IBM Security QRadar Suite Software: SIEM & SOAR

IBM Security QRadar  is primarily used for orchestration, automation, and incident response in my environment.

I use IBM Security QRadar  for automation and incident response through a phishing mail playbook, where an employee sends a malicious phishing email to the SOAR  inbox, and SOAR  automatically generates an incident based on that email. After the incident is generated, we have created an advanced playbook that analyzes and scans the incident artifacts, extracting malicious elements in the notes. Following the identification of malicious content, another playbook sends an email notification about the findings and integrates with firewalls to automatically block the IOCs identified in the email. This is one of several playbooks we have developed.

Regarding my main use case for IBM Security QRadar, I have used most of IBM Security QRadar by integrating it with IBM Security QRadar SIEM , consolidating many IBM Security QRadar SIEM  alerts in IBM Security QRadar SOAR. We have created incident types for each IBM Security QRadar alert and handle each incident carefully in IBM Security QRadar SOAR, automating incidents at an advanced level, including the use of a custom SOAR SDK to develop a custom SOAR application to meet client requirements. We have leveraged the potential of IBM Security QRadar SOAR.

The best features of IBM Security QRadar, in my experience, include multiple application integrations available through the IBM App Exchange, and I particularly appreciate the Playbook Designer feature, which allows me to design playbooks on a canvas, making it user-friendly and efficient.

The Playbook Designer in IBM Security QRadar has specifically helped my workflow by allowing the creation of advanced SOAR playbooks, with many sub-playbooks integrated into the main playbook itself. This feature enables me to create great workflows using functions, scripts, and rules tailored to client requirements, and the integration of applications enhances the feasibility of using Playbook Designer while allowing me to expand playbooks as necessary.

IBM Security QRadar has positively impacted my organization by enabling me to mitigate many incidents and reduce manual tasks by up to 40%. I have noticed a decrease in incident response time and a significant reduction in the number of manual tasks performed, leading to more efficient overall operations.

IBM Security QRadar needs to be more user-friendly; the current build is based on basic code and could benefit from updates. Making IBM Security QRadar's interface more intuitive, similar to that of Splunk, would enhance usability. Additionally, improving the installation and deployment processes to minimize setup time compared to other SIEM and SOAR tools is necessary.

I gave IBM Security QRadar a score of six or seven out of ten because it has a very basic interface; the dashboards require extension management for better usability. There should be an effort to build more effective dashboards within IBM Security QRadar itself without relying on additional applications. Additionally, maintaining good compatibility with IBM App Exchange applications is crucial, as IBM Security QRadar SIEM is an older product that would benefit from code updates.

I have been using IBM Security QRadar for more than two years.

For others looking into using IBM Security QRadar, my advice is to first learn IBM Security QRadar SOAR. Training is essential, but IBM Security QRadar SOAR is not overly complicated, and the documentation from IBM's portal is quite good. By learning IBM Security QRadar SOAR first, users can operate it more efficiently and leverage its versatile features, including rules, workflows, and various custom properties. I would rate IBM Security QRadar a score of six out of ten.

I use IBM Security QRadar  to collect logs, analyze them, and share details. When I began investigating incidents and working with the SOC team, I was using IBM Security QRadar .

IBM Security QRadar has been a game-changer for our SOC at Kantar. It pulls everything together—logs from endpoints, networks, you name it—letting us spot threats faster and cut down response times by about 40% on stuff like phishing alerts and endpoint issues across our 6,000 machines.

IBM Security QRadar offers a wide range of powerful features. During phishing-related investigations, it greatly assists from an analyst’s investigation point of view. A core capability of IBM Security QRadar is visibility — it collects and normalizes logs and network flow events from multiple tools. It can ingest logs from almost any source. Its advanced, modular architecture supports real-time log collection from diverse systems, making it well-suited for environments using platforms such as CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, Trend Micro, and Symantec.

These features are highly beneficial in our environment because, from a security perspective, proper log collection and management are crucial. QRadar streamlines SOC operations by automating alert triggers and providing unified visibility across multiple environments, which enhances our team’s ability to handle phishing and EDR alerts effectively. The shift handover capability is another valuable feature of IBM Security QRadar. Real-time log normalization and its advanced analytics engine help reduce high-risk alerts and false positives by up to 50%.

From an analyst’s perspective, threat hunting and groundwork during rotational shifts, combined with SOAR  playbook automation, enable efficient endpoint isolation and quarantine actions. IBM Security QRadar also features a custom rules engine that allows analysts to create dynamic rules using AQL, targeting niche threats such as suspicious domains, all without vendor lock-in. Unlike rigid EDR policies, its petabyte-scale indexing efficiently handles massive event-per-second (EPS) volumes without performance degradation, making it ideal for expanding enterprise environments compared to lighter SIEM  solutions.

IBM Security QRadar needs improvement in several areas. It should be better integrated with AI, as L1 analysts often deal with noisy rules that require constant fine-tuning. Smarter, out-of-the-box analytics — comparable to CrowdStrike’s low false-positive performance — would significantly enhance efficiency. Additionally, a more intuitive and customizable dashboard would provide better visibility, making it easier to identify available options and streamline operations.

The QRadar mobile app also requires upgrades, as it currently lags behind with limited incident (offense) visibility and lacks push alerts for high-severity events. This becomes challenging during shift rotations. Adding an option for bulk offense closure with multi-select capabilities and predefined reason templates would save time, as manual tagging is currently cumbersome. These improvements are essential for optimizing the overall analyst experience.

I have used IBM Security QRadar for more than two years.

QRadar scales like a champ for our setup—handles petabyte-scale data

Good

Yeah, before QRadar, we were piecing things together with a mix of Microsoft Defender for logs from endpoints and some basic syslog forwarding from Trend Micro Deep Security , but it wasn't a full SIEM —just siloed tools that made correlation a nightmare.

complex

consultant

I can say that almost 35% of time is reduced, specifically 30 to 35% time reduction.

We looked at Splunk and Azure Sentinel  as main alternatives before landing on QRadar—Splunk for its search power and Sentinel  since we're heavy on Azure .

I recommend IBM Security QRadar because it is a trusted IBM product that many organizations and financial institutions use for its strong visibility and analytical capabilities. I have had a great experience working with IBM Security QRadar. From what I know, most SOC professionals agree that once you gain experience with QRadar, adapting to any other SIEM tool becomes much easier. Overall, I would rate my experience with IBM Security QRadar highly due to its robust features and wide industry adoption.

My main use case for IBM Security QRadar is building a SOC with IBM Security QRadar as a SIEM.

I use IBM Security QRadar in my SOC operations as an information security management, security and event management tool, to correlate events and build use cases for incident response.

My main use case helps us to deep dive into the logs and correlate events from many other products like firewalls, endpoints, and also a lot of products.

The best features IBM Security QRadar offers include vulnerability management, a powerful integration, and being a stable product. The vulnerability management feature helps to build an asset library for our organization, and with integrations, we can integrate this vulnerability with other ticketing systems to discover new vulnerabilities and build a patch management for it.

IBM Security QRadar has positively impacted my organization by allowing me to get offenses and threats into our organization, helping me to discover the real threats attacking our organization. The real threats that IBM Security QRadar helps us with are provided as offenses, real offenses with real examples that allow us to discover new offenses and assist in closing these offenses.

IBM Security QRadar can be improved; perhaps IBM support needs improvement in fast response and also the team response.

I have been using IBM Security QRadar for about nine years.

IBM Security QRadar is stable.

IBM Security QRadar's scalability is great; you can have a new collector to deploy if you have increased EPS per second.

Customer support for IBM Security QRadar needs improvement.

I have not used a different solution before IBM Security QRadar; this is my first use.

I have seen a return on investment; I can share that it includes time saved, money saved, and fewer employees needed.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is great compared to the other vendor.

I did not evaluate other options before choosing IBM Security QRadar.

IBM Security QRadar is stable and has great support.

I advise others looking into using IBM Security QRadar that it is really helpful for building a SOC and to get a deep dive into your real threats at the earliest time. I have given this product a review rating of 10.

The use cases are daily monitoring, asset management, asset monitoring, asset health status monitoring, and alert monitoring. That is the current use case of what SIEM  is being used for.

The query search and log fetching are really helpful in IBM Security QRadar  when compared to other tools.

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. There are filters which you can use directly and apply to get the data you want fairly easily.

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.

I have been using it for almost nine months.

The solution is extremely stable because it's on cloud. On cloud, you don't see any disconnections or instability. Any solution that is on cloud works really stably.

I am both a customer and we provide service to that.

I never needed to reach out to support because most of the expertise was already available.

I have used ArcSight and parallelly we are using Sentinel . I have also used Wazuh  and Splunk.

There are analytical workspaces where we create automatic ticket creations and automatic email notifications.

I have worked on technologies including Qualys, Group-IB, and QRadar. I have experience with CrowdStrike EDR and Bitdefender. On the EDR front, I have worked on CrowdStrike and Bitdefender. For SIEMs, I work with IBM Security QRadar and Sentinel. For vulnerability assessments, I work with Qualys.

There are no observable benefits on ROI process-wise, workability-wise, or usability-wise.

We chose IBM Security QRadar because we were moving to cloud. Previously it was an on-prem solution. Compared to Splunk and Sentinel, it's much more cost-effective.

IBM Security QRadar is capable of handling much of the market requirements. It's comparable to any other SIEM tool without standing out significantly.

It's fairly open for custom integrations, but it depends on what type of logs we are receiving and what kind of parsing we are getting done. The integrations are totally based on the skill sets if third-party or custom integrations are required.

When it comes to log management, it's fairly easy to manage and the log rotate is really good compared to any standard SIEM tool. It just gets the work done.

I rate IBM Security QRadar an 8 out of 10.