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Easy Configuration Process: Many users have expressed their positive experiences with the configuration process of SolarWinds, noting that …
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
Overview
What is SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)?
SolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.
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Popular Features
- Centralized event and log data collection (17)8.585%
- Deployment flexibility (17)7.979%
- Event and log normalization/management (17)7.373%
- Custom dashboards and workspaces (16)4.949%
Pricing
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What is SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)?
SolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.
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- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.solarwinds.com/products/pri…
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Alternatives Pricing
What is Microsoft Sentinel?
Microsoft Sentinel (formerly Azure Sentinel) is designed as a birds-eye view across the enterprise. It is presented as a security information and event management (SIEM) solution for proactive threat detection, investigation, and response.
What is Sumo Logic?
Sumo Logic is a log management offering from the San Francisco based company of the same name.
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Product Details
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- Competitors
- Tech Details
- Downloadables
- FAQs
What is SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)?
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (previously know as Log & Event Manager) is presented by the vendor as a powerful and award-winning SIEM. It is an on-prem deployed tool that collects, consolidates, and analyzes logs and events from firewalls, IDS/IPS devices
and applications, switches, routers, servers, operating system logs, and other applications.
The main applications are threat detection, automated incident analysis and response, and compliance reporting for IT infrastructure.
The main applications are threat detection, automated incident analysis and response, and compliance reporting for IT infrastructure.
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Features
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Features
- Supported: Centralized event and log data collection
- Supported: Correlation
- Supported: Event and log normalization/management
- Supported: Deployment flexibility
- Supported: Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools
- Supported: Custom dashboards and workspaces
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Screenshots
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Video
Security Event Manager - Overview
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Competitors
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | No |
SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Downloadables
Frequently Asked Questions
SolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.
Splunk Enterprise Security (ES), LogRhythm NextGen SIEM Platform, and ManageEngine EventLog Analyzer are common alternatives for SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM).
Reviewers rate Host and network-based intrusion detection highest, with a score of 10.
The most common users of SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Reviews and Ratings
(120)
Community Insights
TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Easy Configuration Process: Many users have expressed their positive experiences with the configuration process of SolarWinds, noting that it is easy and straightforward. This indicates that the product provides a user-friendly interface for making necessary adjustments, making it convenient for users to set up and customize according to their needs.
Excellent Customer Support: Several reviewers have praised the expertise and effectiveness of SolarWinds' customer support team in resolving issues. They have found the assistance provided by the support team to be valuable in addressing any concerns or difficulties they encountered while using the product.
Efficient Log Collection and Normalization: Users appreciate the centralized log collection and normalization feature offered by SolarWinds. This functionality streamlines the monitoring and analysis process by efficiently collecting logs from various sources and normalizing them into a consistent format. This allows for easier management and analysis of log data, saving users time and effort.
Confusing User Interface: Users have expressed dissatisfaction with the confusing user interface of SolarWinds SEM, which has made tasks difficult to accomplish. Many reviewers have specifically mentioned that they struggled to navigate and understand the UI.
Limited Reporting Capabilities: Users have found the reporting capabilities of SEM to be limited and not intuitive. They have suggested the need for a better report generation tool that offers more flexibility and customization options.
Poor Integration with Other Products: Several users desired better integration between SEM and other products in the SolarWinds line, such as NPM. They mentioned difficulties in achieving seamless integration, which hindered their ability to effectively manage their network infrastructure.
Users have provided several recommendations based on their experiences with SolarWinds Security Event Manager. The three most common recommendations are:
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It is important to have a detailed plan before deploying the tool. This will help meet expectations and ensure effective usage.
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Users highly recommend SolarWinds Security Event Manager as a reliable security solution. It provides comprehensive log monitoring and is particularly useful for tracking equipment, communication lines, and backup programming.
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Before making a decision, users suggest evaluating whether SolarWinds Security Event Manager meets the specific requirements of your company. Consider factors such as company size, data protection needs, scalability, user intuitiveness, ease of installation, and cost-effectiveness.
