Security Onion vs Wazuh comparison

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Security Onion

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 7, 2024

Security Onion and Wazuh are open-source security information and event management (SIEM) solutions. Security Onion focuses on intrusion detection and network security monitoring with tools like Suricata and Zeek, while Wazuh emphasizes endpoint security and compliance management using lightweight agents. Security Onion might require more configuration for large deployments, while Wazuh offers easier scaling options.

Features: Wazuh is valued for its efficient log analysis, granular security rule customization, and real-time threat detection, while Security Onion emphasizes all-in-one design and comprehensive network monitoring, and extensive integration of open-source security tools. Both are integrating with Elastic Stack to provide log management.
Room for Improvement: Wazuh's user interface needs to be more user-friendly, while Security Onion's is outdated. Wazuh struggles with tool integration, contrasts with Security Onion's complex setup. Wazuh needs better reporting, whereas Security Onion faces performance issues. Both require improved documentation.
Pricing and ROI: Security Onion and Wazuh are free to use as open-source software. The ROI comes from improved security posture, faster incident response, and potential cost savings compared to commercial SIEM solutions.
Deployment and customer support: Wazuh generally requires shorter, less complex deployment and setup times compared to Security Onion. Security Onion relies on community forums and documentation due to its open-source nature. Wazuh provides paid commercial support options alongside its active community forum. Its customer service is highly regarded for its prompt, efficient, and knowledgeable support.

Security Onion is ideal for organizations comfortable with open-source tools and community support. Wazuh is a good choice for security-focused organizations requiring flexibility and scalability. The summary above is based on 23 interviews we conducted recently with Wazuh and Security Onion users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.

To learn more, read our detailed Security Onion vs. Wazuh Report (Updated: July 2024).

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Security Onion vs. Wazuh

July 2024

Helped 793,295 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Security Onion

Ranking in Log Management

30th

Average Rating

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AWS Marketplace (1st)

Wazuh

Ranking in Log Management

2nd

Average Rating

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Security Onion is 6.4%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wazuh is 18.6%, up from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Log Management

Unique Categories:

AWS Marketplace

3.5%

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

15.3%

Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

15.6%

Featured Reviews

Jörg Kippe

Scientist at a educational organization with 10,001+ employees

Jan 18, 2024

A mature and affordable solution that is easy to install and easy to update

The solution is used to learn how the tools work. It enables us to do consulting and demonstrate solutions. We develop attacks, detect them, and demonstrate how it works. The customers are interested in seeing how and what these tools can do We are only working with open-source products. The tool…

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Muhammad Muaaz Bin Zaka

Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jun 15, 2023

Good for file integrity monitoring

There is room for improvement in Wazuh, but it's possible they are already working on it. The only challenge we faced with Wazuh was the lack of direct support. They charge for support, whether it's five days a week or seven days a week. We don't expect it to be free because revenue is generated through the support they provide. In future releases, I would like to see a feature. There is one feature we observed in a premium tool in the industry called Dynatrace. It provides automatic relations between different devices and components. For instance, if you receive a web login request, Dynatrace can trace and show you the path it takes from the firewall to the switch, then to the Apache server, the actual job application, and finally back to the client. It intelligently correlates all the components involved in a single event. If Wazuh could include this feature, where all the components are integrated, it would automatically relate them for any activity in your environment.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use Security Onion for internal vulnerability assessment."

"The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports."

"Security Onion is the most mature solution in the market."

"Good for monitoring, active response, and for vulnerabilities."

"I like that the solution is on top of the Kubernetes stack."

"The deployment is easy and they provide very good documentation."

"The product’s interface is intuitive."

"It's stable."

"Wazuh's logging features integrate seamlessly with AWS cloud-native services. There are also Wazuh agent configurations for different use cases, like vulnerability scanning, host-based intrusion detection, and file integrity monitoring."

"The main thing I like about it is that it has an EDR."

"Some of the strengths of Wazuh that stand out for us include its scalability when deployed on Azure, its open-source nature, which allows for customization based on our needs, and its compatibility with various security solutions like threat intelligence platforms."

More Wazuh pros

Cons

"The product is not easy to learn."

"Security Onion's user interface could be improved."

"The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult."

"Wazuh doesn't cover sources of events as well as Splunk. You can integrate Splunk with many sources of events, but it's a painful process to take care of some sources of events with Wazuh."

"I have yet to find the same capability in Wazuh to get logs from different sources into the system"

"One area where Wazuh could use some improvement is in its reporting mechanism, especially for high-level management like CSOs and CEOs."

"There's not much I like about Wazuh. Other products I've used were a lot more functional and user friendly. They came with reports and use cases out of the box. We need to configure Wazuh's alerts and monitoring capabilities manually. It'd be nice if we could select from templates and presets for use cases already built and coded."

"They need to go towards integrating with more cloud applications and not just OS like Windows and Linux."

"The implementation is very complex."

"I think that the next release should be more suitable for large enterprises, because currently they are not because large companies do not rely on open source solutions."

"It would be great if there could be customization for the decoder portion."

More Wazuh cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Security Onion is a free solution."

"Security Onion is an open-source solution."

"It is an open-source solution."

"Wazuh is an open-source tool, which means it is freely available for use."

