No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AlienVault OSSIM vs USM Anywhere 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)
27th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
USM Anywhere
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
29th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (31st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (39th), Compliance Management (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.1%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of USM Anywhere is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AlienVault OSSIM1.1%
USM Anywhere1.4%
Other97.5%
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.
Kris Nawani - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder/Director at Bangkok MSP Company Limited
Offers complete coverage without the need to install additional software
USM Anywhere is used for threat detection and investigation. It provides a solution with built-in threat intelligence and various other investigation tools The solution offers complete coverage without the need to install additional software, as it is maintained by the vendor. It helps in saving…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a perfectly nice and free tool for compliance testing, assessment, and some basic vulnerability."
"The product is majorly used for threat detection of the agents on servers and endpoints."
"The paid version of the solution has reporting and better scalability options."
"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are case management, ease of configuration, and investigation."
"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."
"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."
"I recommend it due to the experience of the people running it."
"The solution is very stable, and compared to QRadar and Splunk, it's very stable."
"Vulnerability scanning helped out shortcomings of what was not patched in the past and what needed to be patched. This assisted with fine tuning the environment for compliance."
"The product has been very stable."
"I'm glad we purchased it, wished we would have gone with outside monitoring instead of inhouse and there is a lot to learn; great product though."
"Implementation took few days and it's easy to complete the task within the given project time line."
"The most useful feature is the customization for alarms, alerts, and reports."
"The IDS and the threat intelligence are very useful. They are very intuitive and data-rich."
"The ROI is very good if you evaluate all the services which AlienVault can help you with: detection of Malware, bad activities, suspicious behavior, etc."
"The pricing for this solution with the 3 major components: SIEM, FIM, and vulnerability scanning, can’t be beat."
 

Cons

"The biggest thing I always complain about is that the user intake is a very old version."
"The user interface could 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."
"They can add more compliance templates."
"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to other solutions it looks a bit outdated. Additionally, they need to improve their integration."
"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 incidence reporting could be better."
"The correlation engine needs to be improved."
"We develop additional rules and scripts to make it more usable."
"The vulnerability management solution is worse than buying a Nessus Professional license."
"Maybe logs are the problem, as the database query is too slow. If you want to search something, you need time to find it."
"There were deployment issues. At the time, it was right after USM Anywhere had been released, and not all of the documentation was posted."
"Customer service is 4/10 - they need to provide faster responses to emails."
"The log query capability is pretty restrictive and I find myself searching through raw logs via command line more often than the GUI."
"More information about what the alerts mean and how they are derived would be useful when determining their significance."
"Search performance can be slow. The Raw Logs feature is painfully slow. And if we're talking about the newer, the Anywhere product, you can't even schedule reports on the thing. There are probably a dozen other features I'd really like to see there, but that would be one of the biggies."
 

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."
"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 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 an open-source solution."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"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 OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."
"Its price is much lower than McAfee ESM."
"It is affordable, and it also has many features that the premium products such as ArcSight and QRadar have. It is a very good platform for a SIEM solution. Everything is included in the price."
"I don't know exactly, but I know it is based on the number of logs and the retention duration, such as 30 days or something like that. So, the smallest package is about 500 a month for 30 days of logs. There is a virtual machine. You need resources for it. It is a log collecting VM. They provide the software, and you just have to load a virtual machine. So, you're going to incur some CPU RAM and storage for wherever this log collecting appliance is running, which typically is in our cloud and on our platform for the customer."
"Pricing is very competitive with other products and you get much more functionality from AlienVault."
"We pay around $12,000 a year including storage."
"AT&T AlienVault USM is an expensive solution and we pay for the license and the support separately. We paid for the license and support for three years."
"It's very reasonably priced. It was one of the lowest among the ones I looked at. Licensing is pretty flexible. They can do a two-year or a three-year, even a one-year, perhaps."
"Negotiate the best package for your environment."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
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 Business65
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise25
 

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...
What needs improvement with AT&T AlienVault USM?
There are scalability issues due to a 60 TB limit, which restricts its use for large customers like banks. It is also limited when used with bigger products and has complex password requirements.
What is your primary use case for AT&T AlienVault USM?
USM Anywhere is used for threat detection and investigation. It provides a solution with built-in threat intelligence and various other investigation tools.
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
AT&T AlienVault USM, AlienVault, AlienVault USM, Alienvault Cybersecurity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
Abel & Cole, Bank of Ireland, Bluegrass Cellular, CareerBuilder, Claire's, Hays Medical Center, Hope International, McCurrach, McKinsey & Company, Party Delights, Pepco Holdings, Richland School District, Ricoh, SaveMart, Shake Shack, Steelcase, TaxAct, Taylor Morrison, Vonage and Zoom
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. USM Anywhere and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.