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Arista NDR vs Cisco Secure Network Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Arista NDR
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
8th
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
11th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Secure Network Analytics
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
4th
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (37th), Cisco Security Portfolio (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) category, the mindshare of Arista NDR is 6.5%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 11.5%, down from 15.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Secure Network Analytics11.5%
Arista NDR6.5%
Other82.0%
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1719513 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
it's much easier to create your own queries and hunt for threats
We take in IOCs from my SOC and from AlienVault, and then we focus on traffic that hits IOCs and alerts us to it. The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually. Awake didn't support the manual importation of CSV and JSON in version 3.0, but they added it in version 4.0. It's helpful, but it still has to be a specific CSV format. Automated IOCs are on the roadmap. Hopefully, they will be able to automate the ingestion of IOCs by Q1 next year. I'm currently leveraging Mind Meld, an open-source tool by Palo Alto, to ingest IOCs from external parties. I aggregate those lists and spit them out as a massive list of domains, hashes, file names, IPS. Then we aggregate those into their own specific categories, like a URL category. Awake ingests that just like the Palo Alto firewall does, and then it alerts me if traffic attempts to go into it. Some of that is already on the Palo Alto firewall, which blocks it, but that doesn't mean that there is no attempted communication. I want to know if there's a communication attempt because there might be an indicator on that specific device trying to reach an IOC. Yes, my Palo Alto blocked it, but there's still something odd sitting there, and what if it can reach a different IOC that I don't have information about? I want to focus on it. I could do that by leveraging Awake if it could ingest the IOCs automatically. That's something I leverage Awake for today. I still have to manually import it, which is cumbersome because I have to manipulate the files that I get from the different IOC providers into a specific format that it understands. Once they add the ability to automate that, it'll be more useful.
Muhammad Harun-Owr-Roshid - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at BRIGHT-i SYSTEMS LIMITED
Have streamlined network visibility and troubleshooting while seeing benefits from AI integration
In terms of improvements for Cisco Secure Network Analytics, from the implementation point of view, now that AI is in use, some other features need to be upgraded considering AI solutions. Proper management of the database is also important; it should be centralized for easier data collection from a single database. When precise manual analysis is needed, it's sometimes difficult, so having a centralized database will allow network admins to find actual scenarios more effectively, especially since some information may not be visible on the GUI. Cisco should upgrade their hardware part to run the database, because sometimes it cannot handle the load while all features are running in the network. The database management should indeed be centralized because while AI runs behind the systems, central management is essential. For example, in a network with 100 Cisco switches, a few routers, firewalls, and access points, all data generated should be preserved in a central database. This approach simplifies management and analysis for troubleshooting, as GUI interfaces may not always provide visible information. Centralizing the database will allow for better understanding of which information is preserved for each specific device.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the ability to see suspicious activity for devices inside my network. It helps me to quickly identify that activity and do analysis to see if it's expected or I need to mitigate that activity quickly."
"This solution’s encrypted traffic analysis helps us stay in compliance with government regulations. It is all about understanding data exfiltration, what is ingressing and egressing in our network. One common attack vector is exfiltrating data using encryption. My capabilities to see potential data exfiltration over encrypted traffic is second to none now."
"The interface itself is clean and easy to use, yet customizable. I like that I can create my own dashboards fairly easily so that I can see what is important to me. Also, the query language is pretty easy to use. I haven't needed to use it a ton, but as I need to go in and do different queries based on their requests, it has been fairly simple to use."
"The most valuable portion is that they offer a threat-hunting service. Using their platform, and all of the data that they're collecting, they actually help us be proactive by having really expert folks that have insight, not just into our accounts, but into other accounts as well. They can be proactive and say, 'Well, we saw this incident at some other customer. We ran that same kind of analysis for you and we didn't see that type of activity in your network.'"
"The query language makes it easy to query the records on the network, to do searches for the various threat activities that we're looking for. The dashboard, the Security Knowledge Graph, displays information meaningfully and easily. I am able to find the information that I want to find pretty quickly."
"When I create a workbench query in Awake to do threat hunting, it's much easier to query. You get a dictionary popup immediately when you try to type a new query. It says, "You want to search for a device?" Then you type in "D-E," and it gives you a list of commands, like device, data set behavior, etc. That gives you the ability to build your own query."
"This solution help us monitor devices used on our network by insiders, contractors, partners, or suppliers. Its correlation and identification of specific endpoints is very good, especially since we have a large, virtualized environment. It discerns this fairly well. Some of the issues that we have had with other tools is we sometimes are not able to tell the difference between users on some of those virtualized instances."
"The query language that they have is quite valuable, especially because the sensor itself is storing some network activity and we're able to query that. That has been useful in a pinch because we don't necessarily use it just for threat hunting, but we also use it for debugging network issues. We can use it to ask questions and get answers about our network. For example: Which users and devices are using the VPN for RDP access? We can write a query pretty quickly and get an answer for that."
"The most valuable features provided by this solution are visibility and information."
"The most valuable feature is integration."
"It does change the way we troubleshoot and it is relatively easy to use once you learn it. I would recommend it to someone considering it."
"It's a dependable product that is able to pinpoint where we have vulnerabilities if they occur."
"From a security standpoint, it is just seeing pockets as well. Visibility is very key for us."
"Another notable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is its Layer 7 visibility, which allows us to monitor and analyze network communications at the application layer."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is the Threat Intelligence integration."
"Visibility. The ability to look East and West. To see what is passing through your circuits, where it is coming from, and how big it is."
 

