AlienVault OSSIM vs Netsurion comparison

Read 24 Netsurion reviews

683 Views
312 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

AlienVault OSSIM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

AlienVault OSSIM and Netsurion are two prominent cybersecurity solutions. Netsurion appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set and higher perceived value.

Features: AlienVault OSSIM is valued for its threat detection and response capabilities, easy log management, and wide integration options. Netsurion is praised for its extensive security features, managed firewall, and SIEM capabilities. Netsurion's broader feature set makes it appealing to users seeking an all-in-one solution.

Room for Improvement: Users highlight AlienVault OSSIM's need for better scalability and enhanced threat intelligence updates. For Netsurion, reviewers suggest improving reporting functionalities and the complexity of initial configuration. This indicates AlienVault OSSIM could benefit from technical upgrades, while Netsurion needs better usability enhancements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AlienVault OSSIM is often complimented for its straightforward deployment, but its customer service receives mixed reviews. Netsurion is viewed as more complex to deploy but benefits from stronger customer support. Hence, Netsurion may offer better post-deployment support, despite a tougher initial setup.

Pricing and ROI: AlienVault OSSIM is generally perceived as cost-effective with a quicker ROI. Netsurion, despite being pricier, is seen as delivering good value due to its extensive features and reliable managed services. Users accept Netsurion's higher cost owing to its significant return on investment.

To learn more, read our detailed AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion Report (Updated: April 2025).

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 847,862 peers since 2012

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)

10th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Netsurion

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

18th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (5th), SOC as a Service (3rd), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (14th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (18th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 3.9%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netsurion is 0.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

Aman Aijaz

Assistant Manager Global Security at Convergys Corporation

An easy-to-scale open-source solution used for monitoring events on devices

The area for improvement is a lot. When I started using it on our enterprise side, the issue we faced was, for example, if we were running at that time on AlienVault OSSIM v5.7.4. So, for some orders, we had to install some packages, and when we tried installing that package, some dependencies got upgraded to a new version. Now once that dependency got upgraded, the SQL, since you might be aware that OSSIM uses SQL database, now SQL and all the dependency in everything was not on the same version, and that caused the database to crash. The aforementioned area should be eased out by upgrading the patches and upgrading dependencies. This kind of thing is a disadvantage of OSSIM, and I would like them to work on this. But I have also raised service requests many times and gave it a push on the community section too. However, since it is a local source, they don't reply much over there. That is why I don't like to work on OSSIM because it is unpredictable. Once the storage goes above 50 percent, it starts behaving unpredictably. If you get stuck with a situation, then you need to drill a lockdown into that. Sometimes you get no luck. Then you have to just reimage the server with the new fresh OS of AlienVault. As for additional features, not much because if you move to the newer version, it is kind of getting more stable. But, to make my life easier, then I would say try to give more features. I know it's open source, so they also cannot provide me with more features. But still, if they can provide me with more features because right now it's becoming old. Right now, we are even moving from SIEM to Security Data Lake. So when we move to it, this will be literally outdated. No one can even expect anything out of it. The way security is moving, it will be outdated very soon. They have to also provide something new to keep this going for the future also.

Read full review

John-Berry

Information Technology Manager at ProfitSolv

The SOC center monitors, hunts, and notifies us of threats around the clock

I know they are working to resolve this issue, but Netsurion is currently unable to retrieve logs from S3 buckets. We use WP Engine for a lot of web hosting as well as AWS, and both of these platforms use S3 buckets. I would like Netsurion to be able to pull logs from Linux devices. We have some of that capability, and I believe they can do it. However, the way it works with Amazon is strange and glitchy. Therefore, working something out with Amazon would be great. Netsurion's SOC can be a bit too aggressive at times. We have asked them to adjust their playbook because I am tired of being notified about the same issue multiple times a day. I am aware of the issue, and it is not a cause for concern. Let's only take action on this issue if we see an actual problem.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are a lot of people you will find using OSSIM since they are also offering OTX as a service"

"AlienVault OSSIM is an enterprise solution that sells easily. It is rated highly by organizations."

"The product is majorly used for threat detection of the agents on servers and endpoints."

"The dashboard is the solution's most valuable aspect. It brings everything into one central point where I can actually look at it and go, "Okay, I understand what's going on.""

"Better than other SIEM solutions because almost everything can be integrated."

"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."

"The solution has a very good open source community, and whenever we have problems, we are always able to resolve it online."

