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Drata vs USM Anywhere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 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

Drata
Ranking in Compliance Management
4th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
USM Anywhere
Ranking in Compliance Management
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (46th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (31st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (52nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Compliance Management category, the mindshare of Drata is 6.7%, down from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of USM Anywhere is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compliance Management
 

Featured Reviews

Johnny Chen - PeerSpot reviewer
Collects and stores compliance evidence and documentation for you using native integrations with your tech stack.
There is room for improvement in Drata. The core features are solid, but some new features are in a very MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage. They work, but the user experience isn't always smooth. While the core features are well-developed compared to the market, the new features need more polish. They could benefit from more user feedback and iterations to make them more useful. Some of these new features look promising buthave flaws, so we can’t fully adopt them or justify paying extra for them now. The user interface is clean and intuitive. However, you'll need some specific knowledge if you're a security policy manager or need to set updifferent integrations.
Kris Nawani - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers complete coverage without the need to install additional software
USM Anywhere is used for threat detection and investigation. It provides a solution with built-in threat intelligence and various other investigation tools The solution offers complete coverage without the need to install additional software, as it is maintained by the vendor. It helps in saving…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My experience with customer support was good; they were responsive, but they didn't ever get us to a solution that worked."
"Drata keeps adding new features, allowing us to build our entire InfoSec program within it. Adding new components and evidence for different audits is easy. Drata also integrates with various software, like ticketing systems, source code control, and cloud platforms, continuously pulling evidence from these integrations. Without a GRC tool with these integrations, we used to gather evidence from different software during audits manually. Drata has a significant impact on our security posture management. Previously, Drata had features for security posture management, primarily through integration with AWS. For example, it would scan AWS for specific security requirements, like ensuring all S3 buckets are private. It will be reported on the Drata platform if it finds a public bucket. Recently, Drata introduced a new feature that uses an infrastructure-as-code approach. This feature detects issues and provides AI-generated suggestions for fixing them. If an organization uses infrastructure-as-code solutions like Terraform, Drata will suggest changes to the Terraform code to address the issues. You can then review and apply these changes to fix the problems. This is particularly useful when dealing with many topics, as it helps automate and speed up the process of implementing fixes. However, this AI-generated code feature is part of Drata’s upsell options. The basic version of Drata offers limited capabilities compared to the advanced features available with a paid upgrade. Even without this new feature, Drata's security posture management is valuable, as it scans cloud environments for deviations from defined security baselines. Many tools offer similar capabilities, but Drata’s new feature that translates issues into actionable fixes is a notable advancement. This benefits teams with the capability and resources to use this tool effectively."
"Drata helped us publish our ISO and SOC reports, which was essential for the acquisition. The challenge now is whether Drata can scale up to meet the needs of a larger company, which already has tools like Intune to enforce laptop encryption. Drata is excellent for startups and small—to medium-sized companies but may face challenges in larger organizations with multiple environments."
"Drata offers APIs for every clause so that it can integrate into various platforms."
"Drata helps eliminate evidence gathering and makes assigning different activities to different team members easier, simplifying compliance and audit processes. In Pennsylvania, we're putting in thousands of hours. Drata improves our security posture by reducing extra work, allowing us to focus on other security directives. I like the control editing and task management features the most. It's easy to use, but it's also easy for people to think they don't need security experts if they have it."
"The product is 100 percent friendly to use."
"The way the tool's controls are linked to the framework, specifically with SAST and HIPAA frameworks or any other frameworks, is really good."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of deployment that it provides to users. The integrations that the product has with third-party applications are useful."
"It allows you to define what alerts you want to see, or not to see, as well as if you want them grouped, or ungrouped."
"Log-monitoring and alerting enable us to know when things happen that we need to know about."
"It has powerful threat detection, incident response, and compliance management."
"The feature that I liked the most is that they have a vulnerability assessment package that comes along with the SIEM solution. So, whenever I find any threat or alert for any of the devices or servers, I could immediately initiate a vulnerability assessment scan on that machine. That is one of a kind. The price at which AlienVault operates is also valuable."
"The main menu: You can see everything there, what is happening on the servers, and in the logs, you can view more details of each event."
"In terms of monitoring, my best feature would be the monitoring of components across the network. It monitors the respective nodes and any new node that comes onto the network and provides reports. The reporting dashboards are really helpful for management in terms of making decisions around patch management."
"The setup is very easy and straightforward."
 

