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AlienVault OSSIM vs Fortinet FortiSIEM comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AlienVault OSSIM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
25th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortinet FortiSIEM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
17th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
AI Observability (25th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of AlienVault OSSIM is 1.2%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortinet FortiSIEM is 2.1%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiSIEM2.1%
AlienVault OSSIM1.2%
Other96.7%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

BP
Independent Contractor at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
Enables cost-effective security management for small businesses
Scaling for USM is always challenging for any product unless it is purpose-built or overbuilt at the front end. They will use Palo Alto and its competitors, and LevelBlue will manage that implementation. The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale. By pushing it to a cloud-based system, they've largely alleviated scale issues. It's native in Amazon but will also run in Azure. They have worked with cloud service providers to offer enough throughput at a cost reasonable for a corporation. Scaling was their biggest problem, and they've largely conquered those issues.
SY
Network Engineer at Ogma Consulting
Comprehensive monitoring boosts security, yet incident management features need expansion
Fortinet FortiSIEM should broaden its remediation part to include more features for incident management. Currently, to manage repetitive incidents or for remediation, I need to use a separate software called FortiSOAR. Additionally, the search functionality in FortiAI should be improved to provide more precise results, making it easier for me to understand what actions need to be taken.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It has helped us remediate threats in the past by providing significant events that assisted in identifying suspicious activities, such as logins from multiple countries."
"The tool's security detection is good. It helps us with login tracking and generating reports. We aim to identify potential issues, such as brute-force attacks on user accounts or server-level anomalies. For instance, if I receive a report indicating a server is at an abnormal level, I investigate and address the issue."
"Most of the SOC or SIEM enterprise class products are very expensive, whereas with OSSIM you can start out with a smaller setup and then expand as you wish."
"Its user-friendliness is the most valuable. It is very easy to use and explore. The dashboard is very well packaged and integrated. You don't have to spend a lot of time in configuring it and checking out the RPM etc. It is also free and very powerful."
"The most valuable feature is the logging capability."
"The most valuable features of AlienVault OSSIM are case management, ease of configuration, and investigation."
"The dashboard is the solution's most valuable aspect; it brings everything into one central point where I can actually look at it and go, "Okay, I understand what's going on," and the solution works well and allows me to have visibility into anomalous events."
"Asset discovery is good."
"It's easy to manage. There's a web interface and a command line, depending on what the user is comfortable with. There's a large knowledge base available, and the support is timely."
"With the online-based monitoring we've set up, we've been able to watch trends of attempted attacks on our network, and we're also able to monitor our account issues internally as attackers attempt to log into our accounts."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to view all the network events on a single pane and find the point of contact or point of the incident."
"Our customer did not have security monitoring in the first place. With this solution, it provided security posture management and visibility about the security landscape and threats that they had."
"All in all, the product is a well rounded performer when it comes to combined infrastructure and security monitoring, however in traditional SIEM bake-offs, they need a lot more flavour to make it exciting."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiSIEM are the SD-WAN, Global LAN, and application controls."
"The most valuable feature is the dashboard. CMDB database collects data from a lot of pre-configured devices."
"The pricing is very, very affordable; for the value you get, I think it’s about the cheapest solution on the market."
 

Cons

"Lacking in depth of reporting."
"The solution is not scalable."
"I don't like to work on OSSIM because it is unpredictable."
"ArcSight works better than AlienVault right now."
"When comparing AlienVault OSSIM to other solutions it looks a bit outdated. Additionally, they need to improve their integration."
"The main area where the AlienVault product was lacking around the 2018 timeframe was in its ability to scale."
"AlienVault OSSIM should improve the deployment and make it unified like the USM."
"We need more dashboards and we need more customization for dashboards."
"There is no proper guide for integration or configuration. They need to improve the documentation library."
"We expect the latest patch from Fortinet FortiSIEM to give the ability to work with signature files."
"Issues that could have been resolved in 30-60 minutes sometimes took months, but they have improved."
"FortiSIEM is a bit resource-hungry, so work should be done on hardware resource utilization to consume less hardware."
"The initial setup was quite complex."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM could improve to extend to several locations or sites."
"The solution's interface could be modernized and improved."
"Sometimes, if there are changes made by a user on a database server, it can be difficult to get that information on the fly. I would like to see a situation where once I specify a user with the database server I need, and with the changes they have performed on that, I don't need to continue my search pattern to drill down just to get the information."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of AlienVault OSSIM is too high sometimes for us to present to our customers. The price should be lower. We are on a three-year license to use the solution. We had to pay extra for the support."
"The solution is open source, so it's free to use."
"OSSIM is free."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"AlienVault OSSIM is free."
"I used the paid version of the tool and found it to be expensive. It has been a while since I changed to Securonix. I will have to check whether AlienVault charges per device, user, or log."
"AlienVault pricing is the best. Whatever cost you are paying, you are getting a return on every penny... It's not like your IBM, your QRadar, or Splunk, where the cost is too high."
"AlienVault OSSIM is expensive compared to its competitors."
"The tool is really expensive. For what the tool does for our team, the price is fair."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The free version license of the product is available for two months."
"The price of Fortinet FortiSIEM was reasonable compared to other solutions."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is very cost-efficient compared to other SIEM solutions."
"Fortinet FortiSIEM is cheaper compared to other products."
"Please be cheaper and more simplified."
"The price of Fortinet FortiSIEM is a lot less when compared to other solutions."
"This is probably more on the lower cost end of the spectrum compared to competing products. Fortinet's license model is based on events per second, which makes sense, but that's not typical. It makes it very hard to calculate what your costs are going to be as you scale the platform because some log sources, such as firewall logs, are very noisy, and there are lots and lots of events per second, but some of them are not. So, it becomes a bit of a science experiment trying to guess what your costs are going to be as you scale the solution. This is where other competing products perhaps have a more straightforward license model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlienVault OSSIM?
It depends. I would need to review their cost models, but generally, they are on a scaled basis based on throughput usage. Because it's a software as a service solution for their core product for U...
What needs improvement with AlienVault OSSIM?
Scaling for USM is always challenging for any product unless it is purpose-built or overbuilt at the front end. They will use Palo Alto and its competitors, and LevelBlue will manage that implement...
What is your primary use case for AlienVault OSSIM?
This solution is very similar to most of the other MSSPs that you would find out there. When I look at use cases, AlienVault was initially aimed at small to medium businesses. It grew, and that was...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSIEM?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Fortinet FortiSIEM is wonderful, as it offers an excellent license compared to other vendors.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSIEM?
Fortinet FortiSIEM is great overall. Performance could be enhanced, but I do not wish to elaborate on needed improvements.
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiSIEM?
My main use case for Fortinet FortiSIEM is building a SOC and serving as an event management platform for correlating events in my work. I use Fortinet FortiSIEM for event correlation by building a...
 

Also Known As

OSSIM
FortiSIEM, AccelOps
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Council Rock School District
FortiSIEM has hundreds of customers worldwide in markets including managed services, technology, financial services, healthcare, and government. Customers include Aruba Networks, Compushare, Port of San Diego, Cleveland Indians, Infoblox, Healthways, and Referentia.
Find out what your peers are saying about AlienVault OSSIM vs. Fortinet FortiSIEM and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.