AlienVault USM vs. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AlienVault USM
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
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
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Cortex XSOAR, formerly Demisto and now from Palo Alto Networks since it was acquired in March 2019, provides orchestration to enable security teams to ingest alerts across sources and execute standardized, automatable playbooks for accelerated incident response. Its playbooks are powered by hundreds of integrations and thousands of security actions, striking the right balance between rapid machine execution and nuanced human oversight.N/A
Pricing
AlienVault USMPalo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR
Editions & Modules
Essentials
$1,075
per month
Standard
$1,695
per month
Premium
$2,595
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AlienVault USMPalo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AlienVault USMPalo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
AlienVault USMPalo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Comparison of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features of Product A and Product B
AlienVault USM
7.9
8 Ratings
2% above category average
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR
-
Ratings
Centralized event and log data collection8.48 Ratings00 Ratings
Correlation8.18 Ratings00 Ratings
Event and log normalization/management8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment flexibility8.47 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools6.95 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom dashboards and workspaces7.38 Ratings00 Ratings
Host and network-based intrusion detection8.45 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AlienVault USMPalo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR
Small Businesses

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No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
InsightIDR
InsightIDR
Score 9.1 out of 10
Splunk SOAR
Splunk SOAR
Score 8.2 out of 10
Enterprises
InsightIDR
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Score 9.1 out of 10
Microsoft Sentinel
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Score 8.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
AlienVault USMPalo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(390 ratings)
8.2
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.2
(18 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
6.7
(34 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Availability
6.4
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
7.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.3
(25 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
4.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.3
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
6.4
(38 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
6.3
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.6
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AlienVault USMPalo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR
Likelihood to Recommend
AT&T Cybersecurity
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.
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Palo Alto Networks
XSOAR is well suited for phishing detection and response. Phishing alerts are as much of a
problem today as they were decades ago. This is because: ●Attackers Can leverage automation to launch high-quantity phishing attacks with the click
of a button.
●Spear Phishing attacks are sophisticated and sometimes indistinguishable from real
emails, resulting in compromise through human error.
●Security Teams aren’t able to follow set processes while responding to phishing alerts.
They must coordinate across email inboxes, threat intel, NGFW, ticketing, and
other tools. Each tool has different consoles, data conventions, and contexts,
making it difficult for security teams to fill in the gaps while minimizing
errors. XSOAR is less suited for analyzing traffic.
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Pros
AT&T Cybersecurity
  • 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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Palo Alto Networks
  • Automation with immediate security responses.
  • Comprehensive phishing protection and increased email protection.
  • Analysis and reporting feature.
  • Intuitive and easy-to-view panels.
  • Alerts by email and sms of incidents for the administration.
  • Centralized monitoring.
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Cons
AT&T Cybersecurity
  • 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.
Read full review
Palo Alto Networks
  • The XSOAR bot creates a lot of noise on the summary page of any XSOAR incident. Although the filter is available to reduce the view, by default this should not be visible cluttering the whole scenario.
  • The interface has too much data on a single pane. I would love to have many buttons to just click and do stuff.
  • Also, I would love to have search areas more interactive and easier to navigate.
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Likelihood to Renew
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
It has proven to be far to valuable and effective to consider getting rid of it. Until something better comes along, this is staying in our product stack.
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Usability
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Reliability and Availability
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Performance
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
In-Person Training
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Online Training
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
It was much easier than we all anticipated.
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Alternatives Considered
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
The quantity of integrations with security solutions is highest in Palo Alto Solution. The capacity to identify anomalous events is much better in Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR. The flexibility of increased storage area is better as well. The dashboard is very intuitive about showing the most important incidents and how to resolve them.
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Scalability
AT&T Cybersecurity
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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Palo Alto Networks
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
AT&T Cybersecurity
  • 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.
Read full review
Palo Alto Networks
  • Demisto has Eased malware analysis and threat hunting
  • With Demisto, it is simple to create playbooks and scripts
  • This is helped automate policy configurations on our PA firewalls through Panorama
Read full review
ScreenShots

AlienVault USM Screenshots

Screenshot of USM Anywhere NIDS Dashboard