AlienVault OSSIM vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

The compared AT&T and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. AT&T is ranked #13 in SIEM , with an average rating of 7.2, and holds a 1.7% mindshare in the category. Microsoft is ranked #4 in XDR , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 4.8% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of AT&T users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

AlienVault OSSIM

Read 31 AlienVault OSSIM reviews

4,374 Views
4,287 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Microsoft Defender XDR

Read 106 Microsoft Defender XDR reviews

10,762 Views
6,027 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

AlienVault OSSIM

Microsoft Defender XDR

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between AlienVault OSSIM and Microsoft Defender XDR based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed AlienVault OSSIM vs. Microsoft Defender XDR Report (Updated: May 2023).

Buyer's Guide

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Microsoft Defender XDR

May 2023

Download the complete report

Helped 881,733 peers since 2012

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

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (13th)

Microsoft Defender XDR

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

106

Ranking in other categories

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (5th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. AlienVault OSSIM is designed for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and holds a mindshare of 1.7%, down 4.2% compared to last year.
Microsoft Defender XDR, on the other hand, focuses on Extended Detection and Response (XDR), holds 4.8% mindshare, down 6.8% since last year.

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
AlienVault OSSIM	1.7%
Splunk Enterprise Security	7.1%
Wazuh	6.4%
Other	84.8%

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Defender XDR	4.8%
CrowdStrike Falcon	10.1%
Wazuh	7.2%
Other	77.9%

Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

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

Kunle Oluwadiya

House security operator at Cypress Creek Renewables

Advanced threat hunting saves significant time in tracking and responding to incidents

Microsoft Defender XDR could be improved with a lower price. My main suggestion would essentially be what Copilot is providing, which is a single pane of glass, so I don't have to go to different windows. That's just a workflow consideration for me. It would be great to have all the information centralized into one particular data app. If I need to open up extra ones, I can, however, I would appreciate a future where everything I need is right there on one single pane of glass. Beyond that, there's really nothing else I see that I would want Microsoft to improve.

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 solution has a very good open source community, and whenever we have problems, we are always able to resolve it online."

"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."

"The solution is very stable. Compared to Qradar and Splunk, it's very stable."

"There are a lot of people you will find using OSSIM since they are also offering OTX as a service"

"The product is easy to use."

"The open vault component and the checking of vulnerabilities are the most valuable features. The page management helps with this. If you know how your device is vulnerable at least you can do something about it."

"I recommend it due to the experience of the people running it."

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

More AlienVault OSSIM pros

"The incident threat response and its ability to facilitate effective remediation against threats are the standout features."

"I like Defender XDR's reports and alerts. They give you updates about the latest hotfixes and zero-day vulnerabilities, which gives me all the information I need to maintain my servers."

"The attack simulation is excellent; initially, this feature wasn't very robust, but Microsoft improved what we could achieve with it. We can now customize our practice phishing emails and include our company logo, for example. Attack simulation also helps integrate with third-party solutions where applicable and provides an overview of our security architecture through testing. The summary includes areas for improvement in our protection and what steps we need to take to get there."

"The proactive remediation aspects and the surfacing of suspicious activity for investigation and escalation are the key aspects we appreciate most."

"The EDR and the way it automatically responds to ransomware and other attacks are valuable features."

"Microsoft Defender XDR is very comprehensive, covering a lot of the services, tools, and applications that we use, so it's very efficient, and it works out of the box."

"Another noteworthy feature that I find appealing in Microsoft Defender is the credit-backed simulation. This feature enables organizations to train their users on effectively responding to phishing emails through a simulated training environment."

"For me, the advanced hunting capabilities have been really great. It allowed querying the dataset with their own language, which is KQL or Kusto Query Language. That has allowed me to get much more insight into the events that have occurred. The whole power of 365 Defender is that you can get the whole story. It allows you to query an email-based activity and then correlate it with an endpoint-based activity."

More Microsoft Defender XDR pros

Cons

"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."

"Sometimes technical issues take very long to get resolved."

"We need more dashboards and we need more customization for dashboards."

