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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)
24th
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)
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
AI Observability (14th)
 

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 Fortinet FortiSIEM is 2.3%, 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 FortiSIEM2.3%
AlienVault OSSIM1.2%
Other96.5%
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

"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."
"The paid version of the solution has reporting and better scalability options."
"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."
"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."
"The threat policies of the solution are always very advanced and the best in the market, and they are very persistent in terms of keeping up with security protocols."
"I have worked with LogRhythm in the past, since 2015, and I find that AlienVault is a better product."
"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."
"This solution is very stable; it runs on a Linux box, you only interface with it through the GUI, it works behind the scenes, and it has never crashed in the time that I have used it."
"We find the solution to be stable."
"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."
"Some of our customers who use this solution have seen improvement in their connection with load balancing on both connections."
"It's a very nice solution to work with."
"The advanced agents used to collect logs have been most valuable. We have also made use of the advanced intelligence this solution offers."
"The network monitoring is one of the most valuable aspects of the solution."
"The interface is very easy to use. The connector in the core has FortiSIEM support from the vendor."
"FortiSIEM allows you to match IPs with threat intelligence feeds from sources like Kaspersky or Anomali, adding valuable context."
 

Cons

"There needs to be more focus on the NOC and IIS in terms of developing applications for behavior detection."
"The solution needs more integration with cyber intelligence systems. Our customers want to use a single tool for managing cybersecurity."
"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."
"The user interface needs to be friendlier across the board."
"AlienVault OSSIM failed to provide our company a full insight, while also giving out a lot of false positives."
"ArcSight works better than AlienVault right now."
"Sometimes it takes very long for your issue to get resolved."
"AlienVault OSSIM gives unwanted notifications."
"Ease-of-use for end users that do not spend every day in the product. Also, the presentation of historical and trending data in dashboards needs to be improved immensely."
"One of the things that actually opened a ticket about (and they couldn’t help me) is when traffic is leaving our network, it’ll only report the source."
"FortiSIEM needs to expand its integration with third-party vendors. I don't know if Forcepoint has been added, but there were limited resources for integrating Forcepoint solutions when we implemented FortiSIEM. It integrates well with other Fortinet products and solutions from established cybersecurity companies like Palo Alto but doesn't integrate with some of the newer vendors."
"When our team tried configuring logs for Microsoft SQL, it did not work."
"Their technical support is horrible. By horrible, I mean a train wreck of a disaster that has fallen off a bridge and caught fire."
"The dashboards need to be improved. It gives you so much detail, but sometimes too much detail, especially to an executive, it's too much."
"An improvement would be if FortiSIEM's licensing was based on the number of nodes rather than the EPS."
"It's difficult to integrate unsupported devices with FortiSIEM compared to QRadar. It's easier to integrate and develop processes in QRadar. It's harder to develop a custom process in FortiSIEM."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"OSSIM is open source, and USM is the paid license. So, if you want, you can switch to USM. There you will have to buy a license, and they have a support team that helps you out on issues you face."
"OSSIM is free."
"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."
"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."
"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 OSSIM is free."
"The price of Fortinet FortiSIEM was reasonable compared to other solutions."
"FortiSIEM's licensing is based on EPS, and its pricing is competitive in the market."
"The price is competitive."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive. I rate the tool's price as an eight out of ten. Compared with Splunk or Oracle, Fortinet is cheap."
"The price of the solution is expensive. The license is scalable. If there are 10 devices it is simple to license."
"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."
"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."
"We bought the perpetual license, so we own the product, but there is a three-year support renewal fee for that."
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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%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction 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: June 2026.
902,417 professionals have used our research since 2012.