AlienVault OSSIM vs Netsurion comparison

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AlienVault OSSIM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

AlienVault OSSIM and Netsurion are two prominent cybersecurity solutions. Netsurion appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set and higher perceived value.

Features: AlienVault OSSIM is valued for its threat detection and response capabilities, easy log management, and wide integration options. Netsurion is praised for its extensive security features, managed firewall, and SIEM capabilities. Netsurion's broader feature set makes it appealing to users seeking an all-in-one solution.

Room for Improvement: Users highlight AlienVault OSSIM's need for better scalability and enhanced threat intelligence updates. For Netsurion, reviewers suggest improving reporting functionalities and the complexity of initial configuration. This indicates AlienVault OSSIM could benefit from technical upgrades, while Netsurion needs better usability enhancements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AlienVault OSSIM is often complimented for its straightforward deployment, but its customer service receives mixed reviews. Netsurion is viewed as more complex to deploy but benefits from stronger customer support. Hence, Netsurion may offer better post-deployment support, despite a tougher initial setup.

Pricing and ROI: AlienVault OSSIM is generally perceived as cost-effective with a quicker ROI. Netsurion, despite being pricier, is seen as delivering good value due to its extensive features and reliable managed services. Users accept Netsurion's higher cost owing to its significant return on investment.

To learn more, read our detailed AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion Report (Updated: April 2025).

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion

April 2025

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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)

10th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Netsurion

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

18th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (5th), SOC as a Service (3rd), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (14th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (18th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 3.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netsurion is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

Aman Aijaz

Assistant Manager Global Security at Convergys Corporation

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.

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John-Berry

Information Technology Manager at ProfitSolv

The SOC center monitors, hunts, and notifies us of threats around the clock

I know they are working to resolve this issue, but Netsurion is currently unable to retrieve logs from S3 buckets. We use WP Engine for a lot of web hosting as well as AWS, and both of these platforms use S3 buckets. I would like Netsurion to be able to pull logs from Linux devices. We have some of that capability, and I believe they can do it. However, the way it works with Amazon is strange and glitchy. Therefore, working something out with Amazon would be great. Netsurion's SOC can be a bit too aggressive at times. We have asked them to adjust their playbook because I am tired of being notified about the same issue multiple times a day. I am aware of the issue, and it is not a cause for concern. Let's only take action on this issue if we see an actual problem.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The threat policies of the solution are always very advanced and the best in the market. They are very persistent in terms of keeping up with security protocols."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"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."

"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 solution is very stable. Compared to Qradar and Splunk, it's very stable."

"The solution is free to use."

"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."

More AlienVault OSSIM pros

"The most valuable feature is that we get the events: the alerts about disk space and the security reports that we get once a day, including user lockouts and the like."

"Expediting incident response is really great."

"The product satisfies our compliance, and thus, all of our auditors. All of the data that we use and store for all security events is required by our auditors to be kept in a central storage location."

"The SIEMs and managed service are its most valuable features. We get a weekly report from them which provides a culmination of them combing through millions of events which are triggered across our network every day and minute. Their information security experts basically boil that down to a report which I get emailed once a week. It identifies potential threats and the remediation that I should take to be able to quell those threats."

"If I were to look at logs manually, there's no way I could do that. As an example, they are 48 million logs processed a day. There is no way I could look at all 48 million of those. So, it gives me a good structure to be able to look at the different incidents which are created and do different searches."

"Netsurion has its own security operations center, where it tracks information that comes across our telemetry."

"Netsurion's 24/7 monitoring has enhanced the overall security of the company. They have someone looking at the data 24/7 who will call us as needed. If their team spots a malicious process after hours, they notify the appropriate person by phone. We get a lot of actionable threat intelligence from Netsurion. For example, if a user clicks on a malicious link in a web page and starts an unusual process that isn't on the white-list, Netsurion's team can detect it and prevent it from executing. Afterward, they'll notify us by telephone, so we can respond and clean up whatever damage has occurred."

"They have what they call Elasticsearch which is very quick, although that's only available for the last seven days' worth of data. It used to be that, if I wanted to do a search from three days ago, it might take me 10 to 15 minutes because it had to actually unzip some archive files. So I really like that feature. It's almost instantaneous for anything within the last seven days."

More Netsurion pros

Cons

"AlienVault OSSIM failed to provide our company a full insight, while also giving out a lot of false positives."

"The solution is not scalable."

"GUI could be improved."

"There are somewhat more false positives with the user behavior analytics, which could benefit from an additional machine learning model to detect user patterns more rapidly."

"They can add more compliance templates."

"There are somewhat more false positives with the user behavior analytics, which could benefit from an additional machine learning model to detect user patterns more rapidly."

"The incidence reporting could be better."

"It takes some time. It does not give me a prompt response for any such [malicious] traffic. It takes time to get that alert from the AlienVault system."

More AlienVault OSSIM cons

"There are some issues with searches taking a long period of time, but they assured me that they have implemented a new search function that's available in version 9, but which requires a solid-state hard drive... Depending on how many logs you have it could take a long time to return the results if you're looking back prior to the last 30 days."

"I would like to see a faster response when we see things like 15,000 lockouts. I really wished that I had known that on Friday afternoon rather than waiting until I got the weekly report today. By the same token, they are looking at it from the point of view that this is a system or software malfunction. This is not a bad actor repeating the exact same password three times a second. Therefore, they can tell that this is not a bad thing. However, it's not a security event but it is an operational event for me. Knowing this sort of thing would help my team and me out more because then we would be able to clear out a lot of network traffic that we didn't know was going on. So, we would like quicker updates on non-high security events."

