Top 11 Best SIEM Tools in 2023 (Real-Time Incident Response & Security)

List and the comparison of the best open source free SIEM Tools, Software and Solutions with Features, Price, and Comparison:

What is SIEM?

SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) system provides real-time analysis of security alerts by applications and network hardware. It includes systems like Log management, Security Log Management, Security Event correlation, Security Information management, etc.

SIEM is a combination of Security Event Management (SEM) and Security Information Management (SIM).

Security Event Management can perform threat monitoring, event correlation, and incident response by analyzing the log and event data in real time. Security Information Management performs collection, analyzation, and reporting on log data.

Rapid7 has performed a survey on Incident Detection and Response and more than 50% of the people have responded that they use SIEM.

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How does SIEM work?

SIEM software gathers the security log data generated by a variety of sources like host systems and security devices like firewalls and antivirus. The second step is to process this log to convert it into a standard format.

The next step is to perform an analysis for the identification and categorization of incidents and events. Hence, the alerts are generated if a security issue is found. The tool can also provide the reports which are related to security incidents and events.

As per the research performed by AlienVault, most of the businesses are concerned about cloud security threats, 55% of the businesses are concerned about phishing and 45% for ransomware.

The below image will show you the details of the research performed by AlienVault:

Pro Tip:

The right selection of SIEM tools depend on the organization’s requirements. Depending on the requirement, the company can select the tool according to its capability for compliance or for threat detection. You should also consider the factors like threat intelligence capabilities, network forensics capabilities, functionalities for data examination and analysis, automated response capabilities & their quality, native support for log sources.

This article includes a list of the Top SIEM Software Tools for you to pick from.

Our TOP Recommendations:

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Enlisted below are the best Security Information and Event Management Tools that are available in the market.

Comparison of the Top SIEM Software

Here is a comparison of the top SIEM solutions:

SIEMBest forOS PlatformDeploymentFree TrialPrice

SolarWinds

Small, Medium, and Large businesses.Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris.On-premise & Cloud30 daysStarts at $4665.

Salesforce

Small to Large Businesses.Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS.Cloud30 daysStarts at $25/user/month.

Log360

Small to large businessesWindows, Linux, WebCloud-Hosted and On-premise30 daysQuote-based

Paessler PRTG

Small to Large BusinessesWeb-based, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android.On-premise or cloud30 daysStarts at $1799 per server license.

Datadog

Small, Medium, & Large businesses. Windows, Mac, Linux, Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RedHat.On-premise and SaaS. AvailableSecurity Monitoring price starts at $0.20 per GB of analyzed logs per month.

Splunk

Small, Medium, and Large businesses.Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris.On-premises & SaaSSplunk Enterprise: 60 days
Splunk Cloud: 15 days
Splunk Light: 30 days
Splunk Free: Free sample for core enterprise platform.Get a quote.

McAfee ESM

Small, Medium, and Large businesses.Windows & Mac.On-premises, Cloud, or HybridAvailableGet a quote.

ArcSight

Small, Medium, and Large businesses.Windows.Appliance, Software, Cloud (AWS & Azure)AvailableBased on data ingested and security events correlated per second.

Let’s Explore each of the SIEM software in detail!!

Best for Small, Medium, and Large businesses.

Price: SolarWinds offer a fully functional free trial for 30 days. The price starts at $4665. It will cost you a one-time fee.

SolarWinds provides a solution to threat detection for the on-premises network through Log and Event Manager. It has features of USB device monitoring and automated threat remediation. Log and Event Manager has some new features like log filtering, node management, log forwarding, Events console, and increased storage limit.

Features:

• It can perform advanced search and forensic analysis.
• With event-time detection of suspicious activity, there will be faster identification of threats.
• It has regulatory compliance readiness. For this, it supports HIPAA, PCI, DSS, SOX, DISA, STIG, etc.
• It maintains continuous security.

Verdict: SolarWinds supports Windows, Linux, Mac, and Solaris. As per the reviews, SolarWinds doesn’t have a complete security suite but it provides good features and capabilities for threat detection. It can be a good solution for SMEs.

Best for Small to large businesses.

Price: Essentials plan: $25/user/month, Professional Plan: $75/user/month, Enterprise Plan: $150/user/month, Unlimited plan: $300/user/month. A 30-day free trial is also available.

Salesforce offers fantastic security information software for service operators and agents alike. They get complete visibility into all incidents, customer data, and cases in a single workspace. This provides them with greater context to better deal with a problem. The platform proactively identifies security issues before the customer even notices them.

Add to that, Salesforce’s ability to integrate with tons of other external systems makes it capable of resolving security issues before they aggravate. The platform also benefits from smart AI, which can pinpoint issues from a large volume of similar cases, thus expediting the problem-solving process.

