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AlienVault OSSIM vs Sentinel comparison

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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)
24th
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)
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.2%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sentinel is 2.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sentinel2.6%
AlienVault OSSIM1.2%
Other96.2%
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.
PT
Senior Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Improved incident monitoring has reduced false positives and supports audit-ready reporting
The best features Sentinel offers, in my experience, include the filtering features and the ability to run KQL queries so that I can understand what table has what and when the last log has been monitored and reported. Sentinel has positively impacted my organization by improving monitoring significantly. As a pay-as-you-go service, we are ingesting logs as needed. When the pay-as-you-go service is enabled, we can either ingest whenever there is a spike in the logs, and when there are fewer logs, we can reduce the ingestion. This approach is helpful for both the organization and me. In terms of metrics showing how Sentinel has helped, as part of log filtering, we have reduced around thirty to thirty-five percent of false-positive incident creation. We have also cleared some audits by enabling log retention in Sentinel, allowing us to pull out data for audits when necessary using both hot retention and cold retention. This has helped the organization as a whole.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is easy to use."
"This solution is very stable; it runs on a Linux box, you only interface with it through the GUI, it works behind the scenes, and it has never crashed in the time that I have used it."
"The solution is free to use."
"With AlienVault you get everything in one box."
"The product is majorly used for threat detection of the agents on servers and endpoints."
"Network traffic analysis is highly efficient."
"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."
"Better than other SIEM solutions because almost everything can be integrated."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it provides a central locking system for many event sources."
"Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network."
"The correlation engine allows our clients to generate rules more efficiently."
"The most valuable feature is the flexible log for identifying security threats inside an application. Sentinel is very good at this."
"Transactional user information improves security, prevents fraud, and promotes best practices."
"In my opinion, Sentinel's best features include that it's a very easy product to use, it's very simple, and the after-sale service is very good."
"The native integration with out-of-the box format is hassle free and allows data to be used advantageously."
"The tool is simple to use."
 

Cons

"AlienVault OSSIM should improve the deployment and make it unified like the USM."
"AlienVault OSSIM could improve by having better integration with some of the newer tools."
"The solution needs more integration with cyber intelligence systems. Our customers want to use a single tool for managing cybersecurity."
"The user interface needs to be friendlier across the board."
"GUI could be improved."
"There needs to be more focus on the NOC and IIS in terms of developing applications for behavior detection."
"It's under heavy traffic. If you have heavy traffic, the system is slow."
"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."
"Frankly speaking, we did not find this product to be valuable, at all."
"Creating a drag-and-drop dashboard or workbook in Sentinel is a little more complex compared to other tools like LogRhythm and IBM QRadar."
"On version 5, builder was somewhat unstable during deployment -> workaround strong procedure with too many middle steps of saves."
"You need a lot of Unix scripting knowledge in order to manage the tool, which is one of the main issues that we faced."
"There are still a few vendor-specific devices for which Sentinel needs to work on integration, such as Netskope devices."
"It's probably not a product that I would recommend to anyone."
"The solution does not allow outsourced authorizations."
"I rate Sentinel a six out of ten for scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"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."
"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 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."
"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."
"Sentinel is moderately priced."
"Sentinel is a subscription-based solution."
"The solution’s pricing is aligned with its competitors."
"We receive a pricing discount because of our ongoing partnership with Micro Focus."
"We inquired about getting support from the vendor, Micro Focus, but the cost was very high."
"Sentinel's slightly on the expensive side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
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 Enterprise8
 

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?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that while it is a little on the higher side, since it is part of a package for all Microsoft products, I feel it is a better choice comp...
What needs improvement with NetIQ Sentinel?
Sentinel needs minimal improvement, though improvements are ongoing. Everything seems to be functioning perfectly, and I don't have any specific inputs for improvements I would like to see in Senti...
What is your primary use case for NetIQ Sentinel?
My main use case for Sentinel is that I'm a subject matter expert for Sentinel, specifically for security incident event and event management. I head the SME for SIEM in LTIMindtree for this curren...
 

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: September 2026.
920,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.