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AlienVault OSSIM vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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)
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
318
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 3.4%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.4%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source solution that provide good detection and more visibility
The solution is not scalable. It impacts so hard. In the initial stages, AlienVault OSSIM can be suitable for small environments. There may be limitations if the customer expresses a desire to expand and add more devices. In such cases, we would need to either explore additional solutions or work within the constraints of the existing setup. We have set up alerts and configured everything in AlienVault OSSIM. It actively monitors for any security incidents. It provides us with regular updates and notifications about any ongoing activities. Only one person is using the solution. It is the perfect solution for small businesses. I rate the solution’s scalability a three out of ten.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an enterprise solution that sells easily. It is rated highly by organizations."
"The solution has a very good open source community, and whenever we have problems, we are always able to resolve it online."
"The threat policies of the solution are always very advanced and the best in the market. They are very persistent in terms of keeping up with security protocols."
"Asset discovery is good."
"With AlienVault you get everything in one box."
"I recommend it due to the experience of the people running 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."
"We primarily use it to correlate logs throughout the enterprise for both searching and use in investigations."
"We are much faster finding and addressing issues with Splunk."
"This is a straightforward solution, easy to configure."
"The stock analysts and security people use one single dashboard (one single location) to check our logs."
"The indexing and data collection are valuable."
"The community marketplace is useful; often, you do not need to rely on Splunk Enterprise Security support due to the wealth of online documentation available—Splunk docs are truly beneficial."
"Splunk helps us be more proactive. We can take predictive action to identify and block threats so that nothing harmful gets into the system."
"Splunk is a user-friendly solution."
 

Cons

"The incidence reporting could be better."
"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’s configuration and integration could be a little easier."
"The solution is not scalable."
"The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale."
"AlienVault OSSIM gives unwanted notifications."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The price of this solution is very high and it could be cheaper."
"I'd love to see more integrations, which is one of the primary points of the key node with Splunk Enterprise Security."
"At Splunk .conf24, I saw a demo for Splunk Enterprise Security 8. All the things that they have done in Splunk Enterprise Security 8 are what it can be better at."
"It is a challenge to manage the environment in such a way, that one’s log, even with the bandwidth license, isn’t exceeded."
"I think the machine learning should be emphasized. Now, it's really important to analyze Big Data, data mining. A SIEM solution, like Splunk, needs an improved data mining solution, artificial intelligence."
"Due to its high licensing cost, Splunk is out of reach for many organizations."
"The support that is included with the standard licensing fee is very bad."
"Splunk could have more built-in use case presets that customers can build on and customize."
"It would be good if the solution had some kind of copilot to automate or help write correlation searches."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"There is an annual license required to use this solution."
"While some clients find the cost of Splunk Enterprise Security to be on the higher end, its pricing is comparable to other SIEM solutions."
"I think that most of the log analytics solutions are expensive and I'm not sure if it's worth it."
"The Splunk Enterprise Security license is expensive."
"The price of Splunk is too high for our market."
"It is a pretty high cost solution, but if your organization has the funds, it can bring many benefits."
"Splunk Enterprise Security's pricing is based on data volume, which generally suits large enterprises."
"Splunk is definitely not a cheap solution. It is an expensive product."
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Comparison Review

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Feb 26, 2015
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We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.