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AlienVault OSSIM vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 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

AlienVault OSSIM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
13th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
375
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.7%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 7.1%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.1%
AlienVault OSSIM1.7%
Other91.2%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

BP
Independent Contractor at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
Enables cost-effective security management for small businesses
Scaling for USM is always challenging for any product unless it is purpose-built or overbuilt at the front end. They will use Palo Alto and its competitors, and LevelBlue will manage that implementation. The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale. By pushing it to a cloud-based system, they've largely alleviated scale issues. It's native in Amazon but will also run in Azure. They have worked with cloud service providers to offer enough throughput at a cost reasonable for a corporation. Scaling was their biggest problem, and they've largely conquered those issues.
reviewer1469784 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has helped us remediate threats in the past by providing significant events that assisted in identifying suspicious activities, such as logins from multiple countries."
"Network traffic analysis is highly efficient."
"Its user-friendliness is the most valuable. It is very easy to use and explore. The dashboard is very well packaged and integrated. You don't have to spend a lot of time in configuring it and checking out the RPM etc. It is also free and very powerful."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the data correlation and vulnerability assessment."
"The open vault component and the checking of vulnerabilities are the most valuable features. The page management helps with this. If you know how your device is vulnerable at least you can do something about it."
"The tool's security detection is good. It helps us with login tracking and generating reports. We aim to identify potential issues, such as brute-force attacks on user accounts or server-level anomalies. For instance, if I receive a report indicating a server is at an abnormal level, I investigate and address the issue."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The product is easy to use."
"I really like the user interface and how it works."
"Splunk Enterprise Security scales well with the growing needs of our company."
"I find it beneficial that Splunk Enterprise Security easily integrates with other tools. Due to its excellent API capabilities, it facilitates connections with various cybersecurity tools."
"Splunk Enterprise Security has helped improve my organization's business resilience, as we were able to detect an attack that was happening after hours and prevent it thanks to the detections."
"The most valuable feature is the log aggregation, being able to scan through all of the logs."
"Splunk works based on parsing log files."
"The initial setup is simple, not very complex. Initial deployment takes around 10 to 15 minutes to set up the entire base for Splunk including all three tiers."
"Support is quick and competent."
 

Cons

"The incidence reporting could be better."
"The initial setup was a bit complex. You've got to do a lot of reading. It's not an intuitive implementation."
"There are somewhat more false positives with the user behavior analytics, which could benefit from an additional machine learning model to detect user patterns more rapidly."
"AlienVault OSSIM gives unwanted notifications."
"It's so hard to configure and explore something new on it."
"The price of this solution is very high and it could be cheaper."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to other solutions it looks a bit outdated. Additionally, they need to improve their integration."
"Both quality and speed are lacking. Quality-wise, tickets sometimes go in circles, with unnecessary complications and escalations requiring repeated explanations."
"One of the improvement points that Enterprise Security could offer is on-prem training, the availability to have a Splunk representative come out to different sites and actually sit down with the organizations and help them understand."
"It would be great if I could have a certain dialogue box in Splunk that uses innovative AI tools like ChatGPT, which are available now in the tech department."
"We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy."
"I would like more assistance with use cases and help with teaching us how to use it once it's installed."
"Splunk Enterprise Security can be improved mainly from the user interface regarding the visualizations."
"The system can be intimidating, and sometimes the concepts conveyed in the documentation require adjustment."
"The threat detection system has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"OSSIM is open source, and USM is the paid license. So, if you want, you can switch to USM. There you will have to buy a license, and they have a support team that helps you out on issues you face."
"I used the paid version of the tool and found it to be expensive. It has been a while since I changed to Securonix. I will have to check whether AlienVault charges per device, user, or log."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"AlienVault pricing is the best. Whatever cost you are paying, you are getting a return on every penny... It's not like your IBM, your QRadar, or Splunk, where the cost is too high."
"Further reductions would be fantastic, and I believe that more and more people would flock to it."
"The Splunk licensing is high."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive."
"Splunk licensing model might seem expensive but with all the gain in functionalities you will have compared to traditional SIEM solutions I think it’s worth the price."
"Splunk is a bit pricier, but the benefits and ROI are huge."
"Unlike other security tools, Splunk provides a fixed amount of gigabytes per day, and we are required to pay for any additional usage beyond that limit, in addition to our monthly cost."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is cheaper than competitors, but I do not know whether it is just our contract."
"It's a little bit expensive for a small to medium enterprise."
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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
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business109
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise264
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlienVault OSSIM?
It depends. I would need to review their cost models, but generally, they are on a scaled basis based on throughput usage. Because it's a software as a service solution for their core product for U...
What needs improvement with AlienVault OSSIM?
Scaling for USM is always challenging for any product unless it is purpose-built or overbuilt at the front end. They will use Palo Alto and its competitors, and LevelBlue will manage that implement...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
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 ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,515 professionals have used our research since 2012.