It's worth noting that while some users find the software easy to use and understand, others mention concerns about its pricing and suggest exploring alternative options like PRTG or OpManager.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
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October 23, 2020
SEM review of a SolarWinds fanboy at heart
We are currently using it within our Operations team to monitor events and alert others of security events and anomalies that it detects. I would like to recommend this product to any business needing to increase their security posture and get better alerts and more reliable data to look at to assist with the root cause and security monitoring.
- Automated threat detection
- Log collection
- Live filtering
- Custom rules
- Alerting can be confusing to configure
- The dashboards and widgets look a little old as with all SolarWinds products
- The initial setup can take a lot of time
October 13, 2020
SolarWinds Security Event Manager Review
We have a deployment of SolarWinds SEM that monitors our Windows and Linux servers currently for login attempts across the whole organization. This allows us to see any possible vulnerabilities in real-time.
- It is flexible with a variety of system connectors.
- Setup is easy.
- Monitoring log size and system resources is simple.
- It is a robust product so, not clear out of the box exactly what it can do.
- Agent installs can sometimes need manual removal.
- If you're running an older version of SEM, migrating clients to a new install isn't clear-cut.
October 13, 2020
Slick UI, great features, just a little difficult to set up
SolarWinds SEM is used in our operational technology infrastructure to collect and analyze logs from critical systems, those that are part of or manage the infrastructure, and also systems themselves such as the control system(s). It is used to identify issues like account failures and unexpected configuration changes, as well as being a general centralized logging system. The only shortcoming is that it would be great if it could be used as a centralized logging system even for devices that do not have log processors. We have a number of devices not yet supported and just to have the logs in would be useful, rather than setting up a separate Syslog server.
- Visualization: the UI is slick and easy to follow.
- Filtering and Sorting: narrowing down logs is powerful.
- Windows event log parsing
- Device support: less common devices do not have drivers. An SDK or generic one to customize would be useful.
- Generic syslog: some standalone syslog solutions without parsing are more powerful just for log analysis.
- Traceability: tracing log events back to the source needs to be done in the older flash UI until implemented in the new UI.
October 02, 2020
Very good product, easy to install!
We are using SEM to get all logs from any devices to get an overview on what's going on the network. Also, this tool alerts us of suspicious activities.
- Ease of use.
- Good integration with others products.
- Default detection rules.
- Filter easy to understand.
- Better report generation tool could be made (last version is better, but still room for amelioration).
- Mobile app would be very useful (not web, real app).
September 11, 2020
SoalrWinds SEM - great value
It addresses the issue of audit requirement by utilizing log consolidation (syslog, traps, windows log). For windows, an agent needs to be deployed. SEM normalizes the data for several fields so that it is easier to locate the specific event from the 10 million events received per day. The GUI is split into two parts. The first part is part of the new GUI which has dashboard, monitor, nodes, rules, groups (limited). The second is the older GUI where the other functions are. I tend to stay in the older GUI unless the function has been moved over to the new GUI. There is a third interface which can be reached by SSHing to the SEM. This allows to us to diagnosis any issues with the SEM.
It is generally used by the security team, but read-only access has been given to the networking and windows team to enable them to search for specific log entries.
It is generally used by the security team, but read-only access has been given to the networking and windows team to enable them to search for specific log entries.
- Parses the logs into several comment fields to make the search easier
- Can scale up to 218 million per day
- For large amount of events, there is an unreasonable amount of CPUs and Memory needed
- Reporting function has not been updated in many years and is very difficult to write
August 17, 2020
Solarwinds working for you again!
It is being used across our Presort division. It allows us to monitor daily issues and hiccups so that we can address them from anywhere in the country. With it, I'm able to track my local facility while still traveling to the other facilities in the country. It is a lifesaver when I need to be flexible and have the ability to travel or even stay home.
- Centralized log collection and normalization.
- Automated threat detection and response.
- Integrated compliance reporting tools.
- Auto report sending alerting.
