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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Dragos comparison

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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
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Operational Technology (OT) Security (4th)
 

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 2.9%, up 2.7% compared to last year.
Dragos, on the other hand, focuses on Operational Technology (OT) Security, holds 7.6% mindshare, down 11.9% since last year.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT2.9%
Darktrace9.8%
Fortinet FortiGate7.9%
Other79.4%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
Operational Technology (OT) Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dragos7.6%
Nozomi Networks13.8%
Claroty Platform13.1%
Other65.5%
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

"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."
"The tool's most valuable feature is threat detection, which is important because we have multiple layers not only in Cisco."
"We primarily use this solution as an intrusion prevention system for external firewalls and deploy the solution on-premises."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"I would recommend this solution; it's reliable and scalable, with easy installation and integration."
"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 has positively impacted my organization by aiding us to compensate our time."
"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."
"I have been working with Dragos almost since the time when they started the company."
"Dragos is more expensive than other vendors, probably about fifteen to twenty percent more, but it is generally worth the investment."
 

Cons

"We are unhappy with technical support for this solution, and it is not as professional as what we typically expect from Cisco."
"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."
"Performance needs improvement."
"There are some bugs in this solution and troubleshooting them is complicated."
"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT can scale, but if you have too much, you could fill up your log files, which I consider when discussing scalability."
"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"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."
"Dragos is very expensive, charging more than the OEMs. For example, if a PLC costs ten thousand dollars, a customer pays Dragos almost one to ten price in relation to what they would have spent building their plant."
"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."
"From my point of view, Dragos cannot be improved at the moment, but having more user-friendly platforms would be good."
"Dragos basically helped us get to know the entire infrastructure because there were many devices that not even the client themselves knew existed or that were still active, making it a very good tool; however, it requires a lot of hardware and knowledge, especially expertise from people who have worked in the industry and know security, which was lacking in the company where it was implemented, leading to lucky hits but ultimately prompting my decision to change companies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise4
 

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?
Being able to do more tuning and investigation in the dashboard to search for interesting things, along with some threat hunting, would help identify something beyond what is already there. Dragos ...
What is your primary use case for Dragos?
The main use case I had for Dragos during that period was for infrastructure monitoring and to begin detecting any incidents or problems that could arise, especially configuration failures, such as...
 

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
NaturEner
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