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Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs NETSCOUT vSTREAM 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 vSTREAM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
86th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
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 vSTREAM is 0.4%, up from 0.3% 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 vSTREAM0.4%
Other98.7%
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.
KL
Network Engineer at Inniti Network Solution
A user-friendly solution that is easy to install and improves visibility
I would like to see improvements made to the user guide. From my personal experience, it is helpful to see a list of steps describing what to do next in different situations. An example is what to do and what to back up in the case of certain types of failure. There are also cases where a customer can't understand specific features. Enhancements to the user guide would be helpful for this. More features for network fragmentation would be helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AI provides suggested common lines and protection features that help safeguard networks from various threats or unwanted situations."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is the Threat Intelligence integration."
"The network visibility feature opens up a whole new pane of glass that didn't exist before, so when you talk about being able to look into your network and understand what's there for security events, impostering, and everything that Stealthwatch can bring to the table, there's nothing else that a typical customer's going to have installed today that will give them any of that information."
"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%."
"From what I understand, you can encrypt and unencrypt traffic moving in transit. This is one of the features that we liked about it."
"The amount of information that this product gives us for detecting threats is very valuable, and we don't have another product like this in our environment."
"Being able to graph and show data to management has improved our organization. We can show the data to the higher-ups. It shows them that it's picking up on these anomalies and doing its job."
"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."
"One of the valuable features is the packet decoding."
"Sometimes it took a month to troubleshoot something that we can now do within days."
"The generation of KPI-like information that feeds to the nGeniusONE (management) server is the most valuable feature."
"vSTREAM gives us better visibility and reporting about our network infrastructure, allowing for cost-optimization."
 

Cons

"Cisco Stealthwatch is scalable with money. It's expensive."
"Improvements are needed on the application layer for complete security analysis."
"Complexity on integration is not so straightforward and you really need an expert to help build it out."
"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. You should be able to filter the data out to more rapidly find what you're looking for."
"I would like to see interoperability with other Cisco products because we have ThousandEyes, Cisco Prime, and others. The interaction among these is important to us."
"The initial setup was straightforward but required a lot of data entry, to begin with building out the server types and network types."
"Its granularity for RBAC roles-based access control needs improvement."
"I would like for it to have a smaller footprint of the virtual appliance and better performance."
"Room for improvement exists in filtering in the packet decode."
"I would say that this is not a scalable solution."
"I would like to see improvements made to the user guide."
"The stability is okay, but sometimes we see that the memory on the server is not 100 percent correct and we need to stop and start the software to have it reallocated again."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive. It costs several hundred thousand dollars per year (depending on how many flows you are collecting)."
"​Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside (in traffic)."
"The licensing costs are outrageous."
"Today, we are part of the big Cisco ELA, and it is a la carte. We can get orders for whatever we want. At the end of the day, we have to pay for it in one big expense, but that is fine. We are okay with that."
"This is an expensive product. We have quit paying for support because we don't want to have to upgrade it and keep paying for it."
"Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside>in traffic."
"It is worth the cost."
"It has a subscription model. There is yearly support, and there is also three-year support. It depends on what the customers want."
"Licensing is quite expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Construction Company
8%
Construction Company
19%
Energy/Utilities Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise52
No data available
 

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
vSTREAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
Metropolitan Police Agency, Banpara, PropertyRoom.com
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. NETSCOUT vSTREAM and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.