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AlienVault OSSIM vs Microsoft Sentinel 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)
8th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 3.6%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.1%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Aman Aijaz - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-scale open-source solution used for monitoring events on devices
The area for improvement is a lot. When I started using it on our enterprise side, the issue we faced was, for example, if we were running at that time on AlienVault OSSIM v5.7.4. So, for some orders, we had to install some packages, and when we tried installing that package, some dependencies got upgraded to a new version. Now once that dependency got upgraded, the SQL, since you might be aware that OSSIM uses SQL database, now SQL and all the dependency in everything was not on the same version, and that caused the database to crash. The aforementioned area should be eased out by upgrading the patches and upgrading dependencies. This kind of thing is a disadvantage of OSSIM, and I would like them to work on this. But I have also raised service requests many times and gave it a push on the community section too. However, since it is a local source, they don't reply much over there. That is why I don't like to work on OSSIM because it is unpredictable. Once the storage goes above 50 percent, it starts behaving unpredictably. If you get stuck with a situation, then you need to drill a lockdown into that. Sometimes you get no luck. Then you have to just reimage the server with the new fresh OS of AlienVault. As for additional features, not much because if you move to the newer version, it is kind of getting more stable. But, to make my life easier, then I would say try to give more features. I know it's open source, so they also cannot provide me with more features. But still, if they can provide me with more features because right now it's becoming old. Right now, we are even moving from SIEM to Security Data Lake. So when we move to it, this will be literally outdated. No one can even expect anything out of it. The way security is moving, it will be outdated very soon. They have to also provide something new to keep this going for the future also.
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat detection and response capabilities enhance investigation processes
My security team has been using Microsoft Sentinel for around two years. We also have Bastion and SolarWinds as part of our monitoring tools. We use a three-way tool, alongside Microsoft Sentinel, in our environment The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AlienVault OSSIM is an enterprise solution that sells easily. It is rated highly by organizations."
"The paid version of the solution has reporting and better scalability options."
"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."
"Inbuilt IDS, inbuilt integration with threat intelligence platform and with vulnerability assessment modules."
"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."
"I recommend it due to the experience of the people running it."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the data correlation and vulnerability assessment."
"There are a lot of things you can explore as a user. You can even go and actively hunt for threats. You can go on the offensive rather than on the defensive."
"Microsoft Sentinel is cloud native, which is a significant advantage. The data connectors that provide the ability to connect third-party log sources are highly valuable."
"The UI of Sentinel is very good and easy to use, even for beginners."
"The in-built SOAR of Sentinel is valuable. Kusto Query Language is also valuable for the ease of writing queries and ease of getting insights from the logs. Schedule-based queries within Sentinel are also valuable. I found these three features most useful for my projects."
"Sentinel pricing is good"
"The machine learning and artificial intelligence on offer are great."
"We are able to deploy within half an hour and we only require one person to complete the implementation."
"Mainly, this is a cloud-native product. So, there are zero concerns about managing the whole infrastructure on-premises."
 

Cons

"The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale."
"The user interface needs to be friendlier across the board."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"Lacking in depth of reporting."
"The documentation 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 on-premise version is more difficult to implement than the cloud version. Additionally, they should add integration between several different environments at once and improve their online knowledge base."
"The price of this solution is very high and it could be cheaper."
"The pricing tiers of Microsoft Sentinel should be improved. There are complexities in calculating the right pricing tier for different customers, which makes it difficult for me as a consultant during upfront pricing."
"Sentinel still has some anomalies. For example, sometimes when we write a query for log analysis with KQL, it doesn't give us the data in a proper way... Also, the fields or columns could be improved. Sometimes, it is not giving the desired results and there is a blank field."
"In terms of improvements, pricing, licensing, and overall cost could be better."
"They could use some kind of workbook. There is some limitation doing the editing and creating the workbook."
"The learning curve could be improved. I am still learning it. We were able to implement the basic features to get them up and running, but there are still so many things that I don't know about all its features. They have a lot of features that we have not been able to use or apply. If they could work on reducing the solution's learning curve, that would be good. While there is a training course held by Microsoft to learn more about this solution, there is a cost associated with it."
"For certain vendors, some of the data that Microsoft Sentinel captures is redacted due to privacy reasons."
"We are invoiced according to the amount of data generated within each log."
"When we pass KPIs to the governance department, there's no option to provide rights to the data or dashboard to colleagues. We can use Power BI for this, but it isn't easy or convenient. They should just come up with a way to provide limited role-based access to auditing personnel"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OSSIM is 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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."
"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."
"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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"Sentinel is expensive relative to other products of the class, so it often isn't affordable for small-scale businesses. However, considering the solution has more extensive capabilities than others, the price is not so high. Pricing is based on GBs of ingested daily data, either by a pay-as-you-go or subscription model."
"Sentinel is costly."
"Pricing for Microsoft Sentinel could always be lower, but it's workable. The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost, but the licensing per Microsoft Sentinel is fairly straightforward and transparent."
"There are no additional costs other than the initial costs of Sentinel."
"The pay-as-you-go model is beneficial to customers."
"Sentinel is pretty competitive. The pricing is at the level of other SIEM solutions."
"The are two native advantages for customers that use M365 Security and Sentinel. The first advantage is that the log or security-event ingestion into Sentinel is free. Cost-wise, they're saving a lot and that is a major advantage."
"Azure Sentinel is very costly, or at least it appears to be very costly. The costs vary based on your ingestion and your retention charges."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.