AlienVault OSSIM vs BMC Track-It!

AlienVault OSSIM

The most obvious scenario in which OSSIM is well suited is in a single office/home office (SOHO) or small business, in which budget is reduced but asset discovery and vulnerability management are greatly needed and appreciated. OSSIM is lightweight and free, so the real challenge to face is to hire or assign an administrator to manage and operate it, instead of any investment on an expensive appliance. Also, as resellers, promoting usage of OSSIM to customers charging for professional services for installation, administration, and maintenance (remember that OSSIM doesn't have official support from AlienVault) is a great asset for the organization.

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Jose Quintero

Support Services Manager

GB Advisors, Inc.Computer Software, 51-200 employees

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BMC Track-It!

If you are looking for a flexible, highly customizable ticketing or work management tool, this will work for you. It will allow you to create (or use your existing) escalation workflows and tracking. You don't have to adjust to the structure of the software, it can be easily customized to you. The email ticket routing works well and is relatively simple to set up. You can customize the reports to get the very specific data you want.If you don't have a structure for tickets or projects, this doesn't have a built-in structure for you. So if you are looking for a solution to provide an escalation and workflow system for you, this may not be for you. There are products and services out there that have rigid structures in place already that may be a better fit.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 501-1000 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

AlienVault OSSIM

8.2

BMC Track-It!

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Centralized event and log data collection

8.4

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Correlation

8.0

—

Event and log normalization

8.0

—

Deployment flexibility

8.7

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Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools

7.5

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Custom dashboards and views

8.0

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Host and network-based intrusion detection

8.6

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AlienVault OSSIM

—

BMC Track-It!

6.1

Software and hardware inventory tracking

—

6.2

License management

—

6.1

Asset lifecycle monitoring

—

6.3

Contract management

—

6.0

Asset relationship management

—

5.8

Pros

Most of the configuration comes out-of-the-box suited for most environments. Setting it up is really easy, with the wizard, you can have it working in less than 3 hours of deployment, without counting asset installation.
Out-of-the-box dashboards are really useful. You can modify or add new widgets to suit your needs, but you'll most likely agree with what already comes configured.
The tickets feature for handling alarms is really easy to use.

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Ivan Montilla Miralles

Technical Services

GB Advisors, Inc.Computer & Network Security, 11-50 employees

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Easy to implement.
Ease of use.
Lots of features.

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Adam Hummer

IT Customer Service Coordinator

Unity HealthHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees

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Cons

It's a free product! Yes, it doesn't have all the capabilities of the USM anywhere, but it does a great job. Can't really complain.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Non-Profit Organization Management Company, 501-1000 employees

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Not for really large organizations.
Reporting module is not intuitive or easy to use at all.

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Adam Hummer

IT Customer Service Coordinator

Unity HealthHospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees

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Usability

AlienVault OSSIM8.0

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Jose Quintero

Support Services Manager

GB Advisors, Inc.Computer Software, 51-200 employees

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No score

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Alternatives Considered

AlienVault OSSIM has the upper ante in initial deployment price, being that it's open source. Also, with perhaps the exception of SolarWinds, it has a lower optimal requirements for onsite deployment, hence your OPEX won't be hit very hard by investing in new hardware to suit the appliance. The correlation engine is somewhat more robust that their counterparts in LogRhythm and SolarWinds, and the IDS (both NIDS and HIDS) are more reliable as well in terms of results. Finally, although Tenable SecurityCenter is more robust in dashboards, alerts and reports, it comes short in front of OSSIM in terms of real-time IDS and SIEM correlation.

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Jose Quintero

Support Services Manager

GB Advisors, Inc.Computer Software, 51-200 employees

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Track-It! was less expensive and had similar features to the competition.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Information Services Company, 51-200 employees

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