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AlienVault OSSIM vs Fortinet FortiSIEM 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)
27th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiSIEM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
AI Observability (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.1%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiSIEM is 2.2%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiSIEM2.2%
AlienVault OSSIM1.1%
Other96.7%
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.
SY
Network Engineer at Ogma Consulting
Comprehensive monitoring boosts security, yet incident management features need expansion
Fortinet FortiSIEM should broaden its remediation part to include more features for incident management. Currently, to manage repetitive incidents or for remediation, I need to use a separate software called FortiSOAR. Additionally, the search functionality in FortiAI should be improved to provide more precise results, making it easier for me to understand what actions need to be taken.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The threat alerts it gives me from time to time on harmful code within the network, or if they are generating any network traffic, are very useful."
"It is a perfectly nice and free tool for compliance testing, assessment, and some basic vulnerability."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an enterprise solution that sells easily. It is rated highly by organizations."
"I have worked with LogRhythm in the past, since 2015, and I find that AlienVault is a better product."
"The product is easy to use."
"With AlienVault you get everything in one box."
"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."
"It has helped us remediate threats in the past by providing significant events that assisted in identifying suspicious activities, such as logins from multiple countries."
"Analytics is the most valuable feature, and the business service summaries in the dashboards and the correlations for the SIEM are also valuable features."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"The ability to write my own parsers for the devices that are not supported by Fortinet is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiSIEM are the SD-WAN, Global LAN, and application controls."
"The stability is very reliable. It offers very good performance."
"FortiSIEM and FortiSOAR, their overall solutions that are there for threat mitigation, visibility, control, et cetera, is well integrated."
"The solution has an all-in-one approach, where we buy one product and everything our customer needs is included, without additional licenses for more functionality, and any adjustments are done very quickly and easily."
"FortiSIEM helped us discover all the threats at the time that were attacking the IT services of the company. We now have multiple-level authentication."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was a bit complex. You've got to do a lot of reading. It's not an intuitive implementation."
"AlienVault OSSIM gives unwanted notifications."
"I suggest more in-built rules based on modern threats and environments to make it a more competitive solution."
"The biggest thing I always complain about is that the user intake is a very old version."
"The documentation could be improved."
"ArcSight works better than AlienVault right now."
"AlienVault OSSIM failed to provide our company a full insight, while also giving out a lot of false positives."
"The user interface could be improved."
"This solution is not very scalable if you have a lot of security events; it's focused more around smaller companies."
"We need more incidents automatically to protect our network."
"They need to integrate better with Cisco and Palo Alto."
"It would be good if the solution offered even more configuration options, especially in relation to the VPN so that it continues to be a very flexible option."
"Its training can be improved. Its price also needs to be improved."
"The nodes on our network did not comply with the SIEM solution. They use a different format parking log."
"FortiSIEM is a bit resource-hungry, so work should be done on hardware resource utilization to consume less hardware."
"The only drawback is the licensing model. It can get expensive if you want to integrate more solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"OSSIM is free."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"The price of Fortinet FortiSIEM is a lot less when compared to other solutions."
"The solution is available for both, perpetual and subscription licenses."
"Its price can be better. We are Fortinet partners, so we can get discounts, but its price can be an issue at the beginning for others. There is a licensing scheme for every case. There are three licensing schemes that we can choose from."
"The tool is really expensive. For what the tool does for our team, the price is fair."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The free version license of the product is available for two months."
"This is probably more on the lower cost end of the spectrum compared to competing products. Fortinet's license model is based on events per second, which makes sense, but that's not typical. It makes it very hard to calculate what your costs are going to be as you scale the platform because some log sources, such as firewall logs, are very noisy, and there are lots and lots of events per second, but some of them are not. So, it becomes a bit of a science experiment trying to guess what your costs are going to be as you scale the solution. This is where other competing products perhaps have a more straightforward license model."
"Pricing is acceptable for more than 90% of our customers, as they normally get discounts."
"They have a yearly subscription."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing 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 Business34
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise24
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSIEM?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Fortinet FortiSIEM is wonderful, as it offers an excellent license compared to other vendors.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSIEM?
Fortinet FortiSIEM is great overall. Performance could be enhanced, but I do not wish to elaborate on needed improvements.
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiSIEM?
My main use case for Fortinet FortiSIEM is building a SOC and serving as an event management platform for correlating events in my work. I use Fortinet FortiSIEM for event correlation by building a...
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
FortiSIEM, AccelOps
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
FortiSIEM has hundreds of customers worldwide in markets including managed services, technology, financial services, healthcare, and government. Customers include Aruba Networks, Compushare, Port of San Diego, Cleveland Indians, Infoblox, Healthways, and Referentia.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Fortinet FortiSIEM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.