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AlienVault OSSIM vs OpenText Enterprise Security Manager comparison

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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)
20th
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 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 OpenText Enterprise Security Manager is 1.6%, down from 1.7% 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 paid version of the solution has reporting and better scalability options."
"What I like about this product, is that it is a fully-fledged solution."
"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."
"Network traffic analysis is highly efficient."
"It has helped us remediate threats in the past by providing significant events that assisted in identifying suspicious activities, such as logins from multiple countries."
"You can customize the dashboards as well as the reporting."
"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are case management, ease of configuration, and investigation."
"The dashboard is the solution's most valuable aspect; it brings everything into one central point where I can actually look at it and go, "Okay, I understand what's going on," and the solution works well and allows me to have visibility into anomalous events."
"ArcSight is better than them all when it comes to filtering, normalization, aggregation, dashboards, reporting and correlation, multi-tenancy and custom devices support."
"Its versatility when it comes to vendor support, the powerful ESM and logger tools, the Alert and Case Tracking mechanism, the Express all-in-one component for small businesses, the efficient NTP for blocking identified threats, and the ArcSight Flex Connector Development module for unsupported vendor products make this solution extremely capable."
"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."
"The tool is good for correlation and aggregation. We use it as a collection platform."
"ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager (ESM) is very cheap compared to other tools."
"From a daily perspective, ArcSight prevents attacks while it actively monitors our systems."
"The solution is pretty stable."
"The simple fact that HPE ArcSight helped us several times to survive malware attacks (Conficker was one such attack) and it also helped a lot with different compliance audits, which was enough for us."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was a bit complex. You've got to do a lot of reading. It's not an intuitive implementation."
"The initial setup was not so easy, partly because the documentation was not up to date."
"The price of this solution is very high and it could be cheaper."
"The user interface needs to be friendlier across the board."
"We need more dashboards and we need more customization for dashboards."
"Sometimes it takes very long for your issue to get resolved."
"AlienVault OSSIM should improve the deployment and make it unified like the USM."
"The user interface could be improved."
"The first limitation is with the ArcSight Data Storage Manager (ADSM). ArcSight's total capacity is currently capped at 12 TB. This becomes an issue if a customer needs a longer real-time data retention period, such as exceeding 90 days or reaching a year or even ten months. Increasing the disk space beyond 12 TB is not currently possible."
"The biggest requirement is that there is no cloud solution for this product yet. They need to create a cloud version. It's the biggest thing they can do to make the solution better."
"ArcSight ESM needs to improve performance, user interface, and automation."
"There are several improvements that we would like to see, including: Building a system based on a log collection (SOC), a scenario for external encroachment, and Operator training."
"The solution could be more stable."
"For somebody who is new and just starting with this product, they find it really tough."
"It's very expensive in its licensing model."
"The hardware requirements are very high and the solution has poor stability when they are not met."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AlienVault OSSIM is an open-source solution."
"OSSIM is 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."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."
"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."
"We're paying a fee for an MSSP, and the cost of the total cost of ArcSight ESM was approximately three to four million dollars a year. The price was less than similar solutions. We did not have additional fees."
"ArcSight is pretty expensive compared with its competitors. I believe that is fine as it provides value."
"ArcSight can be a little bit expensive because of the area that we work in and the cost. Licensing is mostly on a yearly basis, not monthly."
"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."
"The pricing is great compared to others."
"Customers without a ton of resources to dedicate to deployment may be better served by a managed ArcSight service."
"Pricing is good, I'd rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with ten being low price. It's better than Splunk and IBM QRadar because their pricing is based on EPS."
"It's a good price, it's one of the cheaper solutions."
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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
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
8%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.