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Microsoft Sentinel vs NetWitness Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 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

Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
34th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (36th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 3.6%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Sentinel3.6%
NetWitness Platform1.1%
Other95.3%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Kallamuddin Ansari - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Consultant at HR Software Solution
Centralized monitoring has improved threat response but cost control still needs refinement
Based on real operations used in our corporate IT environment, the key features include log correlation and incident view. Microsoft Sentinel's biggest strength is how it correlates multiple related alerts into a single incident. This significantly reduces alert noise and helps the SOC focus on real threats instead of isolated events. Another valuable feature is KQL-based threat hunting with Kusto Query Language. The flexibility of this language allows us to build custom hunting queries based on our environment's behavior. This is extremely useful for detecting low and slow threats or hidden threats that default rules may miss. Cloud-native scalability and stability is another important feature. Being cloud-native, Microsoft Sentinel scales well for medium to large corporate environments without infrastructure management. Stability has been solid in day-to-day production. SOAR automation using playbooks is a feature we highly recommend. Microsoft Sentinel's SOAR functionality helps automate repetitive SOC tasks like alert enrichment and notification. This saves analyst time and improves response consistency.
reviewer2256927 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Information Security, Cyber Defense and IT Risk Management at HCT. at a transportation company with 201-500 employees
A solid SIEM solution that should improve technical support and online resources to be easier to use
A big problem with the product is that we don't have much professional experience in Israel installing, implementing, and integrating this product. There is not enough of a knowledge base. There is no support for this product in this country, so problems have to be resolved through global technical teams. We like to work locally because of the language, and when the product is only supported outside the country, it's a little difficult to implement and use this product. Moreover, AI is something that must be added immediately. Artificial intelligence is a part of the competitors' products, and it's not been implemented for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a great product."
"There are a lot of things you can explore as a user. You can even go and actively hunt for threats. You can go on the offensive rather than on the defensive."
"In Azure Sentinel, we have found, they do have a store in their capability. AI and intelligence features. We found that to be very helpful for us because some other things we do need to integrate again or find another vendor for the store"
"Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it."
"The solution has features that helped improve the security posture of our clients. It provides the ability to correlate a large variety of log sources very cost-effectively, especially for Microsoft sources."
"Microsoft Sentinel is a cloud-native SIEM solution, so it helped us reduce our infrastructure costs and deliver better services to our customers."
"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"
"It's easy to use. It's a very good product. It can easily ingest data from anywhere. It has an easily understandable language to perform actions."
"Thanks to this tool, we have a small SOC running in our company."
"Prior to implementing the solution, the customers had no visibility of their assets, however, after adopting the solution, they have gained complete visibility over all their assets, including a comprehensive understanding of the network and attack symptoms."
"Over time, NetWitness Logs and Packets has matured from a boxed solution with multiple parts to the current, more streamlined version for which we only need the software license to put it up on our own cloud and deliver it to multiple clients."
"RSA NetWitness is a SIEM and real-time network traffic solution that collects logs and packets, applies a set of alerting, reporting, and analysis rules on them, and thus provides the enterprise with full visibility of the networks and activities of the systems."
"The development of use cases on the SSA console is quite user friendly, which means that the security analyst or the researcher does not have to learn another language."
"The most valuable feature is that we can create our own connectors for any application, and NetWitness provides the training and tools to do it."
"Offers a good wireless feature."
"Technical support is very good; they try to resolve issues with the proper SLAs which are defined by them and they understand the client's requirements as well as the client's infrastructure in a better manner."
 

Cons

"Sometimes you will find some network issue and network error with the Azure Sentinel portal. That's the biggest drawback I found with the Sentinel."
"Everyone has their favorites. There is always room for improvement, and everybody will say, "I wish you could do this for me or that for me." It is a personal thing based on how you use the tool. I do not necessarily have those thoughts, and they are probably not really valuable because they are unique to the context of the user, but broadly, where it can continue to improve is by adding more connectors to more systems."
"With non-Microsoft products, there are definitely integration issues. Exporting the logs is very difficult, and the API calls are not being generated frequently from the Microsoft end."
"At the network level, there is a limitation in integrating some of the switches or routers with Microsoft Sentinel. Currently, SPAN traffic monitoring is not available in Microsoft Sentinel. I have heard that it is available in Defender for Identity, which is a different product. It would be good if LAN traffic monitoring or SPAN traffic monitoring is available in Microsoft Sentinel. It would add a lot of value. It is available in some of the competitor products in the market."
"The on-prem log sources still require a lot of development."
"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."
"Cost management is still one of the biggest pain points."
"The data connectors for third-party tools could be improved, as some aren't available in Sentinel. They need to be available in the data connector panel."
"I cannot say that the solution was stable because it tended to crash."
"The threat detection capability and centralizing and upgrading capability need to be improved. The threat alert capability needs to be improved as well because there is some lag time at present. They need to work on their database search too."
"I believe that integrating the solution with other products such as Oracle would be beneficial."
"One thing to be improved in NetWitness is the capability to correlate event logs in a general sense."
"But the 11.3 version is a complete disaster. You cannot analyze anything."
"We have encountered issues with unresolved crashes."
"The tool's integration capability isn't so great."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets is far behind the competition."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Sentinel is a pay-as-you-go solution. To use it, you need a Log Analytics workspace. This is where the logs are stored and the cost of Log Analytics is based on gigabytes... On top of that, there is the cost of Sentinel, which is about €2 per gigabyte. If a customer has an M365 E5 license, the logs that come from Microsoft Defender are free."
"The solution is expensive and there is a daily usage fee."
"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."
"Microsoft Sentinel can be costly, particularly for data management."
"The combination of the ease of accessibility and the free cost of the service is great. But we buy storage based on our events per second and on how many sources are integrated into the solution."
"In comparison to other security solutions, Microsoft Sentinel offers a reasonable price for the features included."
"I am just paying for the log space with Azure Sentinel. It costs us about $2,000 a month. Most of the logs are free. We are only paying money for Azure Firewall logs because email logs or Azure AD logs are free to use for us."
"Sentinel is costly."
"The product is expensive."
"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"It provides tools to assist in selecting the appropriate license and usage scenarios."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets do not have a subscription model, it's a one-time purchase. There is only a perpetual license."
"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."
"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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.
What is your primary use case for NetWitness Platform?
I use NetWitness Platform ( /products/netwitness-platform-reviews ) in the financial industry as a good product with excellent capabilities and integration with various devices.
 

Also Known As

Azure Sentinel
RSA Security Analytics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Sentinel vs. NetWitness Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.