IBM Security QRadar Reviews

We're a customer, partner, or reseller. We use QRadar on our own internal SOC. We are also a reseller of QRadar for some of the projects. So, we sell QRadar to customers, and we're also a partner because we have different models. We roll the product out to a customer as part of our service where we own it, but the customer is paying. We also do a full deployment that a customer owns. So, we are actually fulfilling all three roles.

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.

In terms of the GUI, they need to improve the consistency. It has been written by different teams at different times. So, when you go around the interface, you'll find a lot of inconsistencies in terms of the way it works.

I'd like them to improve the offense. When QRadar detects something, it creates what it calls offenses. So, it has a rudimentary ticketing system inside of it. This is the same interface that was there when I started using it 12 years ago. It just has not been improved. They do allow integration with IBM Resilient, but IBM Resilient is grotesquely expensive. The most effective integration that IBM offers today is with IBM Resilient, which is an instant response platform. It is a very good platform, but it is very expensive. They really should do something with the offense handling because it is very difficult to scale, and it has limitations. The maximum number of offenses that it can carry is 16K. After 16K, you have to flush your offenses out. So, it is all or nothing. You lose all your offenses up until that point in time, and you don't have any history within the offense list of older events. If you're dealing with multiple customers, this becomes problematic. That's why you need to use another product to do the actual ticketing. If you wanted the ticket existence, you would normally interface with ServiceNow, SolarWinds, or some other product like that. 

Their support should also be improved. Their support is very slow, and it is very difficult to find knowledgeable people within IBM.

Its price and licensing should be improved. It is overly expensive and overly complex in terms of licensing. 

I have been using this solution for 12 years.

Their support is very slow. it is very difficult to find knowledgeable people within IBM. I'm an expert in the use of QRadar, and I know the technical insights of QRadar very well, but it is sometimes very painful to deal with IBM's support and actually get them to do something. Their support is very difficult to work with for some customers.

I work with Prelude, which is by a French company. It is a basic beginner's SIEM. If you never had a SIEM before and you wanted to experiment, this is where you would start, but it is probably that you would leave very quickly. I've also worked with ArcSight and Splunk.

My recommendation would depend upon your technical appetite or your technical capability. QRadar is essentially a Linux-based Red Hat appliance. Unfortunately, you still need some Linux knowledge to work with this effectively. Not everything is through the GUI. 

Comparing it with Splunk, in terms of licensing, IBM's model is simpler than Splunk's model. Splunk has two models. One is volume metrics, so you pay for the number of bytes that are transmitted daily. The other one is based upon the number of events per second, which they introduced relatively recently. Splunk can be more expensive than QRadar when you start to get into adding what they call indexes. So, basically, you create specific indexes to hold, for instance, logs related to Cisco. This is implicit within QRadar, and it is designed that way, but within Splunk, if you want to get that performance and you have large volumes of logs, you need to create indexes. This is where the cost of Splunk can escalate.

Installing QRadar is very simple. You insert a DVD, boot the system, and it runs the installation after asking you a few questions. It runs pretty much automatically, and then you're up and going. From an installation point of view, it is very easy.

The only thing that you have to get right before you do the installation is your architecture because it has event collectors, event processes, flow collectors, flow processes, and a number of other components. You need to understand where they should be placed. If you want more storage, then you need to place data nodes on the ends of the processes. All this is something that you need to have in mind when you design and deploy.

It is overly expensive and overly complex in terms of licensing. They have many different appliances, which makes it extremely difficult to choose the technology. It is very difficult to choose the technology or QRadar components that you should be deploying. 

They have improved some of it in the last few years. They have made it slightly easy with the fact that you can now buy virtual versions of all the appliances, which is good, but it is still very fragmented. For instance, on some of the smaller appliances, there is no upgrade path. So, if you exceed the capacity of the appliance, you have to buy a bigger appliance, which is not helpful because it is quite a major cost. If you want to add more disks to the system, they'll say that you can't. If they ship a disk with 2 terabytes that the older appliances have, and you say to them that you can commercially get 10 terabyte disks, they will say this is not possible, even though there is no technical reason why it cannot be done. So, they're not very flexible from that point of view. For IBM, it is good because you basically have to buy new appliances, but from a customer's point of view, it is a very expensive investment.

Make sure that you have the buy-in from different teams in the company because you will need help from the network teams. You will potentially need help from IT. 

