Likelihood to Recommend This is pretty good AV product - lightweight, easy to install, and easy on system resources. It will take some getting used to on the end user side, it doesn't scan in a traditional way, and it does not have a taskbar icon so it hard to know if it's working or installed. My only complaint would be the false positives which I know every AV system has, but the problem with Barkly is that it alerts the users with a message (which they freak out about) and it alerts IT with an email. Again, not a major issue, but it can be annoying until it is overridden. The override process is super easy though, so its again, not a big deal.
Read full review At this point I'm saying a 4. While the marketing material make it appear to be easy to use and it was relatively easy to set up, as previously mentioned, each event description is based upon the individual asset making it nearly impossible for the administrator to be a SME for each asset. For example, if one of the assets reporting is a router, the administrator monitoring alerts would need to know what the various events are that can be triggered as an event for the particular router; however, if the asset is a workstation, the administrator would need to know the various events that are triggered for workstations.
Read full review Pros Customer Service. Usually, I'd put the technical details up front, and they're good with that too. But the service from pre-sales all the way through onboarding and continued account management is top tier. Our onboarding schedule got messed up, partly because of us, but that was rather minor. I always get prompt replies to any tickets, and they've even reached out to discuss my feature requests. When it comes to security, it's critical to have a responsive team, and they've got it. Detection seems good. It's hard to quantify exactly, but it seems that they always detect the bad actors. And when we get an alert, they include a bunch of details so we know what kind of scan they're trying to do, how far they got, etc. You can't prevent everyone from doing a scan on your IP, but it gives you a really good idea of where your soft spots might be. And if you're getting those low-level alerts, it's a reminder that it's there and working if you have a major event too. Very easy setup. This goes back to their customer support to some extent, as they walk you through all the steps required. But it's also about their technical solution, it's not so overly complex that it's fragile, nor does it take a great deal of time to deploy. And it's been zero effort to maintain since then. Read full review AlienVault USM is simple and easy to deploy. Sensors can be deployed in as little as 15 minutes through the setup wizard. The USM UI is easy to understand. I've trained multiple analysts who are able to perform their duties on their first day, in part because of USM Anywhere's ease of use. Top-notch built-in compliance templates and reporting features. Read full review Cons The interface is a little lacking from a search perspective but its not really meant for us to have to do the work Read full review Personally, I've wished I could purchase a service that would configure AV for my environment. I get a lot of traffic on a daily basis and I almost need to hire an analyst that just works on AV. Some of the filters when looking for a specific alert aren't that easy to use. Read full review Likelihood to Renew The centralized logging and retention for PCI compliance was our main driver, and it is meeting that need. Otherwise there has been enough frustration with the lack of documentation and the need to customize through the CLI that I would be open to alternatives.
Read full review Usability Once you are able to navigate the different panels, finding what you need is quite easily. Before getting used it it can be a bit of challenge . Each panel is quite well laid out and the filtering search capabilities are quite strong.
Read full review Reliability and Availability We do have issues with maintenance on the AlienVault USM as the disk fills up from time to time with other data sources. Sources for scanning logs and net flow data isn't calculated in regular disk maintenance and can easily fill up our disk if we do not keep an eye on it with some custom Nagios plugins. The system does properly trim logging data from logging sources properly.
Read full review Performance With the latest release of AlienVault USM overall performance has not been an issue. We have noticed single source events per second does not scale well with the overall system. 2,000eps on a vmware system with a single source produces delays of up to an hour for us. Pages, reporting and even raw log searches are rather quick though.
Read full review Support Rating The support we received from alienvault was excellent. They went above and beyond in making sure everything was working as it needed to be. They REALLY want their product implementation to be a success and our security goals be achieved. They are like a member of our security team.
Read full review In-Person Training I did not have any experience with "in person" training directly. The free online classes offered for a half a day are based on the actual training offered. These little teasers are very good and well worth your time to learn a few quick and dirty ways of getting more information from your SIEM
Read full review Online Training It was very well organized and helpful in using the product to the fullest extent. The instructor allowed time for folks who were involved with managed services to receive tuning tips in order to better support their customers. In addition, the course materials were automatically updated when the new version came out.
Read full review Implementation Rating AlienVault USM was a very simple to implement and get up and running. We started with a trial version and had that up and going within an hour of receiving email instructions from the sales engineer. We never had to contact support to get the system up and going. It was extremely easy to convert over to a full license once we started with a paid version.
Read full review Alternatives Considered I was using Alert Logic Insight for myself to improve my skills and ability to it. My organization was not happy using our previous website security program so I recommended for them to use this software. It has been more than 1 year and still, they are using this program without having any problem so far.
Read full review Splunk 's ES is a paid add-on on top of an already pricey product. Finding a MSSP that supports
Splunk and isn't a 6 figure annual commitment seems unlikely. LogRhythm did not have a cloud-based solution when we were considering SIEMs. Fantastic product though and have a good MSSP base. Devo did not have a MSSP partner base when we looked. Their product is fantastic too. AlienVault USM has good partners to choose from as well as an affordable cloud model, that's why we chose it.
Read full review Scalability The AlienVault USM is not very scalable. Some scalability can be achieved by installing additional sensors, but this only offers 500eps per sensor and is still overall limited by the installation type of VM or physical. We have also noticed the EPS (events per second) is rated overall and not towards a single source. A single source on a very healthy VMware partition tops out at 2,000eps for us, no matter how we configure it. Maybe this is a problem of the 5.2 release?
Read full review Return on Investment Return on Investment is measured in how protected our reputation is and Alert Logic contributes to this is a large way. Alert Logic provides excellent information security assurance to the business and allows us to feel more proactive. Read full review Once you hit the 150 asset mark, you have to jump to their unlimited license. There is no middle ground. We were only 10 or so assets above the 150 so we had to chose to either not monitor those assets or pay the price of the upgrade. AlienVault brings all the information to one place which makes it much quicker to track down problems. Read full review ScreenShots AlienVault USM Screenshots