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Fortinet FortiSIEM vs Splunk Enterprise Security vs USM Anywhere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiSIEM is 3.3%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.4%, down from 12.1% 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

Oliver Jackson - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems monitoring enhanced by firewall and intrusion detection features
My primary use case for Fortinet FortiSIEM is systems monitoring and alerting. I use it for standard functions like log monitoring, incident detection, and notification.  My customers are mostly medium-sized enterprises ranging from engineering companies, mining companies, independent schools, and…
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.
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

"The Threat Hunting feature provides complete traffic analysis."
"FortiSIEM sends an email or SMS notifications to admins when there are significant incidents. It's a highly efficient way of responding to incidents."
"I like the various options, including the option for CMDB and the easier access to create rules, playbooks, or use cases. It's also easier to use for creating dashboards and reports."
"The advanced agents used to collect logs have been most valuable. We have also made use of the advanced intelligence this solution offers."
"We have found the most important features in Fortinet FortiSIEM to be the correlation, file utility check, latest file, and hash changes. These features are important for us."
"The solution’s IP database is awesome."
"To add workers and even collectors is pretty easy."
"FortiSIEM allows you to match IPs with threat intelligence feeds from sources like Kaspersky or Anomali, adding valuable context."
"The community marketplace is useful; often, you do not need to rely on Splunk Enterprise Security support due to the wealth of online documentation available—Splunk docs are truly beneficial."
"The benefits my company has seen from the use of Splunk Enterprise Security revolve around the speed of detection it offers."
"Internal tracking is helpful because we do not like to deal with multiple ticketing systems, and I am not a fan of ServiceNow. We are able to keep everything internal and utilize Enterprise Security."
"The solution is the market leader."
"The SIEM is the most valuable feature of the product."
"Integrity with many vendors: This simplifies the implementation and integration with different devices"
"Being able to track impossible travel logins and things of that nature is valuable. We can track user logins from various IPs, various countries, and at various times to see if everything adds up."
"It is the best tool if you have a complex environment or if data ingestion is too huge."
"This is a USM, so being able to get all the features under one roof makes it a good product with good new features."
"This solution can completely detect and prevent incidents on your network."
"The most valuable feature is vulnerability management because it gives you insight into your environment to know what systems need to be updated or patched."
"On any given day I could give you a different answer regarding the most valuable features of the product. The feature that is most important is the fact that it has a lot of features, that it's not just a log collection and correlation system, that it has a lot of other components built in. The bundle of features is really the killer feature."
"AlienVault provides a checklist answer when using SIEM."
"The best thing about AlienVault USM is it being a “Jack-of-All Trades” solution. It provides SIEM, HIDS/NIDS, FIM, NetFlow, Asset Management, Vulnerability Management, etc., under one USM platform. None of the commercial SIEM vendors like ArcSight, McAfee, etc., can boast of such a diverse feature set."
"What I find the most valuable about USM Anywhere is its compliance. It shows a list of all the administrators logged on and does it quite well. There are no whistles and bells, it's reliable and simple to use."
"The USM is a work horse, no matter what devices or the number of logs we throw at it, the system processes them in real time, correlates the events, and alerts on only events that need human review."
 

