AlienVault OSSIM Reviews

AlienVault's features are all quite valuable. Using the CM to get post pay logs and lateral pay logs to a connection is also helpful.

The biggest thing I always complain about is that the user intake is a very old version. In cloud versions, it is very good, but for on-premises versions, it's not so good. If they want to improve the on-premises version, they should upgrade the SQL.

The user interface could be improved.

The solution is very stable. We've never had any availability issues. Our consultant used a 12 core CPU, but he only used half of it.

From a scalability perspective, it's very good software. It is very scalable because it has a very flexible architecture. You can connect one source in one server, and then you can connect four additional ones off that. You can put one on in front of it and you can put four under it and you can put four each off of that, etc. It's pretty open to scalable architecture.

Technical support was very good. They've always responded on time.

The initial setup wasn't too complicated. We didn't have any problems.

We implemented the solution with the help of a consultant.

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 AlienVault has the best price-performance ratio.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

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.

They can add more compliance templates.

I have been using AlienVault OSSIM since 2015. 

It is a quite stable product.

It is perfectly scalable. We have ten in-house users.

I have used Splunk. AlienVault OSSIM and Splunk differ mainly in price. In Splunk, we need to do the correlation ourselves. Alienvault OSSIM is more user friendly. I don't have to learn a particular SQL language to do a query. It provides a new way of creating a query for any security event or management. 

The initial setup is very straightforward. It doesn't take more than 15 minutes, and you are done.

We predominantly deploy it on-premises. We have a few deployments on the cloud, but our focus is primarily on the on-premises deployments.

AlienVault OSSIM is free.

It is a very good solution. It is already more than adequate. It is a perfectly nice and free tool for compliance testing, assessment, and some basic vulnerability. 

I would advise upgrading to its paid version, USM, to get more features. It's well worth the money because of the provided threat intelligence, support, and training. When you upgrade to the paid version, you enjoy all these features. OSSIM doesn't have all these features because it is a freeware. 

AlienVault OSSIM is backed up by AT&T Cybersecurity, which is a Fortune Top 20 company. When you upgrade to the paid version, you also get support from AT&T, which is good.

I would rate AlienVault OSSIM a nine out of ten. I'm very happy with this solution. It is a great product.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

Our clients use this SIEM solution to collect and analyze logs that are generated by different appliances or different machines. It is a correlation tool for event management that gathers all of the events in your environment. This includes different hardware and different operating systems. There are rules in AlienVault that might be triggered based on the logs, and you can tell when there is a security attack or something else that is malicious that comes to your network. These types of events raise a flag and send a notification.

Our clients include banks and other financial institutions.

There are two versions of AlienVault. One is a community edition and the other requires a license. We are dealing with the licensed version and a hybrid-cloud environment.

The most valuable features of this solution are the data correlation and vulnerability assessment.

The price of this solution is very high and it could be cheaper. Normally it is sold to financial institutions, which is why it is high.

I first implemented this solution in 2012, seven years ago.

This solution is very stable. It runs on a Linux box and you only interface with it through the GUI. It works behind the scenes. It has never crashed in the time that I have used it.

Scalability is very good. It integrates with a number of other products, such as the help desk.

Technical support for this solution is very good. They are now owned by AT&T Security, and their people do a pretty good job.

We implement this solution for our customers.

We have a team of twenty engineers. Some work on infrastructure, while others handle security products. I am the head of the security team.

There are two versions of AlienVault available. The Community Edition is free, and the other version requires a license. The licensing fees for the non-community edition are paid on an annual basis, and there are no costs in addition to this.

There is a cloud version of this solution available, called AlienVault USM Anywhere, which defends data that is outside of the premises.

The OSSIM version is an open-source product, unlike AlienVault USM, or the cloud version, AlienVault USM Anywhere. You have to rely on the community for support. If you are a business or a bank or a financial institution then it would be better to go with the licensed version. You get support 24/7, while with the community you cannot find this support. On the other hand, an individual who is using it and can handle the issues should go with OSSIM because it's almost free. As long as you can handle problems, such as when it stops working, that you can fix over a couple of days or during the weekend, then it is fine. 

