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Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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 Network Analytics
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
33rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (3rd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (5th), Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)
NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
75th
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 0.9%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Network Analytics0.9%
NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG0.5%
Other98.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

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.
Michael Gideon Genita - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate System Engineer at SMS Global Technologies, Inc.
Easy to set up with good documentation and helpful support
I'm using it for a customer The packet flow switch is the most valuable aspect of the solution.  It's an easy product to set up. We can scale the solution if we need to. It's stable.  The documentation is well-written and quite useful. It's compatible with other products.  Under the pocket flow…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Using the Cognitive Analytics feature, we have complete visibility that we didn’t have before."
"This solution gives our customers better visibility."
"Great network monitoring, looking at anomaly detection and evaluation."
"Stealthwatch reduced our incident response rate, as well as the amount of time it takes to detect and remediate threats by about 25%."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is the Threat Intelligence integration."
"The solution's analytics and thrust detection capabilities are good. We're still adjusting it. It's a little hypersensitive, but it is working right now."
"This solution has improved my organization because when I have users who are having issues with patching slowness it gives me the ability to be able to proactively troubleshoot and determine what the issue is."
"It has cut our group's troubleshooting time down significantly, e.g., depending on the issue, what would normally take maybe a couple of hours will now take minutes."
"The technical support is really good. They will go above and beyond, if you are running into a problem. You can go to a sales engineer, who will engage technical support to help you out."
"An issue that used to take days is now fixed within minutes to an hour."
"From a troubleshooting perspective, it allows us to quickly search all data TAP points in the network and helps our network engineers get to root cause quickly."
"This solution has cut our overall troubleshooting time, sometimes going down to a few hours over what might have taken one to two days to fully troubleshoot an issue, and it has helped to increase our application uptime as we try to keep the five nines."
"The product is stable. I have never had any issue where we have lost an InfiniStream, or visibility from that particular InfiniStream, throughout the bank."
"The solution has helped to increase application and network uptime, reduced our mean time to repair significantly for application and network issues, and cut our overall troubleshooting time from an hour down to five minutes."
"If you are looking for a good application monitoring and packet analysis tool, you can strategically use NETSCOUT to get it done."
 

Cons

"Cisco Stealthwatch is scalable with money. It's expensive."
"We determined that Stealthwatch wouldn't provide the machine learning model that we required."
"Improvements are needed on the application layer for complete security analysis."
"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."
"It would be better to let people know, up front, that is doesn't give you nice, clear information, as seen in the demos, without Cisco ISE installed."
"I would like to see better filters."
"There's a lot of traffic on our network that we don't see sometimes."
"The technology goes end-of-life on us every year, which is why I am looking forward to vSTREAM."
"It can be scalable. It just costs too much."
"It's not able to communicate with our probes."
"I would like to see an improved level of stitching between IPs."
"The stability depends on who is using the tool, because you only can get as much out of the tool as you put into it. There are a lot of patches for this particular environment, so you have to keep on them. If you lose track of them, then the product is not useful anymore."
"We don't use the single pane of glass view, even though we own it."
"The technology goes end-of-life on us every year, which is why I am looking forward to vSTREAM. I don't like when devices go end-of-life on us so quickly. If we can get more of an advanced notice of when an end-of-life is brought up, because our certification process within the organization takes a while."
"The solution is not great, but it is not bad."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is not cheaply priced."
"Our fees are approximately $3,000 USD."
"It is worth the cost."
"There are additional licenses needed for the number of so-called network flows. It's hard to plan the number of flows you need in the network, this is a problem. The price of the Cisco Stealthwatch is relatively inexpensive"
"We pay for support costs on a yearly basis."
"NetFlow is very expensive."
"The yearly licensing cost is about $50,000."
"​Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside (in traffic)."
"The scalability is good, but it comes at a cost. E.g., if you need 100 InfiniStream because you are sending gigs or terabytes of data to one InfiniStream, then you will have to purchase another InfiniStream, which are not cheap."
"I would like it to be more scalable with less spend."
"To capture more with the solution that we bought, you have to buy another InfiniStreamNG, and there are only four ports in the back."
"The price is a little high."
"It can be scalable. It just costs too much. With a company as big as ours, it gets too expensive to accommodate every single site."
"This product could be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
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
Midsize Enterprise1
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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
InfiniStreamNG, NETSCOUT ISNG, Infinistream
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
U.S. Department of Defense
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.