Cons

"Improvements include making it easier for users to create their normalizers. Fortinet FortiSIEM uses XML for normalizing and parsing, which can be tedious and time-consuming. A simpler way of using regex could be helpful."
"The product does not have Security Orchestration and Automation Response, I would recommend adding this feature."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is a little out of sight and needs more marketing efforts to be popular in the market."
"I would like to see more integration with other platforms."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM could improve by having a signature update."
"When our team tried configuring logs for Microsoft SQL, it did not work."
"The reporting feature is not very attractive for the upper management and I am not able to perform complex/nested queries."
"It would be good if the solution offered even more configuration options, especially in relation to the VPN so that it continues to be a very flexible option."
"Improving the infrastructure behind Splunk Enterprise Security is vital—enhanced cores, CPUs, and memory should be prioritized to support better processing power."
"The product was designed for security and IT with business intelligence needs, such as PDF exporting, but this has not been the highest priority. While the functionality is there, it could be developed more."
"The product was difficult to back up the first time."
"Splunk can be an expensive solution. Technical support could be improved as well."
"I think the tech support response time could be a bit better. Sometimes I need to wait more than 24 hours for a response to my tickets."
"It takes time to train people."
"​Not even Splunk's support guy, who came to our firm, could help with defining proper role management.​"
"We do have to educate developers on how to not blow it up. It is a little to easy to write an expensive query and overly stress the system. This could be improved."
"The one thing I continue to dislike about the USM is the limitation on reports."
"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."
"For creating new rules, you have to be familiar with regular expressions. I feel there could be something built-in to make sure that process is easier."
"This solution could be easier to use."
"The AT&T AlienVault USM is okay, but the relational database is not very good for large amounts of data. For example, many logs cannot be processed. It has been very slow for the queries and some data which are large, it is not very good in this case."
"The solution is a bit complicated. It could be simplified quite a bit."
"There are scalability issues due to a 60 TB limit, which restricts its use for large customers like banks."
"The reporting module could be a little easier to handle, as it requires quite some trial and error until you get the reports you want. Also, it would be great to have a graphical interface for the Network Intrusion Detection System's rule management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is probably more on the lower cost end of the spectrum compared to competing products. Fortinet's license model is based on events per second, which makes sense, but that's not typical. It makes it very hard to calculate what your costs are going to be as you scale the platform because some log sources, such as firewall logs, are very noisy, and there are lots and lots of events per second, but some of them are not. So, it becomes a bit of a science experiment trying to guess what your costs are going to be as you scale the solution. This is where other competing products perhaps have a more straightforward license model."
"We bought the perpetual license, so we own the product, but there is a three-year support renewal fee for that."
"Fortinet's products are not expensive, it is less than the competition."
"Its price can be better. We are Fortinet partners, so we can get discounts, but its price can be an issue at the beginning for others. There is a licensing scheme for every case. There are three licensing schemes that we can choose from."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive. I rate the tool's price as an eight out of ten. Compared with Splunk or Oracle, Fortinet is cheap."
"Please be cheaper and more simplified."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is very cost-efficient compared to other SIEM solutions."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is not an expensive solution."
"Splunk is definitely not a cheap solution. It is an expensive product."
"Pricing is probably its weakest spot. As compared to some competitors, Splunk is really expensive."
"It is expensive. I work for multiple clients. I am working for more than five clients, but most of the clients are switching from Splunk to Sentinel because of the cost. Even though Sentinel is very limited, clients are moving to Sentinel."
"Although Splunk is an expensive product, it is designed to be utilized across your organization in order to maximize your ROI and lower your TCO."
"It is a bit costly."
"My experience with the solution's setup cost, pricing, and licensing was really good."
"The pricing model is based on the number of gigabytes that you ingest into the Splunk system. So it can be an expensive solution."
"It is expensive. That is why many customers have moved to IBM QRadar. The price is definitely a challenge for customers."
"It's very reasonably priced. It was one of the lowest among the ones I looked at. Licensing is pretty flexible. They can do a two-year or a three-year, even a one-year, perhaps."
"Pricing is very competitive with other products and you get much more functionality from AlienVault."
"Do the one month trial and try to work out the kinks during it, as it has free support and service hours."
"So far, it has been a good solution for a tight budget."
"​The price point is good.​"
"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."
"The licensing fees are dependent on usage."
"Negotiate the best package for your environment."
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Comparison Review

VS
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiSIEM?
Fortinet FortiSIEM needs to provide better API integrations to users.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSIEM?
The pricing is reasonable, which is why it is preferred by government customers. Windows agent licenses cost around 3...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSIEM?
Fortinet FortiSIEM should broaden its remediation part to include more features for incident management. Currently, t...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is a...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingest...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitor...
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 ...
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...
 

Also Known As

FortiSIEM, AccelOps
No data available
AT&T AlienVault USM, AlienVault, AlienVault USM, Alienvault Cybersecurity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FortiSIEM has hundreds of customers worldwide in markets including managed services, technology, financial services, healthcare, and government. Customers include Aruba Networks, Compushare, Port of San Diego, Cleveland Indians, Infoblox, Healthways, and Referentia.
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
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 Splunk, Wazuh, Microsoft and others in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). Updated: July 2025.
862,514 professionals have used our research since 2012.