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AlienVault OSSIM vs Elastic Security comparison

 

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
Elastic Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (13th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (19th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (11th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.2%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.5%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.5%
AlienVault OSSIM1.2%
Other95.3%
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.
Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower
Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows
The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The open vault component and the checking of vulnerabilities are the most valuable features, and the page management helps with this, because if you know how your device is vulnerable at least you can do something about it."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The initial setup was straightforward. I didn't have any problems."
"The paid version of the solution has reporting and better scalability options."
"What I like about this product, is that it is a fully-fledged solution."
"I have worked with LogRhythm in the past, since 2015, and I find that AlienVault is a better product."
"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."
"Network traffic analysis is highly efficient."
"The visualization is very good."
"It's a good platform and the very best in the current market. We looked at the Forester report from December 2022 where it was said to be a leader."
"The performance is good and it is faster than IBM QRadar."
"The indexes allow you to get your results quickly. The filtering and log passing is the advantage of Logstash."
"Elastic Security is very customizable, and the dashboards are very easy to build."
"The most valuable feature is the search function, which allows me to go directly to the target to see the specific line a customer is searching for."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to collect authentication information from service providers."
"It is an extremely stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale."
"The biggest thing I always complain about is that the user intake is a very old version."
"GUI could be improved."
"I would like the solution to be able to integrate with my firewall, my IDS and my Honeypot solutions so that it can provide real-time reporting as things occur and then have alert sent to me on my phone when suspicious activity is happening."
"AlienVault OSSIM’s configuration and integration could be a little easier."
"We need more dashboards and we need more customization for dashboards."
"I suggest more in-built rules based on modern threats and environments to make it a more competitive solution."
"Lacking in depth of reporting."
"Email notification should be done the same way as Logentries does it."
"It could use maybe a little more on the Linux side."
"We'd like better premium support."
"The interface could be more user friendly because it is sometimes hard to deal with."
"The problem with ELK is it's difficult to administer. When you have a problem, it can be very, very difficult to rebuild indexes."
"This solution is very hard to implement."
"One thing they could add is a quick step to enable users who don't have a solid background to build a dashboard and quickly search, without difficulty."
"We had issues with scalability. Logstash was not scaling and aggregation was getting delayed. We moved to Fluentd making our stack from ELK to EFK."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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."
"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 solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"Elastic Stack is an open-source tool. You don't have to pay anything for the components."
"It's a monthly cost with Elastic SIEM, but I am not sure of the exact cost."
"The pricing is in the middle. I think it is not an expensive experience if we compare it with big names, for example, QRadar, and also Oxide. I think Elastic Security is quite cheap. I would rate the pricing of this solution a five out of ten."
"I can say that the product is cheaply priced."
"The base product is open-source but if you need advanced security features then you need to pay for the subscription. Elastic Security's price is reasonable in some cases and in other cases it's not."
"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for this solution."
"Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
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 Business40
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise15
 

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...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.
What needs improvement with Elastic Security?
I do not have any specific recommendations for improvements in Elastic Security, but I feel that the AI module should get more mature. These machine learning algorithms become better with time; as ...
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Elastic Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.