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NetWitness Platform 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

NetWitness Platform
Ranking in Log Management
38th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
29th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
USM Anywhere
Ranking in Log Management
47th
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
28th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (52nd), Compliance Management (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.6%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of USM Anywhere is 0.9%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

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.
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 most valuable features are the packet inspection and the automated incident response."
"Incident management is its most valuable feature."
"The software is scalable to whatever is required, and you can also put a lot of resources in the cloud."
"The most valuable features are the integration and ease of use."
"The development of use cases on the SSA console is quite user friendly. This means that the security analyst or the researcher does not have to learn another language."
"The most valuable feature is that we can create our own connectors for any application, and NetWitness provides the training and tools to do it."
"The most valuable features are the threat prediction and network forensics."
"NetWitness Platform is valuable for creating rules that the solution must detect."
"The most valuable feature in AT&T AlienVault USM is the reporting."
"The asset discovery and inventory capabilities in USM Anywhere is quite good."
"The ease of implementation is the most valuable feature."
"Reports are customized, so you can present them to executives or engineers.​"
"It allows you to define what alerts you want to see, or not to see, as well as if you want them grouped, or ungrouped."
"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."
"It provides a single pane of glass view, coupled with a whole security ecosystem. The ability to manage everything from a central point, including vulnerability assessments, asset management - including the services provided by the various hosts, NIDS, HIDS, etc. - provides a very efficient way of dealing with things."
"We're using it more for reporting, that's all. We're using it to help our customers to pass any kind of audits that they receive."
 

Cons

"The log system is a bit complex and has room for improvement."
"It is not so easy to customize this product."
"I'd like to see improvement in its ease of use. It's basically unusable. It's overly complex."
"Technical support could be improved."
"The solution should have more integration capabilities with different platforms."
"The initial setup is very complex and should be simplified."
"There are instances where you try to run the reports and then it does not give you the desired outcome."
"The implementation needs assistance."
"The price of AT&T AlienVault USM could be reduced."
"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."
"Source material on the forums to be more up-to-date with the changes happening within the product. Forums being out-of-date with information due to the changes makes troubleshooting a little more difficult - specific to the HIDS agents."
"The other thing is the agent is OSSEC. They needed to create its own agent to help to find threats on the devices that it happens to be installed."
"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."
"AlienVault cannot automatically respond to threats like other SIEM solutions, such as Sentinel and LogRhythm. Most of our clients are far away, so it's often challenging to handle alerts when they come up on our dashboard."
"Windows log collection works with HIDS, but documentation is sparse and confusing."
"I feel that some areas of improvement would be vulnerability scanning. We use a separate product that seems to do a much better job."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."
"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."
"The product price was reasonable for my region and the market."
"The new pricing and licensing mechanisms are fair. I would advise always to get the full solution (i.e., not only Logs)."
"It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."
"Negotiate the best package for your environment."
"Its price is in the medium to upper range."
"​The price point is good.​"
"So far, I feel the product's pricing is a good value. The technology is decent. You get what you pay for. I think it's fair."
"It is a product that is priced in a medium range, making it neither a cheap nor a costly product."
"So far, it has been a good solution for a tight budget."
"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."
"It's saved security costs."
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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
19%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Government
6%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Computer Software Company
20%
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 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.
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

RSA Security Analytics
AT&T AlienVault USM, AlienVault, AlienVault USM, Alienvault Cybersecurity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
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 NetWitness Platform vs. USM Anywhere and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.