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We primarily use the solution just to check on devices. OSSIM does a lot of different things to help with this, including a bit of analytics, vulnerability testing, assessment, etc.

The open vault component and the checking of vulnerabilities are the most valuable features. The page management helps with this. If you know how your device is vulnerable, at least you can do something about it.

It's not easy to add a device that doesn't have a steady IP. Particularly when you're not putting a sensor on-site. When you have a sensor on-site, then that sensor speaks to the main sensor. We are trying to look for quality devices that give a dynamic IP, so it makes it practically impossible to add a new device.

If there was a way to do dynamic DNS, I think that would help.

The stability of the solution is fine.

Scalability can be a bit tricky, especially for network devices. We have about 150 devices on the solution right now that I am monitoring.

We didn't previously use another solution.

The initial setup was a bit complex. You've got to do a lot of reading. It's not an intuitive implementation. The deployment didn't take a long time, however.

I handled the implementation myself.

The solution is open-source, so it's free to use.

We did evaluate another solution.

We use the cloud deployment model. I have a server that I subscribe people to.

I would advise others to consider, if they get more customers, to do the commercial version the OSSIM from AlienVault. It's now part of AT&T, so there's a lot of support.

I would rate the solution seven out of ten.

I use it for monitoring. I use it for getting alerts on various malicious activities, if there are such on my network. I'm using the free version of this product, OSSIM.

As a media company, we follow MPAA, which is a set of controls for media businesses. The other set of compliance that we follow is DPP. We use AlienVault to comply to their standards.

We have various media organizations from which we get data into our network and then it goes out. If you put any control, any device, or anything to sense the traffic, it will say that it's malicious traffic, because of the nature of most of the traffic that we generate. We usually upload or download TV shows or films, they go in and out. The same size of IP packets increase because of the kind of transfer that we do.

In addition to that, we also are into broadcasting. We send the data to broadcasting stations, and from there it gets broadcasted on air.

It has really helped find critical vulnerabilities in our network at times. There was a brute force attack, a web attack, and I was able to discover that using AlienVault. There was a WannaCry in one of my systems, a trojan, and it was generating traffic towards the WannaCry domain. I was able to see that through the AlienVault system. It was not immediate. It was after almost three days that I was able to discover that there was a vulnerability within our network.

The threat alerts it gives me from time to time on harmful code within the network, or if it is generating any network traffic, are very useful. However, it takes some time. It does not give me a prompt response for any such traffic. It takes time to get that alert from the AlienVault system.

I'm using it for discovering assets every day. If there are any changes in my network, I give it additional subnets which have been added. It adds all the assets to my dashboard.

I find it very useful when it is for a small or mid-size enterprise. The problem I see in this product is that it is not meant for a large business or for managing critical business services.

AlienVault-like products are not meant for businesses like the banking sector or insurance and places that require strong regulatory compliance, in my experience, because of delays in response. And sometimes it is very complicated to configure this for specific requirements. Writing APIs, etc. takes time. On the other hand, if you look into other products in the market, it's easy to write APIs or integrate them with other database services or middleware and your application layer services, and get the alerts.

It does not help me to respond to the threats all the time. That's why we are also working with Splunk. Splunk is used by one of our service providers and we can directly ask them to use Splunk instead of any other SIEM solutions.

I find it to be stable. That's why I'm using it. Given that it's free of cost, whatever it gives us is more than enough.

I haven't explored scalability very much but the scalability is open. It's scalable up to a level where we can manage a mid-size business. As I said earlier, it is not suitable for the banking sector at all, because they require stringent controls and monitoring, real-time monitoring, which this tool doesn't have; at least, I haven't seen it. Perhaps it's my bad that I haven't seen this tool give me a proper response, on time. It takes time for it to give a response.

I've used and evaluated QRadar vs AlientVault very extensively - I was working with IBM. I used it for ten years. I used and have compared ArcSight vs AlienVault as well, at my previous organization. At that organization, I also deployed AlienVault because I am comfortable with AlienVault.

