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AlienVault OSSIM vs OpenText Enterprise Security Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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
OpenText Enterprise Securit...
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
23rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 OpenText Enterprise Security Manager is 1.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenText Enterprise Security Manager1.6%
AlienVault OSSIM1.2%
Other97.2%
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.
SM
Cloud Security Archirect at IBM
Unified log analysis has strengthened incident detection and supports continuous attack simulation
I do not have any areas for improvement in ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) as I have not delved deeply into it; overall, it is a good package. I would like to see the detection and response features included in the next release of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM), as security orchestration and automation are increasingly important.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The threat policies of the solution are always very advanced and the best in the market, and they are very persistent in terms of keeping up with security protocols."
"I recommend it due to the experience of the people running it."
"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are case management, ease of configuration, and investigation."
"The solution has a very good open source community, and whenever we have problems, we are always able to resolve it online."
"I have deployed it widely because I find that it gives value for money."
"Network traffic analysis is highly efficient."
"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."
"Its user-friendliness is the most valuable. It is very easy to use and explore. The dashboard is very well packaged and integrated. You don't have to spend a lot of time in configuring it and checking out the RPM etc. It is also free and very powerful."
"From a customer perspective, the most important thing is network visibility, as companies have more visibility on what is happening in the network, so they will be able to make decisions, whether automatic or human decisions, based on the analysis given by ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM), which helps improve the security within the organization."
"ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) also gives you the main reason for the alert so it saves time in terms of investigating all alerts, including false alerts, so it improved my company."
"ArcSight helps to track all configuration changes and correlates with corresponding service tickets, helping a lot in auditing system and network admins with minimal time and cost."
"Once the rules are defined, it becomes easy to detect changes and generate automated logs."
"ESM has valuable features for event prediction and security analysis."
"The most valuable features of ArcSight ESM are ease of use and readily usable components."
"The feature that I have found the most useful is that it can be deployed to the cloud."
"Support is very good."
 

Cons

"Lacking in depth of reporting."
"The solution is not scalable."
"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."
"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."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The incidence reporting could be better."
"AlienVault OSSIM is costly."
"AlienVault OSSIM could improve by having better integration with some of the newer tools."
"Although we're able to customize it, it requires some level of subject-matter expertise for all the special adapters for collection."
"The interface—the console looks pretty old right now, so could benefit from a more modern design."
"When we need to consume old events, we have to wait for a long time. ArcSight should improve the database capability to reply to queries faster. It would also be interesting if they implemented network visibility. For example, they could add a feature like NetWitness with a model just for looking through the packets."
"ArcSight ESM could improve the alerts for the storage capacities or actions."
"They need to improve the Web UI, similar to how it is done with Splunk."
"There could be more API features for extracting logs on different devices included in the product."
"It can be overloaded when rules and data monitoring are not optimized and the system receives too many events."
"They need to develop NetFlow appliances that can be installed in the customer network on span ports, collect NetFlow, and send it to ArcSight without relying on the devices' NetFlow capability and their position in the network."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this."
"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"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."
"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."
"We are using the community version, which can be used for free."
"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."
"ArcSight ESM is an affordable solution, it cost approximately $200,000 for three years. This price was at a substantial discount."
"The pricing is great compared to others."
"The pricing model is expensive compared to open-source alternatives."
"Customers without a ton of resources to dedicate to deployment may be better served by a managed ArcSight service."
"The product licenses are inexpensive."
"The licensing cost is affordable if you get an enterprise license. The licensing is based on EPS, so you can probably provide a package of license for multiple ESMs with their correlational end fees. It is cost-effective."
"Price-wise, ArcSight ESM was a bit high compared to competitors, which factored into our decision to switch to Splunk. It couldn't cover all our business needs for what we wanted to implement."
"We have a license to use this solution. The price of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager is expensive."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Jun 28, 2015
Qradar vs. ArcSight
Continuing with the SIEM posts we have done at Infosecnirvana, this post is a Head to head comparison of the two Industry leading SIEM products in the market – HP ArcSight and IBM QRadar Both the products have consistently been in the Gartner Leaders Quadrant. Both HP and IBM took over niche SIEM…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Construction Company
11%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
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 Business37
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise59
 

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...
Which is the best SIEM tool for a mid-sized financial services firm: Arcsight or Securonix?
In my market, a lot of financial companies had or have an ArcSight installation. Just because in former times it was pretty good. Now a lot of them are looking for a more effective solution due to ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
I would rate the pricing of ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) around seven, as it varies based on features and demand, making it more affordable for larger organizations, while smaller one...
What needs improvement with ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM)?
I do not have any areas for improvement in ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) as I have not delved deeply into it; overall, it is a good package. I would like to see the detection and respo...
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
Micro Focus ArcSight, HPE ArcSight, ArcSight
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Lake Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Bank AlJazira, Banca Intesa, and Obrela.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. OpenText Enterprise Security Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.