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Check Point IPS vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 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

Check Point IPS
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Check Point IPS is 3.3%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 2.9%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Check Point IPS3.3%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT2.9%
Other93.8%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

GR
Support at a security firm with 51-200 employees
Real-Time Blocking Improves Response and Reduces Manual Logs
The best feature in my experience with Check Point IPS is the real-time prevention because it uses thousands of preventive protections based on both known exploit signatures and behavioral analysis to detect and block threats before they reach vulnerable systems. I find the behavioral analysis feature of Check Point IPS to be a most valuable feature because it can detect sophisticated threats that do not match known signatures. For example, when I need to view anomaly detections, instead of relying solely on known attack patterns, Check Point IPS monitors network traffic for unusual behavior such as unexpected protocol use, abnormal data flows, or suspicious command sequences. Check Point IPS impacts my organization positively because it has had a strong positive impact by strengthening our network defense, reducing manual work, and improving our incident response times.
reviewer2772102 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Logging and customizable rules have helped improve threat monitoring and detection
The logging is mainly what I consider one of the best features with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. Being able to log and store it in a file allows you to push it to a centralized repository. The logging and reporting help improve incident response. You should always be logging threats, any sort of misconfiguration, and anything that could be an issue. It's important to at least log and monitor it. The basic rules provide a good baseline in assessing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT's ability in providing real-time analytics for threat detection, but as a professional, you should look to constantly modify that baseline. They provide extensive customizability so you can define your own rules. The customizability allows it to be adaptable in protecting against diverse network threats to the constant change.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers robust protection with features such as Next Generation firewall capabilities, mobile solutions, and proactive threat prevention."
"Check Point Intrusion Prevention System has great profiles, and we can continuously create, modify, activate, deactivate or configure any specific setting to allow the profile to focus on just one thing or for certain attacks."
"The best features Check Point IPS offers include finding threats hidden in encrypted data, which I find valuable."
"Check Point IPS manages risk categories very well and accordingly helps us protect each of our devices in real-time."
"IPS can protect our organization with any old vulnerabilities or if any vulnerability detected minutes ago IPS can protect us as per our configured policy."
"Check Point IPS has positively impacted our organization by helping us secure our environment, leading to fewer complaints about security issues."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"This is a very stable product."
"It is quite an intelligent product."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"With Cisco Sourcefire SNORT, we've been able to prevent and detect intrusion in our network and actually decrease our SLA (Service Level Agreement)."
"It has a huge rate of protection. It's has a low level of positives and a huge rate of threat protection. It's easy to deploy and easy to implement. It has an incredible price rate compared to similar solutions."
"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"This solution makes life a lot easier as there are fewer man-hours required and we no longer need too many resources to manage it."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
"The tool's most valuable feature is threat detection, which is important because we have multiple layers not only in Cisco."
 

Cons

"Check Point IPS could be improved because the documentation is not intuitive."
"One area that could be improved in Check Point IPS is the user interface for managing IPS policies, which can be a bit complex for new users, along with the need for faster signature updates for emerging threats and more seamless integration with third-party tools."
"The pain point that I have with this solution is contacting technical support."
"The initial setup is complex and must be done by a team, necessarily also made up of internal staff, who are highly skilled."
"Improvement suggestions include more attractive dashboards, enhanced visual analytics, and automated attack path correlation in SmartEvent to improve situational awareness."
"A reduction in price would always be welcome."
"Sometimes we had false positives where packages that were legitimate for us were blocked and we had to unblock them through exceptions."
"In some cases, I would have liked the updates to be faster."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that."
"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"If the price is brought down then everybody will be happy."
"Performance needs improvement."
"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this product should be reduced."
"My company pays for the yearly licensing of Check Point IPS. It is a very expensive tool."
"The pricing is quite reasonable."
"It is a reasonably priced product."
"Pricing for this solution is negotiable and I'm happy with our pricing."
"You can pay for Check Point IPS yearly, or you can go with a three-year license. There's no extra cost apart from the standard licensing fee."
"There is a license needed to use the Check Point IPS which is not expensive. However, the Check Point IPS device is expensive."
"I give the price of the solution a five out of ten."
"I don't know the exact amount, but most of the time when I go to a company with a proposition, they will say, "This thing that you are selling is good, but it's expensive. Why don't you propose something like FortiGate, Check Point, or Palo Alto?" Cisco device are expensive compared to other devices."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business51
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point IPS?
I have saved around two or three hours a week since I started using Check Point IPS. My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Check Point IPS is great, and I have no problem with t...
What needs improvement with Check Point IPS?
Check Point IPS is working well for our organization. In the future, more automated and more AI-based intelligence could be fed into Check Point IPS, and that would be helpful for us.
What is your primary use case for Check Point IPS?
Check Point IPS is used as a security feature to prevent zero-day attacks and the execution of malicious files in our network. Check Point IPS is an Intrusion Prevention System that prevents malici...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five. There are some other tools in the market that are more expensive than Cisco. There are no additional c...
What needs improvement with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
I have not had much experience with the community-driven rule set while utilizing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. I don't have experience with recognizing zero-day vulnerabilities, but based on my knowledg...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
Endpoint protection is the main use case. The main aspect involves specifying different rules, and when network traffic hits these rules, it will try to block the traffic or at least log the traffi...
 

Also Known As

Check Point Intrusion Prevention System
Sourcefire SNORT
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Morton Salt, Medical Advocacy and Outreach, BH Telecom, Lightbeam Health Solutions, X by Orange, Cadence, Nihondentsu, Datastream Connexion, Good Sam, Omnyway, FIASA, Pacific Life, Banco del Pacifico, Control Southern, Xero, Centrify
CareCore, City of Biel, Dimension Data, LightEdge, Lone Star College System, National Rugby League, Port Aventura, Smart City Networks, Telecom Italia, The Department of Education in Western Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Check Point IPS vs. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.