You need to have a strategy of how you onboard logs into SIEM. Do you take a risk-based approach or do you onboard everything? You should take the time to understand the architecture and the implications of design choices. For instance, QRadar Components communicate with each other using SSH tunnels. The normal practice in security is that if I put a device in a DMZ, then communication between the device on the normal network, which is a higher security zone, and the DMZ, which is a lower security zone, will be initiated from the high-security zone. You would not expect the device in the DMZ to initiate communication back into the normal network. In the case of QRadar, if you put your processes in the DMZ, then it has to communicate with the console, which means that you have to allow the processor to communicate. This has consequences. If you have remote sites or you plan to use cloud-based processes, collectors, etc, and have an internal console, the same communication channels have to exist. So, it requires some careful planning. That's the main thing.

I would rate QRadar an eight out of 10 as compared to other products.

It is suitable for large companies with critical infrastructure. For our clients, robustness, availability at a high level, and the level of references and experiences connected to the solution are important. They need to know that other energy players are also using it.

There should be easier and wider integration opportunities. There should be more 
opportunities for integration with CTI info sharing areas. On platforms where you exchange CTI, there should be more visibility connected to what we share, what we can reach, or what options are connected to CTI info sharing. This is one area where they could add value because we cannot integrate it easily with QRadar. If a client has a legacy or already existing solutions for CTI, we cannot ask them to forget it because we cannot guarantee that QRadar is able to deliver everything connected to this area. 

I have been using this solution for three years.

We have five to ten customers of this solution. My impression is that it can cost a lot to scale upwards. It didn't bother us in most cases, but that could be a problem for SMEs at times.

Their support during the operation seems fine. I'm a consultant, and very often, I am offsite. I am not there when clients get into operating QRadar in the long run. So, I know more about implementation than the operation itself.

It requires expertise. If you have the right personnel, you can manage. It wouldn't be easy for a client and admins to set it up without proper support or support from QRadar itself.

Setting it up requires an assistant like us. QRadar plays a role there, but that's not enough. There is also the language barrier. Not every Hungarian company is good in English, and IBM naturally doesn't have full Hungarian support.

It requires cooperation between clients and us. Typically, we send a team of five people that includes tech guys, a project manager, and maybe one process guy, if needed. Generally, you don't have 360-degree professionals, so you have someone good in networking, someone good in log management or log analysis, and so on. Because of that, we need this kind of team. 

The client also has a few people. Typically, we send in more people than the client. These are not full-time people on our side and client-side. 

It could be cheaper, but the value itself is far more important for us than the price. Typically, our clients have yearly subscriptions.

I don't know what I would recommend for SMEs because we never worked with SMEs, but I would be very careful in recommending QRadar for SMEs. 

I would rate IBM QRadar a nine out of 10.

The solution is primarily used for threat detection and response. QRadar can be integrated with other services from IBM such as Watson, among others. The main need is for threat detection, incident response, and dealing with threats or hunting threats. 

What else? I mean, it's always you're looking for threats. Usually, whoever buys this SIM solution or buys QRadar, for example, is looking for hidden threats and they get the logs to see what's happening within their system. They want a solution that looks very deep inside in order to correlate those logs and see if there's any information that they can get out of those logs or even live packets that are spanning through their networks. Therefore, it's usually threat hunting. That's the main thing, Others might use it to understand the system, and how it's performing overall.  However, that's the lesser use case.

Inside IBM QRadar there are a lot of engines that actually work to help us to do the correlation and normalization as well for the logs that we're receiving from multiple devices. IBM is very powerful in that regard. 

QRadar, as a solution, can integrate with a lot of other applications. You can write your own custom rules if you want to. We can ask it to detect whatever we want it to, even with the devices that are not supported to send logs. IBM QRadar can understand these types of commands and we can still integrate and write our own rules to help us to detect those logs that are coming from, for example, IoT devices or from other devices that usually we don't understand.

It can handle really a huge number of logs with fewer false positives. We can use the artificial intelligence and the rules that IBM is providing to make it really smart. The solution can help you predict even the false positives when we are alerting the admin or the security admin about some offenses that we have seen from the logs.

Their product is very user-friendly.

Customer service is very good and very helpful.

The initial setup is quite straightforward.

The solution can scale.

The solution is very stable.

As per Gartner, maybe the price makes it so that the customers are not going for IBM QRadar. It's a little bit pricey compared to other solutions in the market. More or less that's the area that needs to be improved. That's usually the main concern that we receive from the customers - that it's a little bit pricey. That's the only thing I can say.

