AlienVault USM vs Datadog | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 7.5 out of 10

Based on 679 reviews and ratings

Score 8.2 out of 10

Based on 96 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

AlienVault USM

Datadog

Centralized event and log data collection

Correlation

Event and log normalization

Deployment flexibility

Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools

Custom dashboards and views

Host and network-based intrusion detection

Pros

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.

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Tier II SOC Analyst

Rendition Infosec LLCInformation Technology & Services, 11-50 employees

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APIs, the ability to interact with the data we pull into data dog is key. We port the information over to Servicenow, so the ability to pull everything into DataDog, then Servicenow, is a key component of our success here at Wayfair.
Simple Interface - clean, useful, effective. Allows users to use DataDog for one reason, get work done.
Lightweight agent on hosts

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Anthony Zappala

ServiceNow Lead Engineer/Architect

WayfairInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

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.

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Christian Holton

System Administrator

Enthought, Inc.Computer Software, 51-200 employees

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User interface could be improved in some areas, looking for host information and the agent install link takes a bit of time.
Configuration of the agent is generally done via a config file which is a pro and a con. It would be nice to have some UI to configure various agent options.
Billing isn't entirely straightforward, they could use more reports to figure out the source of your monthly costs.

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Kevin Van Heusen

Software Architect

SpringAheadInternet, 51-200 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

AlienVault USM 6.5

Based on 19 answers

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.

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Aaron Rothstein

IT Systems Architect

ROTHSTEIN.ioRestaurants, 5001-10,000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

AlienVault USM 6.9

Based on 35 answers

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.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 201-500 employees

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Datadog 10.0

Based on 1 answer

The user interface is quite intuitive with the exception of the network map. As a deployer of software, it is trivial to setup.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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Reliability and Availability

AlienVault USM 6.4

Based on 3 answers

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.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 201-500 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Performance

AlienVault USM 7.3

Based on 3 answers

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.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 201-500 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

AlienVault USM 7.3

Based on 28 answers

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.

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Verified User

Project Manager in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 201-500 employees

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Datadog 8.4

Based on 12 answers

Our experience working with their support found them to be helpful and quick to respond. Also, as many of their integrations are open source, improvements we desired could be tracked and even driven by us. Their documentation is excellent and makes integrating their tooling simple and makes standing up monitoring for new application a quick and painless process.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Human Resources Company, 51-200 employees

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In-Person Training

AlienVault USM 4.5

Based on 1 answer

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

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 201-500 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Online Training

AlienVault USM 8.5

Based on 6 answers

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.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Implementation Rating

AlienVault USM 6.4

Based on 39 answers

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.

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Verified User

Supervisor in Information Technology

Utilities Company, 51-200 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

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.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Staffing and Recruiting Company, 51-200 employees

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New Relic APM is a great application performance monitoring tool, but the agent was producing an increased load on our system compared to Datadog. Datadog also gives the flexibility of going outside of the boundaries of the application and looking at system performance as well, which can have a large impact on application performance.

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Senior Security Engineer

TealiumMarketing and Advertising, 201-500 employees

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Scalability

AlienVault USM 6.3

Based on 3 answers

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?

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 201-500 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

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.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Financial Services Company, 51-200 employees

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One of our critical production databases went down a couple of weeks back. Just because we had the Datadog monitoring enabled for that database, Datadog sent the alerts to PagerDuty and we were instantly notified via pager and email alert. We could act right away and bring up the database within a few mins.
Ability to create custom screenboards have allowed us to track the critical and warning alerts in front of our eyes all the time

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Rajeshh Raghavan

Systems Analyst, Engineering

Dreamworks AnimationEntertainment, 1001-5000 employees

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Screenshots

See All (7) Datadog Screenshots

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

AlienVault USM Editions & Modules

Edition

Essentials	$1,075¹
Standard	$1,695¹
Premium	$2,595¹

per month

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

Datadog Editions & Modules

On-premise Edition

Infrastructure	$15.00¹
Log Management	$1.27²
APM	$31.00³

Per Host Per Month
Per Million Log Events
Per Host Per Month

SaaS Edition

Free	$0¹
Standard	$15/host²
Enterprise	Custom³

Up to 5 hosts
Up to 500 hosts
500+ hosts

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

AlienVault USM

Datadog

AlienVault USM

Datadog

AlienVault USM

Datadog

AlienVault USM

Datadog

AlienVault USM

Datadog

AlienVault USM

Datadog

AlienVault USM

Datadog

AlienVault USM

Datadog

AlienVault USM

Datadog

AlienVault USM

Datadog

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