If the fictional producer Bruce Dickinson were putting together a security information and event management (SIEM) solution, you’d bet it would have all the bells and whistles. But alas, he’s not. Instead, security teams must rely on their vendors to come out with chart-topping capabilities that help detect threats early and block attackers before damage is done.

The Only Prescription for Your SIEM Fever Is More Cowbell

Fortunately for IBM QRadar customers, there’s plenty of cowbell to go around. However, not all SIEM platforms are created equal. Whether you’re evaluating an SIEM for the first time or your current solution leaves something to be desired, QRadar has that extra flair you’re looking for.

Based on feedback from our customers, below are some of the most popular benefits and features that QRadar delivers to security teams around the globe.

Immediate Value Without the Need to Customize

I don’t need to tell you that there’s a cybersecurity skill gap — you feel it every day. So why put undue stress on yourself and your team by choosing an SIEM that makes you do all the work?

On the QRadar team, our mission is to help our customers detect and manage threats as effectively and efficiently as possible. That’s why we deliver more out-of-the-box rules and reports than any other vendor and offer free snap-in content packs that can be added to your deployment at any time without needing to upgrade your deployment first.

Out-of-the-box rules are just one reason QRadar customers are able to see value right away. In fact, 70 percent of customers reported that they recognized value from their deployment within a week or less. Read this Ponemon study to learn how QRadar rapidly delivers value to customers.

Flexibility to Fit All Environments

At face value, this should be a given, right? But no two organizations are the same, and one size does not fit all. Customers of all shapes and sizes choose QRadar because of its flexibility to fit into their environment, whatever that environment may be.

From a deployment perspective, customers can buy: a fully supported physical appliance; a virtual appliance to run on their hardware, private cloud or public cloud of choice; a combination of physical and virtual components to fit a hybrid model; or a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. But that’s just the foundation. To get started, QRadar supports the ingestion of logs from over 300 log sources out of the box and offers a simple tool that enables you to easily add your own custom log sources.

Whether you’re a small company with a fairly straightforward infrastructure or a Fortune 100 with a highly diverse and distributed environment, QRadar can fit your needs.

It’s Got All the Bells and Whistles

Depending on your security program, you might not need all the bells and whistles at first. But when you’re investing in a security analytics solution, why not choose an option that can support you as you grow?

If, at some point, be it now or down the road, you’re interested in user behavior analytics (UBA), it’s in your best interest to look for solutions that offer baked-in UBA. That way, you won’t have to buy an entirely separate solution that likely will likely need to be integrated with your SIEM anyway, or one that relies on patchwork SIEM-like capabilities that have not yet been market tested.

Taking this a step further, layered-in artificial intelligence (AI) can deliver significant value in terms of time savings, especially given the shortage of skilled security resources. The ability to quickly hone in on and understand in-progress attacks is a critical step in the response cycle. Yet for most companies today, this process is entirely manual.

When AI capabilities are layered into your SIEM platform, the system can ingest data, automatically investigate threats and report back to your analysts on the scope, type and severity of those threats. If your team is struggling with too many alerts and not enough time to investigate them, AI can be game-changing. One company, for example, accelerated investigations by 50 percent with Watson Advisor.

Don’t Just Take Our Word For It

There are lots of options out there, and you should certainly do your research. But if you find that the options you’re considering or currently using are missing some cowbell, forcing you to do all the heavy lifting, or costing you and arm and a leg, it’s time to take a look at QRadar.

Check out what industry analysts to have to say. If you’re seriously considering an investment, join us at a user group to talk to existing customers and get the scoop firsthand.

Download the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for SIEM