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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

"I recommend it due to the experience of the people running it."
"The paid version of the solution has reporting and better scalability options."
"OSSIM is the only solution that includes the large number of modules that we need: a vulnerability scanner, a network IDS system, a host IDS system."
"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."
"You pay monthly for the solution. I think it's one of the best products. If you compare with other companies, like LogRhythm, etc., the top 8 or 10 CMs, I think Alien Vault has the best price-performance ratio."
"Inbuilt IDS, inbuilt integration with threat intelligence platform and with vulnerability assessment modules."
"You can customize the dashboards as well as the reporting."
"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are case management, ease of configuration, and investigation."
"It's similar to having a car. It's a necessity. I don't have to prove to the business executives that it provides return on investment. It's a necessary function and a must-have."
"On average, my security ops team takes fairly quickly to remediate security incidents with Splunk Enterprise Security, depending on the use case, minutes versus hours, compared to my previous solution, which was ArcSight."
"The logs on the solution are excellent."
"It has a drag-and-drop interface, so you don't need to know SQL or Java to construct a query on Splunk. The resolution time is about the same, but it took longer to discover the issue with ArcSight. Our previous solution took about an hour or more, but Splunk can do it within a few minutes or an hour at most."
"The risk-based alerting (RBA) is one of the valuable features."
"Splunk has machine learning which is a valuable feature."
"Splunk Enterprise Security helps me detect threats faster depending on the type of log I'm using. If I have a current company's log, I can easily detect it faster."
"I very much enjoy Splunk's robust search nature, which enables me to find the data I want within the data I have."
 

Cons

"AlienVault OSSIM failed to provide our company a full insight, while also giving out a lot of false positives."
"AlienVault OSSIM should improve the deployment and make it unified like the USM."
"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."
"The user interface could be improved."
"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."
"The correlation engine needs to be improved."
"The solution needs more integration with cyber intelligence systems."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"Enterprise security: Splunk must work on clarifying the solution to customers and explain how to gain more from it."
"The ingestion happens quickly, so you can run up the data costs if you use the default settings. It isn't a problem for government agencies in the Saudi market, but many of the corporations in India are small or medium-sized enterprises that cannot afford that kind of ingestion system."
"Splunk Enterprise Security documentation exists, but compared to Palo Alto, Palo Alto has more knowledge base articles."
"The user interface feels clunky to navigate and interact with in Splunk Enterprise Security compared to other case management solutions where it feels easier to use at a high level."
"The monitoring aspect of Splunk could be improved. We have to do some queries to get as much information as CrowdStrike or other solutions provide. If you run a big query, you will see a delay. That is the only concern we have because it will take some time if you query large data sets."
"The use cases provided by Splunk are a good starting point, but could cover many additional topics to ensure that a smaller or less experienced shop might maximize the value of an ES deployment."
"Splunk's ability to analyze malicious activities scores an 8 out of 10, but there's room for improvement. By analyzing emerging patterns, Splunk could identify and predict potential threats more effectively."
"We've sometimes faced issues with upgrades. The incident review dashboard sometimes breaks after updates. When we add a space or something in the description or anywhere in the SQL, the drill-down value may be reset with a blank value. Before rolling out any software, they should test it thoroughly and ensure clients won't have issues with the upgraded version. It should be compatible with all or most of the apps. All major issues must be addressed before rolling out the upgrade."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OSSIM is free."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"We are using a free version of the solution. If you purchase a license there are more features available but the price is a little high. The solution should be cheaper to allow more customers to be able to afford it."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"The price of AlienVault OSSIM is too high sometimes for us to present to our customers. The price should be lower. We are on a three-year license to use the solution. We had to pay extra for the support."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"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."
"I have no opinion on pricing."
"I think that most of the log analytics solutions are expensive and I'm not sure if it's worth it."
"The pricing of Splunk Enterprise Security is somewhat high, but comparing it with its benefits, it's acceptable. It depends on the type of business."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is a worthwhile investment given the comprehensive range of features it offers."
"I assume that the pricing is reasonable, because if it was too costly, there are other alternatives."
"Splunk can be expensive, as its licensing is based on the daily data ingestion volume."
"It is expensive. That is why many customers have moved to IBM QRadar. The price is definitely a challenge for customers."
"Its pricing model can be improved."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
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: February 2026.
882,160 professionals have used our research since 2012.