Cons

"The product can improve in its API documentation area."
"The thing with Drata is you cannot open multiple tabs on the same interface or the same desktop,"
"The solution is quite costly."
"One of the challenges with Drata is that if you're paying for a subscription to ISO 27001, you must undergo a risk assessment. You should have access to all necessary modules on the platform to achieve your compliance posture and certification."
"The existing features of Drata are already extensive and costly to integrate."
"Drata has impacted our organization negatively, as it made the whole compliance process more complicated and cost me significant time."
"In terms of improvements, I'd suggest better marketing since the industry tends to market these tools as security experts, which isn't true."
"There is room for improvement in Drata. The core features are solid, but some new features are in a very MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage. They work, but the user experience isn't always smooth. While the core features are well-developed compared to the market, the new features need more polish. They could benefit from more user feedback and iterations to make them more useful. Some of these new features look promising buthave flaws, so we can’t fully adopt them or justify paying extra for them now. The user interface is clean and intuitive. However, you'll need some specific knowledge if you're a security policy manager or need to set updifferent integrations."
"It would be nice to see some machine learning and monitoring of the configuration in network devices."
"I'd like to see a dashboard that's a little more descriptive."
"The vulnerability reporting needs to have options to be able to sort or customize the output."
"Its reporting tools need improvements. It would be good if they can provide integration with other ticketing systems. Currently, we only have integration with Slack and Jira. It is also a bit slow, and its replication engine can be improved."
"The GUI needs to improve because it's not user-friendly."
"More complimentary training needs to be done for use with this tool. If you get into a bind, then it will cost you."
"It was easy on PoC, but when we got to the product it was different story. We had to learn the product again and got feeling that the PoC was a different product."
"The AT&T AlienVault USM is okay, but the relational database is not very good for large amounts of data. For example, many logs cannot be processed. It has been very slow for the queries and some data which are large, it is not very good in this case."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's one of the more expensive options, but I think it's worth the money if you can afford it."
"Drata's pricing is quite reasonable. Compared to other tools in the market, including its biggest competitor, Vanta, Drata is much cheaper. Even compared to other tools like AuditBoard, which aren’t as good, Drata’s price remains competitive."
"I remember that my company used to pay 25,000 USD to use the product...The product's cost is really high, but it is a powerful tool."
"It has good pricing."
"Pricing is very competitive with other products and you get much more functionality from AlienVault."
"The ROI is quite good."
"Do the one month trial and try to work out the kinks during it, as it has free support and service hours."
"QRadar, ArcSight and Splunk are some of the most expensive SIEM products out there in the market and not everyone has the budget to buy them. In such cases, AV USM is a very cost effective alternative."
"It is affordable, and it also has many features that the premium products such as ArcSight and QRadar have. It is a very good platform for a SIEM solution. Everything is included in the price."
"I don't know exactly, but I know it is based on the number of logs and the retention duration, such as 30 days or something like that. So, the smallest package is about 500 a month for 30 days of logs. There is a virtual machine. You need resources for it. It is a log collecting VM. They provide the software, and you just have to load a virtual machine. So, you're going to incur some CPU RAM and storage for wherever this log collecting appliance is running, which typically is in our cloud and on our platform for the customer."
"​The vulnerability management solution is worse than buying a Nessus Professional license.​"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Drata?
Drata helped us manage our SOC 2 compliance by automating the monitoring of our infrastructure, but overall, the platform didn't work effectively at all. Being fairly new SOC 2 compliance, understa...
What is your primary use case for Drata?
Our main use case for Drata is to provide a platform for us to manage our SOC 2 compliance.
What advice do you have for others considering Drata?
My advice to others looking into using Drata is that I would advise them not to use it. I would rate Drata a 1 out of five because the platform requires that you be a compliance expert and doesn't ...
What do you like most about AT&T AlienVault USM?
The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of deployment that it provides to users. The integrations that the product has with third-party applications are useful.
What needs improvement with AT&T AlienVault USM?
There are scalability issues due to a 60 TB limit, which restricts its use for large customers like banks. It is also limited when used with bigger products and has complex password requirements.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
AT&T AlienVault USM, AlienVault, AlienVault USM, Alienvault Cybersecurity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Abel & Cole, Bank of Ireland, Bluegrass Cellular, CareerBuilder, Claire's, Hays Medical Center, Hope International, McCurrach, McKinsey & Company, Party Delights, Pepco Holdings, Richland School District, Ricoh, SaveMart, Shake Shack, Steelcase, TaxAct, Taylor Morrison, Vonage and Zoom
Find out what your peers are saying about Drata vs. USM Anywhere and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,776 professionals have used our research since 2012.