Cons

"Be prepared to update your SOPs to have your analysts work in another tool separately. There are some limitations in the integrations right now. One of the things that I want from a security standpoint is integration with multiple tools so I don't need to have my analysts logging into each individual tool."
"One thing I would like to see is a little bit more education or experience on AWS cloud for their managed services team. We've explained how we have the information set up, that the traffic coming in goes to the AWS load balancer and then gets sent on to our internal servers... but when I get notices they always tell me this traffic is coming from the IPs belonging to the load balancers, not the source IPs. So a little bit more education for their team about how AWS manages the traffic might help out."
"When I looked at the competitors, such as Darktrace, they all have prettier interfaces. If Awake could make it a little more user-friendly, that would go a long way."
"I enjoy the query language, but it could be a bit more user-friendly, especially for new users who come across it... They should push it more into a natural language style as opposed to a query language."
"Awake Security needs to move to a 24/7 support model in the MNDR space. Once they do that, it will make them even better."
"The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually."
"There's room for improvement with some of the definitions, because I don't have time and I'm not a Tier 4 analyst. I believe that is something they're working towards."
"I would like to see the capability to import what's known as STIX/TAXII in an IOC format. It currently doesn't offer this."
"We are continuing down the road of ACI and ISE with Cisco, so we would like to see the continuation of Stealthwatch integrating into ISE for exchange of information, and also, more into the ACI environment too."
"Its granularity for RBAC roles-based access control needs improvement."
"Improvements are needed on the application layer for complete security analysis."
"We haven't seen ROI."
"The expensive nature of the tool is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"We determined that Stealthwatch wouldn't provide the machine learning model that we required."
"I would like to see a hybrid solution that can work without being connected directly to the internet for those destinations."
"The solution should have the ability to analyze security events not only at the network layer but also at the application and OS layers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Because I represent a hedge fund, I have some leverage. I told them that they had to meet my conditions if they wanted me as a client. It was the same way with Awake. They wanted an initial four-year agreement. Initially, we signed on for a one-year contract, but they wanted the four-year deal when it came time for the renewal. I told them that I was not doing that. I said that they either had to do it on my terms, or I'd go somewhere else."
"The pricing seems pretty reasonable for what we get out of it. We also found it to be more competitive than some other vendors that we've looked at."
"Awake's pricing was very competitive. It's not a cheap option though. It's an investment to utilize it, but it's one that we decided was worth the cost, with the managed services. At our scale, it was a much better option to utilize their software and their managed services to handle this, rather than hiring another person to be an analyst. It was quite cost-effective for us."
"The solution is very good and the pricing is also better than others..."
"Awake Security was the least expensive among their competitors. Everyone was within $15,000 of each other. The other solutions were not providing the MNDR service, which is standard with Awake Security's pricing/licensing model."
"We switched to Awake Security because they were able to offer a model that was significantly less expensive and the value that we get out of it is higher."
"The solution has saved thousands of dollars within the first day. Our ROI has to be in the tens of thousands of dollars since October last year."
"The solution is expensive. It costs several hundred thousand dollars per year (depending on how many flows you are collecting)."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"This is an expensive product. We have quit paying for support because we don't want to have to upgrade it and keep paying for it."
"The tool is not cheaply priced."
"NetFlow is very expensive."
"The licensing costs are outrageous."
"It is worth the cost."
"Today, we are part of the big Cisco ELA, and it is a la carte. We can get orders for whatever we want. At the end of the day, we have to pay for it in one big expense, but that is fine. We are okay with that."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Arista NDR?
Arista NDR's scalability is very good, making it easy to add more hardware components. You can order additional hardware and integrate it by stacking it with the existing setup. This feature cannot...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arista NDR?
The tool's pricing is expensive but it is competitive.
What needs improvement with Arista NDR?
Arista NDR needs to open legal offices to be closer to customers and partners. It needs more visibility in the NDR market in the Middle East. While they are doing well, they lack sufficient enginee...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Stealthwatch?
Regarding cost, for the Bangladesh context, Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a little bit high-priced because we are a developing country, making it tough to manage affordable solutions. However, ...
What needs improvement with Cisco Stealthwatch?
In terms of improvements for Cisco Secure Network Analytics, from the implementation point of view, now that AI is in use, some other features need to be upgraded considering AI solutions. Proper m...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Stealthwatch?
Our customers mainly use Cisco Secure Network Analytics to get whole network visibility and easy troubleshooting to find actual problems and also to mitigate loopholes or findings immediately to pr...
 

Also Known As

Awake Security Platform
Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

- Dolby Laboratories- Seattle Genetics- ARM Energy- Ooma- Prophix- Yapstone
Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
Find out what your peers are saying about Arista NDR vs. Cisco Secure Network Analytics and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.