AWS CloudTrail vs. LevelBlue USM Anywhere

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
AWS CloudTrail
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of an AWS account. With CloudTrail, users can log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail provides event history of AWS account activity, including actions taken through the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and other AWS services. This event history simplifies security analysis, resource change tracking,…N/A
LevelBlue USM Anywhere
Score 3.7 out of 10
N/A
The LevelBlue USM Anywhere XDR platform (replacing the former AlienVault USM) delivers threat detection, incident response, and compliance management.
$1,075
per month
Pricing
AWS CloudTrailLevelBlue USM Anywhere
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essentials
$1,075
per month
Standard
$1,695
per month
Premium
$2,595
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
AWS CloudTrailLevelBlue USM Anywhere
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional DetailsYou can view, filter, and download the most recent 90 days of your account activity for all management events in supported AWS services free of charge. You can set up a trail that delivers a single copy of management events in each region free of charge. Once a CloudTrail trail is set up, Amazon S3 charges apply based on your usage. You will be charged for any data events or additional copies of management events recorded in that region. In addition, you can choose CloudTrail Insights by enabling Insights events in your trails. CloudTrail Insights analyzes write management events, and you are charged based on the number of events that are analyzed in that region.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
AWS CloudTrailLevelBlue USM Anywhere
Considered Both Products
AWS CloudTrail
Chose AWS CloudTrail
We mainly needed to focus on logging and auditing of AWS services and activity, while Datadog & New Relic are more about performance monitoring and analytics. Moreover, AWS CloudTrail has a seamless integration with AWS, since it's coming from one bucket of products. So having …
Chose AWS CloudTrail
For this specific functionality, I am not aware of any other product that can do what [AWS] Cloudtrail does.
We did not evaluate any other products.
Chose AWS CloudTrail
Our company has not used any alternatives. Within our industry, it seems that AWS CloudTrail is the defacto standard for this type of functionality within the AWS environment.
Chose AWS CloudTrail
I think in the end, CloudTrail has more features and you can dive deeper inside the logs so it depends on your usage and what you expect in the end to make the right choice, I would say that both tools are really useful and bring a lot of benefits to I.T. companies.
LevelBlue USM Anywhere
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
AlienVault USM offers a user-friendly interface and comprehensive features at a lower cost compared to QRadar, making it our preferred choice for effective threat detection and response.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
Easy to deploy and ease of use, good training by ATT
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
I have used Splunk and QRadar which are quite manual and resource-intensive to get set up. On the other hand, AlienVault USM seems to have everything you need out of the box to get set up.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
QRadar is one of the top SIEMs on the market. AlienVault USM is more suitable for companies or clients having a smaller budget, as AlienVault USM is cheaper than QRadar. Regarding features, QRadar trumps AlienVault USM, as it is a product with a vast array of features.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
The cost of AlienVault is what sold us on AlienVault. However, considering the amount of time and effort that has gone into getting it set up and realizing that views and reports cannot be shared across groups makes it not worth the savings.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
There are other products like IBM QRadare and HP ArcSight, but they are much expensive than AlienVault USM which provides similar functionality.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
AlienVault was recommended by our PCI consultants.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
I evaluated Crowd Strike. It didn't provide any insight into my network equipment, only Mac and Windows clients. I wanted a complete SIEM and log manager.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
The only other product I've used similar to AlienVault is SolarWinds SIEM (formerly TriGeo). It too could be difficult to implement and maintain, but it's user interface was much worse. While AlienVault USM Anywhere charges for the amount of data being processed, SolarWinds was …
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
Darktrace - While also a fantastic product, its use case is slightly different from a SIEM, and we found that AlienVault's broad SIEM capabilities complemented Darkrace's focussed use case well.
