Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review It is valuable software for when it comes to a large or medium organization, since it helps to protect the endpoints, but as the number of servers increases its value increases. However, it is important to keep in mind that when it comes to low end devices, its protection can affect their performance. This is because it is not a software with a very light agent.
Read full review 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. Read full review The incident management piece is the heart and soul of the product. A single area where all data in relation to network and email protection is available. Works well in conjunction with the standard Symantec Endpoint product. URL Protection is advanced and very helpful Technical support is great and definitely the best I have ever seen for a "anti-virus" type product. Read full review 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. Read full review I don't like that I have to maintain the client and keep it up to date. Updating the client is not a very easy process. Deploying the client could be easier. They have a deployment tool, but it doesn't really get to all PCs, which means I still have to manually deploy it. Because the product has so much customization, it can also be very difficult to set up and understand. Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Symantec Advanced Threat Protection has done a sufficient job at identifying true positives. However, the UI could be improved and the amount of false positives is a little too frequent for my liking
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review There is a small learning curve, but compared to other AV products it is fairly simple and easy to catch onto
Read full review Reliability and Availability 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.
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Support responds fast for higher priority issues, they have always been good at solving the problems we encounter.
Read full review In-Person Training 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
Read full review Online Training 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.
Read full review Implementation Rating 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.
Read full review No, besides to review documentation prior to beginning. That is what helped lead to a smooth implementation
Read full review 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.
Read full review Frankly, the other products were too expensive to make the change from Symantec so we continued with the tried and true protection. We don't have the funding to move to a more expensive product and the manpower that it would take to implement a new solution.
Read full review Scalability 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?
Read full review 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. Read full review Some digital assets were lost due to failures to detect various threats. We had to use other products in combination in order to trust that all threats were actually detected, taking extra time. We couldn't use just SATP. Ability to quickly manage/deploy via AD made maintenance of the application itself quick and easy. Read full review ScreenShots AlienVault USM Screenshots