Our organization chose to invest in SolarWinds Security Event Manager because we needed a centralized log management and correlation solution that can be quickly and seamlessly integrated into our global infrastructure. It is very easy to provision by simply installing additional modules onto the Solarwinds server and pointing all of the network/systems devices to it. Having log data in one central location has a huge benefit. For example, troubleshooting an issue on a network can now be done by multiple teams where everyone with access to SEM can search the log repository. The live filtering and historical search capabilities make it easy to get the necessary evidence and the time stamp of what the issue is and when it started. The built-in templates are also helpful in analyzing and targeting specific log data.
- Advanced search capabilities across all log data, powered by a quick engine to minimize the delay.
- Built-in or customized templates.
- Alerting capabilities.
- More advanced log correlation mechanisms with better filtering capabilities.
April 03, 2020
SolarWinds Security Event Manager Review
We use SolarWinds SEM to monitor all production systems Canada-wide. Often times when troubleshooting devices or applications from a administrative position or help desk it can be very time consuming to pull logs from each device and filter out what you're looking for. By using the SolarWinds SEM tool you can forward all relevant logs and filter out what you don't want to see, which reduces time spent resolving tickets and helps to better locate those pesky problems.
- Log Filtering
- Alerting
- Monitoring
- SEM does have some efficiency issues, other tools have been able to handle millions of logs per hour but SEM seems to get overloaded quickly.
- The UI is slow to respond after the solution has been running for a while.
- Some of the logic is fairly limited with the UI, maybe they could improve the usability of the UI.
January 31, 2020
SolarWinds Security Event Manager: A "log" above everyone else
SolarWinds Security Event Manager is a log and event manager that we implemented to replace our Cisco MARS appliance. This system is used by our security team to monitor and log events throughout the entire organization. From an alerting point of view, SolarWinds Security Event Manager makes our monitoring simpler and more refined. By allowing us to create and set email alerts on important and critical events, SolarWinds Security Event Manager allows a hands-off approach, so that we don't have to review hundreds of lines of alerts to get the critical information, saving us time and effort.
- Allows log collecting from almost any source of data, using multiple types of authentication and collection (i.e. SNMP, WMI, etc.)
- Allows customization of dashboards per user, so that you can quickly find the information relevant to your position.
- The dashboard and reports use javascript, which can be slow to load.
- To get it up and running was fast, however, to correctly configure proper alerts, you have to spend a ton of time.
It is being used, at this time, only by my department. We use it to collect logs from all our network devices, servers, and other devices we use to support our services. It is useful for us to have all of our logs in a single place and searchable.
- SEM normalizes logs very well. It is simple to be able to compare fields in logs from say a Cisco router and a Windows server, especially timestamps.
- SEM has great flexibility in customizing its various aspects, especially its correlation rules and reports.
- SEM doesn't support out-of-the-box several device manufacturers that are used in my environment. For example, Peplink and Netonix.
- I have to purchase a separate log parser tool rather than having it included in SEM.
We are using the Security Event Manager to keep track of a number of things.
Configuration changes for our Core network And campus devices which include nexus and Cisco iOS routers, switches and firewalls. We use it as a way to audit admin login failures. Our Device Syslog is sent to it. We use it to keep analyze network traffic when troubleshooting.
- 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.
- Some aspects have not been fully integrated into HTML 5. Those are still a bit slow to access.
- Need an easier way to upgrade the software. SSH to the console and running the commands to connect to the TFTP server is archaic. Needs an “update” button.
November 17, 2019
These Events will "Blow" You Away!
SolarWinds Security Event Manager is being used by our networking and security team on a daily basis. Often times changes to accounts or to your Microsoft Active directory will be logged, but not alerted. This can lead to a false sense of the current state of your accounts and can make a team "blind" to what is happening inside systems. SolarWinds SEM allows teams to receive emails based on pre defined parameters.
- SolarWinds easily provides the much needed visibily into changes in an Active Directory (AD) environment. Email alerting can be configured to alert a team if an account is locked out, disabled by another users, or if users and/or computers accounts are created.
- SolarWinds allowed a searchable audit feature. Microsoft Windows can be configured to log many different parts of a system, but search those logs can be difficult. SEM allows you to search for specific users or events.
- 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.
