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Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL] vs Vectra AI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytic...
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Vectra AI
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (5th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (3rd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (20th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (11th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

SP
Security Analyst at Orange España
Efficiently generates alerts for suspicious activities and scales easily
There are two areas of improvement. Firstly, extend the log retrieval limit to at least three months. For example, there is a limit on the number of log messages that can be received. So, I would like to expand the log retrieval limit. And another thing, if we migrate these things to an event or send us an email if there is any critical event, I would like to configure these things on the initial launch. Because if a system is compromised, there will be a lot of data movement from one post to another post to the outside. Then, we should also get an alert on email as well. We have since we have integrated these things. But a direct email for critical alerts should be there. So, I would like to enhance the critical event configuration. If a new user wants to learn how it should work, how policies work, and where we can configure policies, there should be some learning material for this product.
RR
Consultant at a retailer with 5,001-10,000 employees
Threat detection has improved and malicious emails are now identified quickly
Vectra AI offers artificial intelligence capabilities with visibility that can be integrated into our day-to-day operations and other tools, including malware detection tools and cyber threat tools. Vectra AI has positively impacted my organization. Last year while using it, we received many malicious email threats and virus incidents, including a trojan virus that had reportedly been deployed by someone. Our company used Vectra AI to detect the malicious threats and viruses before they could cause more damage, and we successfully stopped the threats. Using Vectra AI, I notice that server downtime has decreased significantly. We now experience only two to three hours of downtime, whereas without Vectra AI and other tools, our downtime would exceed 48 to 72 hours.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud 100 percent."
"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is scalable because it is on the cloud."
"The product helps me to see malware."
"It tells you if there is any communication going to command and control servers, or if there is any traffic that violates your internal policy, or if any data hoarding is happening where data is being dumped from your machine to outside of the environment. It provides all such meaningful reports to help you understand what's happening."
"Monitoring the traffic, making sure you have the visibility."
"My advice to others is Cisco has great solutions and I would recommend them."
"The logs in Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud are very good when doing the API integration in the team. It is able to give you important information for the correlations."
"When it comes to scalability, there's no size limit. It varies based on licenses and requirements."
"Scalability wise, we have many sensors, and Vectra AI seems to handle them all very well."
"One of the most valuable features of the platform is its ability to provide you with aggregated risk scores based on impact and certainty of threats being detected. This is both applied to individual and host detections. This is important because it enables us to use this platform to prioritize the most likely imminent threats. So, it reduces alert fatigue follow ups for security operation center analysts. It also provides us with an ability to prioritize limited resources."
"The administrative privilege detection feature is the most valuable feature. The admin accounts are often highly accessible to the high-risk component of the environment. If those accounts are compromised or are being used in a suspicious manner, that's high-fidelity events for us to look into."
"It keeps up with the network traffic, which is a good thing. It provides more context to plain alerts compared to using an older system. So, it helps an analyst reduce the information overload."
"Vectra AI helped our team be more productive and save time. We have less work thanks to it."
"It has reduced the time it takes to respond to attacks. That comes back to the proactive point. It makes us able to lower down in the kill chain, we can react now, rather than reacting to incidents that happened, we can see an instant, in some cases, as it's being implemented, or as it's being launched."
"Cognito Streams gives you a detailed view of what happens in the network in the form of rich metadata. It is just a super easy way to capture network traffic for important protocols, giving us an advantage. This is very helpful on a day-to-day basis."
"It has helped us to organize our security. We get a better overview on what is happening on the network, which has helped us get quicker responses to users. If we see malicious activity, then we can quickly take action on it. Previously, we weren't getting an overview as fast as we are now, so we can now provide a quicker response."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is a bit complex in terms of deployment and configuration."
"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud could improve the graphical user interface. It could be a more user-friendly graphical user interface. so that. Not everybody's a cyber security professional, most of the customers that I deal with are not very skilled. The terms that they use in the solution are quite understandable for a normal CIO."
"When I used to work on it, I just didn't see anything new happening for about a year and a half. Providing newer data and newer reports constantly would help. There should be more classifications and more interesting data."
"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud could improve the graphical user interface. It could be a more user-friendly graphical user interface."