"They have their programs and tools that you have to put into your own environment. We basically ingest all the log data and then push it out to them. I wish it was a little bit different than that where we just push directly towards them. I do not know if that is a function that they thought would be better in terms of security, but I wish that instead of doing that, it should go from the device to them and not from the device to another system and then out to them. There seem to be some drawbacks to doing that."

"Where there is an opportunity for improvement is in the interface used for performing the searches. You have to understand Elasticsearch search too well for the security team to be able to take really full advantage of that part of the product. It's not as intuitive as I would like it to be for new staff coming in. The general query capability is a little bit challenging."

"Probably the biggest thing is just: Can I search for this and what's the best way to do it? If I'm looking for two events versus a singular event, I just throw it back at them. They're the experts on it."

"It would be great if they had a client for phones by which they could push a notification to us, as opposed to via email."

"Everything that I've wanted has been added in. EDR was added, and MITRE was added. Those were two big ones that we didn't even have to push for."

"Netsurion's threat detection and response aren't quite mature. I would expect a little more."

More Netsurion cons

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."

"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."

"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 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."

"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."

"AlienVault OSSIM is free."

"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."

More AlienVault OSSIM pricing and cost advice

"Netsurion's pricing is competitive. At the same time, they're the only ones who do what we want to do the way we want it. I can't say we would've paid more, but we would've had to have come up with our own solution if they weren't providing that."

"The pricing and licensing seem very reasonable. The managed service part of it feels like it gives me the equivalent of a full-time engineer for a lot less money. So, I feel it's a good value."

"Our budget follows the calendar year. We just started a new budget year at the beginning of the month. We did budget for an increase in our threat management system selection. Therefore, we have the budget to implement and accommodate a threat management system change, including an increase for the quoted actions that we received to improve EventTracker. We are just waiting on our council to approve that budget, which might not be for a little while. Hopefully, when they do, we will be able to jump on doing something."

"The upfront costs have increased, and we have been locked into this contract. The cost of changing over from it is way too high."

"EventTracker's subscription-based model is interesting as far as yearly license type stuff. It's nice because you know what it's going to be next year. We haven't really looked at any other solutions. The pricing at the time compared to the other solutions was a lot less. A couple of years ago, we actually looked at Splunk. The amount in Splunk's licensing model is based on 20 gigs a day, or something like that. Based on our number of logs and stuff that we were already generating, the costs would be substantially more for the amount of logs that we would be getting."

"Licensing is very easy. Our CIO takes care of the billing, but in terms of price point, he hasn't complained, so it must be good."

"In the security space, it's hard to quantify your return on investment. So, I don't. We spend about $40,000 a year and so. It's hard to say if the SIEM saved that much money."

"Our pricing for Netsurion last year was US $52,000 per year."

More Netsurion pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Computer Software Company

25%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AlienVault OSSIM?

Asset discovery is good.

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 do you like most about Netsurion Managed Threat Protection?

Expediting incident response is really great.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Netsurion Managed Threat Protection?

Their pricing is high. I don't know if it's a barrier. The quality speaks to the price. The price is the price. They provide what they promise. From a purchasing perspective, I just have to come ba...

What needs improvement with Netsurion Managed Threat Protection?

There is one area that needs improvement and that is with the agents and the server that's on-site. The system requirements are very, very high. So I need a pretty powerful server to run. If they c...

Wazuh vs AlienVault OSSIM

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Compared 2% of the time

Rapid7 InsightIDR vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Download AlienVault OSSIM product report

AlienVault OSSIM

May 2025

Download Netsurion product report

April 2025

Also Known As

OSSIM

Netsurion Managed Threat Protection, Netsurion EventTracker

Overview

AlienVault OSSIM, Open Source Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), provides you with a feature-rich open source SIEM complete with event collection, normalization and correlation. Launched by security engineers because of the lack of available open source products, AlienVault OSSIM was created specifically to address the reality many security professionals face: A SIEM, whether it is open source or commercial, is virtually useless without the basic security controls necessary for security visibility.

AT&T

Netsurion offers a comprehensive solution for centralized log management, SIEM, and managed services, ensuring continuous monitoring and security event analysis for diverse organizations, enhancing IT security and compliance.

Netsurion centralizes event management through SIEM and managed services. Organizations leverage it for vulnerability assessment and intrusion detection, integrating logs from Windows, Linux, and network devices. Its SOC provides 24/7 monitoring, ensuring compliance with PCI and audit standards. Real-time alerts and efficient log data aggregation enhance threat identification and response. Weekly reports and insights into user lockouts contribute to robust security management, beneficial for firms with constrained resources.

What are some key features of Netsurion?

SIEM Integration: Centralizes security event data for easier management.
Managed Services: Provides 24/7 SOC monitoring and support.
Real-TIme Alerts: Notifies of unusual security events promptly.
Threat Intelligence: Delivers actionable insights for proactive defense.
Seamless Platform Integration: Compatible with Office 365, firewalls, and other platforms.

How can companies benefit from using Netsurion?

Enhanced Security Management: Real-time monitoring and alerts streamline threat response.
PCI Compliance: Supports meeting audit and regulatory requirements efficiently.
Resource Optimization: Weekly reports and detailed insights aid decision-making for limited-resource organizations.
Improved Threat Detection: Consolidating logs and real-time intelligence helps in identifying threats swiftly.

Netsurion is implemented across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, where security is crucial. These sectors require robust monitoring and compliance solutions, utilizing Netsurion's seamless integration with their existing infrastructure to manage security operations effectively, addressing both regulatory needs and threat management.

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District

The Salvation Army, The FRESH Market, Pacific Western Bank, NASA, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), and Talbot’s Stores