The custom rules could be simplified more or it should be possible to use a different language, other than the ones that the solution is already using. They should add other languages into the mix. You need some advanced customers in order to use the custom rules or to use their rules in order to configure the IBM QRadar in a proper way. Usually, they find it very difficult, especially if they don't have the experience.

Sometimes it works and catches whatever we want, however, sometimes it doesn't work. That's in rare cases, however, that's one thing that they need to maybe enhance.

I've been working with the solution for three years or so.

For stability, I'm not a customer who's using it on daily basis, however, from feedback that I'm getting from the customers who are attending to the solution, I've heard that this solution is stable. That's why it's in the leader area in Gartner. If you compare it to others in Gartner, it shows how their product is actually efficient. Whether I get QRadar, whether it's Splunk, whether it's LogRhythm, all of those products as a SIM are very good at that point. They're all quite reliable.

The scalability is very good. The product is scalable. A company shouldn't have trouble expanding it if they need to.

We typically work with banks and bigger organizations.

Technical support has been very good. They are helpful and responsive.

I've also learned a lot from the documentation, especially the online documentation. Due to the fact that I'm an official instructor for IBM, I have my other resources too, on the Learning Center from IBM. Documentation is not a problem. It's very helpful.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex. It's quite easy.

The deployment takes time, definitely. You've got to prepare for your solution so that it's going to work in spanning all the other devices too. That doesn't mean it's a complex process, it just means it takes a bit.

IBM QRadar is pricey, and therefore, usually small enterprises are not able to afford it. Usually, probably most of the customers are usually large enterprises.

I'm actually teaching IBM and some services such as IBM QRadar, as part of my work. I'm familiar with Splunk, however, I'm not working with it on a daily basis. I'm teaching that technology to others. I'm not a customer. I'm using it for teaching purposes. I'm working in a training center. I'm not dealing with it on a daily basis, however, I understand how the product works. We do sometimes help integrate it and work as consultants occasionally as well.

While 7.4 is out, we're currently working with version 7.3.

Overall, I would rate the product at an eight out of ten. There's more to be done on it, however, we are mostly pleased with its capabilities.

The price is very good. It's quite reasonable.

The solution's performance is excellent. The stability is excellent.

We've found the technical support to be very good.

The pricing is very good.

The product needs to improve its GUI. The dashboard which they facilitate needs to be modernized. They could make it a lot better and a lot easier to navigate.

I've been using the solution for approximately two years or so.

The stability of the product has been great. It's from 80% to 90% is stable. There are very few bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. If you do run into issues, technical support is quite helpful. 

The product works well for small or medium-sized enterprises.

The technical support has been great so far. If you run into any kind of issue, their support is available. They are very helpful and extremely responsive. We're quite satisfied with their level of service. I'd give them a rating of 90% to 95%.

The pricing of the solution is quite reasonable.

We're a customer and an end-user. We don't have a direct business relationship with IBM.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been extremely satisfied with the product so far.

I'd recommend the solution, however, depends upon a company's budget and requirements. For small and medium enterprises, QRadar is the best solution, due to its price and performance.

We use the solution for network behavior and log analytics. We wish to procure one for behavior analytics.

I am not certain which version we are using. 

There is a need for a behavior analytics solution in the environment. We use the solution to highlight unusual traffic for a single particular link or even single particular user traffic. 

The solution will not provide alerts in the event of any particular traffic. It will only alert in the case of a security threat. 

I am looking for a solution to replace IBM QRadar. We use it for incident reporting, but I need one for behavior analytics. I need one which will send alerts in the event of any behavior. 

The solution is fine for analyzing logs. We already have basic modules. We require more modules for getting so that we may obtain further details. We essentially use IBM QRadar for analyzing particular logs. 

There are no additional features which should be added or upgraded in the next release. 

The solution is reliable. 

The scalability is fine. 

Technical support is okay. We have had no issues with them. 

The license is not subscription-based. We have been doing the same deployment for more than ten years. 

The pricing is alright. 

Our environment is binding. We have only monitoring and data central traffic.

I would recommend the solution to others. It is fine for analyzing logs. 

The features that I have found most valuable in QRadar are its data enrichment, use case creations, and adding references - those kinds of features are very good. Also, QRadar's event filtration and device integration are perfect. 

Actually, we are looking for another product because a customer is demanding different products and they're not going with QRadar, hence we are trying to compare QRadar with other solutions like Securonix, Splunk, Exabeam, LogRhythm. Otherwise, all our customers are happy with QRadar.

