Item: AlienVault USM
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Implemented in a SaaS company with resources in colocation and AWS. All server assets are covered however workstations are not. We like that it provides the opportunity of granular logging on all systems and networks.

Pros and Cons

UX/UI responsive and easy to navigate.
Covers wide variety of systems and devices.
Ease of getting sensors up and running.

More simplified dashboards would help not overwhelm new users.
Use more industry-standard terms for items.
Tech support that actually reads your questions prior to replying with canned responses.
Update their KBs to reflect real-world scenarios. We've ran across several places where NxLog's settings in the KB were incorrect and support had no idea, kept telling us that we were wrong despite demonstrating to them the correct settings.

Key Insights

Do you think AlienVault USM delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with AlienVault USM's feature set?

Yes

Did AlienVault USM live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of AlienVault USM go as expected?

Would you buy AlienVault USM again?

Return on Investment

Positive - Increased accountability for account auditing.
Negative - Increased management of devices since discovery still doesn't work correctly.

Alternatives Considered

Zabbix

AlienVault provides a much simpler implementation than Zabbix but of course the cost is much lower. While both do a good job, AlienVault USM does the best for vulnerability scanning and reporting but Zabbix excels much better with integration with Splunk for alerting.

Other Software Used

Splunk On-Call (Formerly VictorOps), Cisco Firepower 2100 Series, SonicWall NSA Series

Likelihood to Recommend

AlienVault is well-suited for the customer that needs compliance reports for PCI/HIPAA/etc. The price will hinder some customers from being able to afford it. This tool does the same thing that dozens of others do, so concentrating more on security scanning, vulnerability, and threats would prevent it from too much overlapping of features. Every vendor who tries to do a "single pane of glass" and be a "single source" always does this poorly.

Great product but out of the box it needs a lot of work.

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with AlienVault USM