AlienVault USM local appliance
August 07, 2019

AlienVault USM local appliance

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

USM Appliance (On-Premises)

Overall Satisfaction with AlienVault USM

AlienVault USM is being used as an on location network security appliance. It monitors all outgoing, incoming, and internal network traffic within our main office. We also use AlienVault USM to monitor our cloud platform. It allows us to fulfill compliance requirements and secure our network more easily than running several different solutions at a time.
  • Gets pretty regular updates
  • Appears to monitor all network traffic
  • Has appliances for many different situations
  • Pretty costly
  • Local appliance requires a little more hands on maintenance to keep it updated and running
Wireshark and Ubiquiti's UNIFI are the closest things I've personally used that do any kind of network monitoring. Wireshark's use case if very different though, AlienVault it meant to be monitoring all traffic on a network, all the time, where as Wireshark is more of a debugging tool.

UNIFI is a little more of a direct competitor, if you have their security gateways, but only if you use their hardware. Assuming that's the case, I would say UNIFI is a lot easier to setup and use, but also has less capability for fine tuning your monitors, etc.
If your business doesn't have the resources to dedicate to a full-time employee handling network monitoring, or wants an all in one solution, this one does pretty well if you have the money. If you plan to have a more dedicated security team, you may still consider this, but there may also be cheaper options if you have the manpower at that point.