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NetWitness Platform vs Pandora FMS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
33rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (30th)
Pandora FMS
Ranking in Log Management
57th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (74th), Server Monitoring (23rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (54th), Cloud Monitoring Software (40th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetWitness Platform0.4%
Pandora FMS0.3%
Other99.3%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

MOTASHIM Al Razi - PeerSpot reviewer
It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand
The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.
Gabriel Glusgold - PeerSpot reviewer
Personalized metrics; simplicity of data
My primary use case for Pandora is monitoring This solution has helped us improve our organization by allowing us to create a lot of metrics on several platforms, including Windows, Linux, and Unix. We then use these Pandora metrics to create an interface. We then pass the interface off to the…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I can have enterprise security, email security, next generation firewall security log, HIDS and NIDS logs, etc. all on the same dashboard. It makes it easy to pinpoint or correlate our server to this. I can find out if there is lateral movement. This is the biggest advantage of this solution."
"NetWitness Platform offers flexibility for deployment and robust integration capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets are the alerts and correlations tools."
"Incident management is its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are the threat prediction and network forensics."
"It gives the capability for the incident response team to correlate logs to identify any kind of problem like malware and incidents in a general sense, both for logs and packets."
"NetWitness Platform is valuable for creating rules that the solution must detect."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to write rules and triggers for network communication, and then being able to investigate based on that."
"The monitoring system within this solution is very good. It is easy to use and navigate, and makes issue alarms easily viewable."
"I like this solution a lot because it has a very large Hispanic community and the platform looks very friendly."
"The solution is so lightweight that with only 4GB of ram, it allows keeping track of up to two hundred agents from a single console."
"You can configure several types of architecture for high availability or load balancing."
"The administration of the console is very easy. I like that Pandora FMS is interactive and easy to manage."
"It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. There is a long list of different ones from Nagios. You can just use them, and within seconds, you get yourself a check that is monitoring whatever you need. It is really flexible. I guess that's why they call it Pandora Flexible Monitoring System (FMS). It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. Our network guy just recently asked about a particular protocol to monitor the bandwidth on the network, which is not a common protocol. When I looked it up, and I found that they cover it. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."
"The most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."
"The official forum is active enough to answer most of the high-end technical questions that you may have."
 

Cons

"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets can improve the threat level aspect, it is lacking compared to other solutions. Whenever any hacking activity or any other threat factor occurred they used to provide the coverages very fast when comparing RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets. I heard the other three solutions, from a discussion with my team members who had experience in other solutions, they used to say that. Whenever any issues happened across the globe RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets are a little bit slow improving those detection mechanisms."
"The multi-tenant capabilities are lagging compared to IBM QRadar."
"The system architecture is complex and sometimes it’s hard to troubleshoot potential problems."
"Lots of competing products have vulnerability protection built into their products, and this solution would be improved by including that support."
"The initial setup was complex because it takes a lot of time to complete the implementation."
"I believe that integrating the solution with other products such as Oracle would be beneficial."
"Health monitoring of the event sources and devices."
"The user interface is a little bit difficult for new users and it needs to be improved."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
"I would like to have a dashboard with all assets displayed, with a quick hover-over status."
"Their support is good, but it is just online communication. It would be great to be able to just call someone and talk to them instead of always writing. It works well for me because I am a decent communicator in email, but some people might find it difficult to describe in a written fashion and communicate with them that way. There is a learning curve to the interface, but once you get used to it, it is actually very powerful. They have a lot of options, but people struggle with the interface. They've improved it though, and it is getting better. They need to keep improving the learning curve to help buy-in. I'm the guy that manages it, so I'm comfortable with it. They can refine the upgrade agents to be easier. They can also do more refinement in end-user usability because not everyone is strong technically, and people who aren't strong technically might be averse to the product, even though it has come a long way. It has a complete GUI and everything."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"It would be useful if Pandora FMS included an ISO image (or «software appliance») for each big company that leases virtual private machines (VPS), just like in AWS."
"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these."
"I sincerely believe that Pandora needs new ideas for functionality closer to advanced device security monitoring."
"The price for Pandora FMS is expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
"It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."
"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."
"The product is expensive."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"Compared to the competition, the is price is not that high."
"Many clients are not able to purchase the packet capability because there is a huge amount of data, and the cost depends on the number of EPS (Events per second), as well as the number of gigabytes of data per day."
"The new pricing and licensing mechanisms are fair. I would advise always to get the full solution (i.e., not only Logs)."
"My rule of thumb would be that if you need more than thirty agents, and you lack an automation tool such as Chef or Puppet, you will save a lot of time and money going to the Enterprise edition."
"Pandora FMS is easy to implement and the pricing of licenses is competitive."
"You have to pay for the number of agents and models that you are monitoring. I would rate the cost at three with one being the most expensive and five being the cheapest."
"They are very competitive on the pricing side. That's one reason why my manager keeps using it."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
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Comparison Review

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Feb 26, 2015
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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
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Performing Arts
7%
Government
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Media Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetWitness Platform?
The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?
The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.
What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?
There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.
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Also Known As

RSA Security Analytics
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about NetWitness Platform vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.