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Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Cisco Secure Workload 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 Network Analytics
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (33rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (3rd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (5th)
Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (16th), Microsegmentation Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 9.9%, up from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 5.9%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Network Analytics9.9%
Cisco Secure Workload5.9%
Other84.2%
Cisco Security Portfolio
 

Featured Reviews

Akash Das Barman - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Trainee at DataSpace Academy
Network analytics has reduced investigation time and provides deeper visibility into lateral movement
Several features often look very promising during evaluation or implementation but end up being used only lightly in day-to-day operations. Advanced reporting and scheduled compliance reports look very attractive for audit and compliance teams at implementation time and can generate structured reports for visibility, risk posture, and traffic summaries. In practice, many teams do not rely on it heavily because SIEM tools or GRC platforms already handle reporting better. Built-in threat intelligence feeds represent another area where expectations do not always match usage. The platform includes threat intelligence-based detection and classifications. Initially, teams expect to depend on this heavily, but later SOC teams often prefer their own threat intelligence feeds or correlate intelligence inside SIEM instead. The built-in feeds are used but not as a primary detection source. Automated incident summaries and guided investigation views are designed to simplify triage by automatically grouping related activity into incidents. However, teams often move away from them due to various factors affecting adoption.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA
Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Secure Network Analytics has increased the visibility of what is happening in our network, and I think that's the most important reason to use it. We can see what is really happening instead of just looking at numbers from routers or switches."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is the Threat Intelligence integration."
"Stealthwatch has definitely reduced the incident response time, making troubleshooting now only minutes instead of a couple of hours and increasing our threat detection rate by around 25-30%."
"I believe this solution has saved our organization a lot of time, money, and administrative work."
"Overall, It seemed like a good product."
"Cisco Stealthwatch has improved our organization because it has brought visibility that we didn't have previously before implementing it."
"The ability to send data flow from other places and have them all in one place is very valuable for us."
"Using the Cognitive Analytics feature, we have complete visibility that we didn’t have before."
"It's stable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"The most valuable feature right now is to do with having visibility on the network — especially on our servers — and to be able to enforce some type of security measures."
"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage; the telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent, it's complete, and you see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations. It saves an enormous, enormous amount of time."
"Overall, this is a really good product and I am happy with it."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
 

Cons

"They should include Citrix VDIs in the next release."
"One area that could be improved in SNA is the integration with Cisco ISE for user and session details, which currently requires additional setup."
"I don't really think we really save time while using this solution."
"Cisco Stealthwatch is scalable with money. It's expensive."
"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."
"Stealthwatch is still maturing in AI. It uses artificial intelligence for predictions, but AI still needs to mature."
"Its granularity for RBAC roles-based access control needs improvement."
"The configuration of the solution was quite complex."
"Cisco Tetration needs more flags and system alerts that we should get with network capture."
"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."
"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."
"The problem is that we can only deploy the particular solution where we have the hardware with Cisco."
"The product must be integrated with the cloud."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes."
"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One of the things which bugs me about Lancope is the licensing. We understand how licensing works. Our problem is when we bought and purchased most of these Lancope devices, we did so with our sister company. Somewhere within the purchase and distribution, licensing got mixed up. That is all on Cisco, and it is their responsibility. They allotted some of our sister company's equipment to us, and some of our equipment to them. To date, they have never been able to fix it."
"It has a subscription model. There is yearly support, and there is also three-year support. It depends on what the customers want."
"Our fees are approximately $3,000 USD."
"Licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Pricing is much higher compared to other solutions."
"It is worth the cost."
"The yearly licensing cost is about $50,000."
"The tool is not cheaply priced."
"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Several features often look very promising during evaluation or implementation but end up being used only lightly in day-to-day operations. Advanced reporting and scheduled compliance reports look ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Stealthwatch?
My main use case for Cisco Secure Network Analytics has been network visibility and anomaly-based threat detection within the enterprise environment. In security operations and VAPT-related activit...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?
CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, provid...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Secure Workload?
When we onboarded Cisco Secure Workload, the usual use case was to discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map for Cisco ACI. As the network team, we chose to implement A...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
Cisco Tetration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.