Features:

• Proactively identify issues
• Real-time collaboration
• Get timely updates for swift problem resolution.
• Connect with customers via digital channels to keep them updated.

Verdict: With Salesforce, you have a SIEM tool that caters to the requirements of both agents and customers. Its ability to proactively detect security issues and expedite the problem-solving process with the help of AI earns it a glowing recommendation from us.

Best for Threat Detection and Mitigation.

Price: Submit a request to get a free quote. The premium plan can be availed for 30 days free of charge. Exclusive Year-End Discounts on ManageEngine products!

Log360 is a fantastic SIEM tool that allows you to anticipate, combat, and mitigate security threats. The software monitors your files and folders constantly and instantly alerts you if any concerning changes to them are detected. You get alerts in real time, thus making your response to incidents more agile and efficient.

Features:

• Constantly monitor network devices, web servers, databases, and file servers to detect security threats
• Assign risk scores to users and entities.
• Assess threats using machine learning
• Set internal security policies with custom templates.

Verdict: Log360 is a great SIEM tool for real-time monitoring of network devices, servers, and applications. It is excellent at security threat management and detection. The platform can be deployed on both virtual and physical environments. It is also fantastic for visualizing data to help security experts better combat threats and incidents.

Best for Feature-rich network monitoring.

Pricing: A 30-day free trial is available. PRTG 500 can be availed for $1799 per server license, PRTG 1000 can be availed for $3399 per server license, PRTG 2500 costs $6899 per server license, PRTG 5000 costs $11999 per server license, PRTG XL1 $15999.

Paessler PRTG arms its users with all tools necessary to monitor their entire IT infrastructure, this includes all devices, traffic, applications, etc. With this tool, you’ll be able to determine how much bandwidth your devices or application are using. The software also helps you monitor specific datasets with the help of individually configured PTRG sensors and SQL queries.

The platform also empowers users to manage all applications and acquire detailed stats about every single application running on your network from a single place. The platform also excels when it comes to monitoring all types of servers in real-time. It assesses them with regard to their accessibility, availability, and reliability.

Features:

• Visualize the network with maps and dashboards.
• Flexible alerts when problems are detected.
• Tool is customizable using custom sensors and HTTP API.
• Use SNMP to monitor a diverse range of devices.

Verdict: Paessler PRTG is arguably one of the most powerful solutions out there that meets the requirements of businesses of varying sizes. The software is easy to use, customizable and comes equipped with a ton of features. Its maps and dashboards allow you to visualize your entire network infrastructure, thus facilitating simple monitoring and managing of all devices, applications, and traffic among many other things.

Datadog Security Monitoring helps you to secure your tech stack through real-time threat detection. Set up key security integrations in minutes; apply OOTB Detection Rules without a query language, and correlate security signals to investigate suspicious activity.

Datadog Security Monitoring unifies the developers, operations, and security teams into one platform. A single dashboard displays devops content, business metrics, and security content. Detect threats in real-time and investigate security alerts across your infrastructure metrics, distributed traces, and logs.

Key Features:

• With more than 450+ vendor-backed integrations, Datadog Security Monitoring lets you collect metrics, logs, and traces from your entire stack as well as from your security tools.
• Datadog’s Detection Rules give you a powerful way to detect security threats and suspicious behavior within all ingested logs, in real-time.
• You can start detecting threats in minutes with default out-of-the-box rules for widespread attacker techniques.
• Edit and customize any rule with our simple rules editor, to meet your organization’s specific needs – no query language required.
• Break down silos between developers, security, and operation teams with Datadog Security Monitoring.

#6) Splunk Enterprise SIEM

Best for Small, Medium, and Large businesses.

Price: A free trial is available for the product but the trial period differs as per the product. It provides a free sample for the core enterprise platform. You can get a quote from them. As per the reviews, the enterprise license will cost $6000 for 500MB per day for a perpetual license. The term license is also available for $2000 per year.

Splunk provides improved security operations like customizable dashboards, asset investigator, statistical analysis, and incident review, classification, and investigation. It has features of alerts management, risk scores, etc. It provides security services to the public sectors, financial services, and healthcare.

Features:

• It can work with any machine data, even if it is from the cloud or on-premises.
• Automated actions and workflows for quick and accurate response.
• It has the capability of event sequencing.
• Quick detection of malicious threats.

Verdict: In order, to provide you actionable and predictive insights, Splunk makes use of AI and Machine Learning. Dashboards and visualizations are customizable. As per the customer reviews, it is an expensive tool and thus it is best for the enterprises.

Website: Splunk

#7) McAfee ESM

Price: Free trial is also available. You can get a quote for its pricing details. As per the online reviews, the price is $39995 for VM and $47994 for comparable hardware pricing.

McAfee ESM will provide you real-time visibility for the activities on system, networks, databases, and applications.

It provides various products related to security like McAfee Investigator, Advanced Correlation Engine, Application Data Monitor, Enterprise Log Manager, Event Receiver, Global threat intelligence for Enterprise Security Manager, and Enterprise Log Search. You will get actionable data from McAfee ESM.

Features:

• Prioritized alerts.
• With advanced analytics and rich context, it will be easier to detect and prioritize threats.
• Dynamic presentation of data. It will be an actionable data for investigating, containing, remediating, and adapting for importing alerts and patterns.
• Data will be monitored and analyzed from a broad heterogeneous security infrastructure.
• It has open interfaces for two-way integration.

Verdict: McAfee is one of the popular SIEM tools. It confirms system security by running through your active directory records. It supports Windows and Mac OS.

Website: McAfee ESM

#8) Micro Focus ArcSight

Best for Small, Medium, and Large businesses.

Price: Micro Focus offers a free trial for ArcSight. It will cost you according to the amount of data ingested and security events correlated per second.

ArcSight Enterprise Security Manager has features of distributed correlation and cluster view.

It is good in sources ingestion as it supports more than 500 device types for analyzing the data. It is available through the appliance, software, AWS, and Microsoft Azure.

Features:

• It provides a distributed correlation by combining SIEM correlation engine with distributed cluster technology.
• It can be integrated with various machine learning and intelligence platform.
• It makes use of agents or connectors. It supports more than 300 connectors.

Verdict: Micro Focus ArcSight is a scalable solution to meet demanding security requirements. It is good at blocking threats and for performance (100000 EPS).

Website: Micro Focus ArcSight

#9) LogRhythm

Best for medium-sized organizations.

Price: You can get a quote for a high-performance appliance, software solution, and Enterprise licensing program. As per the online reviews, the price starts at $28000.

LogRhythm provides Next-Generation SIEM solution for the problems like fragmented workflows, alarm fatigue, segmented threat detection, lack of automation, lack of metrics for understanding maturity, and lack of centralized visibility. It has flexible data storage options.

Features:

• It will process unstructured data and will also provide you a consistent, normalized view.
• It supports Windows and Linux OS.
• It is an AI-based technology.
• It supports a wide range of devices and log types.

Verdict: This platform has all features and functionalities from behavioral analysis to log correlation and AI. According to the customer reviews, it has a learning curve but the instruction-manual with hyperlinks to features will help you to learn the tool.

Website: LogRhythm

#10) AlienVault USM

Best for any sized businesses.

Price: AlienVault offers three pricing plans i.e. Essentials ($1075 per month), Standard ($1695 per month), and Premium ($2595 per month). Essentials plan will work best for small IT teams, Standard plan is for IT security teams, and Premium plan is for those IT security teams who want to meet specific PCI DSS audit requirements.

AlienVault is the only platform with multiple security capabilities. It has features for asset discovery and inventory, vulnerability assessment, intrusion detection, SIEM event correlation, compliance reports, log management, email alerts, etc.

It makes use of lightweight sensors and endpoint agents. It can be used by MSSPs to tailor their security services offerings.

Features:

• It has an automated asset discovery feature so that it can be used in a dynamic cloud environment.
• Endpoints will get continuously monitored for threats and configuration issues.
• Identification of vulnerabilities and AWS configuration issues.
• It will deploy faster, work smarter, and automate threat hunting.

Verdict: AlienVault USM (Unified Security Management) is the platform for threat detection, incident response, and compliance management. It can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment. It will deploy faster, work smarter, and automate threat hunting.

Website: AlienVault USM

#11) RSA NetWitness

Best for medium and large businesses.

Price: You can get a quote for its pricing details. As per the online reviews, the starting price will be $857 per month for a term license. These rates are for the typical enterprise.

This platform makes use of various data sources like RSA NetWitness logs, RSA NetWitness Network, RSA NetWitness Endpoint, RSA NetWitness UEBA, and Orchestrator.

For a definitive response, it provides orchestration and automation capabilities to analysts. For this, it connects with the incidents over time and will identify the scope of an attack. It will help analysts to eradicate threats before it impacts the business.

Features:

• Using the threat intelligence and business context, it performs real-time data enrichment.
• This real-time data enrichment will help the analysts during the investigation by making security data more useful.
• It can automatically extract threat-relevant meta-data by making use of specialized algorithms.
• It provides complete incident management.
• It provides flexibility in deployment as it can be deployed as a single appliance or multiple, partially or fully virtualized, and on-premises or in the cloud.

