AlienVault USM vs. pfSense

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
pfSense
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
pfSense is a firewall and load management product available through the open source pfSense Community Edition, as well as a the licensed edition, pfSense Plus (formerly known as pfSense Enterprise). The solution provides combined firewall, VPN, and router functionality, and can be deployed through the cloud (AWS or Azure), or on-premises with a Netgate appliance. It as scalable capacities, with functionality for SMBs. As a firewall, pfSense offers Stateful packet inspection, concurrent…
$179
per appliance
Pricing
AlienVault USMpfSense
Editions & Modules
Essentials
$1,075
per month
Standard
$1,695
per month
Premium
$2,595
per month
SG-1100
$179
per appliance
SG-2100
$229
per appliance
SG-3100
$399
per appliance
SG-5100
$699
per appliance
XG-7100-DT
$899
per appliance
XG-7100-1U
$999
per appliance
XG-1537
$1,949
per appliance
XG-1541
$2,649
per appliance
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AlienVault USMpfSense
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
AlienVault USMpfSense
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Comparison of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features of Product A and Product B
AlienVault USM
8.0
8 Ratings
3% above category average
pfSense
-
Ratings
Centralized event and log data collection8.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Correlation8.58 Ratings00 Ratings
Event and log normalization/management8.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment flexibility8.67 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools7.35 Ratings00 Ratings
Custom dashboards and workspaces7.08 Ratings00 Ratings
Host and network-based intrusion detection8.05 Ratings00 Ratings
Firewall
Comparison of Firewall features of Product A and Product B
AlienVault USM
-
Ratings
pfSense
7.6
11 Ratings
11% below category average
Identification Technologies00 Ratings5.110 Ratings
Visualization Tools00 Ratings7.08 Ratings
Content Inspection00 Ratings4.111 Ratings
Policy-based Controls00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
Active Directory and LDAP00 Ratings7.09 Ratings
Firewall Management Console00 Ratings9.510 Ratings
Reporting and Logging00 Ratings8.011 Ratings
VPN00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
High Availability00 Ratings10.011 Ratings
Stateful Inspection00 Ratings7.011 Ratings
Proxy Server00 Ratings6.011 Ratings
Best Alternatives
AlienVault USMpfSense
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

Sophos UTM
Sophos UTM
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Splunk Enterprise
Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.3 out of 10
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Splunk Enterprise
Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.3 out of 10
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
AlienVault USMpfSense
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(391 ratings)
9.7
(24 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.2
(18 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
6.7
(34 ratings)
10.0
(1 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)
-
(0 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 USMpfSense
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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
Because pfSense is built around open source software, it is very convenient to be able to deploy in the event of hardware failure. We once had a client with a proprietary router that failed. While the router was under warranty, the expected time for the new router to arrive was about 2 weeks. We decided to implement pfSense for the client as a stop gap and ultimately ended up deploying the full enterprise appliance. Being able to get up and running using commodity hardware was a huge win for the client. We've also had a great amount of success deploying pfSense hardware at apartment complexes. The DNS resolver works great and we've had no issues handling multiple VLANs with various DHCP scopes on it. Finally, we've had clients that require having a failover cluster. Utilizing the built in CARP capabilities, we've been able to provide a very robust failover system that requires little maintenance and no downtime in the event of equipment failure.
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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.
Read full review
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
  • Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.
Read full review
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
Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
  • When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
  • I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
  • I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
  • I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.
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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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
The interface is simple, has sane defaults, and is consistent throughout.
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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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
No answers on this topic
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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
While you can get the performance out of other products, pfSense offers the unique ability to put other services on the same device. Products such as Untagle's NG Firewall and SonicWall's TZ series offer cost effective options for firewall and VPN services, having incoming load balancing and connection proxies on the same device as the firewall offers extremely easy configuration and day to day management of network services
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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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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
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.
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Netgate (Rubicon Communications, LLC)
  • Using pfSense has allowed us to build a professional network in our small office without needing a lot of proprietary hardware, saving thousands of dollars in IT infrastructure investment.
  • The cost for using pfSense is free, so it's a great option for those who don't have a large IT budget
  • pfSense utilizes all of the industry standard services to provide all of it's functionality, so support for service-level issues is readily available
  • Because of how much work has been put into pfSense to make it rock solid and reliable, we're able to support our network with minimal IT staffing, saving us thousands of dollars/year in personnel alone.
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ScreenShots

AlienVault USM Screenshots

Screenshot of USM Anywhere NIDS Dashboard