AlienVault OSSIM vs. Snow License Manager

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

I have said at a number of events that I have attended, where other suppliers have shown their latest and greatest new thing, it is the fundamentals that need to work, and need to work well, and this is what Snow License Manager does. It does not take a team of 100 staff to get the tool working or to keep the tool functioning, it works and is stable out of the box. We have learnt that putting the right processes in at the start means that Snow License Manager can do what it has been designed to do and what we have paid for it to do. Audits from vendors now days are relatively simple actions, with the Snow License Manager doing it's job we can quickly run a report and know exactly what our position is and then act accordingly, quick, simple and accurate data at your finger tips, as long as you put the work in to enter the license details etc. If Snow License Manager could invent a robot to go around the business and find all these bits of paper for us then that would be perfect.

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

• SLM finds installations of software reliably.
• SLM determines the usage of applications, web apps, and the users who employ them.
• SLM Reports help management determine current and future application usage.
• SLM notifies when forbidden programs are installed.
• SLM provides complete license management.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Recognition of licensed plugins running in another application's executable is missing
• There is inconsistent use of Wildcards like "%" across search fields in the SLM and SMACC
• The search "filter" called "Also include not installed/used" is necessary to see not installed/used applications.

Incentivized

It is a tool that works, a tool that is reliable, and trusted within the industry and our company

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

While the deployment is fairly easy, updating the agent can be tedious. For one, each new version needs a request to customer support, but too it's not possible to "update" the old version rather than reinstall the new one. The lack of customization/configuration possible for the SnowAgent installer is irritating. Putting that aside, once the system is set up it's fairly easy to maintain and with very few hiccups, update. It overall runs very smoothly with little to no error.

Incentivized

Never had issues in this area. Always up and running

Incentivized

It took some growing pains and SNOW fixed performance issues for their product, but never had any issue with it

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

Support for the most part is responsive, but there are times when it takes more time than I would like to resolve. But then, most of the time it is related to growing pains and the fact I do not have a Dev/Test environment to test items and upgrades before going to Production

Incentivized

Love it, and I got to go to Sweden

Incentivized

It went well, we took out time and verified each step as we went

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

The deciding factor for the decision makers was the combination of license management and utilization statistics. Our desktop people wanted the utilization and reporting to be very granular and close to real time. Snow was purchased because they promoted their real time utilization in addition to the license management, alerting and reporting. To my knowledge, only Snow was given a proof of concept before the decision was made.

Incentivized

Not quite sure I understand the deployment question. We deployed company wide

Incentivized

Worked great and accomplished the goals

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

• Allowed for reducing licenses/cost at renewal or true-up time
• Shows us new software in our environment so we can get it removed or purchase appropriate licensing to avoid compliance issues
• Shows up blacklisted software when it appears in our environment allowing us to get it removed to avoid security issues

Incentivized