AlienVault OSSIM was an open source Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). AlienVault was acquired by AT&T Cybersecurity, now LevelBlue, and OSSIM is no longer available for sale.
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Microsoft Sentinel
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Microsoft Sentinel (formerly Azure Sentinel) is designed as a birds-eye view across the enterprise. It is presented as a security information and event management (SIEM) solution for proactive threat detection, investigation, and response.
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 …
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.
If you're already a Microsoft shop, it is the option. That's the only one. If you're not a Microsoft shop or not very deep into it, like E5 licenses, I'd say you get much less out of it than you might from some other products.
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.
The visual presentation of data is terrific, so including what we had prior to Microsoft Sentinel, it presents data in a much more usable way, so that's been quite refreshing. It's not quite as complex to understand what you're looking at.
It's hard to pinpoint anything that's wrong with it. It's the only thing is the cost. Everyone wants stuff cheaper, right? Because the product itself is hard to find flaws in, it does exactly what it says it does. I'd love to use it more, but the cost is too expensive, so you have to use it in specific use cases to drive down the cost. If you could open the floodgates, then you would basically use it more.
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.
User interface and overall usability are critical for any security platform, and Microsoft Sentinel performs very well in this area. The UX design makes core functions intuitive and easy to access, which enables analysts to work efficiently and use the platform’s capabilities effectively.
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.
Microsoft support is one of the highest rated on the market. It has global and multilingual support. Calls can be made over the phone and the solution is virtually instantaneous with the help of Microsoft engineers. It's great!
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.
These are all the Microsoft products. We have used Splunk. And again, I would say Microsoft Sentinel stacks up because it's a native tool that is more like an ecosystem. It's not a standalone tool. It's like if you're in the Microsoft stack, Microsoft Sentinel will stack up best to use these things. And of course, Microsoft Sentinel works across clouds as well. So I would recommend Microsoft Sentinel over Splunk or other options.
As any cybersecurity product, this has to be more with risk to avoid loss in case of a ransomware that more than relate to a productivity increase. Maybe the impact could be that instead of having people that are checking 24/7 the dashboard, you could implement Sentinel and have less people checking that or people with less expertise. So the saving will be a minor but will be a saving in the cost of your team.
