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AlienVault OSSIM vs Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

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)
16th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sentinel is 2.7%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AlienVault OSSIM1.3%
Sentinel2.7%
Other96.0%
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.
Simon Johnston - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Customer Success at Coltek Business Soltuions
Simple antivirus solution integrates well but could improve pricing and currency options
I don't really have experience working with these solutions. I promote them for our clients, but I don't work with them. I can't share my experience with these tools as I make assumptions about that. For both Adlumin and CrowdStrike, both confirm that they're scalable and enterprise-ready and all those kinds of things. We haven't had any specific problem with either of those. We just have a preference for which one we would prefer. If somebody says they want to use a different one from the one that we prefer, then we have to find reasons why they aren't. But scalability is not one of the reasons that one is better over the other. I don't really have advice for people that are looking into using Sentinel; just do your research across what is available. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Sentinel a seven.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very stable, and compared to QRadar and Splunk, it's very stable."
"Technical support is excellent; they are very helpful and responsive."
"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."
"A very good feature of AlienVault OSSIM is that it has many domains that can be integrated from different solutions."
"It is a perfectly nice and free tool for compliance testing, assessment, and some basic vulnerability."
"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," and the solution works well and allows me to have visibility into anomalous events."
"The product is majorly used for threat detection of the agents on servers and endpoints."
"If you compare with other companies, like LogRhythm, etc., the top 8 or 10 CMs, I think AlienVault has the best price-performance ratio."
"Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network."
"The stability is phenomenal and we never had any issues with downtime or even had to restart."
"The most valuable feature is the flexible log for identifying security threats inside an application. Sentinel is very good at this."
"The stability is phenomenal and we never had any issues with downtime or even had to restart."
"Sentinel is a tool that, if it's well configured, removes from view all unnecessary information and shows you only needful entries, so you can do your job faster, more conveniently, and with high performance."
"The tool is simple to use."
"Transactional user information improves security, prevents fraud, and promotes best practices."
"The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure."
 

Cons

"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."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"ArcSight works better than AlienVault right now."
"We need more dashboards and we need more customization for dashboards."
"The documentation could be improved."
"AlienVault OSSIM failed to provide our company a full insight, while also giving out a lot of false positives."
"AlienVault OSSIM could improve by having better integration with some of the newer tools."
"It's under heavy traffic. If you have heavy traffic, the system is slow."
"It is an ancient product."
"I rate Sentinel a six out of ten for scalability."
"The dashboard and customer view should be improved."
"It's probably not a product that I would recommend to anyone."
"There are still a few vendor-specific devices for which Sentinel needs to work on integration, such as Netskope devices."
"This product's connection to certain types of cloud systems could be improved."
"Price is always a consideration, so the price would be nice if it were lower."
"Some functions look great but, in practice, some key limitations turn the process into something opaque."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"OSSIM is free."
"We are using the community version, which can be used for 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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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 inquired about getting support from the vendor, Micro Focus, but the cost was very high."
"Sentinel is moderately priced."
"The solution’s pricing is aligned with its competitors."
"Sentinel is a subscription-based solution."
"We receive a pricing discount because of our ongoing partnership with Micro Focus."
"Sentinel's slightly on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

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 is your primary use case for AlienVault OSSIM?
This solution is very similar to most of the other MSSPs that you would find out there. When I look at use cases, AlienVault was initially aimed at small to medium businesses. It grew, and that was...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetIQ Sentinel?
I don't have too many comments overall about pricing as we're in South Africa, so it makes more sense if it's billed in rand. They nearly always bill it in dollars, so if it can be billed in our cu...
What needs improvement with NetIQ Sentinel?
I'm not sure what the room for improvement is for Sentinel. It needs to stay current, and it does, so I suppose that's fine. I don't have a high demand for what it should do. Price is always a cons...
What is your primary use case for NetIQ Sentinel?
It's our go-to choice for antivirus. I use Sentinel a lot.
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
NetIQ Sentinel, Novell SIEM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Faysal Bank, GaVI, Handelsbanken, ISC Mªnster, Lambeth Council, Swisscard, The Municipality of Siena, Tukes, University of Dayton, University of the Sunshine Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
895,891 professionals have used our research since 2012.