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AlienVault OSSIM vs OpenText Enterprise Security Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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)
13th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpenText Enterprise Securit...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
21st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
98
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.7%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Enterprise Security Manager is 1.5%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AlienVault OSSIM1.7%
OpenText Enterprise Security Manager1.5%
Other96.8%
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.
NM
Senior Security Engineer at Valuepoint Systems
Interpreting data effectively despite challenges in integration and support
If someone lacks the budget for a new SIEM tool with advanced capabilities, I would recommend ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM). However, if they have the budget, I would suggest looking into other options. Overall, I would give ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) a rating of seven out of ten.

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. Compared to Qradar and Splunk, it's very stable."
"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."
"The open vault component and the checking of vulnerabilities are the most valuable features. The page management helps with this. If you know how your device is vulnerable at least you can do something about 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."
"With AlienVault you get everything in one box."
"The tool's security detection is good. It helps us with login tracking and generating reports. We aim to identify potential issues, such as brute-force attacks on user accounts or server-level anomalies. For instance, if I receive a report indicating a server is at an abnormal level, I investigate and address the issue."
"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.""
"Inbuilt IDS, inbuilt integration with threat intelligence platform and with vulnerability assessment modules."
"Support is very good."
"It is a robust product and has multiple valuable features."
"When WannaCry attacks I can minimize the damage. My company had no protection at the time. We get alerts in ArcSight and then whenever a user got a copy of WannaCry and the WannaCry malware wants to connect to the mother ship, it alerts me in the ArcSight dashboard, and that helps us a lot. We then just go to the user and erase the malware."
"The stability of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager is good."
"I really like the correlation part and the way the logs are correlated. I have never faced issues with parsing in this product. I like the way it parses, and everything is so clear to me."
"We have been satisfied with the support."
"The most valuable features of ArcSight ESM are ease of use and readily usable components."
"The most important feature is ArcSight's event correlation capabilities. It's powerful and easy. I also like the flex connector capability. It's easy to develop a new connector that isn't fully supported out of the box. For example, say you created a solution internally that's completely different, and it's not unsupported by the solution. You can write your own connector using the flex connector."
 

Cons

"It's under heavy traffic. If you have heavy traffic, the system is slow."
"The correlation engine needs to be improved."
"The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale."
"The user interface could be improved."
"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 is costly."
"There needs to be more support or some kind of training program so users can self-learn the system more effectively."
"The documentation could be improved."
"The biggest requirement is that there is no cloud solution for this product yet. They need to create a cloud version. It's the biggest thing they can do to make the solution better."
"It would be nice to have it on the cloud so that you can deploy it easily, saving time and resources."
"The product should include a lot more predefined scenarios so the adopted company will have knowledge and a broader skill set in security and network."
"They should try to include business logic vulnerabilities in the SIEM tool."
"The visualization is not very good compared to Splunk."
"The first limitation is with the ArcSight Data Storage Manager (ADSM). ArcSight's total capacity is currently capped at 12 TB. This becomes an issue if a customer needs a longer real-time data retention period, such as exceeding 90 days or reaching a year or even ten months. Increasing the disk space beyond 12 TB is not currently possible."
"The initial setup is very complex. We had to architect a deployment which allowed us to incorporate an ever growing number of customers into our hosted instance of ArcSight."
"The only concern is that AI needs to be integrated"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to Microsoft Sentinel, AlienVault OSSIM incurs additional costs due to its licensing price structure. If you are using AlienVault for security purposes at a certain level it can have a higher price point than the current pricing of Microsoft Sentinel."
"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."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"OSSIM is free."
"There is a license required for this solution."
"ArcSight is pretty expensive compared with its competitors. I believe that is fine as it provides value."
"ArcSight can be a little bit expensive because of the area that we work in and the cost. Licensing is mostly on a yearly basis, not monthly."
"Aggregation can help a lot in pushing down licensing costs."
"Customers without a ton of resources to dedicate to deployment may be better served by a managed ArcSight service."
"The product licenses are inexpensive."
"The pricing is great compared to others."
"The licensing cost is affordable if you get an enterprise license. The licensing is based on EPS, so you can probably provide a package of license for multiple ESMs with their correlational end fees. It is cost-effective."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Computer Software 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 Business37
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise57
 

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...
Which is the best SIEM tool for a mid-sized financial services firm: Arcsight or Securonix?
In my market, a lot of financial companies had or have an ArcSight installation. Just because in former times it was pretty good. Now a lot of them are looking for a more effective solution due to ...
What do you like most about ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
We utilize ArcSight ESM for real-time threat detection in our organization. We have custom rules that we've developed on top of the WAN services, along with scheduled licensing activities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is very cheap compared to other tools. It is worth the investment if you are considering the cost.
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
Micro Focus ArcSight, HPE ArcSight, ArcSight
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Lake Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bank AlJazira, Banca Intesa, and Obrela.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. OpenText Enterprise Security Manager and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.