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AlienVault OSSIM vs Fortinet FortiSIEM comparison

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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)
15th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
AI Observability (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.2%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiSIEM is 2.2%, down from 3.4% 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 OSSIM1.2%
Other96.6%
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

"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."
"Network traffic analysis is highly efficient."
"The product is majorly used for threat detection of the agents on servers and endpoints."
"You can customize the dashboards as well as the reporting."
"The solution has a very good open source community, and whenever we have problems, we are always able to resolve it online."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"There are a lot of people you will find using OSSIM since they are also offering OTX as a service"
"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."
"Scalability is very good."
"If you are comparing the product to Cisco's solutions, it's very cheap and moderately priced, it's affordable and at the same time a very effective solution that works well."
"The advanced agents used to collect logs have been most valuable. We have also made use of the advanced intelligence this solution offers."
"The beautiful thing about Fortinet is that they have integrated many, many solutions."
"The most valuable feature is auto-discovery. When you send logs from any device to port 514, it helps register those devices automatically."
"AccelOps gives us a greater visibility into potential data/network breach attempts with the monitoring and alerting capabilities."
"These aspects make Fortinet FortiSIEM a valuable choice."
"The event correlation is pretty robust. The GUI is pretty good."
 

Cons

"There needs to be more support or some kind of training program so users can self-learn the system more effectively."
"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 documentation could be improved."
"It's so hard to configure and explore something new on it. It is not easy to find the steps we need to follow in order to use the solution effectively."
"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to other solutions it looks a bit outdated. Additionally, they need to improve their integration."
"AlienVault OSSIM’s configuration and integration could be a little easier."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"AlienVault OSSIM gives unwanted notifications."
"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."
"I would like to see easier implementation in the future."
"Their product support, in general, is not that great. The product support is in the same ecosystem. Their support is improving but it's not that great.vvv"
"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."
"The biggest thing that could be better is a quicker response to support cases."
"The nodes on our network did not comply with the SIEM solution. They use a different format parking log."
"When an alert triggers in Fortinet FortiSIEM, the layout or format can feel limited"
"The dashboard needs to improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."
"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."
"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 expensive compared to its competitors."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"Manageable, however would be better as pay as you go versus CapEX."
"The tool is really expensive. For what the tool does for our team, the price is fair."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is cheaper compared to other products."
"The solution is available for both, perpetual and subscription licenses."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is not an expensive solution."
"The price of Fortinet FortiSIEM is a lot less when compared to other solutions."
"FortiSIEM's licensing is based on EPS, and its pricing is competitive in the market."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
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: November 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.