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Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT comparison

 

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

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS)
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
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)
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is 4.4%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.5%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

Yosevan Sinaga Sinaga - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively identifies malicious behavior while future automation and AI advancements hold potential
Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is quite powerful for threat detection and includes botnet detection. It effectively blocks unwanted software, hashes, and suspicious behaviors. The tool is easy to integrate with other IT security solutions due to similar protocols. The system offers effective threat detection features, although automation capabilities are not yet fully utilized.
Jack Poon - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ease of setup and good documentation
When it comes to the product's deployment phase, we have a lot of vendor support. We have a lot of skills here in Hong Kong. Our company doesn't find any problem deploying Cisco solutions. The solution is deployed on an on-premises version. Speaking about the time required to deploy the solution, I would say that we have quite a lot of previous experience with deploying Cisco products. We have our company's standard design document, which we need to follow. We have a standard testing procedure for all those features. We just take out some appropriate parts and then compile them into one document for an individual project. It is actually quite easy for us to do the documentation, so it just takes one or two hours, and we can do the implementation because all the materials and testing procedures are already in our company standard documents, so it is not that difficult for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Malware Detection, threat defense, sandboxing, VPN and mail security have all been valuable features of Cisco NGIPS."
"The most valuable feature would be the IPS is very important in Cisco Firepower because I can configure deep configuration in IPS and tuning."
"The most valuable features of Cisco NGIPS are the VPN, IPS, access policy management, EIM, and the ASA model as part of Firepower."
"Among all the different solutions I have worked with, such as Palo Alto many other firewalls. Cisco has the support, documentation, and design. The documentation is widely available and it can help you a lot with implementation. It makes the implementation much easier."
"It has good intelligence. It does a great job at stopping threats."
"It is more or less stable. Sometimes I have some issues normally when we need to upgrade it to newer versions. I think it does the job."
"The solution is very powerful coupled with Firepower."
"I think their fingerprints are good in terms of how they whitelist and blacklist."
"Solid intrusion detection and prevention that scales easily in very large environments."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"The solution can be integrated with some network electors like Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco ISE, and Active Directory to provide the client with authentication certificates."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"Cisco technical support is unbeatable. It offers a premium service every time."
"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."
"In general, the features are all great. However, if I need to take hardware for ASA, because they need to upgrade to Firepower, we want to create rules. For that, most of the time we go to the command line. Right now Firepower is working really hard on the grid. You can apply all those rules to the grid. Even if you want to monitor the logs, for example, the activity will tell you which particular user has been blocked because of that rule. Firepower's monitoring interface is very good, because you can see each and every piece. ASA also had it, but there you needed to type the command and be under the server to see all that stuff. In Firepower you have the possibility to go directly to the firewall. The way the monitoring is displayed is also very nice. The feature I appreciate most in Firepower is actually the grid. The grid has worked very well."
 

Cons

"Overall, it lacks user-friendliness. It could be easier to manage. I can train any customer using FortiGate or Palo Alto in a few days, but with Cisco, it takes much more time because the systems aren't easy to use."
"The solution requires better management. When it comes to central management capabilities, improvements can be made."
"There are some features not found in Firepower, like data loss prevention, and SSO, to have a connection between Cisco and Active Directory which was introduced on other products."
"I would like to see integration with monitoring tools such as Nagios or BMC."
"What I don't like about Cisco recently is they keep changing the names, which makes it hard for customers and sometimes even us as engineers to know what is the solution they are speaking about. For example, with AMP, now they call it Secure Endpoint and I don't know if in the next couple of years they're going to change it to something else. They should keep the names the same."
"It has room for improvement when it comes to integrating machine learning and AI into it where even if you don't have a baseline that is of length for anomaly detection, it could do more like an AI style machine learning. It learns on its own."
"The feedback from some of our customers is that they weren't interested in Cisco because it was too complicated to deploy, especially in cloud-related areas."
"I would like to see better integration with SIEMs."
"While the alerts they offer are good, it could improve it in the sense that they should be more detailed to make the alerts more useful to us in general. Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives. Due to the fact that the alerts aren't detailed, we have to go dig around to see why is it being blocked. The solution would be infinitely better if there was just a bit more detail in the alert information and logging we receive."
"Performance needs improvement."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."
"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"The main dashboard of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They are very expensive in some places and not reasonable at times for many customers. I have had customers choose another solution because of the high price."
"The pricing could be improved. Our customers have a yearly license."
"Pricing depends on negotiation with the vendor, although I can say that it is moderate."
"It is highly priced but competitive regarding features and support services."
"In our company, we know that the price of Cisco products is high, especially for its switches, routers and IOS. The price of Cisco products may be twice its original price if you plan to extend some of its features."
"We get cut in price since we use other Cisco products. We have the whole bundle of Cisco solutions."
"The price for additional throughput is the highest in the industry."
"The price of the solution is expensive to a degree it cannot be used by small businesses. It is best suited for medium and enterprise businesses."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco NGIPS?
The product's initial setup phase was easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco NGIPS?
Cisco is one of the top brands known for cost-effectiveness, making it worth the money. It's cheaper to integrate with existing IT security solutions compared to other expensive brands with subscri...
What needs improvement with Cisco NGIPS?
In the future, I hope to see automation features like automatic blocking and rule creation. Additionally, incorporating AI capabilities would enhance its functionality.
What do you like most about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet.
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?
Cisco offers the Cisco DNA Center, which is a source that provides crucial information for us to monitor performance, and see whether there is any trouble. We are using Cisco DNA center, but again,...
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire NGIPS, Firepower NGIPS
Sourcefire SNORT
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Electric Power, Huntington Bank, Keycorp, Nationwide, Transunion, Marriott, Inova Health, Ford, Thomson Reuters, Dow Chemical, Equifax, Chevron, Walmart, Coca Cola
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 Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.