AlienVault OSSIM vs NetWitness Platform comparison

AT&T and NetWitness are both solutions in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category. AT&T is ranked #12 with an average rating of 7.2, while NetWitness is ranked #31 with an average rating of 8.3. AT&T holds a 1.9% mindshare in SIEM, compared to NetWitness’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of AT&T users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of NetWitness users who would recommend it.

AlienVault OSSIM

Read 31 AlienVault OSSIM reviews

4,311 Views
4,225 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

NetWitness Platform

Read 36 NetWitness Platform reviews

1,929 Views
1,196 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

AlienVault OSSIM

NetWitness Platform

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

NetWitness Platform and AlienVault OSSIM are reputable cybersecurity solutions known for their advanced threat detection capabilities. While users prefer AlienVault OSSIM's support and pricing, NetWitness Platform's comprehensive features justify its cost.

Features: NetWitness Platform offers deep packet inspection, threat intelligence, and more advanced extensive features. AlienVault OSSIM is recognized for its simplicity and integration capabilities, making it user-friendly.

Room for Improvement: NetWitness needs better scalability and third-party tool integration. AlienVault OSSIM requires enhanced documentation and more frequent updates, focusing on support improvements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NetWitness Platform's deployment is complex but supported by strong customer service. AlienVault OSSIM provides a straightforward deployment process with reliable customer support.

Pricing and ROI: NetWitness Platform has higher setup costs but offers significant ROI through its enhanced capabilities. AlienVault OSSIM offers competitive pricing and reasonable ROI, being more cost-effective upfront.

To learn more, read our detailed AlienVault OSSIM vs. NetWitness Platform Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AlienVault OSSIM vs. NetWitness Platform

December 2025

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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)

12th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

NetWitness Platform

Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

31st

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (34th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.9%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetWitness Platform is 0.8%, up from 0.6% 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 (%)
AlienVault OSSIM	1.9%
NetWitness Platform	0.8%
Other	97.3%

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.

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MOTASHIM Al Razi

CISO at One Bank Limited

It is a stable solution, but they should make the user interface easier to understand

The solution's initial setup takes work. We have to organize multiple paths and many features. The deployment process takes less than a week. But it takes a month to complete if we want to make the solution smarter by integrating it with various devices. I rate the process as a six out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Better than other SIEM solutions because almost everything can be integrated."

"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are vulnerability assessment, network intrusion detection system, response to critical events, and awareness of the whole network."

"The product is easy to use."

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

"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are case management, ease of configuration, and investigation."

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

More AlienVault OSSIM pros

"What we are mainly using are the RSA concentrator, RSA Decoder, Archiver, Broker, and Log Decoder."

"Alerting Module: It provides real-time event processing language on all the logs/packets stream for advanced alerting, i.e., using SQL LIKE statements."

"It's fully scalable. There is no limit. Of course, the license limits per day the number of terabytes. In my opinion, it's very flexible."

"Performance and reporting are very good."

"NetWitness Platform offers flexibility for deployment and robust integration capabilities."

"The most valuable features are its ingestion of logs and raising of alerts based on those logs."

"It gives the capability for the incident response team to correlate logs to identify any kind of problem like malware and incidents in a general sense, both for logs and packets."

"In my opinion, the solution's most valuable feature is its capacity to monitor network traffic, logs from devices within the network, and network captures. This capability extends beyond logs to include full network capturing."

More NetWitness Platform pros

Cons

"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."

"AlienVault OSSIM is costly."

"The correlation engine needs to be improved."

"AlienVault OSSIM could improve by having better integration with some of the newer tools."

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

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

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

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

More AlienVault OSSIM cons

"I'd like to see improvement in its ease of use. It's basically unusable. It's overly complex."

"The threat detection capability and centralizing and upgrading capability need to be improved. The threat alert capability needs to be improved as well because there is some lag time at present. They need to work on their database search too."

"They should implement algorithms to digest that data and produce additional, more advanced reporting, alerting and support of internal security teams."

"The user interface is a little bit difficult for new users and it needs to be improved."

"Log aggregation is an issue with this solution because there are a huge number of alerts in a single instance."

"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets can improve the threat level aspect, it is lacking compared to other solutions. Whenever any hacking activity or any other threat factor occurred they used to provide the coverages very fast when comparing RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets. I heard the other three solutions, from a discussion with my team members who had experience in other solutions, they used to say that. Whenever any issues happened across the globe RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets are a little bit slow improving those detection mechanisms."

"Sometimes, it gives me static when integrating Windows-based systems. It should produce a precise log of sorts as to where the problem is. For example, a few days ago because of the McAfee application firewall, I couldn't get access to the particular Windows machine. So, my team and I had to figure out by ourselves that there was a virus responsible for the obstacle. This solution should trigger a meaningful log or message indicating the reason the user or implementer can't get into the machine."

"The product's licensing models are complex to understand. This particular area needs improvement."

More NetWitness Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"OSSIM is 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."

"AlienVault OSSIM is free."

"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."

"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."

More AlienVault OSSIM pricing and cost advice

"There is a licensing fee and the customer can choose whether he wishes this to be subscription-based or perpetual."

"The licenses are good but the cost is very expensive."

"We have yearly licensing costs. The license fee can be based on the volume of EPS. Some organizations may have, as a gentlemanly gesture, 10,000 EPS and get a 3,000 EPS license but actually use 5,000 EPS."

"The product is expensive."

"It’s cheaper to run virtual machines in a VMware environment."

"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."

"The NetWitness Platform may be affordable only for enterprise-level customers, as it may not be within the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."

"This is a pricey solution; it's not cheap."

More NetWitness Platform pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

Vinod Shankar

Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 26, 2015

HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm

We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Performing Arts

Computer Software Company

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	8
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	20

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AlienVault OSSIM?

Asset discovery is good.

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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 NetWitness Platform?

The product's initial setup phase was not at all difficult.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetWitness Platform?

The pricing is comparable to others, and I consider the cost to be intermediate. Specific cost details are unknown to me.

See all answers

What needs improvement with NetWitness Platform?

There is currently no need for improvement in the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ), though there could be potential enhancements by integrating with AI.

See all answers

Comparisons

Wazuh vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 47% of the time

Venusense USM vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 9% of the time

USM Anywhere vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 7% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 6% of the time

ManageEngine Log360 vs AlienVault OSSIM

Compared 1% of the time

More AlienVault OSSIM Competitors

IBM Security QRadar vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 13% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Elastic Security vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Sentinel vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Trellix Network Detection and Response vs NetWitness Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More NetWitness Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

AlienVault OSSIM

January 2026

Download AlienVault OSSIM product report

Buyer's Guide

NetWitness Platform

January 2026

Download NetWitness Platform product report

Also Known As

OSSIM

RSA Security Analytics

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

NetWitness Platform is an evolved SIEM and threat detection and response solution that functions as a single, unified platform for ALL your security data. It features an advanced analyst workbench for triaging alerts and incidents, and it orchestrates security operations programs end to end. In short: NetWitness Platform is all you need to run an intelligent SOC.

NetWitness

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply

Buyer's Guide

AlienVault OSSIM vs. NetWitness Platform

December 2025

Free Report: AlienVault OSSIM vs. NetWitness Platform

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