AlienVault OSSIM vs Netsurion comparison

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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: January 2025).

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion

January 2025

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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)

18th

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) (14th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (18th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 4.2%, up from 3.2% 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 features of AlienVault OSSIM are vulnerability assessment, network intrusion detection system, response to critical events, and awareness of the whole network."

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

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

"The threat alerts it gives me from time to time on harmful code within the network, or if they are generating any network traffic, are very useful."

"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."

"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."

"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."

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

More AlienVault OSSIM pros

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The real-time alerting for things such as people getting dropped into a VPN group or the domain admin group — things like that which really shouldn't happen without proper change management, but we all know the reality, they do from time to time — gives me real-time visibility into what's going on."

"The SIEMs and managed service are its most valuable features. We get a weekly report from them which provides a culmination of them combing through millions of events which are triggered across our network every day and minute. Their information security experts basically boil that down to a report which I get emailed once a week. It identifies potential threats and the remediation that I should take to be able to quell those threats."

"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 a number of integrations with different products. Google Workspace is one of them, and Microsoft Azure is another one. They integrate with a number of other things, such as Duo for multi-factor authentication. They can pull the logs from Duo to see if users are coming from bad repeatable IPs or if there are malicious known IPs that may be popping up in the logs. They are able to see that, and they can identify that. Some of the other integrations they do are from inside your network. For firewalls, they can integrate with SonicWall, Cisco, Fortinet, etc. They have a pretty wide variety of things to integrate with and be able to pull the logins from those devices."

"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."

More Netsurion pros

Cons

"The incidence reporting could be better."

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

"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 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."

"AlienVault OSSIM is costly."

"Lacking in depth of reporting."

"They can add more compliance templates."

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

More AlienVault OSSIM cons

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"Probably the biggest thing is just: Can I search for this and what's the best way to do it? If I'm looking for two events versus a singular event, I just throw it back at them. They're the experts on it."

"The biggest problem is that we have too many domain controllers. So, we have to keep all the clients and main system updated with the latest versions along with making sure all the firewalls are open."

"We get a report generated on a particular day of the week and we go through it, trying to mitigate problems and make sure we're seeing everything that's happening. It would be helpful if the SOC spent a little more time with us going through some of those reports."

More Netsurion cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."

"OSSIM is free."

"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."

"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."

More AlienVault OSSIM pricing and cost advice

"In the security space, it's hard to quantify your return on investment. So, I don't. We spend about $40,000 a year and so. It's hard to say if the SIEM saved that much money."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"When we first got the EventTracker product, we were using SIEM Simplified. At the time they didn't call it that, but it was more of a service thing. So, there was a bit more hand-holding and getting stuff set up, along with failure reports, that they did during the first one to two years. Then, we decided that the the additional money to have someone do these daily reports wasn't terribly useful, so we discontinued that service."

"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 upfront costs have increased, and we have been locked into this contract. The cost of changing over from it is way too high."

"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."

More Netsurion pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

University

Computer Software Company

26%

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...

Wazuh vs AlienVault OSSIM

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Compared 2% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs AlienVault OSSIM

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Product Reports

Download AlienVault OSSIM product report

AlienVault OSSIM

February 2025

Download Netsurion product report

February 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