TrustRadius Insights
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.
Recent Reviews
Awards
Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards
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
N/A
Unavailable
What is SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)?
SolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.solarwinds.com/products/pri…
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?
38 people also want pricing
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.
Features
Return to navigation
Product Details
- About
- 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).
Comparisons
Compare with
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:
-
It is important to have a detailed plan before deploying the tool. This will help meet expectations and ensure effective usage.
-
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.
-
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
(1-9 of 9)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 29, 2022
SEM - Powerful and Affordable
We use SEM as our primary logging solution for all network infrastructure devices (switches, routers, WLCs, etc). The software allows us to track changes, identify issues, and it helps us stay compliant with insurance requirements. Particularly useful is the ability to send e-mail notifications when a critical event has occurred.
- Logging network devices and servers
- Searching Historical Events
- Notifications and custom rules
- Sometimes get duplicate log entries for the same event
- There is a moderate learning curve for setup and maintenance
December 09, 2020
SolarWinds Security Event Manager Review
SolarWinds Security Event Manager is utilized by the Information Technology department. Individuals on multiple IT teams have email alerts set up to notify them about events that require action. Additionally, the Security Event Manager is also utilized when there is a need to look at the logs to identify the root cause of a problem. For example, user account lockouts at a time the user wasn't in the office. It addresses multiple business problems by letting us know when something requires our attention.
- Easy to utilize--the rules are straightforward and pre-configured. You just have to customize them to fit your environment.
- Great customer service, which is incredibly useful when you want help with better utilizing the SEM.
- Easy and clear filters when looking for specific information without your environment.
- The SEM can be rather slow--an increase in CPU and RAM appeared to fix this problem fairly easily though.
- The SEM has lately required reboots for us fairly often. This is something we are currently working with support to resolve.
- The SEM could release additional graphic options to help better display data to management.
December 08, 2020
The SolarWinds SEM: Cost effective centralized log management tool that helps your audit and security.
The Solarwinds SEM is used for our client for 24/7 incident monitoring and reporting. The primary use is for account events, such as lockouts, disablement, and enablement to both user and computer accounts. It really works well in correlation and helps to stick with the audit and compliance. With a user-friendly web interface and automation modules, SolarWinds is an overall excellent cost-effective SIEM product if the intention is just to monitor for security incidents by manually created correlation rules.
- Has a nice user-friendly interface. Some SIEM 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.
- The logging agent in the source device is really simple to deploy and integrate.
- Monitoring and reporting the account disablement with detail to whoever disabled an account for audit and compliance.
- Some logs are not parsed well, happen to depend on the external log parser tool.
- The update method needs to be made even simpler, auto update would be better.
- The email alert features with SolarWinds will send a large number of emails if the number of alerts email. The duplication of email alerting needs to be reduced.
December 08, 2020
Solarwinds - great product with a few small flaws.
SolarWinds has been implemented across our network as a systems management platform for server, applications and high value workstations. I assisted it's implementation with the systems that I administer across the region. It allows us to track the health of critical services and to quickly identify and address problems as they occur.
- We use the client on register systems as event forwarders and log collection.
- It enables us to verify the access security to high value workstations and register systems.
- It provides a repository storage for log files so that they do not solely exist on workstations.
- It helps us ensure PCI standards are being maintained and track security risk issues as well as system health.
- Within the scope of my role I have noticed that the client can be problematic during system startup - some of the register systems we use are older and have lower resolution screens. When the client loads it pops up on screen but completely out of scale (to clarify, it may open a window that is 14x14 inches on a screen that only displays 10x10 inches. This is more frustration than a functional problem.
- Automated rollout would be useful but it is outside of my scope in my job to even know if it already has automated install capability.
- The GUI itself is a little clunky and there is somewhat of a learning curve - training is provided to clients however a friendlier interface would be helpful.
October 25, 2020
Great product with a steep learning curve
It is being used by the outsider IT company who does Level2 and Level3 support. We use it to audit network device logs with it (Palo Alto Firewalls and Juniper switches). Also we use it to audit Active Directory logons. It is easier to keep these logs in a single place.
- Customizable dashboards, where you can see everything you want.
- Easy to set-up connectors.
- Fully customizable event filters.
- Unable to set up some legacy equipment (Zyxel switches).
- Not an easy to product to learn from scratches.
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
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
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.
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.