SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) vs. SonicWall Analytics

Optimal for SolarWinds Security Event Manager needs for smaller companies - it is a very cool product but has some limitations around EPS (which gets chewed up quickly if you're doing it the right way & adding servers/storage/FW & other network devices)... Also pricing model is GREAT (not consumption-based, which is the greatest grift the SIEM industry has created).

Incentivized

If you have Sonicwall firewalls, and want to store logs and generate custom reports, then this additional investment is worthy. If you only want to have storage for your logs, then I won't recommend this. You can opt for a Syslog tool or a SIEM platform for analyzing the same and storing logs.

Incentivized

• It does a great job of notifying us when accounts have been locked out. We can then find out the device on the network where the login attempt occurred.
• Searching for incidents is now a lot faster with the implementation of the HTML 5 interface.

Incentivized

• Consolidated Logging
• Reporting
• Custom and predefined templates for reporting
• Ease of integration with firewall and other tools
• Similar GUI and web console like of Sonicwall UTM and firewalls

Incentivized

• All SolarWinds product suffer from slow response times in management portals. SolarWinds SEM is no exception. While it is much preferred over a "thick client" there is much room for improvement in speed.
• If you use the email alert features with SolarWinds make sure to prepare you staff and team for the large amount of emails they could receive. Make sure to reduce the number of alerts so your team does not ignore the alerts.

Incentivized

• We get reports on the basis of features, like system reports, content/url filtering reports. There must be an option to get reports no the basis of complete user activity, or user timeline
• They could have bundled or included management along with reporting
• Pricing considering only collecting of logs and generating reports only from Sonicwall firewalls, I feel is high.

Incentivized

It is pretty likely that we will renew SEM when the time comes up. It is easy to use and maintain so there isn't much of a need to replace this product. It is also a pretty fair price for the capabilities provided by the SEM

Incentivized

If you are familiar with SolarWinds then you can use this product it's as easy as that. If you have never used a SolarWinds product then it will take a minute to get how they do reports and make dashboards but that being said the tool is great and can make things very easy once you get a feel for how it works and get everything setup how you like it.

Incentivized

The quality of support can vary depending on whom you end up speaking with. I was fortunate enough to work with a support representative who was very familiar with the product. He had even authored some of the support documentation on the website. On the flip side, I had two other experiences where I was simply directed to online training material.

Incentivized

Fortianalzyer can only do logs from FortiGate so usefulness is limited. Elasticsearch was a lot slower than Solarwinds and the filters were a lot harder to set up and use. The connectors for SEM were far more stable.

Incentivized

Incentivized

• For the price, it produced a decent value. It did a lot of the easy stuff well. I can't give any specific data given the objective of the product was to monitor very basic events in the environment.
• There are free options that can do a better job.

Incentivized

• We are not able to keep SonicWall firewall logs for more than 3 months, which has given a positive rating to compliances
• We are getting custom and scheduled reports of user web activities
• Logs are now stored safely and securely

Incentivized