is scalable, if it fits your business requirements, and if there is room to scale up, the answer is yes, for sure.
For EPS license, if you increase or exceed the EPS license, you cannot receive events.
It can be extended and adapted as necessary.
Regarding scalability, I find it to be a nine, as we have had no issues with scaling Splunk SOAR.
Everyone is ingesting Copilots or some form of AI in their platforms, and Splunk SOAR doesn't have it yet.
Most of the time, the system is stable as long as the components that they integrate with are stable.
Regarding stability, I have noticed some lagging, crashing, and downtime, which is one of my largest gripes.
I would rate Torq's product stability at eight, acknowledging that there are bugs, glitches, and downtimes.
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.
We have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues.
We have not seen any impact in the work that we do with Splunk SOAR or the SIEM platform.
I would rate Splunk SOAR's stability at around eight, indicating that it is quite stable with minimal downtime, bugs, or glitches.
It was able to capture data but was unable to differentiate between the agent hostname we are using and the hostname that resides on the back end of the Internet.
From an engineering perspective, I think more error messages and error handling information for our engineering team would be very helpful.
If a step is failing, the system could try to autocorrect it with AI or open a ticket from the workflow itself.
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.
If we start ingesting those data to Splunk SOAR or SIEM with some sort of integration with threat intelligence feed, that will also improve our detection and prediction method or help us with the investigation.
Although it enhances alert handling, it still has a journey to compete with Palo Alto SOAR and FortiSOAR.
Splunk's Unified Platform does help consolidate networking security and IT observability tools.
When they bring more and more value into the platform, it makes more sense to pay that price, but still, it is expensive.
Before deciding to implement Torq, I considered that compared to our old case management platform, Torq was a much better price and had a lot better value for what you get out of the platform, which was a key consideration for the company.
It is an expensive solution, not an inexpensive solution, but we get through the flexibility.
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.
Splunk SOAR is moderately priced, neither cheap nor overly expensive.
I am familiar with the pricing aspect, setup cost, and licensing cost of Splunk SOAR, and it is pretty much similar to what industries are offering these days.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is perfectly acceptable, helping us significantly with setup costs and licensing, and aiding in making approvals and assigning customized advanced workflows.
Torq's unified platform approach to AI SOC automation and case management has significantly benefited us by integrating the case management platform with the automation, which saves time compared to managing multiple point solutions across our security stack.
The fact that I can build whatever I want within my own imagination and skills without relying on code is the best thing about Torq.
You can copy and paste a cURL command. If you have documentation or APIs, you usually have an example on the side. You basically have all the information on how the API call should be. You can just copy that and paste it into a step, and it will just build the step for you.
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.
Creating playbooks using the Playbook Editor in Splunk SOAR is easy. The editor is designed to be user-friendly with visual drag and drop features, allowing for easy workflows without writing any code.
Splunk SOAR saves time in threat response, and the time to solve an incident is currently the best in the market.
Splunk SOAR has improved our MTTD and MTTR both with the consolidation with a unified platform with Splunk.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Splunk SOAR | 8.0% |
| IBM Security QRadar | 6.0% |
| Torq | 4.2% |
| Other | 81.8% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Midsize Enterprise | 3 |
| Large Enterprise | 4 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 91 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 39 |
| Large Enterprise | 105 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 12 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 8 |
| Large Enterprise | 36 |
Torq is the enterprise AI SOC solution that effectively combines adaptive insights and automation to handle critical threats efficiently. It manages threat lifecycles, swiftly moving from triage to response, ensuring effective risk management.
Torq is designed to streamline security operations by aggregating telemetry across your security stack. It investigates significant risks and manages threats from triage to containment and remediation. This AI-driven tool enhances the capabilities of your SecOps team, allowing them to achieve more impactful results without introducing complicated processes.
What are the key features of Torq?In industries like finance and healthcare, Torq shows effectiveness by adapting to specific risk scenarios often encountered in these fields. Its integration with existing infrastructures makes it a valuable asset for maintaining stringent security standards, essential for protecting critical data and operations in diverse high-stakes environments.
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."
Splunk SOAR offers features like automation and orchestration of manual tasks, speeding up work, detection and response to advanced and emerging threats.
Automate manual tasks. Address every alert, every day. Establish repeatable procedures that allow security analysts to stop being reactive and focus on mission-critical objectives to protect your business.
Orchestrate and automate repetitive tasks, investigation and response to increase efficiency and productivity, and do more with the people you already have. Make a team of three feel like a team of 10.
Work faster with Splunk SOAR. Respond to threats in seconds. Lower your mean time to respond (MTTR) by automating security tasks and workflows across all of your security tools.
Take advantage of Splunk Enterprise Security and Splunk SOAR joining forces to provide a seamless and intuitive SecOps platform to prevent, detect and respond to advanced and emerging threats.
We monitor all Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.