Those competitors to AlienVault are very user-friendly, their interfaces are very user-friendly. They have multiple options such as generating reports and getting immediate alerts.

If somebody changes the privileges in the system or some code changes the privileges in the system, AlienVault is lacking there. Machine-learning and artificial intelligence are things that AlienVault should explore. If those were added to it, no product could replace it.

My setup is very complex. The network is segmented and configured differently for different customers.

The initial deployment started around two years ago. It took around one-and-a-half years to make this product stable and to talk to each and every device in my network and give me some sort of report which would actually give me the right posture of my security status. I did the complete deployment myself.

The implementation strategy was there and that's why it took a long time. We were also engaged in other business activities, so it took a long time to make this into a proper deployment.

We didn't have any third-parties involved. It was all mine. I started with the web, through YouTube, through various other social media, and a couple of people who used it earlier. I now have several years of experience. That has helped me a lot in getting this deployed.

There is a financial value. It's giving me some value and I've already had a good amount of results on AlienVault products. I deployed it at multiple stations, three or four cities in India, two in the US, and one in the UK. I have deployed it widely because I find that it gives value for money. If I got the paid version at the right cost, I think it would be the best product available in the market for a business like ours.

A product like Splunk will squeeze you for money if you ask them to provide similar services. So I find this solution very useful in that sense.

AlienVault pricing is the best. Whatever cost you are paying, you are getting a return on every penny. I have advised multiple friends of mine, those who are into the security arena, to go for AlienVault. It's not like your IBM, your QRadar, or Splunk, where the cost is too high.

If your network is flat, if it is not that complicated, then you should go for it. I'm using it free of cost, so I'm very happy with AlienVault.

I'm the only one who's controlling it. I have a team of five. They are my soft team. They monitor all the alerts 24/7. It takes a team of five to maintain it. I lead the security section and among the other five, two are network specialists and three are system administrators.

We use the product for user analysis and network visibility. 

AlienVault OSSIM is an enterprise solution that sells easily. It is rated highly by organizations. 

AlienVault OSSIM is costly. 

I have been working with the solution for more than a year. 

The solution is stable. 

The product is scalable. 

The tool's installation is straightforward. 

The tool's licensing costs are yearly. 

I rate AlienVault OSSIM an eight out of ten. 

I use AlienVault OSSIM for the protection of our customers and to find critical events. 

There are two different versions of AlienVault OSSIM, one is on-premise and the other is cloud.

The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are vulnerability assessment, network intrusion detection system, response to critical events, and awareness of the whole network.

AlienVault OSSIM on-premise version is more difficult to implement than the cloud version. Additionally, they should add integration between several different environments at once and improve their online knowledge base.

I have been using AlienVault OSSIM for three years.

The older versions of AlienVault OSSIM were not stable, but the latest version was better.

I rate the stability of AlienVault OSSIM a four out of five.

I rate the scalability of AlienVault OSSIM a four out of five.

We have three people who use this solution in my company.

The support from AlienVault OSSIM is good, they are responsive.

I rate the support from AlienVault OSSIM a five out of five.

Positive

The initial setup of AlienVault OSSIM was easy. However, I have many years of experience in the field of network administration. The process took one day to complete.

We did the implementation of AlienVault OSSIM, we are all certified. We have five engineers that did the implementation of the solution.

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.

We have two people that do the maintenance for the solution.

I rate AlienVault OSSIM an eight out of ten.

I have deployed AlienVault OSSIM in a couple of small environments for monitoring.

The paid version of the solution has reporting and better scalability options.

When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to other solutions it looks a bit outdated. Additionally, they need to improve their integration.

I have been using AlienVault OSSIM for approximately seven years.

The solution is stable.

The free version is lacking some of the scalability options.

I have used QRadar and ArcSight.

The configuration of the solution is difficult. There are videos we can watch but we do not have time to watch videos. We want there to be better documentation that we can use.

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 have evaluated ELK Stack and Security Onion.

I rate AlienVault OSSIM an eight out of ten.