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AlienVault OSSIM vs Netsurion 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)
24th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Netsurion
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
49th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Managed Security Services Providers (MSSP) (27th), SOC as a Service (13th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (36th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (43rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.2%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netsurion is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AlienVault OSSIM1.2%
Netsurion0.8%
Other98.0%
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.
John-Berry - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager at ProfitSolv
The SOC center monitors, hunts, and notifies us of threats around the clock
I know they are working to resolve this issue, but Netsurion is currently unable to retrieve logs from S3 buckets. We use WP Engine for a lot of web hosting as well as AWS, and both of these platforms use S3 buckets. I would like Netsurion to be able to pull logs from Linux devices. We have some of that capability, and I believe they can do it. However, the way it works with Amazon is strange and glitchy. Therefore, working something out with Amazon would be great. Netsurion's SOC can be a bit too aggressive at times. We have asked them to adjust their playbook because I am tired of being notified about the same issue multiple times a day. I am aware of the issue, and it is not a cause for concern. Let's only take action on this issue if we see an actual problem.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There are a lot of people you will find using OSSIM since they are also offering OTX as a service"
"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."
"The initial setup was straightforward. I didn't have any problems."
"It is a perfectly nice and free tool for compliance testing, assessment, and some basic vulnerability."
"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 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."
"The solution is free to use."
"This solution is very stable; it runs on a Linux box, you only interface with it through the GUI, it works behind the scenes, and it has never crashed in the time that I have used it."
"The biggest lesson I have learned is that the outsourcing of this service has a dramatic impact on the organization."
"The SIEMs and managed service are its most valuable features. We get a weekly report from them which provides a culmination of them combing through millions of events which are triggered across our network every day and minute. Their information security experts basically boil that down to a report which I get emailed once a week. It identifies potential threats and the remediation that I should take to be able to quell those threats."
"We use those standard reports every day and monitor them, and it probably saves us three hours a day because the solution is doing the consolidation of the log files for us."
"When it comes to threat detection and response, it does a very good job detecting and blocking on its own. And the SOC is a nice added value because they're doing analysis on things that aren't as obvious, on things that you can't just detect with a signature or behavior. Also, any SIEM will come with a lot of noise, so having them do a lot of the initial analysis to find out what's critical and what issues are false alarms is very good."
"With the managed component, we get that personal attention and that consistent team to deal with, and to some extent, it's like they're part of our IT team."
"If we need to do a search for user lockouts, we can go, search, and find locations where they have been locked out, then keep track of those events, historically."
"Netsurion was easy to deploy. I have worked with other systems that were a little less complex, but they weren't quite as easy to deploy."
"Netsurion's security operations center is critical for us because they provide 24/7 monitoring, we've never had another company meet the same need in the past, and it's a valuable tool to have."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was not so easy, partly because the documentation was not up to date."
"ArcSight works better than AlienVault right now."
"The solution is not scalable."
"Lacking in depth of reporting."
"There are somewhat more false positives with the user behavior analytics, which could benefit from an additional machine learning model to detect user patterns more rapidly."
"It's so hard to configure and explore something new on it. It is not easy to find the steps we need to follow in order to use the solution effectively."
"I suggest more in-built rules based on modern threats and environments to make it a more competitive solution."
"From a management console perspective and the maturity of the dashboards, I would probably put it slightly behind some of the other players that have been in the market for ages."
"There's always room to improve because there would be no competition if they had a perfect solution. The GUI to perform searches within the product may not be intuitive to a new user."
"Netsurion's SOC can be a bit too aggressive at times."
"The MITRE ATT&CK framework could be faster when identifying and understanding sophisticated threats. Whenever something happens, we usually get notified a couple hours later."
"The threat detection and response is passive. We have asked if there were options for taking action, and we have not gotten any feedback on that, which would be useful to know. Depending on the situation and threat, some actions may not be possible, but we haven't gotten any feedback on what options could be directed and actionable with the understanding that it may have an extra cost. It would be nice to know or find out if it is actually possible to take actions by a SIEM service or a SIEM agent."
"With version 8, there are quite a few things; the query tool was one of the big ones, and the query speed was one of the big ones, but they've made some great strides between versions 8 and 9."
"Everything that I've wanted has been added in. EDR was added, and MITRE was added. Those were two big ones that we didn't even have to push for."
"We get a report generated on a particular day of the week and we go through it, trying to mitigate problems and make sure we're seeing everything that's happening. It would be helpful if the SOC spent a little more time with us going through some of those reports."
"With version 8, there are quite a few things. The query tool was one of the big ones, and the query speed was one of the big ones, but they've made some great strides between versions 8 and 9. There were also issues in version 8 around the ability to get the data back out. It's one thing to collect data, but it's a whole other thing to be able to present it or run it in a timely manner. The old tool, depending on how far back I was looking, might even time out and I would have to run it again."
 

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."
"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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"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."
"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."
"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 tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"We have seen time and cost savings. It prevents us from having to hire specialized people for this type of work. We would need to hire six staff members to accommodate the same service."
"I don't know if the pricing is by the seat but we're paying about $20,000 to 25,000 a year. On top of that, we pay for the managed support services. That runs us about another $35,000 or $40,000 a year."
"Our budget follows the calendar year. We just started a new budget year at the beginning of the month. We did budget for an increase in our threat management system selection. Therefore, we have the budget to implement and accommodate a threat management system change, including an increase for the quoted actions that we received to improve EventTracker. We are just waiting on our council to approve that budget, which might not be for a little while. Hopefully, when they do, we will be able to jump on doing something."
"Netsurion's pricing is competitive. At the same time, they're the only ones who do what we want to do the way we want it. I can't say we would've paid more, but we would've had to have come up with our own solution if they weren't providing that."
"It is a bit expensive as compared to some of the other products that have come out in recent years. Expense-wise, the only downside is that it is not cheap."
"The solution is fairly expensive, but in my experience, all of the SIEM applications that I've evaluated or looked at cost about the same."
"The pricing and licensing seem very reasonable. The managed service part of it feels like it gives me the equivalent of a full-time engineer for a lot less money. So, I feel it's a good value."
"Our pricing for Netsurion last year was US $52,000 per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Performing Arts
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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 Business10
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise7
 

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...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

OSSIM
Netsurion Managed Threat Protection, Netsurion EventTracker
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
The Salvation Army, The FRESH Market, Pacific Western Bank, NASA, American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), and Talbot’s Stores
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Netsurion and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.