No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AlienVault OSSIM vs Netsurion 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)
16th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Netsurion
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
52nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (30th), SOC as a Service (14th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (36th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (43rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netsurion is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AlienVault OSSIM1.3%
Netsurion0.8%
Other97.9%
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.
John-Berry - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are a lot of people you will find using OSSIM since they are also offering OTX as a service"
"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."
"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."
"Technical support is excellent; they are very helpful and responsive."
"Most of the SOC or SIEM enterprise class products are very expensive, whereas with OSSIM you can start out with a smaller setup and then expand as you wish."
"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."
"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are vulnerability assessment, network intrusion detection system, response to critical events, and awareness of the whole network."
"You can customize the dashboards as well as the reporting."
"If we need to do a search for user lockouts, we can go, search, and find locations where they have been locked out, then keep track of those events, historically."
"Of all the products and vendors that we've used, I've never had a more positive experience with a support team than with EventTracker's support team."
"The managed service has been invaluable to us in terms of being able to narrow the scope of what really needs to be looked at and bringing those things to our attention to be dealt with."
"The managed service is great value which saves you a full-time employee on your staff by being able to outsource it to EventTracker to review all the logs and cull through the data to make recommendations and identify threats, then how to remediate them."
"When I looked last week, we probably averaged about 20 million log entries a day. So, we certainly can't individually manage that. Just looking at the reports, then trying to go back and find anything that was questionable, was a challenge. Therefore, the managed service has been invaluable to us in terms of being able to narrow the scope of what really needs to be looked at and bringing those things to our attention to be dealt with."
"Their SOC team manages vulnerability management and IOC reviews. They stop bad processes when they happen. The best thing is their weekly reviews of what has been going on in the infrastructure as well as the things that they see and what we should look out for."
"What I like most about Netsurion is the level of visibility and reporting."
"The most valuable feature is definitely real-time alerting, especially in situations where someone might attempt to exploit or hack into our network."
 

Cons

"AlienVault OSSIM failed to provide our company a full insight, while also giving out a lot of false positives."
"The initial setup was a bit complex. You've got to do a lot of reading. It's not an intuitive implementation."
"The documentation could be improved."
"The log collection is okay, but tracing the logs or tracing the events is a bit difficult."
"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."
"The incidence reporting could be better."
"There needs to be more focus on the NOC and IIS in terms of developing applications for behavior detection."
"The system requirements are very, very high. So I need a pretty powerful server to run. If they could lighten that load so that the on-premise part of their product didn't impact my systems as much that would be ideal."
"The solution's dashboard is okay. The one thing that we ran into are issues when we upgraded to the newer version. It uses Elasticsearch for the different dashboard entries. So, we were running on spinning disks, and Elasticsearch didn't work that well. A number of the different dashboards, like my dashboard or different things like that, pull from Elasticsearch. Since Elasticsearch really wasn't working, we were having some issues with that, but we just migrated."
"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."
"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."
"With version 8, there are quite a few things. The query tool was one of the big ones, and the query speed was one of the big ones, but they've made some great strides between versions 8 and 9. There were also issues in version 8 around the ability to get the data back out. It's one thing to collect data, but it's a whole other thing to be able to present it or run it in a timely manner. The old tool, depending on how far back I was looking, might even time out and I would have to run it again."
"I would like to see the dashboard come up more quickly."
"The hosted on-premise hardware that we were using was having issues. The performance of it was horrendous, but we weren't using it."
"The upfront costs have increased, and we have been locked into this contract."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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."
"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 an open-source solution."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is fairly expensive, but in my experience, all of the SIEM applications that I've evaluated or looked at cost about the same."
"When we first got the EventTracker product, we were using SIEM Simplified. At the time they didn't call it that, but it was more of a service thing. So, there was a bit more hand-holding and getting stuff set up, along with failure reports, that they did during the first one to two years. Then, we decided that the the additional money to have someone do these daily reports wasn't terribly useful, so we discontinued that service."
"You are paying for different levels, especially as far as the monitoring goes and how often you review it with the team. The other factor that figures in is how many nodes are on your network, such as clients, network equipment, servers, etc. There are some additional pieces on top of that, but it's laid out pretty simply, as far as how much you're going to pay for a node."
"I don't know if the pricing is by the seat but we're paying about $20,000 to 25,000 a year. On top of that, we pay for the managed support services. That runs us about another $35,000 or $40,000 a year."
"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."
"Netsurion's pricing is extremely fair and flexible. The price of their SIEM product is reasonable, and you can pay for those services you want on top of that. It wasn't cheap, but it's competitive, and we intend to renew our contract."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Performing Arts
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing 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 Business10
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise7
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
Netsurion Managed Threat Protection, Netsurion EventTracker
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.