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AlienVault OSSIM vs Elastic Security comparison

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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)
24th
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)
11th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (14th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (25th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (12th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.2%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Security is 3.2%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Elastic Security3.2%
AlienVault OSSIM1.2%
Other95.6%
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
Cyber Security Lead at Orange
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

"The solution is free to use."
"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."
"A very good feature of AlienVault OSSIM is that it has many domains that can be integrated from different solutions."
"I recommend it due to the experience of the people running it."
"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."
"Most of the SOC or SIEM enterprise class products are very expensive, whereas with OSSIM you can start out with a smaller setup and then expand as you wish."
"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are case management, ease of configuration, and investigation."
"Technical support is excellent; they are very helpful and responsive."
"Enables monitoring of application performance and the ability to predict behaviors."
"The most valuable thing is that this solution is widely used for work management and research. It's easy to jump into the security use case with the same technology."
"We chose the product based on the ability to scan for malware using a malware behavioral model as opposed to just a traditional hash-based antivirus. Therefore, it's not as intensive."
"I like the indexing of the logs."
"We like Elastic Security because it's a REST API-based solution. That's the primary reason we use it."
"Elastic Security actually has a very good cost-benefit ratio compared to other vendors in the market."
"The cost is reasonable. It's not overly pricey."
"One of the most valuable features of this solution is that it is more flexible than AlienVault."
 

Cons

"The user interface needs to be friendlier across the board."
"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to other solutions it looks a bit outdated. Additionally, they need to improve their integration."
"I would advise others to not implement it for any enterprise-level organization."
"ArcSight works better than AlienVault right now."
"The solution is not scalable."
"AlienVault OSSIM is costly."
"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."
"The log collection is okay, but tracing the logs or tracing the events is a bit difficult."
"The solution is stable if you don't touch it too much. Meaning, it's technically stable, but if there is a period of downtime, you will face quite a big hiccup in getting it running again and stabilized."
"Anything that supports high availability or ease of deployment in a highly available environment would help to improve this solution."
"Elastic Security could improve the documentation. It would help if they were more simple and clean."
"Better integration with third-party APMs would be really good."
"The solution's basic setup takes time, and a lot of effort is required from the beginning to make it actually work."
"Their visuals and graphs need to be better."
"The documentation for this solution is very important, and more needs to be developed."
"It could use maybe a little more on the Linux side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OSSIM is free."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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."
"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 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."
"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 licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"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."
"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."
"The price is reasonable. It probably costs the same as ArcSight and LogRhythm SIEM. FortiSIEM might cost less than Elastic Security. There are no hidden or additional costs."
"Affordable but with additional costs"
"We use the open-source version, so there is no charge for this solution."
"The tool's pricing is flexible and comes at unit cost. You don't have to pay for everything."
"Compared to other tools, Elastic Security is a cheaper solution."
"Elastic Security is free to use."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
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 Enterprise12
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...
What is your primary use case for AlienVault OSSIM?
This solution is very similar to most of the other MSSPs that you would find out there. When I look at use cases, AlienVault was initially aimed at small to medium businesses. It grew, and that was...
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 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.
What needs improvement with Elastic Security?
I do not have any specific recommendations for improvements in Elastic Security, but I feel that the AI module should get more mature. These machine learning algorithms become better with time; as ...
 

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: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.