AlienVault® Unified Security Management®
(USM) delivers threat detection, incident response, and compliance
management in one unified platform. It is designed to combine all the essential security
capabilities needed for effective security monitoring across cloud and
on-premises environments, including SIEM, intrusion detection, vulnerability
management, as well as continuous threat intelligence updates. The vendor states that even for resource-limited IT
security teams, AlienVault…
$1,075
per month
KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
PhishER is presented as a lightweight Security Orchestration, Automation and Response (SOAR) platform to orchestrate threat response and manage the high volume of potentially malicious email messages reported by users. And, with automatic prioritization of emails, PhishER helps InfoSec and Security Operations team cut through the inbox noise and respond to the most dangerous threats more quickly.
$0.50
per month (billed annually) per seat
Pricing
AlienVault USM
KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Editions & Modules
Essentials
$1,075
per month
Standard
$1,695
per month
Premium
$2,595
per month
3001-5000 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$0.50
per month (billed annually) per seat
2001-3000 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$0.55
per month (billed annually) per seat
1001-2000 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$0.65
per month (billed annually) per seat
501-1000 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$0.75
per month (billed annually) per seat
101-500 Monthly Pricing Per Seat
$1.00
per month (billed annually) per seat
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AlienVault USM
KnowBe4 PhishER/PhishER Plus
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
—
PhishER is a monthly per seat price, billed annually.
At this point I'm saying a 4. While the marketing material make it appear to be easy to use and it was relatively easy to set up, as previously mentioned, each event description is based upon the individual asset making it nearly impossible for the administrator to be a SME for each asset. For example, if one of the assets reporting is a router, the administrator monitoring alerts would need to know what the various events are that can be triggered as an event for the particular router; however, if the asset is a workstation, the administrator would need to know the various events that are triggered for workstations.
I have been able to create customized simulated phishing campaigns that are really testing our users ability to "spot the fake." That coupled with the training campaigns that are included make it much more likely that our users will be better prepared to protect our organization by being able to recognize common industry threats, and brings awareness to less common threats that are out there. I love that they have a shared folder full of relevant, recent real-world scams that we can choose from to train our user base.
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.
Analysis and classification of phishing emails using machine learning
Response to reporting users with personalised emails template
Automatic response and actions using integration with Microsoft
Good dashboard with reporting and KPI
Integration with others product to improve scan and analysis
It improves users' security awareness and behavior as receiving an immediate response with the analysis result improves the ability to recognize a phishing email
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.
Enhancing the automated response capabilities, such as directly initiating remediation processes or integrating with other cybersecurity tools, could further streamline the threat management process.
Implementing a feedback system where users can be informed about the outcome of their reported emails might encourage more proactive engagement.
the reporting tool is not as streamlined on mobile devices as it is on desktops. Enhancing mobile functionality would be beneficial
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.
Phish ER has reduced the time my team and I spend on reported emails by over 80%. With the volume of emails reported and a small team this is a must have.
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.
The configuration is a bit complicated, but easy once you get the hang of it. Once configured, it is easy to manage our malicious emails that are reported by our staff.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
KnowBe4 PhishER has a lot of features that other companied does not have. Its AI capability, integration with VirusTotal, PhishRIP and PhishFlip features make it totally different from other solutions. Its Phish Alert Button directly installed on users Outlook without affecting them and the reporting technique is very simple, just clicking on the Phish Alert Button and the email will be directly reported to the KnowBe4 PhishER dashboard. KnowBe4 PhishER dashboard is a very good example of centralized dashboard where you can find all things related to that reported email.
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?
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.