"AlienVault OSSIM failed to provide our company a full insight, while also giving out a lot of false positives."

"AlienVault OSSIM should improve the deployment and make it unified like the USM."

"It takes some time. It does not give me a prompt response for any such [malicious] traffic. It takes time to get that alert from the AlienVault system."

"Lacking in depth of reporting."

"The user interface needs to be friendlier across the board."

More AlienVault OSSIM cons

"The user interface of Microsoft 365 Defender could improve. They could make it simpler."

"The Defender agent itself is more compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11. Other than these two lines, there are so many compatibility issues. Security is not only about Microsoft. The core technical aspects of it are quite good, but it would be good if they can better support non-Microsoft solutions in terms of putting the agents directly into VMware and other virtualization solutions. There should be more emphasis on RHEL and other operating systems that we use, other than Windows, in the server category."

"We should be able to use the product on devices like Apple, Linux, etc."

"Microsoft 365 Defender does not have a unique package with emerging endpoint security technologies, such as EDR and XDR."

"Microsoft Defender XDR could be improved in terms of speed, especially backend speed."

"When discussing the secure score, which includes overviews and recommended actions, some of these recommended actions are not applicable to us, particularly those related to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which we do not use in any of our environments."

"The abundance of sub-dashboards and sub-areas within the main dashboard can be confusing, even if it all technically makes sense."

"Microsoft Defender XDR can be improved as a solution because it's still quite costly; it's part of E5, E5 security, so the cost is still quite high, especially considering SME and C customers, or SMB customers."

More Microsoft Defender XDR cons

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."

"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."

"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."

"OSSIM is free."

"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."

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

"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."

More AlienVault OSSIM pricing and cost advice

"I believe the pricing is fair and acceptable. I consider it to be reasonable and satisfactory."

"I believe that the pricing of the licensing is fair."

"Microsoft Defender falls within a mid-tier price range compared to other security solutions."

"With the little idea I have about the costs, I can say that XDR tools tend to be a bit expensive. If you are using Microsoft Defender XDR, then you need to go for a subscription-based pricing model."

"Microsoft Defender XDR is included in our license."

"Microsoft should provide lower-level licensing options. They should do it in such a way that even an individual could purchase a license, and it should be entirely flexible."

"Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft."

"While Microsoft Defender XDR carries a higher cost, its ease of use compared to Defender may justify the investment."

More Microsoft Defender XDR 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

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

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	47
Midsize Enterprise	25
Large Enterprise	38

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

What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?

Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?

My experience with pricing, setup, costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender XDR is tied to our E5 subscription, which is very straightforward for us. We also purchase the uplift for our mobile us...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?

I am not aware of a mobile app that would be available for my team. With a single analyst, if she is ever away, it would be beneficial to have easier access. While she can use the web portal, the e...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wazuh vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 40% of the time

Venusense USM vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 10% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 7% of the time

USM Anywhere vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 7% of the time

Elastic Security vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 5% of the time

More AlienVault OSSIM Competitors

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Microsoft Defender XDR

Compared 11% of the time

Wazuh vs Microsoft Defender XDR

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Microsoft Defender XDR

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Defender XDR

Compared 4% of the time

TrendAI Vision One vs Microsoft Defender XDR

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Defender XDR Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AlienVault OSSIM

February 2026

Download AlienVault OSSIM product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender XDR

January 2026

Download Microsoft Defender XDR product report

Also Known As

OSSIM

Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender

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

Microsoft Defender XDR is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect against threats in the Microsoft 365 environment.

It offers robust security measures, comprehensive threat detection capabilities, and an efficient incident response system. With seamless integration with other Microsoft products and a user-friendly interface, it simplifies security management tasks.

Users have found it effective in detecting and preventing various types of attacks, such as phishing attempts, malware infections, and data breaches.

Watch the Microsoft demo video here: Microsoft Defender XDR demo video.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.

Buyer's Guide

AlienVault OSSIM vs. Microsoft Defender XDR

May 2023

Free Report: AlienVault OSSIM vs. Microsoft Defender XDR

Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.

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See our AlienVault OSSIM vs. Microsoft Defender XDR report.

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