CyberShark - Cloud SIEM solutions do not often allow full control of or access to …
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
I've only used AlienVault and no other products of this nature.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
AlienVault USM Anywhere provided the right gamut of features at the right price, with not a great deal of time or effort required to fully implement. As an added bonus, we can tick many checkboxes for various compliance standards, all from one solution. Complexity is an enemy …
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
We already had familiarity with the platform but we needed cloud support so we upgraded to USM. We reviewed a few other options but decided USM was the best fit our requirements and price point.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
IBM Security Network Intrusion Prevention System, Nessus and Splunk Cloud
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
The tools reviewed were quite sophisticated. The reason for choosing AlienVault USM was mainly inclusiveness (multiple services integrated) of the solution as well as the cost-benefit ratio. Integrating the solution into our current infrastructure also appeared relatively …
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
Installation of AlienVault USM is much easier and customization is open to all kinds of improvements.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
AlienVault USM is considerably more user-friendly, but it does fall short with the search functionality that a query language offers when looking for specific logs/statistics/data.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
USM anywhere is easy to deploy and has sufficient documentation to guide administrators throughout the process of configuration and log creation. It also verifies threats against the Open Threat Exchange platform. USM gives remediation advice and insights to all threats …
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
I chose AlienVault to try it in the lab environment and assess its strengths and weaknesses.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
The price and the ease-of-use, and the support from AlienVault are better. I had a lot of trouble starting out, but they guided me very well. The training provided by AlienVault was fantastic, because I could play without the fear of breaking anything.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
In terms of user-friendliness and overall navigation, I think AlienVault USM has the advantage. Also, AlienVault USM provides its own threat intelligence and then integrates it into its SEIM, which is a very helpful feature.
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
AlienVault was given to us, even though we already had Secureworks. Both SecureWorks and Fireye are more of a managed solution. It's fine to say we'll use AlienVault but it requires a lot of expertise to get it running and alerting correctly. And even then, if no one is …
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
We had used Splunk, which is not even close to its pricing not at all budget-friendly. Splunk implementation requires more man-power and is a time-consuming process because no default directives are present and in implementation, each and every case needs to be checked. …
Chose LevelBlue USM Anywhere
I didn't select either product but I have used both. I suspect IBM Qradar is more expensive, however, it is also more responsive, includes support for e-streamer, does parse the "blocked" field in source fire logs, and includes UEBA.
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User Ratings
AWS CloudTrailLevelBlue USM Anywhere
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.8
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
6.7
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.5
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
6.4
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
6.3
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
AWS CloudTrailLevelBlue USM Anywhere
Likelihood to Recommend
Most probably it would be suitable for Finance industries, where security is at the head of the table. However, in our case for E-commerce, it's also quite suitable, since we have quite a significant amount of data and usage of AWS services. Especially with usage of AWS services, AWS CloudTrail comes into play as a heavy plus. For instance, troubleshooting any issues in AWS services is really nice. Therefore, it would be less appropriate with a small amount of AWS service usage and some basic web hosting.
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AlienVault Unified Security Management (USM) Anywhere is a cloud-based security information and event management solution that provides effective and affordable threat detection, incident response, and compliance management capabilities. USM Anywhere is well suited to mid-size enterprise environments operating in the cloud. USM Anywhere is also well suited to enterprises whose operations teams require easy deployment and management. Last, USM Anywhere is considered a highly affordable option compared to competitors. USM Anywhere lags competitors in several areas, such as application monitoring, database monitoring, and integrations with third-party solutions such as cloud access security brokers (CASB), DAM, DAP, and DLP.
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Pros
  • Logs details
  • Easy implementation
  • Great support
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  • The USM platform provides the essential security capabilities that work together for a fast and cost-effective way for organizations to have complete visibility into the security of their environment.
  • With the information gathered during asset discovery, USM will correlated that information with known vulnerabilities for continuous vulnerability awareness. In addition, USM contains an active scanner capable of scanning for over 30,000 known vulnerabilities.
  • To give better visibility into your network, and possibly detect intrusions that don’t follow behavioral patterns, we offer Netflow information, bandwidth monitoring, and traffic capture, all part of our behavioral monitoring capabilities built into USM.