November 16, 2019
SolarWinds SEM Review
We are mostly using it to track logs from our Windows Server. We do also have some networking equipment sending syslog to it as well. Primarily we use it to help track down password lockouts. Its terrible UI doesn't allow for much more than that. It would be nice if there were some nice looking always on dashboard type screens we could use.
- I honestly don't have too many good things to say about it. It was cheap compared to other products like Splunk and that's why we bought it.
- Even though this is like 90X cheaper than other products like Splunk, etc. - It's still overpriced because it's terrible.
- Flash, Java, Really? Who still uses this? Also, why is this not integrated with Orion and useable from the same Solarwinds dashboard as all our other Solarwinds products?
October 09, 2019
SolarWinds LEM: Useful and Low Cost SIEM Solution for SMBs
We initially started using SolarWinds Security Event Manager(previously Log and Event Manager) to meet a security compliance requirement. Once I spent some time with it, I realized that I could use it for alerting on specific events and activities that our users were interested in. For instance, we used the File Integrity Module on our HR file share to alert the HR manager when files were added or deleted, and then we sent a weekly report to that department with all read/write activity. We also used it to monitor AD changes, and the email alerts were really useful in producing historical information about what changes had been made recently.
- Compared to other SIEMs, it's relatively easy to get up and running. The virtual appliance is easy to maintain.
- Support was top notch. The support team really knows their stuff when you run into an issue.
- The email alert system is easy to use and attach to a fired rule.
- Compared to other SIEMs, there are features that are missing. Machine learning, automatic event correlation, ability to correlate multiple sources together.
- The UI is clunky, and the *New* event log analyzer page felt really disjointed from the rest of the product.
- In my experience, the dashboards were almost unusable. They persisted across login per device, and even then they sometimes would reset and go back to the ''Getting Started'' look.
March 15, 2019
SolarWinds Log & Event Manager: Exactly as Advertised
SolarWinds Log & Event Manager is used by our company's IT department to monitor events on domain controllers in locations across the globe. The primary use is for account events, such as lockouts, disablement, and enablement to both user and computer accounts. It is a more proactive way to give attention to user account management. While not an originally intended use, the node health section also lets us know if a domain controller is not acting properly.
- Monitors account lockouts and reports them with detail so that it is easier to solve this with end users.
- Monitors and reports account disablement with detail to whoever disabled an account, for audit and accountability.
- Also, monitors and reports account enablement with detail to whoever enabled an account, again for audit and accountability.
- Flash-based UI can lag, HTML5 would be preferred
- Availability for custom widgets, but you need a bit of training to get things done right unless you have time for trial and error.
- It only knows what it knows for account lockouts. If a source machine isn't available in the Event Viewer ID that triggers the alert, it does not have any extra tools to help it determine the issue.
February 28, 2019
LEM, your one stop shop for Security Event and Incident Management!
As a Network Monitoring Engineer and instructor, I see many Government and Military IT Organizations choose LEM as their primary Security Event and Incident Manager(SEIM) across all of their networks. LEM allows them to have a consolidated, normalized view of both their server and network environments. Having a consolidated view provides SolarWinds customers with the ability to correlate multiple security events across disparate systems and greatly reduces the amount of time and effort to detect and respond to potential security intrusions.
- One of the most valuable features of SolarWinds LEM is its ability to normalize logs from differing systems into one common format. LEM normalization saves time and effort in doing forensic analysis by letting security personnel see the "whole picture" of their network in one place.
- LEM's Active Response capability makes it easy to watch a security event happen in real time and to take immediate action. For example, LEM can very efficiently allow security personnel to logoff suspect users or even restart important Windows Server processes in real time, before further intrusion can happen.
- LEM has a lot of out of the box features that allow for the quick implementation of security policy across many industries. LEM can provide immediate compliance monitoring and management for standards such as PICA, HIPAA and DISA-STIG.
- The number one challenge for SolarWinds customers I see is LEM's reporting software. LEM Reporter, a standalone Windows Application, is not as intuitive as customers would like and they report some instability in the application itself. Customers tend to use LEM's search scheduling as a more effective way to report on security events.