I'm doing integrations and deployments for QRadar. So, in regards to integration and deployment, QRadar is very easy as compared to other products.

In terms of what could be improved, I would say the script which we have to create for custom actions. QRadar needs to improve that feature.  Additionally, QRadar has to provide the playbooks designing features.

I have been working with IBM QRadar for the last four years.

QRadar is very stable in our deployment. I'm not aware of other customer deployments.

IBM QRadar is scalable. We can scale it according to our requirements. We can scale it up, as per our requirement. We can increase the resources, we can increase the storage. We can do everything with QRadar.

Their technical support is also good. During weekends they are only looking at the priority issues. That is difficult, because sometimes the critical log sources stop sending events to QRadar and in those cases we need support on an urgent basis, but they're not going to support it during weekend.

We work with LogRhythm as well as QRadar, as well as NetIQ Sentinel, Azure Sentinel and others.

The initial setup for QRadar is easy. It is easy to understand and easy to implement.

As compared to LogRhythm, IBM QRadar's pricing is moderate.

We recommend QRadar. It is a good product, a good solution.

Every customer should go with IBM QRadar.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give IBM QRadar a nine.

There are many use cases for this solution. One example is we are using this solution to monitor user site access to band sites. 

The solution is highly used here in Pakistan and in many sectors, they could improve it by having more SIEM connectors.

I have been using this solution for approximately four years.

The stability is good until you upgrade to a new version. You have to properly shut down services when you are doing some maintenance activities every three to four months. There might be some problems that you do not expect. We have had some complaints from users regarding operation. 

We have had bad experiences with support from IBM. We are not satisfied with the support and they have made me very angry. My customers have had similar experiences.

The initial setup of QRadar is not complex because we have done it before and we are used to the development. It is getting easier all the time.

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 am evaluating Splunk.

Here in Pakistan, this solution has already saturated the financial market.

I rate IBM QRadar a five out of ten.

We make some special demos that we sell to our customers. We work as a technical support L1/L2 for our customers in these cases as well.

The solution allows organizations to check people who work from home or in the office. It can help a company understand who is connected from home. 

Sometimes people give a login and password to colleagues. The security can see the situation when someone logs in locally, and they can see a remote connection. They can see this is from the login and password. They'd be able to tell if something was shared and could dig deep to figure out if it is a breach or if it is something that has been properly shared. 

The SOAR features are very good.

The product is able to handle special requests.

It can effectively search local files.

We are able to deploy in two or more different locations.

The solution is functional right out of the box and it's a pretty simple system with different kinds of solutions that address different types of problems. 

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.  

The solution is stable.

The product can scale.

Technical support is good overall.

Qradar has a lot of integration capabilities with different security products.

If we talk about functionality in general for SIEM systems, it's good.

In terms of the government sector, sometimes they do not have enough money to buy a full SIEM. That's why they ask about some parts of the SIEM system or core. It can be expensive.

It would be ideal if they offered a barebone setup alongside an appliance. It's very interesting for different kinds of customers. Most of them prefer the core appliance, yet some of them prefer barebone.

It would be ideal if the solution offered new connectors to other systems.

The reporting system could use some upgrading.

We've been using the solution for at least the last 12 months or so.

The stability is good. there are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The scalability of the product is very good. Sometimes we get requests for specific functionality and usually, we can accommodate that.

Generally, we are happy with technical support. They are helpful and responsive.

The initial setup is very simple for our customers due to the fact that the first step is a demo for a customer. We need about 5 to 15 working days to make this demo. We talk about making a core system. It's not difficult to make over the Qradar SIEM. After that, if the customer needs some special function for, for example, different parts of the organization, we can propose some separate parts of SIEM. That's about two or eight weeks away. 

In general, for a SIEM project, you are looking at a deployment time of about two til eight months. 

As integrators, we can help advise clients and assist in the deployment process.

IBM Qradar has an interesting scheme for payments. They have annual payments for customers who use subscriptions for some services. I can't see any problem with the current financial scheme for this product generally. It's okay.

We are implementors. Our customers are the ones that use IBM Qradar.

We are an IBM partner.

We strongly recommend to our customers use the latest version of Qradar. It's important for security. We tend to use the latest in general.

Our customer is a government organization, including some ministries. Therefore, they use on-premise deployments only. However, they have some plans for hybrid clouds or private clouds in the next three or four years. That said, it's very hard to say exactly as the work at the ministry is about security. On-premise is deemed to be more secure.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.