AlienVault OSSIM vs. Norton Small Business

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.

Incentivized

For a small or mid-sized firm with distributed computing requirements like ours, Symantec Norton is well suited. It is an ideal solution as it is easy-to-use and the pricing is the right fit on account of geographical customisation. Small businesses, especially, realise the value of endpoint protection only when they encounter serious issues, therefore their product becomes well suited for those who may dither because of the lack of clarity and poor pricing structure of other options. However, the most important feature still remains its effectiveness, which makes it the most optimal option at the right price

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• In term of pricing
• In term of Advanced threat protection
• User friendly solution and good support team.

• Creating custom rules is a bit complicated
• Reporting could be improved
• Agent has caused conflicts with a couple of our other applications

Incentivized

• Confusing Workflow at Renewal
• Fixed Bundle Sizes may be an issue for Smaller Businesses with in-the-middle requirements
• Easier Installation

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Data Protection is ensured which ensures positive focus from all team members on their work which certain results in improved productivity at the individual level of 2-4% that consequently improves organisational productivity.
• Our cost of external inputs for data security issues is NIL therefore obviously reducing the bottomline by 1-2% which would be the average cost incurred by organisations of our size in general. Of course an event maybe costlier, but I am sticking to averages since we have had no events.
• Overall, we feel that the cost of security software is also lower on account of optimised pricing by Symantec. While the expense in this segment is a fraction of total IT costs, and therefore tangible savings are also fractional. However, So, since the value of outcomes (lack of security related negative events) is much higher, intangible benefits are even higher.

Incentivized