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Cons
  • Delay
  • User interface, must send logs elsewhere to view them
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  • USM Anywhere doesn't allow you to multi-home sensors. So if you have non-routable networks, you'll need to investigate the on-premise solution too.
  • You have to be on top of tuning else a constant stream of alerts will cause your SOC staff to begin ignoring alarms.
  • You have to be on top of tuning else you'll eat your allotment of storage for that month. It is really easy to exceed your storage quota if you don't proactively monitor log sources. USM could do a better job letting you know if a log source is too chatty.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
The centralized logging and retention for PCI compliance was our main driver, and it is meeting that need. Otherwise there has been enough frustration with the lack of documentation and the need to customize through the CLI that I would be open to alternatives.
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Usability
No answers on this topic
Once you are able to navigate the different panels, finding what you need is quite easily. Before getting used it it can be a bit of challenge . Each panel is quite well laid out and the filtering search capabilities are quite strong.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
We do have issues with maintenance on the AlienVault USM as the disk fills up from time to time with other data sources. Sources for scanning logs and net flow data isn't calculated in regular disk maintenance and can easily fill up our disk if we do not keep an eye on it with some custom Nagios plugins. The system does properly trim logging data from logging sources properly.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
With the latest release of AlienVault USM overall performance has not been an issue. We have noticed single source events per second does not scale well with the overall system. 2,000eps on a vmware system with a single source produces delays of up to an hour for us. Pages, reporting and even raw log searches are rather quick though.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
Support is friendly but response time has been spotty. Also initially when we signed up there was a lot of pointing us at the documentation, which has been spotty and ad-hoc for what is supposed to be a commercial product. Overall the feel of AlienVault and the support has been of a very new and startup company that is trying to grow up out of it's open source roots, and I'm not sure if they've totally been able to make the transition to being able to meet the expectations of the enterprise customers.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
I did not have any experience with "in person" training directly. The free online classes offered for a half a day are based on the actual training offered. These little teasers are very good and well worth your time to learn a few quick and dirty ways of getting more information from your SIEM
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
The instructor gave detailed overview and went through the labs before allowing us to attempt using them. I enjoyed the balance of time and level of instruction received. The content went deeper that usual and the lab environment was easy to use and all results were consistent. I came away from the course knowing more than i did if I had just read the course notes.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
AlienVault USM was a very simple to implement and get up and running. We started with a trial version and had that up and going within an hour of receiving email instructions from the sales engineer. We never had to contact support to get the system up and going. It was extremely easy to convert over to a full license once we started with a paid version.
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Alternatives Considered
For this specific functionality, I am not aware of any other product that can do what [AWS] Cloudtrail does. We did not evaluate any other products.
Read full review
The cost of AlienVault is what sold us on AlienVault. However, considering the amount of time and effort that has gone into getting it set up and realizing that views and reports cannot be shared across groups makes it not worth the savings.
Read full review
Scalability
No answers on this topic
The AlienVault USM is not very scalable. Some scalability can be achieved by installing additional sensors, but this only offers 500eps per sensor and is still overall limited by the installation type of VM or physical. We have also noticed the EPS (events per second) is rated overall and not towards a single source. A single source on a very healthy VMware partition tops out at 2,000eps for us, no matter how we configure it. Maybe this is a problem of the 5.2 release?
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Return on Investment
  • Saved us from purchasing and managing 3rd party solutions
  • Satisfies Security/Governance requirements
  • No upkeep/maintenance
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  • Once you hit the 150 asset mark, you have to jump to their unlimited license. There is no middle ground. We were only 10 or so assets above the 150 so we had to chose to either not monitor those assets or pay the price of the upgrade.
  • AlienVault brings all the information to one place which makes it much quicker to track down problems.
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ScreenShots

AWS CloudTrail Screenshots

Screenshot of CloudTrail Insights: Identify and respond to unusual operational activity
•Unexpected spikes in resource provisioning
•Bursts of IAM management actions
•Gaps in periodic maintenance activity
•Automatic analysis of API calls and usage patterns
•Alerts when unusual activity is detected