Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and Check Point IPS are both key players in the network security marketplace, competing in the intrusion prevention systems category. Check Point IPS appears to have the upper hand with its advanced threat prevention capabilities, appealing to enterprises that prioritize security.
Features: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is valued for its open-source flexibility, offering extensive customization and integration possibilities. It provides a wide variety of rule sets and intelligent security automation for contextual awareness and network behavior analysis. Check Point IPS emphasizes advanced threat prevention, including zero-day attack detection, automatic protection updates, and comprehensive security against multiple attack vectors.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could benefit from enhanced user-friendliness for those with less IT expertise, greater scalability for enterprise environments, and streamlined deployment processes. Check Point IPS might improve by reducing false positives, simplifying the configuration process for new users, and minimizing the performance impact of signature updates.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Check Point IPS offers a streamlined deployment process with strong customer service support, aiding efficient installation and configuration. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT requires a more hands-on approach, which can be challenging for those without substantial IT resources, potentially impacting deployment efficiency for smaller organizations.
Pricing and ROI: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is generally more cost-effective for budget-conscious organizations with lower initial setup costs, offering a high ROI when its open-source nature is leveraged properly. Check Point IPS, with higher setup costs, provides considerable ROI through enhanced security and reduced long-term risks, making it favorable for businesses seeking comprehensive protection.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Check Point IPS | 3.8% |
| Cisco Sourcefire SNORT | 2.7% |
| Other | 93.5% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 32 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 23 |
| Large Enterprise | 23 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 5 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 8 |
| Large Enterprise | 7 |
Check Point IPS is an intrusion prevention system that aims to detect and prevent attempts to exploit weaknesses in vulnerable systems or applications. The solution provides complete, integrated, next-generation firewall intrusion prevention capabilities at multi-gigabit speeds with a low false positive rate and high security. It helps organizations secure their enterprise network, and protect servers and critical data against known and unknown automated malware, blended threats, and other threats.
Check Point IPS Features
Check Point IPS has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
Check Point IPS Benefits
There are many benefits to implementing Check Point IPS. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Check Point IPS is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it has granularity capabilities for rule creation, quick updates of signatures, and a helpful mechanism that allows users to turn IPS signatures to a different mode automatically.
A System and Network Administrator at Auriga mentions, “The Check Point IPS module allows me granularity in creating rules. I can specify which definition to apply and to which scope or network.” The reviewer also adds, “I can create multiple profiles, which is helpful.”
“The quick updates of the signatures when a new threat is identified are great. For instance, when Microsoft releases patches, we usually see new signatures for those issues that have to be patched in a day. This gives us time to test/deploy the patches while already being protected from the threats. Also, it's very good with reporting. I can generate reports for management automatically based on the threats of the last day/week/whatever is needed,” says a Systems en networks engineer at CB.
Another PeerSpot user, a Network Engineer at VSP Vision Care, writes, “The mechanism where you can let the system automatically turn the IPS signature to a different mode (prevent / monitor / inactive) is a nice feature that allows us to easily adjust the balance between security protection and the risk of business impact.”
Snort is an open-source, rule-based, intrusion detection and prevention system. It combines the benefits of signature-, protocol-, and anomaly-based inspection methods to deliver flexible protection from malware attacks. Snort gained notoriety for being able to accurately detect threats at high speeds.
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