More AlienVault OSSIM pros

"Netsurion's 24/7 monitoring has enhanced the overall security of the company. They have someone looking at the data 24/7 who will call us as needed. If their team spots a malicious process after hours, they notify the appropriate person by phone. We get a lot of actionable threat intelligence from Netsurion. For example, if a user clicks on a malicious link in a web page and starts an unusual process that isn't on the white-list, Netsurion's team can detect it and prevent it from executing. Afterward, they'll notify us by telephone, so we can respond and clean up whatever damage has occurred."

"The network alert is the most valuable feature. That way, we in the IT department are aware of user lockout and invalid password attempts way before a user ever even calls in."

"The most valuable feature is definitely real-time alerting, especially in situations where someone might attempt to exploit or hack into our network."

"Netsurion has its own security operations center, where it tracks information that comes across our telemetry."

"The most valuable feature is that we get the events: the alerts about disk space and the security reports that we get once a day, including user lockouts and the like."

"When it comes to threat detection and response, it does a very good job detecting and blocking on its own. And the SOC is a nice added value because they're doing analysis on things that aren't as obvious, on things that you can't just detect with a signature or behavior. Also, any SIEM will come with a lot of noise, so having them do a lot of the initial analysis to find out what's critical and what issues are false alarms is very good."

"What I like most about Netsurion is the level of visibility and reporting."

"Expediting incident response is really great."

More Netsurion pros

Cons

"The documentation could be improved."

"Lacking in depth of reporting."

"It's under heavy traffic. If you have heavy traffic, the system is slow."

"There needs to be more support or some kind of training program so users can self-learn the system more effectively."

"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."

"The user interface could be improved."

"AlienVault OSSIM on-premise version is more difficult to implement than the cloud version. Additionally, they should add integration between several different environments at once and improve their online knowledge base."

More AlienVault OSSIM cons

"Communication is always something that can be improved, but I feel that any time we've had a communication issue, it's quickly addressed when we bring those up at the monthly meetings. Usually, it's an individual that wasn't clear in the communication, it's not the process per se. You always have to be able to segregate if the process didn't work or an individual either didn't say the right thing or my people didn't understand what they were being told."

"Where there is an opportunity for improvement is in the interface used for performing the searches. You have to understand Elasticsearch search too well for the security team to be able to take really full advantage of that part of the product. It's not as intuitive as I would like it to be for new staff coming in. The general query capability is a little bit challenging."

"The solution's dashboard is okay. The one thing that we ran into are issues when we upgraded to the newer version. It uses Elasticsearch for the different dashboard entries. So, we were running on spinning disks, and Elasticsearch didn't work that well. A number of the different dashboards, like my dashboard or different things like that, pull from Elasticsearch. Since Elasticsearch really wasn't working, we were having some issues with that, but we just migrated."

"The MITRE ATT&CK framework could be faster when identifying and understanding sophisticated threats. Whenever something happens, we usually get notified a couple hours later."

"The deployment of the agents could be a bit easier. We always seem to have a bit of a challenge with that. A lot of times the agents either don't deploy or they quit responding, then we have to go and redeploy them."

"Netsurion's SOC can be a bit too aggressive at times."

"Netsurion's threat detection and response aren't quite mature. I would expect a little more."

"The threat detection and response is passive. We have asked if there were options for taking action, and we have not gotten any feedback on that, which would be useful to know. Depending on the situation and threat, some actions may not be possible, but we haven't gotten any feedback on what options could be directed and actionable with the understanding that it may have an extra cost. It would be nice to know or find out if it is actually possible to take actions by a SIEM service or a SIEM agent."

More Netsurion cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 expensive compared to its competitors."

"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."

"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."

"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."

"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."

"OSSIM is free."

More AlienVault OSSIM pricing and cost advice

"EventTracker's subscription-based model is interesting as far as yearly license type stuff. It's nice because you know what it's going to be next year. We haven't really looked at any other solutions. The pricing at the time compared to the other solutions was a lot less. A couple of years ago, we actually looked at Splunk. The amount in Splunk's licensing model is based on 20 gigs a day, or something like that. Based on our number of logs and stuff that we were already generating, the costs would be substantially more for the amount of logs that we would be getting."

"Netsurion's pricing is extremely fair and flexible. The price of their SIEM product is reasonable, and you can pay for those services you want on top of that. It wasn't cheap, but it's competitive, and we intend to renew our contract."

