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SEM easy to afford, easy to install, easy to use
November 12, 2020

SEM easy to afford, easy to install, easy to use

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)

We're using SEM on various networks that need to comply with 800-53 security controls under RMF. We have many security technical implementation guides me must follow with many requirements that need to be followed.
  • Easy to install virtual appliance
  • Out of the box configuration that works with little modification
  • Price isn't based on events it's based on monitored nodes
  • It may not scale to millions of nodes
  • Searches way back in time take a little longer due to compression
  • Not many Cons really!
  • Reasonable price
  • Easy to implement
  • Simple to standardize on
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.
SEM is appropriate for all but the absolute largest networks. It works great for smaller, medium, and even some decent sized networks. Having options for all kinds of data to easily be ingested and have the events normalized out of the box is great. The price is really right when compared to other products. Some competitors are priced by number of events and in a locked down environment; this means millions of events so price climbs fast on these other products. Agents are easily deployed and can be used in images. The number of event connectors for ingesting data is large and built into the product and constantly updated. Updates are easy.