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SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)

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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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Easy Configuration Process: Many users have expressed their positive experiences with the configuration process of SolarWinds, noting that …
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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

View all 7 features
  • Centralized event and log data collection (17)
    8.5
    85%
  • Deployment flexibility (17)
    7.9
    79%
  • Event and log normalization/management (17)
    7.3
    73%
  • Custom dashboards and workspaces (16)
    4.9
    49%
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Pricing

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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

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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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Features

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Security Information and Event Management is a category of security software that allows security analysts to look at a more comprehensive view of security logs and events than would be possible by looking at the log files of individual, point security tools

7.7
Avg 7.8
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Product Details

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.

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

Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of

SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Video

Security Event Manager - Overview

SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationNo

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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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(119)

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!

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:

  1. It is important to have a detailed plan before deploying the tool. This will help meet expectations and ensure effective usage.

  2. 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.

  3. 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

(1-25 of 34)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It came down to price on this one. SolarWinds gave us a great break on it. For the features that we were looking for, SolarWinds is a great value for our dollar. As far as features go, we were looking for some basics that SolarWinds had. We do look forward to implementing more features such as USB tracks. I would say that its simplicity and cost make SolarWinds SEM stack up quite well against its competitors. We installed the free trial and converted that to the production environment.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Solarwinds Security Event Manager (SEM) is the best solution for price/performance. The solution has an easily understandable architecture and also the solution can be installed easily. The solution is a very stable and fast solution for our company size.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Splunk was a pretty good product but the licensing structure needed a lot of work. They changed the structure three times that I am aware and I still had problems understanding LogRhythm had a lot of issues correlating users to IP addresses, the mappings were frequently wrong so this product could not be trusted in my environment as all our access logs are IP based and this needs to be matched to usernames from AD Fortianalzyer is a great product but it can only do logs from Fortigates so that was not helping for anything other than our firewalls.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We found that SolarWinds performed poorly when the Architecture included many large data centers spread across the globe. When evaluating the SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) solution we quickly realized that we needed a distributed architecture with log aggregation to a Managed Security Services vendor. For this reason, we did not go with SolarWinds SEM however, it is an ideal solution for large enterprises with continental data center reach. Coupled with SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, Application and Server Monitor, and other SolarWinds modules make this is an excellent solution for Enterprises looking for an end-to-end IT Operations tool.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • SolarWinds Virtualization Manager (VMAN)
SolarWinds SEM was selected because it integrates with VMAN on the Orion platform and allows all monitoring information and alerts to be aggregated in one place.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have additionally used Netwrix Auditor, which has some similarity with SolarWinds SEM. I use both hand in hand, but typically use the SEM first since it is easier to manage. With Netwrix custom searches are more complex than customer searches in the SEM. The SEM makes it easy to save custom filters, which makes future similar research very easy.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I know the Qradar is not the right SIEM tool to compete with Solarwinds SEM but when we looked from a cost, audit & compliance perspective (which are major for many customers), we knew the log management and compliance with regulation would be achieved with SEM. But no machine learning stuff to impress by understanding the users' behaviors, as Qradar's add-on features do.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SEM is much better value proposition due to being priced by node and not by size of the event database. It's also much easier to configure that Splunk and needs much less infrastructure to run. Out of the box SEM beats Splunk on functionality. We looked at many products and compared before choosing SEM.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I find Tripwire Log Center to be adequate and stable but it lacks the graphics and the unified UI that you can have with SolarWinds products. It is also not as simple to set up and operate. One more advantage that SolarWinds products have is the THWACK forum, a big user base and plenty of documentation.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
It is a bit hard to compare, since Cortex XDR is kind of a different starship, with endpoint protection and such, and not really great for auditing Windows Event Logs.
ELK stack on the other hand is free in some of it's editions but seems much similar then Cortex. SolarWinds SEM has better premade dashboards and event filters.
Tim Short | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We picked SolarWinds because of the better price point, integration with other SolarWinds products, and the ease of training. Because we were already familiar with the SolarWinds way of doing alerts and reports, it made this product a nice fit for our company and it has great capabilities built in to give our team a feeling of being more secure and to help deter possible attackers.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The first reason is the ease of installation. Unlike competitor, SEM was running and partially deployed within a day. With the defaults already in the SEM, it's super easy to get result quickly, without a consultant. Also, it's not too resource-intensive, and does not require a complex setup. One server and you're good to go.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Several clients have moved away from LogRhythm because of cost. SEM offers the best ROI for the function. Its interface is much cleaner then LogRhythm. However, there is a steeper learning curve with SEM. The ease of search and data integrity offered by SEM is definitely a plus - as it stores multiple copies of the database and cross-checks for integrity.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Splunk to also collect Syslog data across our enterprise. However, it is quite different in the correlation process. Splunk is less user-friendly and requires advanced-level training to manage. Solarwinds SEM is a lot easier to manage and set-up.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds provides support so when you have problems you don't need to turn to information bases as you can just get a hold of SolarWinds support. I would say another reason for getting SEM is that it is generally easier to configure and easier to learn than the other solutions available, this means that IT staff at any level can easily learn how to start monitoring and alerting using a log-based solution. SEM also does a lot of the leg work for you whereas other solutions you have to get from point A to B on your own.
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