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NetWitness Platform vs WatchGuard XTM [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NetWitness Platform
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (36th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (34th)
WatchGuard XTM [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1130436 - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Security and Infrastructure Expert at a government with 201-500 employees
Helps to deal with potential attacks and is available at a reasonable price
My company has had many benefits from the use of the product in the last eight years. The tool has streamlined our company's incident response process since it serves as a log repository, which allows us to correlate events and access different technology stacks. In our company, we were able to actually find some potential attacks, so it has been very helpful. The tool's integration capability isn't so great. In my company, we managed to integrate it with our Microsoft Azure Subscription, after which we managed to integrate it with other tools. You will face a lot of difficulties if you want to integrate it with your database monitoring tool, PAM solutions, or IAM products. The product has done well overall for my company's teams to deal with their workflow efficiency. I would not recommend the product to others. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.
Generalm4545 - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager- IT & Automation - Serum at a pharma/biotech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Protects from attack software and hacking but it doesn't provide the reports in a readable format
In my opinion, image clarity is very important, because I don't get the proper image product on reports. This means that functionality is not there. My engineer does not know how he can replace an order. We attach a log after any kind of keys using a utility instead. For the internet policies that we are implementing, the policy should be based on proper protocols. We use the default policies and there are a number of third-party protocols that appear here. Management with WatchGuard XTM means that out of policy is the problem from our side. In this way, we can not do effective services for people with this one. The policy definition with WatchGuard XTM is not proper for all use case requirements. I've got weekly business reports that I am expecting attachments with from WatchGuard XTM that display data for all kinds of consideration which should be required. Main User Functionality Level Order must adhere to using the admin functionality on the registry, or else our users publish their own name. Maybe these recommendations are irrelevant, but I say that the issue to improve most with WatchGuard XTM is the Main User Function.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is really scalable for the high-end power, enterprise customer."
"The most valuable features are the packet inspection and the automated incident response."
"Prior to implementing the solution, the customers had no visibility of their assets, however, after adopting the solution, they have gained complete visibility over all their assets, including a comprehensive understanding of the network and attack symptoms."
"Their customer service is excellent, one of the best."
"What we are mainly using are the RSA concentrator, RSA Decoder, Archiver, Broker, and Log Decoder."
"It gives customers visibility about their most important servers and devices."
"The solution is reliable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to write rules and triggers for network communication and then being able to investigate based on that, where you can see the payload and deconstruct the packets."
"XTM is more effective and friendly to use than our previous solution, and it also provides me with very good VPN tunnel stability."
"SNMP status monitoring and the Central Management Software."
"ROI was complete in less than a year."
"We switched because WatchGuard offered better value for money without sacrificing security."
"This product helped facilitate and protect our environment from the inside out, with features like DLP (data loss prevention) to content filtering all the way to port filtering and traffic shaping."
"For the current network demand, I think the product is worth buying as it is not too expensive and it has almost all the features that I need."
"After it is installed, you will have plenty of time to do something else, because it is stable and does not require you to reboot all the time."
"WatchGuard XTM2050A has enterprise class performance with the cost of an SMB class device."
 

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."
"We encountered stability issues in the earlier versions, and much fewer in the newer versions."
"The system architecture is complex and sometimes it’s hard to troubleshoot potential problems."
"The documentation is not as structured as I would like, personally, and I think that it can be improved and made much more user-friendly."
"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."
"If we have the ability to run a dynamic analysis through malware in the same suite, it would be great to have a sandbox solution to analyze malware through dynamic analysis."
"The product continues to crash. Even with tech support help, it does not resolve itself."
"Licensing should be improved."
"WatchGuard doesn't have a product that allows them to get into the data center. And that's just because there is no hardware to do the job. The software could do it, but there's no hardware that allows that to happen at the moment. So it doesn't scale as well as some other products, that's for sure."
"While the wireless capability is great for roaming and seamless hand-off, there have been intermittent issues with connection dropping on Apple devices."
"Now, you need to replace the appliance."
"We still haven't got the Terminal Service agent to work in our Citrix environment Application Signature also doesn't work well especially in SSL traffic"
"The VPN errors are not helpful when troubleshooting."
"Unfortunately, I could not disable the default Outgoing policy and if I do all clients could not access the internet even if I created another Outgoing Policy to replace the default one."
"Using the SSL VPN remote feature is great, but we additionally needed two-factor authentication, and employed a third-party product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is very expensive, so I rate the pricing a ten out of ten. The solution has an annual subscription."
"RSA NetWitness Logs and Packets do not have a subscription model, it's a one-time purchase. There is only a perpetual license."
"The product price was reasonable for my region and the market."
"Our license is for one year."
"We are on an annual license for the use of the solution."
"In comparison to other SIEM solutions such as Splunk, NetWitness is less costly."
"We have a perpetual license, so the total cost of ownership is not very expensive. It's a good investment."
"There is a licensing fee and the customer can choose whether he wishes this to be subscription-based or perpetual."
"Like all other manufacturers, there are a lot of features and different pricing. The best is to talk to a representative.​"
"The licensing and renewal is very expensive."
"Get at least a maintenance contract for the updates and take a larger WatchGuard than you need. A WatchGuard creates new ways to secure your network."
"It costs less than the SO works and others (like SonicWall, Cisco, and Barracuda) without increasing so much CPU use."
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Comparison Review

VS
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise20
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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.
What is your primary use case for NetWitness Platform?
I use NetWitness Platform ( /products/netwitness-platform-reviews ) in the financial industry as a good product with excellent capabilities and integration with various devices.
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Also Known As

RSA Security Analytics
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Los Angeles World Airports, Reply
AVG, Cyren, Kaspersky Lab, Lastline, NCP engineering, Trend Micro, Websense
Find out what your peers are saying about Splunk, Wazuh, Cribl and others in Log Management. Updated: October 2026.
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