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AlienVault OSSIM vs USM Anywhere 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
USM Anywhere
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
31st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (46th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (52nd), Compliance Management (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 3.4%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of USM Anywhere is 0.9%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source solution that provide good detection and more visibility
The solution is not scalable. It impacts so hard. In the initial stages, AlienVault OSSIM can be suitable for small environments. There may be limitations if the customer expresses a desire to expand and add more devices. In such cases, we would need to either explore additional solutions or work within the constraints of the existing setup. We have set up alerts and configured everything in AlienVault OSSIM. It actively monitors for any security incidents. It provides us with regular updates and notifications about any ongoing activities. Only one person is using the solution. It is the perfect solution for small businesses. I rate the solution’s scalability a three out of ten.
Kris Nawani - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers complete coverage without the need to install additional software
USM Anywhere is used for threat detection and investigation. It provides a solution with built-in threat intelligence and various other investigation tools The solution offers complete coverage without the need to install additional software, as it is maintained by the vendor. It helps in saving…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Network traffic analysis is highly efficient."
"The product is easy to use."
"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."
"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."
"You can customize the dashboards as well as the reporting."
"The open vault component and the checking of vulnerabilities are the most valuable features. The page management helps with this. If you know how your device is vulnerable at least you can do something about it."
"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."
"The dashboard is the solution's most valuable aspect. It brings everything into one central point where I can actually look at it and go, "Okay, I understand what's going on.""
"It has streamlined log aggregation and analysis to meet organizational and regulatory needs."
"The setup is very easy and straightforward."
"Allowed us to help our customers satisfy compliance needs around logging and monitoring."
"The main menu: You can see everything there, what is happening on the servers, and in the logs, you can view more details of each event."
"The most valuable feature is threat intelligence."
"Having everything in a central place has been helpful."
"OTX is a great module that lets staff maintain and monitor updates regarding events in the infrastructure and takes decision to improve the security perimeter."
"The Event Correlation and vulnerability scans have been the most useful. As a 24/7 SOC, we use the incoming alarms to give an overview of suspicious traffic going through the network. It's easy to look at the correlated events and see the broad picture of traffic for that customer. Vulnerability scans are good for providing patch and remediation guidelines to keep customer systems secure."
 

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."
"The solution is not scalable."
"AlienVault OSSIM failed to provide our company a full insight, while also giving out a lot of false positives."
"The user interface needs to be friendlier across the board."
"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."
"Lacking in depth of reporting."
"It's under heavy traffic. If you have heavy traffic, the system is slow."
"The reporting tools are a bit lacking for building reports to give directly to customers, but support has been helpful in giving our requests for new features to the development team and following up with us."
"We've had some stability problems, not a lot, but a few. Updates seem to be the worst. That seems to be when the stability problems come up."
"Adding a parsing interface for the customers would make AT&T AlienVault USM better."
"It was easy on PoC, but when we got to the product it was different story. We had to learn the product again and got feeling that the PoC was a different product."
"The dashboard could be improved as well as the level of customization."
"There could be some type of integration with our existing portal. We have our own customer portals, and it would be good if there was an integration so that our portal can provide reports. There could be some type of API into the AlienVault system with the USM system so that it is easy to show the customers high-level reports of the system through our portal."
"The reporting and dashboards have room for improvement."
"AlienVault must improve their correlation feature. Some of the events do not match with the correlation rules and some of the correlation events are false-positive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"OSSIM is free."
"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"​The vulnerability management solution is worse than buying a Nessus Professional license.​"
"The ROI is quite good."
"Use an MSSP instead. It is much cheaper."
"Its price is much lower than McAfee ESM."
"Do the one month trial and try to work out the kinks during it, as it has free support and service hours."
"QRadar, ArcSight and Splunk are some of the most expensive SIEM products out there in the market and not everyone has the budget to buy them. In such cases, AV USM is a very cost effective alternative."
"I don't know exactly, but I know it is based on the number of logs and the retention duration, such as 30 days or something like that. So, the smallest package is about 500 a month for 30 days of logs. There is a virtual machine. You need resources for it. It is a log collecting VM. They provide the software, and you just have to load a virtual machine. So, you're going to incur some CPU RAM and storage for wherever this log collecting appliance is running, which typically is in our cloud and on our platform for the customer."
"The price of this solution is reasonable, which is one of the reasons why we selected it over other solutions."
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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
19%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
6%
 

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...
What do you like most about AT&T AlienVault USM?
The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of deployment that it provides to users. The integrations that the product has with third-party applications are useful.
What needs improvement with AT&T AlienVault USM?
There are scalability issues due to a 60 TB limit, which restricts its use for large customers like banks. It is also limited when used with bigger products and has complex password requirements.
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
AT&T AlienVault USM, AlienVault, AlienVault USM, Alienvault Cybersecurity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Abel & Cole, Bank of Ireland, Bluegrass Cellular, CareerBuilder, Claire's, Hays Medical Center, Hope International, McCurrach, McKinsey & Company, Party Delights, Pepco Holdings, Richland School District, Ricoh, SaveMart, Shake Shack, Steelcase, TaxAct, Taylor Morrison, Vonage and Zoom
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. USM Anywhere and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.