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Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Corelight Open NDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 22, 2026

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 Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
3rd
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (33rd), Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)
Corelight Open NDR
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
5th
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 5.8%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Corelight Open NDR is 4.7%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Detection and Response (NDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Network Analytics5.8%
Corelight Open NDR4.7%
Other89.5%
Network Detection and Response (NDR)
 

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.
reviewer2834367 - PeerSpot reviewer
Growth And Strategy Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Network visibility has transformed how we detect nation state threats and protect critical industry
Before Corelight recently started pushing some of the agentic features, querying at times could be a little difficult, depending on your mastery of log scale. However, I think with a lot of the artificial intelligence that they are building in, it is getting a lot easier to query in the platform. I would definitely encourage them to continue down that path where anybody can hop into the platform and start running queries, whether it is a simple instruction like I want this, and an artificial intelligence process can actually build the query and do it. I think that would be super powerful. Cyber skill sets are in high demand, and there is a huge backlog in cyber talent. We cannot fill all the positions we need. The easier we can make these cyber systems for people to pick up and be effective on, I think is really key. Explainability of data is hyper important. In the past few artificial intelligence related updates we have gotten from Corelight, that has been one of the first questions our team has asked every time or that I have asked: show me what the model is doing, show me how it came to this analysis. Within Investigator platform, they are able to walk through and see exactly what data the artificial intelligence pulled from where and why it did what it did as far as making its suggestions. They have definitely built their system with artificial intelligence in mind up front, and having that openness as one of the key features of any of their artificial intelligence and machine learning processes in the platform is important. The issue with black boxes is obviously hallucinations from artificial intelligence and just not being able to trace to ground truth. When we are talking about these cyber incidents and being able to do forensics, you need to be able to pinpoint and tie everything together, and black boxes really obscure that and prevent you from doing so. Corelight has done a really good job of making sure that everything is explainable and everything is mapped when it comes to leveraging any of their artificial intelligence features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Being able to identify specific date closed across the network is invaluable."
"Cisco products are incredibly stable, boasting a 200% stability."
"Being able to look at the Layer 7 application and get information about intrusion attempts is the most valuable feature for us."
"The feature most valuable for us is to gain visibility of what is actually floating through, so we can stop it based on whether it's good or bad traffic."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it helps you gain visibility for your application."
"I believe this solution has reduced our incident response time."
"The solution has increased our threat detection rate. Cisco Stealthwatch has not reduced our incident response times. It has not reduced the amount of time it takes us to detect immediate threats. It has reduced false positives."
"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%."
"Corelight is easy to use."
"Corelight Open NDR has had a positive impact on my company, providing visibility as the Suricata engine can scan huge volumes of traffic, including north-south and east-west, revealing signatures and exposures I was not expecting and enabling me to catch them with Suricata alerts."
"Technical support seems to be good."
"It is easy to deploy and easy to handle."
"It's an easy way for us to get visibility in a client's environment."
"Corelight makes much easier the remediation of cyber attacks; instead of facing a chaotic amount of logs, Corelight provides correlated metrics that allow pivoting to find, in seconds, all the data related to an alert, detection, or asset."
"Our company has seen massive improvements in cybersecurity position for our clients."
"It's easy to create additional dashboards specific to supporting specific tasks."
 

Cons

"The version with the Dell server had iDRAC problems. Often, it reported iDRAC failure."
"We've had problems with element licensing costs so scalability is a concern."
"Cisco Stealthwatch is scalable with money. It's expensive."
"It's too complicated to install, when starting out."
"The expensive nature of the tool is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"We had some trouble with the installation as we migrated from our previous solution."
"I think the interface is a little lacking. The interface seems like it just needs to be modernized. It's been the same interface now, ever since I've seen it probably four years ago."
"The reporting of day-to-day metrics still has room for improvement."
"The solution’s architecture is complex and difficult to understand. There are multiple machines and VMs."
"It's an expensive solution and the price could be reduced."
"Before Corelight recently started pushing some of the agentic features, querying at times could be a little difficult, depending on your mastery of log scale."
"In the next release, building a graphical user interface would be helpful."
"Corelight hasn’t added features in a long time."
"Machine learning could be a good improvement, but it's very costly."
"They can enhance the interface of the product. They can make it more interactive and also easier to use for feature access."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The yearly licensing cost is about $50,000."
"The solution is expensive. It costs several hundred thousand dollars per year (depending on how many flows you are collecting)."
"Pricing is much higher compared to other solutions."
"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."
"Our fees are approximately $3,000 USD."
"We pay for support costs on a yearly basis."
"The licensing costs are outrageous."
"On a yearly basis, licensing is somewhere around $30,000."
"It's a yearly fee and depends on what you are looking for."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
 

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 Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

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 Corelight?
I have a fortunate experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Corelight Open NDR, as being a principal architect, I get to sit outside of that conversation and just choose the best prod...
What needs improvement with Corelight?
Corelight Open NDR does not need any improvements or additional features in the next releases. The product is excellent at what it does, and I believe what they have done with it, taking an open-so...
What is your primary use case for Corelight?
I have been using Corelight Open NDR solution for approximately three years. I leverage the Suricata engine heavily for alerting on indicators of compromise as my main use case for this solution.
 

Also Known As

Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
Corelight Open NDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
CarrefourEdnonGrand Canyon EducationSektorCERTTietoevryVolkswagen Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Corelight Open NDR and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.