Verdict: This platform will provide you benefits of unmatched visibility, definitive response, and advanced threat detection. For extensive metadata, it works with different sources to extract threat-relevant metadata into more than 200 metadata fields.

Website: RSA NetWitness

#12) EventTracker

Best for small, medium, and large businesses.

EventTracker is the platform with multiple capabilities like SIEM & Log Management, Threat Detection & Response, Vulnerability Assessment, User and Entity Behavior Analysis, Security Orchestration and Automation, and Compliance.

It has customizable dashboard tiles and automated workflows. It provides scalable views for small screens and SOC displays.

Features:

• It will generate rule-based alerts in real-time.
• It performs real-time processing and correlation which will be helpful for behavior analysis and correlation.
• 1500 pre-defined security and compliance reports are included.
• It provides a single pane of glass for SOC, optimized responsive display, and faster elastic search.
• It will allow you to pre-configure the alerts for multiple security and operational conditions.

Verdict: The solution can be used in multiple industries like finance & banking, legal, higher education, retail, healthcare, etc. It can be deployed in the cloud or on premises.

Website: EventTracker

#13) Securonix

Best for small, medium, and large businesses.

Price: Get a quote.

Securonix is the next-gen SIEM platform to collect data at a scale, detect advanced threats, and to remediate threats quickly. It is a scalable platform based on the Hadoop. It will be delivered in the cloud as a service. It will allow you to export the visualized data in standard data formats.

Features:

• Intelligent incident response.
• It has capabilities for user and entity behavior analytics, threat hunting, security orchestration, automation, and response.
• For the intelligent and automated incident response, it makes use of Securonix Response Bot.
• It is a recommendation engine and is based on artificial intelligence.

Verdict: Securonix is a machine learning based scalable platform. Complex threats will be found using behavior analytics and machine learning.

Website: Securonix

#14) Rapid7

Best for small, medium, and large businesses.

Price: Get a quote.

Insight IDR is a cloud SIEM solution by Rapid7. For data collection and search, it has a cloud-based Insight Platform.

Threats like malware, phishing, and stolen credentials can be detected. It has the features of user and attacker behavior analytics, centralized log management, deception technology, file integrity monitoring, etc. It will scan the endpoints for real-time detection.

Features:

• It provides attacker behavior analytics.
• It has centralized log management.
• For user behavior analytics it continuously baselines healthy user activity.
• For the endpoint detection and visibility, it makes use of Insight Agent.
• Automatic creation of corresponding tickets for any type of alert that is created or managed by InsightIDR.

Verdict: Rapid7 provides cloud-based log and event management. It will not require any ongoing maintenance. It will help you to make smart and quick decisions by uniting log search, user behavior, and endpoint data.

Website: Rapid7

#15) IBM Security QRadar

Best for: Medium and large businesses.

Price: Get a quote from IBM Security QRadar. As per the reviews available online, the price starts at $800 per month. For the virtual appliance of 100 EPS, the price is $10,700. There’s a free trial for 14 days.

IBM Security QRadar is a market-leading SIEM platform, which provides security monitoring of your entire IT infrastructure through log data collection, event correlation, and threat detection.

QRadar allows you to prioritize security alerts using threat intelligence and vulnerabilities databases and an inbuilt risk management solution and supports integration with antiviruses, IDS/IPS, and access control systems.

QRadar is an extendable SOC core, that can be enriched with additional functionality by plugging various useful applications available at the IBM Security App Exchange portal.

Features:

• Advanced rule correlation engine and behavioral profiling technology.
• Versatile and highly scalable platform with vast out-of-the-box functionality and presets for different use cases.
• A solid ecosystem of integrations by IBM, third-party vendors, and community.

Verdict: IBMQRadaroffers numerous features for data collection, log activity, network activity, and assets. It provides support to IE, Firefox, and Chrome browsers. As per the customer reviews, it focuses on critical incidents.

Conclusion

We have seen the top SIEM tools, along with their comparison, and reviews.

Most of the services follow a quote based pricing model and offer a free trial. SolarWinds and Splunk are the top solutions for SIEM. McAfee ESM is one of the popular SIEM software and has features like prioritized alerts and dynamic presentation of data.

ArcSight ESM is good for sources ingestion and is available through the appliance, software, AWS, and Microsoft Azure. IBM Security QRadar supports the Linux platform and will focus on critical incidents. LogRhythm is an AI-based technology and can process unstructured data.

AlienVault has multiple security capabilities and will provide automated asset discovery. RSA NetWitness will provide you complete incident management. EventTracker is a platform with multiple capabilities and has features like customizable dashboard tiles and automated workflows.

Securonix is the next-gen SIEM platform based on the Hadoop.

Hope this article will help you with the selection of the right SIEM tool for your business.

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