"We put together the package of what we needed. It was based pretty much on the number of agents that we were deploying. If we needed to manage logging from certain specific applications, like Active Directory and SQL Server, there has been no additional cost for that. We had agents deployed for those specific servers and the applications were included, then there was just an additional installation that they had to do for us."

"The pricing and licensing seem very reasonable. The managed service part of it feels like it gives me the equivalent of a full-time engineer for a lot less money. So, I feel it's a good value."

"Licensing is very easy. Our CIO takes care of the billing, but in terms of price point, he hasn't complained, so it must be good."

"Netsurion's pricing is competitive. At the same time, they're the only ones who do what we want to do the way we want it. I can't say we would've paid more, but we would've had to have come up with our own solution if they weren't providing that."

"Our budget follows the calendar year. We just started a new budget year at the beginning of the month. We did budget for an increase in our threat management system selection. Therefore, we have the budget to implement and accommodate a threat management system change, including an increase for the quoted actions that we received to improve EventTracker. We are just waiting on our council to approve that budget, which might not be for a little while. Hopefully, when they do, we will be able to jump on doing something."

"We have seen time and cost savings. It prevents us from having to hire specialized people for this type of work. We would need to hire six staff members to accommodate the same service."

More Netsurion pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

847,862 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Computer Software Company

26%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AlienVault OSSIM?

Asset discovery is good.

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 do you like most about Netsurion Managed Threat Protection?

Expediting incident response is really great.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Netsurion Managed Threat Protection?

Their pricing is high. I don't know if it's a barrier. The quality speaks to the price. The price is the price. They provide what they promise. From a purchasing perspective, I just have to come ba...

What needs improvement with Netsurion Managed Threat Protection?

There is one area that needs improvement and that is with the agents and the server that's on-site. The system requirements are very, very high. So I need a pretty powerful server to run. If they c...

Wazuh vs AlienVault OSSIM

Comparisons

Compared 81% of the time

USM Anywhere vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 5% of the time

Elastic Security vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 4% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 2% of the time

Rapid7 InsightIDR vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 2% of the time

More AlienVault OSSIM Competitors

Devo vs Netsurion

Compared 36% of the time

Sumo Logic Security vs Netsurion

Compared 33% of the time

Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response vs Netsurion

Compared 31% of the time

More Netsurion Competitors

Product Reports

Download AlienVault OSSIM product report

AlienVault OSSIM

April 2025

Download Netsurion product report

March 2025

Also Known As

OSSIM

Netsurion Managed Threat Protection, Netsurion EventTracker

Overview

AlienVault OSSIM, Open Source Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), provides you with a feature-rich open source SIEM complete with event collection, normalization and correlation. Launched by security engineers because of the lack of available open source products, AlienVault OSSIM was created specifically to address the reality many security professionals face: A SIEM, whether it is open source or commercial, is virtually useless without the basic security controls necessary for security visibility.

AT&T

Netsurion offers a comprehensive solution for centralized log management, SIEM, and managed services, ensuring continuous monitoring and security event analysis for diverse organizations, enhancing IT security and compliance.

Netsurion centralizes event management through SIEM and managed services. Organizations leverage it for vulnerability assessment and intrusion detection, integrating logs from Windows, Linux, and network devices. Its SOC provides 24/7 monitoring, ensuring compliance with PCI and audit standards. Real-time alerts and efficient log data aggregation enhance threat identification and response. Weekly reports and insights into user lockouts contribute to robust security management, beneficial for firms with constrained resources.

What are some key features of Netsurion?

SIEM Integration: Centralizes security event data for easier management.
Managed Services: Provides 24/7 SOC monitoring and support.
Real-TIme Alerts: Notifies of unusual security events promptly.
Threat Intelligence: Delivers actionable insights for proactive defense.
Seamless Platform Integration: Compatible with Office 365, firewalls, and other platforms.

How can companies benefit from using Netsurion?

Enhanced Security Management: Real-time monitoring and alerts streamline threat response.
PCI Compliance: Supports meeting audit and regulatory requirements efficiently.
Resource Optimization: Weekly reports and detailed insights aid decision-making for limited-resource organizations.
Improved Threat Detection: Consolidating logs and real-time intelligence helps in identifying threats swiftly.

Netsurion is implemented across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, where security is crucial. These sectors require robust monitoring and compliance solutions, utilizing Netsurion's seamless integration with their existing infrastructure to manage security operations effectively, addressing both regulatory needs and threat management.

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District

The Salvation Army, The FRESH Market, Pacific Western Bank, NASA, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), and Talbot’s Stores