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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)
26th
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)
49th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (22nd), SOC as a Service (11th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (32nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (44th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.2%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netsurion is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AlienVault OSSIM1.2%
Netsurion0.8%
Other98.0%
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

"The paid version of the solution has reporting and better scalability options."
"The solution is very stable, and compared to QRadar and Splunk, it's very stable."
"Inbuilt IDS, inbuilt integration with threat intelligence platform and with vulnerability assessment modules."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."
"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."
"The solution is free to use."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an enterprise solution that sells easily. It is rated highly by organizations."
"With the managed component, we get that personal attention and that consistent team to deal with, and to some extent, it's like they're part of our IT team."
"I think Netsurion scales well. We've gone from a small number of agents up to thousands. So I would imagine that it would continue to scale. I don't see any issue with that."
"There are a host of things that are most valuable. Obviously monitoring our environment and reporting out different events is important. They perform a suite of services. They monitor all of our servers, all of our key infrastructure, like our DNS, our switches, all that stuff. They aggregate and correlate that quarterly. They'll tell us if we're getting a lot of login failures and something is going on or if something's weird."
"We have also integrated our endpoint security into the Netsurion SIEM. That's important because we have all the events in one place; we don't have to manage them in multiple places. In addition, the embedded MITRE ATT&CK Framework was paramount in our decision to choose Managed Threat Protection because the MITRE Framework is the industry standard for threats."
"We use those standard reports every day and monitor them, and it probably saves us three hours a day because the solution is doing the consolidation of the log files for us."
"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."
"EventTracker is exactly that; it's giving me all of the features and functions that we need to do our jobs, and at a price point that's incredibly attractive."
"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."
 

Cons

"From a management console perspective and the maturity of the dashboards, I would probably put it slightly behind some of the other players that have been in the market for ages."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"I suggest more in-built rules based on modern threats and environments to make it a more competitive solution."
"The user interface could be improved."
"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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is costly."
"I don't like to work on OSSIM because it is unpredictable."
"There needs to be more focus on the NOC and IIS in terms of developing applications for behavior detection."
"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."
"I would like to see the dashboard come up more quickly."
"The threat detection and response is passive. We have asked if there were options for taking action, and we have not gotten any feedback on that, which would be useful to know. Depending on the situation and threat, some actions may not be possible, but we haven't gotten any feedback on what options could be directed and actionable with the understanding that it may have an extra cost. It would be nice to know or find out if it is actually possible to take actions by a SIEM service or a SIEM agent."
"The MITRE ATT&CK framework could be faster when identifying and understanding sophisticated threats. Whenever something happens, we usually get notified a couple hours later."
"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."
"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."
"We get a report generated on a particular day of the week and we go through it, trying to mitigate problems and make sure we're seeing everything that's happening. It would be helpful if the SOC spent a little more time with us going through some of those reports."
 

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."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"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."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"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."
"OSSIM is 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."
"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."
"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."
"The upfront costs have increased, and we have been locked into this contract. The cost of changing over from it is way too high."
"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."
"It is a bit expensive as compared to some of the other products that have come out in recent years. Expense-wise, the only downside is that it is not cheap."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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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%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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...
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...
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: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.