"The initial setup of Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is complex."
"The product's price is high."
"The product needs to improve its user-friendliness. It is very tricky and you need to study it before using the standard functionalities."
"If we migrate these things to an event or send us an email if there is any critical event, I would like to configure these things on the initial launch. Because if a system is compromised, there will be a lot of data movement from one post to another post to the outside. Then, we should also get an alert on email as well. We have since we have integrated these things. But a direct email for critical alerts should be there. So, I would like to enhance the critical event configuration."
"We had another product with Vectra AI and used the MDR solution as an add-on. Initially, it wasn't fully appropriately configured, so we didn't get the expected results. Even once configured correctly, we weren't fully satisfied with its response. The issue was both with their service response and the product's capabilities."
"The rules for threats are not always precise and Vectra AI should improve this."
"One thing which I have found where there could be improvement is with regard to the architecture, a little bit: how the brains and sensors function. It needs more flexibility with regard to the brain. If there were some flexibility in that regard, that would be helpful, because changing the mode of the brain is complex. In some cases, the change is permanent. You cannot revert it."
"The reporting from Cognito Detect is very limited and doesn't give you too many options."
"The solution's ability to reduce false positives wasn't very good, initially, because it was picking up so much information."
"One of the things that we are missing a bit is the capability to add our own rules to it. At the moment, the tech engine does its thing, but we have some cool ideas to make additional rules. There should be an option in the platform to add custom rules, or there should be some kind of user group where we can suggest them for the roadmap and see if they get evaluated and get transparent communication on whether they will be implemented in the product or not."
"The solution has not reduced the security analyst workload in our organization because we still need to SIEM."
"I would like to see ways they can look to bring out new cloud functionality without introducing additional costs for them as additional subscriptions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is an expensive enterprise solution."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"The price of Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is expensive."
"The upfront pricing model that we have would have been more beneficial if it had been a recurring license fee, but that wasn't a massive issue for us. It's fairly priced."
"From a licensing perspective, the Vectra detect platform is pretty doable. Also, the hardware prices are nothing that we're not used to. The stream part is a little overpriced compared to the detect part. The reason is that you need to stream data to detect events anyway, so the data is in there. The only thing that's not available is the UI to be able to look at the stream data, which is also on the appliances but is just not activated. That's mainly the thing that we want to improve on."
"There are additional features that can be purchased in addition to the standard licensing fee, such as Cognito Recall and Stream."
"From a pricing perspective, they are very commercially competitive. From a licensing perspective, just be conscious that some of their future cloud solutions come with additional subscriptions. Also, if you're outside of the US, you will get charged freight for the device back to your country."
"Vectra is a bit on the higher side in terms of price, but they have always been transparent. The reason that they are this good is that they invest, so they need to charge accordingly."
"It is an expensive solution, but it's not the most expensive we've seen. We also know how much we're going to pay, unlike with some other providers where all of a sudden our license explodes."
"We have a desire to increase our use. However, it all comes down to budget. It's a very expensive tool that is very difficult to prove business support for. We would like to have two separate networks. We have our corporate network and PCI network, which is segregated due to payment processing. We don't have it for deployed in the PCI network. It would be good to have it fully deployed there to provide us with additional monitoring and control, but the cost associated with their licensing model makes it prohibitively expensive to deploy."
"Vectra's pricing is too high. All schools will not be able to afford it. Vectra will only end up targeting higher education and higher value independence purely because of the price. A lot of schools would love to have a product like Vectra AI, but they simply can't because they struggle to even pay the high E5 licensing from Microsoft. When you're up against that, Vectra AI is never going to be within the sector's price range."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Performing Arts
12%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?
I find the pricing of Vectra AI to be one of the best we have seen as feedback from customers and partners indicates it is very competitive for an EDR solution.
What needs improvement with Vectra AI?
I think one area that could be improved about Vectra AI is their marketing. One of the aspects that Darktrace excels at is their marketing, and I do not feel Vectra AI is on that level yet, leading...
What is your primary use case for Vectra AI?
I primarily use Vectra AI for customers, and I only provide Vectra AI.
 

Also Known As

Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud, Observable Networks
Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Options, Schneider Electric, Washington University in St Louis, Gotcha, Kraft Kennedy, PartnerRe, Sumologic, Veterans United, AFGE, Agraform, Artesys, Dynamic Ideas Financials, Department of Agriculture and Commerce
Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
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902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.