No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AlienVault OSSIM vs Elastic Security 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

AlienVault OSSIM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
16th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Elastic Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (12th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (20th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (10th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.3%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.5%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.5%
AlienVault OSSIM1.3%
Other95.2%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

BP
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.
Laurentiu Popescu - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"OSSIM is the only solution that includes the large number of modules that we need: a vulnerability scanner, a network IDS system, a host IDS system."
"If you compare with other companies, like LogRhythm, etc., the top 8 or 10 CMs, I think AlienVault has the best price-performance ratio."
"What I like about this product, is that it is a fully-fledged solution."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"The open vault component and the checking of vulnerabilities are the most valuable features, and the page management helps with this, because if you know how your device is vulnerable at least you can do something about it."
"It is a perfectly nice and free tool for compliance testing, assessment, and some basic vulnerability."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an enterprise solution that sells easily. It is rated highly by organizations."
"With AlienVault you get everything in one box."
"Elastic Security is cost-effective compared to Defender and CrowdStrike."
"It is scalable."
"Elastic Security offers advanced features such as machine learning and integration with ChatGPT."
"Enables monitoring of application performance and the ability to predict behaviors."
"It is very quick to react, and I can set it to check anomalies or suspicious behavior every 30 seconds."
"In terms of query resolution, error searching finding and production issues, we're able to find issues quicker."
"Elastic is straightforward, easy to integrate, and highly customizable."
"It is very quick to react. I can set it to check anomalies or suspicious behavior every 30 seconds. It is very fast."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was a bit complex. You've got to do a lot of reading. It's not an intuitive implementation."
"The price of this solution is very high and it could be cheaper."
"AlienVault OSSIM is costly."
"The log collection is okay, but tracing the logs or tracing the events is a bit difficult."
"AlienVault OSSIM on-premise version is more difficult to implement than the cloud version. Additionally, they should add integration between several different environments at once and improve their online knowledge base."
"AlienVault OSSIM failed to provide our company a full insight, while also giving out a lot of false positives."
"The initial setup was a bit complex. You've got to do a lot of reading. It's not an intuitive implementation."
"It does not give me a prompt response for any such malicious traffic; it takes time to get that alert from the AlienVault system."
"Elastic doesn't have the features like other competitors in SIEM. For example, Dynatrace as a solution for SIEM has features that Elastic actually doesn't have."
"One thing they could add is a quick step to enable users who don't have a solid background to build a dashboard and quickly search, without difficulty."
"I would say that right now the Linux feature set is a little limited."
"Continuous upgrades can be quite inconvenient. My security testing team continuously reports vulnerabilities, and we have to fix and update the versions frequently."
"Technical support could respond faster."
"Better integration with third-party APMs would be really good."
"The solution could also use better dashboards. They need to be more graphical, more matrix-like."
"I would like the process of retrieving archived data and viewing it in Kibana to be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I used the paid version of the tool and found it to be expensive. It has been a while since I changed to Securonix. I will have to check whether AlienVault charges per device, user, or log."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"OSSIM is open source, and USM is the paid license. So, if you want, you can switch to USM. There you will have to buy a license, and they have a support team that helps you out on issues you face."
"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."
"The price of AlienVault OSSIM is too high sometimes for us to present to our customers. The price should be lower. We are on a three-year license to use the solution. We had to pay extra for the support."
"The solution is free."
"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."
"It is easy to deploy, easy to use, and you get everything you need to become operational with it, and have nothing further to pay unless you want the OLED plugin."
"Compared to other products such as Dynatrace, this is one of the cheaper options."
"This is an open-source product, so there are no costs."
"Compared to other tools, Elastic Security is a cheaper solution."
"We are using the free, open-source version of this solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What needs improvement with AlienVault OSSIM?
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 implement...
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...
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 ...
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.
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Elastic Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.