AlienVault OSSIM vs Elastic Security comparison

AT&T and Elastic are both solutions in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category. AT&T is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.2, while Elastic is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.5. AT&T holds a 1.7% mindshare in SIEM, compared to Elastic’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of AT&T users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 86% of Elastic users who would recommend it.

AlienVault OSSIM

Read 31 AlienVault OSSIM reviews

4,374 Views
4,287 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Elastic Security

Read 66 Elastic Security reviews

11,426 Views
7,084 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

AlienVault OSSIM

Elastic Security

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Elastic Security and AlienVault OSSIM compete in the security analytics and management category. Elastic Security has the upper hand owing to its integration and analytics depth, offering greater customization and scalability.

Features: Elastic Security users highlight advanced analytics and integration capabilities, providing deep, customizable insights. AlienVault OSSIM is praised for its comprehensive out-of-the-box security features, appealing to those needing immediate utility. Elastic Security offers flexibility and depth, while AlienVault OSSIM focuses on ease of use and immediate functionality.

Room for Improvement: Elastic Security users mention the complexity of configurations and a steep learning curve. AlienVault OSSIM users highlight limitations in scalability and the need for more advanced analytics. Elastic Security could benefit from usability enhancements, whereas AlienVault OSSIM needs better scalability and analytics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Elastic Security users find its deployment complex but appreciate its robust customer support. AlienVault OSSIM users report simpler deployment but mixed customer service experiences. Elastic Security demands more technical expertise for setup but offers superior support, while AlienVault OSSIM provides a smoother initial deployment with variable support quality.

Pricing and ROI: Elastic Security is seen as costly but delivers high ROI through extensive features and integration. AlienVault OSSIM is recognized for its lower upfront costs and reasonable ROI, particularly for smaller organizations. Despite the higher price, Elastic Security's comprehensive capabilities justify its cost, whereas AlienVault OSSIM offers a cost-effective solution with decent returns.

To learn more, read our detailed AlienVault OSSIM vs. Elastic Security Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Elastic Security

February 2026

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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)

13th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Elastic Security

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (9th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (14th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.7%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.8%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Elastic Security	3.8%
AlienVault OSSIM	1.7%
Other	94.5%

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Featured Reviews

Brandon Pearce

Independent Contractor at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees

Enables cost-effective security management for small businesses

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 implementation. The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale. By pushing it to a cloud-based system, they've largely alleviated scale issues. It's native in Amazon but will also run in Azure. They have worked with cloud service providers to offer enough throughput at a cost reasonable for a corporation. Scaling was their biggest problem, and they've largely conquered those issues.

Read full review

Laurentiu Popescu

Chief Product Officer at ClusterPower

Has improved threat detection with deep log analysis and streamlined investigation workflows

The most useful features I find in Elastic Security are the forensic ones that allow us to carry deeper analysis into the logs for in-depth investigations, and the dashboards, with the reporting dashboard being quite user-friendly. Elastic Security is quite good at identifying threats, as it is part of the deep investigation tool that I mentioned before. Unless we need to look further into a certain log, we can carry out a deeper analysis and forensics on those particular logs. I can assess the impact of Elastic Security's real-time data analysis on our threat response efficiency as working pretty good. We are looking for real-time analysis because we have a continuous inflow of logs from different sources: from our cloud, from Active Directory, from our network. So it works pretty well.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 tool's security detection is good. It helps us with login tracking and generating reports. We aim to identify potential issues, such as brute-force attacks on user accounts or server-level anomalies. For instance, if I receive a report indicating a server is at an abnormal level, I investigate and address the issue."

"Asset discovery is good."

"Network traffic analysis is highly efficient."

"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."

"Inbuilt IDS, inbuilt integration with threat intelligence platform and with vulnerability assessment modules."

"You can customize the dashboards as well as the reporting."

More AlienVault OSSIM pros

"It is very quick to react. I can set it to check anomalies or suspicious behavior every 30 seconds. It is very fast."

"It's open-source and free to use."

"ELK documentation is very good, so never needed to contact technical support."

"Elastic Security is applied within my cyber defense strategy by utilizing many modules such as EDR, GenAI, SOAR module and combines with the SIEM module."

"The most valuable feature of Elastic Security is that you can install agents, and they are not separately licensed."

"It's very customizable, which is quite helpful."

"Elastic Security is very customizable, and the dashboards are very easy to build."

"Elastic Security makes data communication easier."

More Elastic Security pros

Cons

"The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale."

"There needs to be more support or some kind of training program so users can self-learn the system more effectively."

"It's so hard to configure and explore something new on it."

"AlienVault OSSIM is costly."

"AlienVault OSSIM gives unwanted notifications."

"The initial setup was a bit complex. You've got to do a lot of reading. It's not an intuitive implementation."

"The correlation engine needs to be improved."

"The solution is not scalable."

More AlienVault OSSIM cons

"There are connectors to gather logs for Windows PCs and Linux PCs, but if we have to get the logs from Syslog then we have to do it manually, and this should be automated."

"The setup process is complex. You need a solid working knowledge of networking, operating systems, and a little programming."

"Better integration with third-party APMs would be really good."

"Elastic Security could improve the documentation. It would help if they were more simple and clean."

"Their visuals and graphs need to be better."

"There isn't really a very good user experience. You need a lot of training."

"We are paying dearly for the guy who is working on the ELK Stack. That knowledge is quite rare and hard to come by. For difficulty and availability of resources, I would rate it a five out of 10."

"It would be better if Elastic Security had less storage for data. My customers do not like this. Other vendors have local support in different countries, but Elastic Security doesn't. I would like to have Operational Technology (OT) security in the next release."

More Elastic Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."

"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."

"AlienVault pricing is the best. Whatever cost you are paying, you are getting a return on every penny... It's not like your IBM, your QRadar, or Splunk, where the cost is too high."

"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to Microsoft Sentinel, AlienVault OSSIM incurs additional costs due to its licensing price structure. If you are using AlienVault for security purposes at a certain level it can have a higher price point than the current pricing of Microsoft Sentinel."

"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."

"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."

"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."

"OSSIM is free."

More AlienVault OSSIM pricing and cost advice

"We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for this solution."

"The base product is open-source but if you need advanced security features then you need to pay for the subscription. Elastic Security's price is reasonable in some cases and in other cases it's not."

"When compared to other products, the price is average or on the low side."

"Affordable but with additional costs"

"I can say that the product is cheaply priced."

"The licensing cost of Elastic Security is based on the daily ingestion rate. I can't recall the exact figure, but for 10GB of log action daily, it would cost around $20,000."

"Its price is fine. Its licensing works on a yearly basis. We have to renew the license every year. I also have a good experience with Darktrace. When we buy Darktrace, we get training free of cost, which is not there in Elastic. We have to pay extra for training. There is certainly room for improvement."

"We are using the free, open-source version of this solution."

More Elastic Security pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	18
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	40
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AlienVault OSSIM?

Asset discovery is good.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with AlienVault OSSIM?

See all answers

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?

With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...

See all answers

What do you like most about Elastic Security?

Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because ...

See all answers

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

I am satisfied with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing cost. It is a pure 10.

See all answers

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Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs Elastic Security

Compared 6% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Elastic Security

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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Elastic Security

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AlienVault OSSIM

February 2026

Download AlienVault OSSIM product report

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Security

February 2026

Download Elastic Security product report

Also Known As

OSSIM

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash

Overview

AlienVault OSSIM, Open Source Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), provides you with a feature-rich open source SIEM complete with event collection, normalization and correlation. Launched by security engineers because of the lack of available open source products, AlienVault OSSIM was created specifically to address the reality many security professionals face: A SIEM, whether it is open source or commercial, is virtually useless without the basic security controls necessary for security visibility.

AT&T

Elastic Security is a robust, open-source security solution designed to offer integrated threat prevention, detection, and response capabilities across an organization's entire digital estate. Part of the Elastic Stack (which includes Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana), Elastic Security leverages the power of search, analytics, and data aggregation to provide real-time insight into threats and vulnerabilities. It is a comprehensive platform that supports a wide range of security needs, from endpoint protection to cloud and network security, making it a versatile choice for organizations looking to enhance their cybersecurity posture.

Elastic Security combines the features of a security information and event management (SIEM) system with endpoint protection, allowing organizations to detect, investigate, and respond to threats in real time. This unified approach helps reduce complexity and improve the efficiency of security operations.

Additional offerings and benefits:

The platform utilizes advanced analytics, machine learning algorithms, and anomaly detection to identify threats and suspicious activities.
It offers extensive integration options with other tools and platforms, facilitating a more cohesive and comprehensive security ecosystem.
With Kibana, users gain access to powerful visualization tools and dashboards that provide real-time insight into security data.

Finally, Elastic Security benefits from a global community of users who contribute to its threat intelligence, helping to enhance its detection capabilities. This collaborative approach ensures that the solution remains on the cutting edge of cybersecurity, with up-to-date information on the latest threats and vulnerabilities.

Elastic

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care

Buyer's Guide

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Elastic Security

February 2026

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