- Performance has been an issue based on LEM's use of a Flash interface. This has been a limitation for a long time. However, with the transition of the LEM interface from Flash to HTML5, customers are reporting much better performance starting in LEM 6.5
- Every one of my customers makes some comment about LEM's very high learning curve. LEM is not very intuitive, requiring a lot of rote learning through repetition. Many LEM customers request some type of training to help them learn to use it.
We use LEM for two main purposes. First, to replace an obsolete Cisco MARS appliance that captured a couple of days' worth of packets from our firewalls for forensic purposes. Second, to provide notification to staff of AD events such as account lockouts and administrator logins. Users are strictly within the infrastructure team of the IT department.
- Able to ingest full Syslog output from three enterprise firewalls.
- Able to detect and alert on specific Active Directory events.
- The interface for creating alerts is onerous. It is necessary to dig out the exact event ID of anything you want to alert on.
- Early versions required a separate server to host a FastBit database, but that requirement has been eliminated with the latest release; SQL is now required.
We are currently using Solarwinds LEM to pull logs from about 150 servers. We have also worked to get logs pulled from some barracuda load balancers and also a barracuda message archiver. We have alerting set on account lockouts and some other security events. LEM has helped notify us of account attacks and has also been valuable to reviewing both application and security logging when we need to cross reference servers or look at historical data.
- LEM's console interface works well to narrow down all the logs into a view able format.
- You can customize alerting triggers off of any event conditions.
- the logging agent is relatively small and easy to deploy.
- In order to navigate the console smoothly and set alerting in place, you need to go through their training.
- All your configuration is done by hand. There are no built in analytics or alerting to help you.
- I've found the reporting, real time and otherwise, to be slow and unruly. There are some updates and work a rounds that we have applied to help optimize the process, but if you try to pull to many logs, or over too long a period of time it will often time out.
- The logging and reporting is dependent on the server automatically determining the type of server and logs it is getting. If it doesn't properly tag the logs, then they are essentially gone, lost, unsearchable. There is no good way to manually tell the server to classify the logs, which makes the process either difficult or impossible at times.
March 21, 2017
LEM pulls event data from across our network
Our IT department uses SolarWinds Log & Event Manager (LEM) to monitor events across our network. LEM consolidates security alerts from our firewalls as well as OS event alerts from servers. Application generated errors are passed on to our development team.
- LEM is able to pull from a variety of different information sources without requiring a lot of configuration changes to get the data flowing.
- LEM assists in limiting the amount of data required for the business need without requiring a full dump (ie SNMP from all sources).
- LEM does require tweaking in order to get each data source configured. The event data comes into LEM easily, but the kind of data needs to be identified or custom classifications set up to organize the resulting alerts meaningfully.
February 16, 2016
LEMme tell you about Solarwinds LEM!
We use Solarwinds Log and Event Manager (LEM) as our SIEM to correlate all of our various log data coming from servers, network equipment and security appliances to create meaningful alerts and, in some cases, automatically take action. LEM gives important insight for our IT staff into the activity the occurs on our network. It can be used for troubleshooting communication issues, quickly identifying policies that are blocking legitimate traffic, or to identify anomalies in network traffic that need to be investigated. It also sends email notifications when certain events are detected, allowing us to have eyes on even when we are away.
- Incredibly easy to set up. It was deployed and had log sources pointed to it and performing basic correlations within a day.
- Auto-response. The automated responses that are available after deploying the agent give you incredible control to respond to events on your network.
- User-friendly interface. Some SIEMs can be daunting to learn how to use and get acclimated to, but LEM has an intuitive layout and is very easy to pick up and use.
- No custom parser. Inevitably, there will be a product on your network that Solarwinds LEM won't know how to parse. Other SIEM solutions I've used leverage custom parsers for this reason. LEM does not have support for creating custom parsers, so unknown log formats remain unparsed.
- Sometimes too basic. LEM is an excellent tool for performing basic correlations in a small to mid-size environment. If you try to get too advanced with the correlations you are trying to perform, you may get frustrated with the lack of functionality due to the way that LEM parses data.