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: March 2026).

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion

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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)

12th

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)

54th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (33rd), SOC as a Service (15th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (39th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (43rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.6%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netsurion is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
AlienVault OSSIM	1.6%
Netsurion	0.7%
Other	97.7%

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

Brandon Pearce

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.

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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has a very good open source community, and whenever we have problems, we are always able to resolve it online."

"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, and compared to QRadar and Splunk, it's very stable."

"The initial setup was straightforward. I didn't have any problems."

"The product is easy to use."

"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 most valuable features of this solution are the data correlation and vulnerability assessment."

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

More AlienVault OSSIM pros

"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."

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

"The real-time alerting for things such as people getting dropped into a VPN group or the domain admin group — things like that which really shouldn't happen without proper change management, but we all know the reality, they do from time to time — gives me real-time visibility into what's going on."

"The product satisfies our compliance, and thus, all of our auditors."

"I like the UI, overall. I like the main page and there are aspects of the search page that I like. When you bring it up on the left-hand side of the page, as you look at the events, the ability to simply hit and click the plus/minus to pull events in and out of the overall view is well done and is very effective from a threat-hunting and an analysis perspective. I like the detail it shows."

"The most valuable feature is definitely real-time alerting, especially in situations where someone might attempt to exploit or hack into our network."

"The solution provides actionable threat intelligence, it is not a passive service, they go in and perform mitigations on whatever they find, it is timely, and they provide context so it is understood by anyone who receives these reports."

"Netsurion's security operations center is critical for us because they provide 24/7 monitoring, we've never had another company meet the same need in the past, and it's a valuable tool to have."

More Netsurion pros

Cons

"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."

"We need more dashboards and we need more customization for dashboards."

"The correlation engine needs to be improved."

"Lacking in depth of reporting."

"The log collection is okay, but tracing the logs or tracing the events is a bit difficult."

"The initial setup was a bit complex. You've got to do a lot of reading. It's not an intuitive implementation."

"The price of this solution is very high and it could be cheaper."

"The solution needs more integration with cyber intelligence systems."

More AlienVault OSSIM cons

"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."

"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."

"Their SOC team can't understand our network because they haven't worked in the actual company. This does negatively affect security posture, e.g., if you don't have knowledge about the network, then you will miss things."

"I would like to see the dashboard come up more quickly."

"The upfront costs have increased, and we have been locked into this contract."

"Where there is an opportunity for improvement is in the interface used for performing the searches."

"There's always room to improve because there would be no competition if they had a perfect solution. The GUI to perform searches within the product may not be intuitive to a new user."

"It would be helpful if the SOC spent a little more time with us going through some of those reports."

More Netsurion cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."

"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."

"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."

"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."

"AlienVault OSSIM is free."

"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."

More AlienVault OSSIM pricing and cost advice

"We have seen time and cost savings. It prevents us from having to hire specialized people for this type of work. We would need to hire six staff members to accommodate the same service."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We put together the package of what we needed. It was based pretty much on the number of agents that we were deploying. If we needed to manage logging from certain specific applications, like Active Directory and SQL Server, there has been no additional cost for that. We had agents deployed for those specific servers and the applications were included, then there was just an additional installation that they had to do for us."

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

"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."

"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."

More Netsurion pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

12%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Performing Arts

13%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	18
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AlienVault OSSIM?

Asset discovery is good.

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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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AlienVault OSSIM?

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Product Reports

AlienVault OSSIM

Download AlienVault OSSIM product report

Download Netsurion product report

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 robust SIEM capabilities enhanced by managed services, facilitating efficient threat identification and response with real-time alerts and comprehensive reporting.

Netsurion stands out for its integration of SIEM, IDS, and vulnerability management. Its real-time threat alerts and dashboards enhance user response capabilities. With centralized logging from Windows, Linux, Cisco devices, firewalls, and Active Directory, Netsurion enables effective compliance support for HIPAA and PCI standards. Managed Threat Protection with the embedded MITRE ATT&CK Framework enhances threat intelligence, while its evolving interface aims to improve user interactions. However, some users find deployment and searching challenging, pointing to areas for improvement.

What are Netsurion's key features?

SIEM Capabilities: Efficient threat identification using real-time alerts and dashboards.
Managed Services: Provides remote monitoring and advisory support.
Comprehensive Reporting: Assists in compliance and actionable insights.
MITRE ATT&CK Framework: Enhances threat intelligence and management.
Seamless Integration: Works with existing systems for streamlined operations.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Threat Response Tool: Rapid identification and response to security incidents.
Usability: Efforts to evolve and simplify user interactions.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlined processes through integration and managed services.
Compliance Support: Assistance with industry standards like HIPAA and PCI.

Netsurion is frequently implemented in industries requiring comprehensive security monitoring and compliance, such as healthcare and finance. It aids businesses in consolidating security efforts, offering insights into user activities and system changes, an asset for companies lacking substantial internal resources.

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

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion