For those of you that are interested in a response, I found one.
E1000 NICs are in fact virtual NICs.
According to this website:
The E1000 virtual NIC is a software emulation of a 1 GB network card.
To be more preciese, the E1000 is an emulated version of the Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet NIC.
How can you verify that your NIC can emulate the E1000? According to VMWare:
A driver for this NIC is not included with all guest operating systems. Typically Linux versions 2.4.19 and later, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and later, and Windows Server 2003 (32-bit) and later include the E1000 driver.
How to emulate this card to run AlienVault?
Easy, in VirtualBox, for example, you just need to change your machine NIC settings. You have an option either for the E1000 or it will be written as Intel 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Pro or something.