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AlienVault OSSIM vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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)
10th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Enterprise Security
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
305
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (2nd), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 3.9%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Enterprise Security is 9.5%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Aman Aijaz - PeerSpot reviewer
An easy-to-scale open-source solution used for monitoring events on devices
The area for improvement is a lot. When I started using it on our enterprise side, the issue we faced was, for example, if we were running at that time on AlienVault OSSIM v5.7.4. So, for some orders, we had to install some packages, and when we tried installing that package, some dependencies got upgraded to a new version. Now once that dependency got upgraded, the SQL, since you might be aware that OSSIM uses SQL database, now SQL and all the dependency in everything was not on the same version, and that caused the database to crash. The aforementioned area should be eased out by upgrading the patches and upgrading dependencies. This kind of thing is a disadvantage of OSSIM, and I would like them to work on this. But I have also raised service requests many times and gave it a push on the community section too. However, since it is a local source, they don't reply much over there. That is why I don't like to work on OSSIM because it is unpredictable. Once the storage goes above 50 percent, it starts behaving unpredictably. If you get stuck with a situation, then you need to drill a lockdown into that. Sometimes you get no luck. Then you have to just reimage the server with the new fresh OS of AlienVault. As for additional features, not much because if you move to the newer version, it is kind of getting more stable. But, to make my life easier, then I would say try to give more features. I know it's open source, so they also cannot provide me with more features. But still, if they can provide me with more features because right now it's becoming old. Right now, we are even moving from SIEM to Security Data Lake. So when we move to it, this will be literally outdated. No one can even expect anything out of it. The way security is moving, it will be outdated very soon. They have to also provide something new to keep this going for the future also.
ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Has many predefined correlation rules and is brilliant for investigation and log analysis
It is very complicated to write your own correlation rules without the help of Splunk support. What Splunk could do better is to create an API to the standard SIEM tools, such as Microsoft Sentinel. The idea would be to make it less painful. In ELK Stack, Kibana is the query language with which you can search log files. I believe Splunk has also a query language in which they search their log files, but once you have identified the log file that you want to use for further security correlation, you want to very quickly transport that into your SIEM tool, such as Microsoft Sentinel. That is something that Splunk could make a little bit less painful because it is a lot of effort to find that log file and forward it. An API with Microsoft Sentinel or a similar SIEM tool would be a good idea.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is majorly used for threat detection of the agents on servers and endpoints."
"AlienVault OSSIM's GUI is very user-friendly."
"You pay monthly for the solution. I think it's one of the best products. If you compare with other companies, like LogRhythm, etc., the top 8 or 10 CMs, I think Alien Vault has the best price-performance ratio."
"The solution is very stable. Compared to Qradar and Splunk, it's very stable."
"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."
"Asset discovery is good."
"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 most valuable feature is the logging capability."
"The most useful feature for me is the ability to create different kinds of alerts and set a different kind of denominator that will capture the real event. That is helpful for a power user like me."
"It helps us uncover bottlenecks in the network."
"The stock analysts and security people use one single dashboard (one single location) to check our logs."
"We used it to create a custom anomaly detection data model to monitor the activity of our back-end services on an hourly basis relative to the past three months of activity."
"We have a more secure, robust environment, which keeps the harmful software out of the zone required."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is a standard solution providing good customer service and partnership."
"The flexibility of the solution is quite good."
"You can integrate Splunk with third-party security automation solutions and set rules for automatic response."
 

Cons

"I would like the solution to be able to integrate with my firewall, my IDS and my Honeypot solutions so that it can provide real-time reporting as things occur and then have alert sent to me on my phone when suspicious activity is happening."
"The correlation engine needs to be improved."
"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 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."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"We need more dashboards and we need more customization for dashboards."
"Sometimes technical issues take very long to get resolved."
"AlienVault OSSIM’s configuration and integration could be a little easier."
"In terms of the interface, it could include some improvements for the look and feel."
"I would like to see ability to master management. In terms of clustering, how it manages clustering needs improvement."
"Splunk should have more regional data centers in the Middle East."
"In the next release, they should include machine learning-based rules that would streamline the process of finding anomalies."
"Splunk could add more ways to manage archiving and storage. There isn't a web interface. You can do this on the SaaS version, but the on-premise platform doesn't have this option. It has other things but no option for remote NAS. I would like to have a personal web interface where I can specify how long logs should be stored. To have this readily available on the web, you need to adjust some settings on the backend. That is tricky."
"Sometimes, the data does not match what we're looking for, or the tool contains incorrect data."
"The solution could improve by giving more email details."
"I've never had too many issues with the stability. Years ago we had indexes crash but that was more on us. We didn't understand how to properly size Splunk."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"OSSIM is free."
"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."
"I would highly recommend anyone evaluating this option to download the free trial which allows for the ingestion of 500MB of data per day in order to get a feel for what Splunk does at its core. It will get pricey once your ingestion rates start to sky rocket, but I would consider it expensive given the amount of information that it allows you to analyze and react on straight out-of-the-box."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is affordable."
"It's a little bit expensive for a small to medium enterprise."
"You will eat up whatever you purchase quickly. The level of insights that Splunk empowers is addictive."
"The pricing model is based on the number of gigabytes that you ingest into the Splunk system. So it can be an expensive solution."
"The price of Splunk is reasonable."
"While licensing can be a concern, there are ways to reduce the licensing costs including filtering some events."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive."
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Comparison Review

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Feb 26, 2015
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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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.