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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Dragos 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 Sourcefire SNORT
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (12th)
Dragos
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Operational Technology (OT) Security (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Security Systems solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is designed for Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) and holds a mindshare of 3.0%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
Dragos, on the other hand, focuses on Operational Technology (OT) Security, holds 7.8% mindshare, down 11.9% since last year.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.0%
Darktrace10.1%
Fortinet FortiGate8.5%
Other78.4%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
Operational Technology (OT) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dragos7.8%
Nozomi Networks14.5%
Claroty Platform13.8%
Other63.9%
Operational Technology (OT) Security
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2772102 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Logging and customizable rules have helped improve threat monitoring and detection
The logging is mainly what I consider one of the best features with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. Being able to log and store it in a file allows you to push it to a centralized repository. The logging and reporting help improve incident response. You should always be logging threats, any sort of misconfiguration, and anything that could be an issue. It's important to at least log and monitor it. The basic rules provide a good baseline in assessing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT's ability in providing real-time analytics for threat detection, but as a professional, you should look to constantly modify that baseline. They provide extensive customizability so you can define your own rules. The customizability allows it to be adaptable in protecting against diverse network threats to the constant change.
Rajesh Podishetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Risk monitoring has improved and real-time fraud detection provides transparent banking control
Dragos should be improved in deployment complexity as it requires OT engineering coordination. One needs to have proper engineering coordination to understand the system, deploy it, integrate it, and make all the complex things into one system. This is very challenging, and one should be really skillful and have experience to accomplish this. Cost is another area for improvement. The cost is higher due to site-based licensing and expert services. The licensing is very heavy, and expert services are required for deployment. Cost-wise is also challenging and needs to be improved. Integration needs alignment with IT security systems and compliance frameworks. Controlling cybersecurity where any fraudulent person or third party should not access the system is controlled, and managing that level of complexity is quite challenging. Since there is continuous monitoring, it can reduce operational risk losses by 20% to 30% annually. Controlling that huge amount of data and transactions, especially regarding storage, requires a lot of database space. The space-wise storage should be reduced.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend this solution; it's reliable and scalable, with easy installation and integration."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"Users have access to intelligent security automation as one of the features, which can easily automate your event impact assessment so your IPS policy tuning can be done as well as your network behavior analysis, and you can do real-time contextual awareness with correlation of events created on your applications, user devices, operating systems, or vulnerabilities, with all of this real-time data captured including your apps and port scans."
"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."
"If you compare it to other vendors, the technical support from Cisco is excellent."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
"There are a lot of features that I really appreciate with Firepower, which is why I advise most of my customers to go with Firepower."
"I like most of Cisco's features, like malware detection and URL filtering."
"Dragos has positively impacted my organization by aiding us to compensate our time."
"Dragos is more expensive than other vendors, probably about fifteen to twenty percent more, but it is generally worth the investment."
"Dragos' best features are that they are more focused towards Incident Response, so they have a dedicated playbook in their platform, making it easier for anyone investigating any incidents to investigate the alerts."
"Dragos especially ensures systems recover quickly, providing resilience, and it handles all the operational resilience in banking with metrics of 99.9% uptime, 30 minutes recovery time, and 99% transaction accuracy."
 

Cons

"This is a good solution, but some others may have some advantages."
"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."
"The implementation could be a bit easier."
"The initial setup is a little difficult compared to other products in the market. It depends on the environment. If we are doing any migration, it might take months in a brown-field environment."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"The cloud can be improved."
"We are unhappy with technical support for this solution, and it is not as professional as what we typically expect from Cisco."
"With the next release, I would like to see some PBR, so that you can do the configuration with the features."
"From my point of view, Dragos cannot be improved at the moment, but having more user-friendly platforms would be good."
"Dragos could improve its asset visibility and discovery tools, as the competitor Claroty has better options in this area."
"Dragos should be improved in deployment complexity as it requires OT engineering coordination."
"I think Dragos can offer more flexibility similar to Nozomi and more visibility into the assets, nodes, and links, which would make it more competitive in the future."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"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."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Energy/Utilities Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Healthcare Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise7
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I have not had much experience with the community-driven rule set while utilizing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. I don't have experience with recognizing zero-day vulnerabilities, but based on my knowledg...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
Endpoint protection is the main use case. The main aspect involves specifying different rules, and when network traffic hits these rules, it will try to block the traffic or at least log the traffi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dragos?
Pricing-wise, I am not certain because there is a third party who handles the pricing in my company. The setup cost and licensing is quite critical. Licensing is always handled for access users, an...
What needs improvement with Dragos?
From my point of view, Dragos cannot be improved at the moment, but having more user-friendly platforms would be good. Enhancing the user interface experience to be better or more smoothly would be...
What is your primary use case for Dragos?
My main use case for Dragos is for vulnerability management, which I rely on day-to-day. A quick specific example of how I use Dragos for vulnerability management in my daily work is that I made an...
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT
Dragos Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
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