IBM’s surprise departure from cybersecurity software this week didn’t just rearrange the competitive landscape — it also reshuffled the procurement plans and vendor relationships for many CISOs rebuilding their SOCs.

IBM has agreed to sell the QRadar SaaS portfolio to Palo Alto Networks for an undisclosed sum. After years of development, IBM started rolling out the QRadar Suite in 2023, a cloud-native set of shared endpoint security components, including multiple detection and response products (EDR, XDR, and MDR), along with log management capabilities, notably security information and event management (SIEM) and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) platforms.