"Wazuh is open-source, but you must consider the total cost of ownership. It may be free to acquire, but you spend a lot of time and effort supporting the product and getting it to a point where it's useful."

"It is an open-source product."

"The solution's pricing is very competitive."

"The current pricing is open source."

"There is not a license required for Wazuh."

"Wazuh is open-source, therefore it is free. You can purchase support for $1,000 a year."

"It is a free-of-cost solution."

More Wazuh pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

11%

University

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

17%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Security Onion?

The most valuable feature of Security Onion for security monitoring is its ability to find infected ports.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Security Onion?

Security Onion is an open-source solution. On a scale from one to ten, where ten is expensive and one is cheap, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten.

What needs improvement with Security Onion?

The initial setup of the solution is a little bit difficult.

What do you like most about Wazuh?

Integrates with various open-source and paid products, allowing for flexibility in customization based on use cases.

What needs improvement with Wazuh?

I have built some rules that produce duplicate alerts two or three times. Therefore, these rules should be consolidated. Alerts should be specific rather than repeatedly triggered by integrating mu...

What is your primary use case for Wazuh?

We use Wazuh for the onboarding of both Windows and Linux machines, as well as for firewall and SIM configuration. The IP address is automatically blocked if a server has multiple wrong passwords.

Elastic Stack vs Security Onion

Comparisons

Compared 13% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Security Onion

Compared 5% of the time

TheHive vs Security Onion

Compared 4% of the time

Kali Linux vs Security Onion

Compared 3% of the time

Graylog vs Security Onion

Compared 3% of the time

More Security Onion Competitors

Elastic Security vs Wazuh

Compared 13% of the time

AlienVault OSSIM vs Wazuh

Compared 11% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Wazuh

Compared 9% of the time

Graylog vs Wazuh

Compared 6% of the time

Elastic Stack vs Wazuh

Compared 3% of the time

More Wazuh Competitors

Product Reports

Download Security Onion product report

Log Management

July 2024

Download Wazuh product report

June 2024

Learn More

Security Onion Solutions, LLC

Overview

Security Onion is a free and open Linux distribution for threat hunting, enterprise security monitoring, and log management. The easy-to-use Setup wizard allows you to build an army of distributed sensors for your enterprise in minutes!
Security Onion includes a native web interface with built-in tools analysts use to respond to alerts, hunt for evil, catalog evidence into cases, monitor grid performance, and much more. Additionally, third-party tools, such as Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, Suricata, Zeek (formerly known as Bro), Wazuh, Stenographer, CyberChef, NetworkMiner, and many more are included.

Wazuh is an enterprise-ready platform used for security monitoring. It is a free and open-source platform that is used for threat detection, incident response and compliance, and integrity monitoring. Wazuh is capable of protecting workloads across virtualized, on-premises, containerized, and cloud-based environments.

It consists of an endpoint security agent and a management server. Additionally, Wazuh is fully integrated with the Elastic Stack, allowing users the ability to navigate through security alerts via a data visualization tool.

Wazuh’s agent can run on many different platforms, and is lightweight. It can successfully perform the tasks needed to detect threats in order to trigger responses automatically.
Wazuh manages the agents, can analyze agent data, and can scale horizontally.
Elastic Stack is where alerts are indexed and stored.

Wazuh Capabilities

Some of Wazuh’s most notable capabilities include:

Intrusion detection: Wazuh’s agents can detect hidden files, cloaked processes, or unregistered network listeners, as well as inconsistencies in system call responses. Wazuh’s server component uses a signature-based approach to intrusion detection, using its regular expression engine to analyze collected log data and look for indicators of compromise.
Log data analysis: Wazuh can read operating system and application logs, and securely forward them to a central manager for rule-based analysis and storage.
Integrity monitoring: File integrity monitoring can help identify changes in content, ownership, permissions, and attribute of files. Wazuh’s file integrity monitoring can be used in conjunction with threat intelligence.
Vulnerability detection: Wazuh agents can identify well-known vulnerable software so you can see where your weak spots are and take action before an attack can exploit them.
Configuration assessment: System and application configurations are monitored to make sure they are compliant with security policies. Periodic scans are used to detect applications that are known to be vulnerable, insecurely configured, or unpatched.
Incident response: Wazuh responds actively when active threats need to be addressed. It can perform countermeasures like blocking access to a system when a threat source is identified.
Regulatory compliance: Wazuh includes the security controls required to be compliant with industry regulations and standards.
Cloud security: Wazuh’s light-weight and multi-platform agents are commonly used to monitor cloud environments at the instance level. In addition, Wazuh helps monitor cloud infrastructure at an API level.
Security for containers: With Wazuh, you have increased security visibility into hosts and containers, allowing for easier detection of threats, anomalies, and vulnerabilities.

Wazuh Benefits

Some of the most valued benefits of Wazuh include:

No vendor lock-in
No license costs
Uses lightweight, multi-platform agents
Free community support

Wazuh Offers

Annual support and maintenance
Assistance with deployment and configuration
Training and instructional hands-on courses

Reviews From Real Users

"It's very easy to integrate Wazuh with other environments, cloud applications, and on-prem applications. So, the advantage is that it's easy to implement and integrate with other solutions." - Robert C., IT Security Consultant at Microlan Kenya Limited

“The MITRE ATT&CK correlation is most valuable.” - Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm