Comparisons anchored on Security Onion, the free Linux distribution for threat hunting, network security monitoring and log management from Security Onion Solutions, published under the Elastic License 2.0.
Whether to run Security Onion as a single standalone box or as the distributed manager, search node and sensor layout its documentation recommends for production. Covers what each deployment type is for, the node roles (manager search, receiver, heavy, Fleet), how logs flow through Redis, and the cost of extra hardware against throughput and resilience.
Free Security Onion against Security Onion Pro: the Pro-only features such as OIDC SSO, FIPS and STIG hardening, LUKS encryption, notifications, Manager of Managers and Onion AI, per-node licensing on 1 to 5 year terms, the support SLA, and what happens when a Pro license expires.
Security Onion bundles Elasticsearch, Elastic Agent and Fleet with Suricata, Zeek, packet capture and its own Sigma, YARA and NIDS detections, while Elastic Security on its own splits features between Elastic's free Basic tier and paid subscriptions. Compares licensing (both ELv2), what each includes free, hardware and when to run Security Onion instead of building on Elastic directly.
Two network security monitoring suites built on Zeek and Suricata: Security Onion's Elastic License 2.0 distribution with Elasticsearch, Suricata packet capture and a paid Pro edition against Apache-2.0 Malcolm with Arkime, OpenSearch and deep ICS protocol parsing. Fit for SOCs versus OT networks.
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