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Fortinet FortiAnalyzer vs Security Onion comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer
Ranking in Log Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Security Onion
Ranking in Log Management
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
AWS Marketplace (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is 2.0%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Security Onion is 5.7%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Boaz Katabazi - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables flexible and comprehensive reporting across all syslog-enabled devices
I mainly use it for reporting. It also integrates other security solutions around. It can report onto anything that has a syslog on the network. It doesn't have to be a Fortinet product. It integrates within FortiGate and you can find the reports there. It's a very flexible and rich tool, providing custom reports along with default reports.
Jörg Kippe - PeerSpot reviewer
A mature and affordable solution that is easy to install and easy to update
The product takes time to learn, it's not that easy. In the beginning we had a lot of questions. If you want to use such a tool in an real (industrial) environment, you have to ask how to get the network data. Can we do a full packet capture? Can we provide agents to our end systems? There are no simple solutions to these questions. It's a general problem when running such systems in an industrial environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product can scale."
"The most valuable features of the solution are report generation and traffic logs."
"The scalability is good. It is also good in the cluster nodes. You can make multiple FortiAnalyzer clusters groups, and you can distribute the logs between these FortiAnalyzer nodes. In other words, you can expand the scale."
"Our use case for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is analyzing traffic. We use it to investigate complaints about account access, check if something is blocked or working, and understand what's happening inside them."
"There are a lot of monitoring features available."
"t integrates within FortiGate and you can find the reports there."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the reports and the playbooks."
"This solution offers one view of incident management which has been the most valuable feature."
"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."
"The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports."
"Security Onion is the most mature solution in the market."
 

Cons

"Their in-house technical support is extremely slow to respond. We have our own in-house team to manage issues so clients don't have to wait over two weeks for a response to issues."
"The solution lacks business intelligence features. It's much too basic."
"The setup of the solution can be improved because it is currently complex."
"The only issue is the cost of the licenses."
"I believe that its technical support is the only aspect that requires significant improvement."
"I need some improvements in the support team since it is an area where there are certain shortcomings."
"Our organization wants the solution to be able to provide us access to a centralized dashboard that displays a log view for all firewalls under Fortinet FortiAnalyzer."
"One area for improvement could be better support for third-party products, as it doesn't have as much visibility with these compared to Fortinet's own products."
"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."
"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."
"The product is not easy to learn."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The program is expensive."
"Its price is okay for us. Fortinet products are cheaper than other solutions."
"I rate Fortinet FortiAnalyzer's pricing as five out of ten."
"Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is quite an expensive tool."
"We have around 12 devices and yearly we spend approximately $14,000."
"It is expensive for small business customers. It is only available for customers with a high number of firewalls to manage or to report. If a customer has only five boxes of FortiGate, the price of FortiAnalyzer can be more than the five boxes. So, we can't easily put this solution for small business customers."
"I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The cost and pricing should be in accordance with the calculation of log storage capacity for a time period required for historical analysis."
"Security Onion is a free solution."
"It is an open-source solution."
"Security Onion is an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
University
11%
Government
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiAnalyzer?
The reporting features, which offer customization, real-time insights, and compliance support, are particularly noteworthy aspects.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer?
I am a technical engineer, so I am not privy to pricing details.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiAnalyzer?
Sometimes, there is a problem with CPU consumption, where one process consumes 100%, and I need to restart FortiAnalyzer to fix this. I am not familiar with the processes of scalability.
What do you like most about Security Onion?
The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Security Onion?
Security Onion is an open-source solution. On a scale from one to ten, where ten is expensive and one is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.
What needs improvement with Security Onion?
The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

General Directorate of Information Technology
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiAnalyzer vs. Security Onion and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.