These Events will "Blow" You Away!
November 17, 2019

These Events will "Blow" You Away!

Adam Morrison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Security Event Manager

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.
  • SolarWinds SEM has allowed my network team to have confidence that we have an eye on changes in our AD environment, and that if we miss something we can investigate quickly.
I have used portions of other products such as ManageEngine or Microsoft System Center Operation Manager for similar functions as we currently use SolarWinds. They are both good products, but have their weaknesses. We had some security issues with ManageEngine when we were testing the functionality that came up during a PenTest and we did not continue. SCOM is much harder to dig into for results when compared to SolarWinds.
I have not directly worked with SolarWinds support. However, my staff has great things to say about them. Even during upgrades on the servers that we were doing ourselves support was very helpful with troubleshooting and best practices. Also the TWACK community is very helpful. I have heard other people in the industry stated that it is one of SolarWinds best features.

Do you think SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)'s feature set?

Yes

Did SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) again?

Yes

When an account is created in active directory your teams can be notified. You can also be notified when computer objects are created in your enviroment. This can be helpful to spot unknown devices that may try to bind to your AD for authentication. Or if accounts are deleted in mass you can react quickly.

SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Feature Ratings

Centralized event and log data collection
10
Correlation
7
Event and log normalization/management
8
Deployment flexibility
6
Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools
Not Rated
Custom dashboards and workspaces
7