Likelihood to Recommend I do think it is well worth the cost and consideration, especially if you are using it on devices containing electronic medical records, personal health information or personal privacy information or devices that contain proprietary information, critical business information or other information that needs to be securely protected. It can also be used to track a device (individual) as well if that is your goal. We use it as an extra precaution to track our mental health clinicians that do home visits. It allows us to keep track of their whereabouts, in case an issue arises at a client's home. We are able to send someone out to check or assist, alert emergency services or send law enforcement if a situation should arise.
Read full review If this is your first experience with a SIEM, this one can get you started. Take the time to learn the ins and outs of the product and you'll most likely be satisfied with it if your company is an SMB. If you need compliance reports, OSSIM is too small for you, you'll need to go with USM or USM Anywhere.
Read full review Pros I tracked a stolen computer all the way to Africa from USA and disabled it. I set up geofences with alerts. As soon as a computer got a wifi connection outside of our fences it would email me its current location. Absolute's persistent technology was helpful. -Even when a pawn shop would attempt to "wipe" a device before getting it online, as soon as it got online it notified me of the OS re-installation and current location. We could call authorities and they could recover the device for us. And they were happy it made their job easier and deterred the pawn shop from reselling stolen devices. Read full review Asset discovery. Once installed in a centric, network-accessible server, OSSIM can poll all your endpoints with common protocols (SSH, SNMP, WMI) to detect and discover site-wide assets to monitor. You only need to group them by your own criteria once added to the product. SIEM Event Correlation. You can define quite complex correlation rules to detect possible suspicious or malicious actions or attempts in your network, in order to categorize them as real threats or as false positives, thus streamlining your risk assessment and management. Ease of installation. The entire AlienVault OSSIM is self-contained in an ISO file, which can be burned into a DVD or just mounted in your server of choice (physical or virtual) for deployment. The installation process is automated and quote verbosed, with options for static IP, email messaging and others. Ease of access. Being AlienVault OSSIM a self-contained appliance, it can be accessed via web by any device that supports a web browser, being that desktops, workstation, mobile devices, etc. The OSSIM dashboard and other features are automatically rearranged to adapt to the particular device being in use. Read full review Cons I do not know where I would consider this product to be deficient in functionality, difficult to use or any major changes that needed to be addressed. I wish the pricing of this product was a little lower, but I do think it is well worth the cost and consideration, especially if you are using it on devices containing electronic medical records, personal health information or personal privacy information. Read full review Creating custom rules is a bit complicated Reporting could be improved Agent has caused conflicts with a couple of our other applications Read full review Usability AlienVault OSSIM is far easy to use and manage - provided you know what you're doing. As any SIEM application, there is some background knowledge required in order to take advantage of the product's functionalities, such as the log correlation and analysis. Other than that, the application is quite usable and robust.
Read full review Support Rating Everything is done through MSSP and installation pro services. Once those hours are burned up, then you're on your own without a lot of help. Typically the pro services hours aren't enough to get past 60 days and MSSP are hit and miss. We had a miss for installation helpers.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I have only used Absolute Data and Device Security (DDS). It was recommended by my Dell sales rep. After reviewing the product info, and loading a demo, it became clear that this is what was needed to add to our existing security to protect us from information loss due to a data breach on our portable devices. I presented this solution to the appropriate departments, and they agreed that this was something well worth the investment.
Read full review Originally my organization leveraged alien value due to the lower cost of entry and ability to manage it as a service provider. Unfortunately, after several years of working with this tool, it became unwieldy to use as it felt that almost every useful report had to be created by hand. As other tools have come out with the ability to do automated responses such as
Stellar Data processor, we have begun to evaluate alternatives.
Read full review Return on Investment Recovery of stolen assets. After recovering a few devices and students becoming aware of Absolute being deployed, it had a prevention effect deterring additional theft. It deterred pawn shops from accepting our stolen machines. Read full review It satisfied a requirement of our audit team (internal and external). Custom written alerts allow us to be proactive for some events. Stable product means we don't spend a lot of time keeping it up and running. Read full review ScreenShots Absolute Visibility Screenshots