Elastic Security vs OSSEC

Elastic Security combines SIEM, XDR, endpoint security, and cloud security for detecting, preventing, and responding to cyber threats. Detection options include prebuilt and customizable rules, machine-learning anomaly detection, and threat hunting. Elastic Defend uses machine learning, behavioral analysis, and prebuilt rules to address endpoint threats; cloud capabilities cover cloud and Kubernetes security posture management, workload protection, and vulnerability management. Elastic Workflows can automate triage, enrichment, response, notifications, and case management. Elastic lists more than 400 prebuilt integrations and up to 1,000 total security and data-source integrations, alongside native OpenTelemetry support. The software can run on Elastic Cloud or self-managed infrastructure, with APIs and query options KQL, Lucene, and ES|QL. The free Basic plan includes SIEM, XDR, and host security analysis. Elastic Cloud Hosted and Serverless offer a 14-day free trial. Security Analytics Essentials is listed at $0.09 a month, with retention priced separately; Essentials also includes endpoint protection, while retention is priced separately at as low as $0.017 per retained GB per month. Elastic Cloud uses HTTPS for internet-facing and inter-node communications and encrypts cluster data at rest.

OSSEC is an open-source host-based intrusion detection system for monitoring systems and network components. It analyzes logs, checks file integrity, monitors the Windows registry, detects rootkits, and can alert users in real time or take active response actions. Monitoring can be agent-based or agentless, and a centralized server applies policies across operating systems, with server-specific overrides. Alerts can use SMTP, SMS, and syslog; active response can block an attack immediately. The system runs on Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, macOS, Solaris, and Windows, and supports self-hosted and cloud environments. OSSEC and OSSEC+ use command-line management; Atomic OSSEC editions add a management console and integrations with cloud services and other tools. OSSEC+ adds machine learning, ELK integration, threat sharing, and additional rules. Free OSSEC is listed at free; OSSEC+ is also free, with registration required. Atomic OSSEC is $5 a month per device. Atomic OSSEC SaaS offers a free 14-day trial for up to 10 endpoints.