AlienVault OSSIM vs Netsurion comparison

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92% willing to recommend

AlienVault OSSIM

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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: March 2025).

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion

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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)

17th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (4th), SOC as a Service (3rd), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (15th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (19th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 4.1%, up from 3.4% 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.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."

"The solution is very stable. Compared to Qradar and Splunk, it's very stable."

"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."

"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."

"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."

"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."

"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 product is easy to use."

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."

"They have what they call Elasticsearch which is very quick, although that's only available for the last seven days' worth of data. It used to be that, if I wanted to do a search from three days ago, it might take me 10 to 15 minutes because it had to actually unzip some archive files. So I really like that feature. It's almost instantaneous for anything within the last seven days."

"I think Netsurion scales well. We've gone from a small number of agents up to thousands. So I would imagine that it would continue to scale. I don't see any issue with that."

"If we need to do a search for user lockouts, we can go, search, and find locations where they have been locked out, then keep track of those events, historically."

"I like the UI, overall. I like the main page and there are aspects of the search page that I like. When you bring it up on the left-hand side of the page, as you look at the events, the ability to simply hit and click the plus/minus to pull events in and out of the overall view is well done and is very effective from a threat-hunting and an analysis perspective. I like the detail it shows."

"When I looked last week, we probably averaged about 20 million log entries a day. So, we certainly can't individually manage that. Just looking at the reports, then trying to go back and find anything that was questionable, was a challenge. Therefore, the managed service has been invaluable to us in terms of being able to narrow the scope of what really needs to be looked at and bringing those things to our attention to be dealt with."

"The most important feature is keeping track of when accounts are created and deleted, when permission groups are changed, and memberships are changed in groups; and overall, how many errors are occurring on the various systems that we're monitoring."

"We don't have the eyeballs available to stare and watch for things, or even have the capability of building internal alert systems. So, the managed SOC has been huge for freeing up staff to work on other responsibilities. We are saving on at least one full-time employee."

More Netsurion pros

Cons

"The price of this solution is very high and it could be cheaper."

"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."

"The correlation engine needs to be improved."

"Lacking in depth of reporting."

"I suggest more in-built rules based on modern threats and environments to make it a more competitive solution."

"I don't like to work on OSSIM because it is unpredictable."

"The solution needs more integration with cyber intelligence systems."

"I would like the solution to be able to integrate with my firewall, my IDS and my Honeypot solutions so that it can provide real-time reporting as things occur and then have alert sent to me on my phone when suspicious activity is happening."

More AlienVault OSSIM cons

"There are some issues with searches taking a long period of time, but they assured me that they have implemented a new search function that's available in version 9, but which requires a solid-state hard drive... Depending on how many logs you have it could take a long time to return the results if you're looking back prior to the last 30 days."

"I would also like to have a dashboard that I can access anytime to review the real-time data from their website."

"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."

"They have their programs and tools that you have to put into your own environment. We basically ingest all the log data and then push it out to them. I wish it was a little bit different than that where we just push directly towards them. I do not know if that is a function that they thought would be better in terms of security, but I wish that instead of doing that, it should go from the device to them and not from the device to another system and then out to them. There seem to be some drawbacks to doing that."

"I would like to see a faster response when we see things like 15,000 lockouts. I really wished that I had known that on Friday afternoon rather than waiting until I got the weekly report today. By the same token, they are looking at it from the point of view that this is a system or software malfunction. This is not a bad actor repeating the exact same password three times a second. Therefore, they can tell that this is not a bad thing. However, it's not a security event but it is an operational event for me. Knowing this sort of thing would help my team and me out more because then we would be able to clear out a lot of network traffic that we didn't know was going on. So, we would like quicker updates on non-high security events."

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

"The system requirements are very, very high. So I need a pretty powerful server to run. If they could lighten that load so that the on-premise part of their product didn't impact my systems as much that would be ideal."

"Everything that I've wanted has been added in. EDR was added, and MITRE was added. Those were two big ones that we didn't even have to push for."

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 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."

"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to Microsoft Sentinel, AlienVault OSSIM incurs additional costs due to its licensing price structure. If you are using AlienVault for security purposes at a certain level it can have a higher price point than the current pricing of Microsoft Sentinel."

"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 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."

"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 OSSIM is free."

"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."

More AlienVault OSSIM pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"It is a bit expensive as compared to some of the other products that have come out in recent years. Expense-wise, the only downside is that it is not cheap."

"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."

"You are paying for different levels, especially as far as the monitoring goes and how often you review it with the team. The other factor that figures in is how many nodes are on your network, such as clients, network equipment, servers, etc. There are some additional pieces on top of that, but it's laid out pretty simply, as far as how much you're going to pay for a node."

"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."

"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."

"I don't know if the pricing is by the seat but we're paying about $20,000 to 25,000 a year. On top of that, we pay for the managed support services. That runs us about another $35,000 or $40,000 a year."

More Netsurion pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Computer Software Company

25%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

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...

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Product Reports

AlienVault OSSIM

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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

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion