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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs KerioControl comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 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 Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
KerioControl
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Firewalls (27th), Unified Threat Management (UTM) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 2.9%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of KerioControl is 3.2%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT2.9%
KerioControl3.2%
Other93.9%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

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.
Constantnos Achilleos - PeerSpot reviewer
Product manger at Asbis Mediteranean
Leveraging geo-tagging and web filtering for enhanced network security
The solution is used for site-to-site VPN connections and it is valued for its cost efficiency and easy connectivity. It is especially beneficial for multi-site VPNs and is used in about fifteen different components KerioControl has provided a financial benefit as it allows purchasing one license…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"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."
"We primarily use this solution as an intrusion prevention system for external firewalls and deploy the solution on-premises."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"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."
"Scalability is something that Cisco has always cared about."
"It is quite an intelligent product."
"It works well as it is, and I don't have a problem with how it works."
"The statistic feature enables us to better use bandwidth management. We monitored the use by mobile, type of application, department, and by users. The bandwidth was solid. Our internet speed is optimized for our research."
"The interface control manager where we can allocate LAN connections to certain VLANs is the most valuable feature."
"The user interface and the ease of use are pretty good. Everything fits together so nicely."
"From the old way we used to do things, it is night and day, and the efficiency has doubled."
"The product is easy to use."
"The comprehensiveness of the security features that Kerio Control provides us with is good. Before GFI had it, they would have more updates. The updates have been slower, but I like the things that they keep adding like the ability to block by country. I use pretty much every feature."
"Kerio Control has helped my organization by hiding my private IP address behind the firewall and we use the proxy destination instead of my website."
 

Cons

"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that. Whenever I go to the technical community with an issue, they will usually say that it is not there yet, but the technical team are working on it. The issues are not insolvable. I think they should just keep working on the product to make sure that the product can become very stable. The technical support is great. I appreciate that. We have a lot of communities supporting Firepower now, so you can find help for whatever issue you have."
"The main dashboard of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve."
"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."
"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."
"A lot of Cisco equipment is very good, but in judging the model of this solution that we have, I feel that it is the worst."
"This is a good solution, but some others may have some advantages."
"The solution can be improved to create the capability for larger bandwidths that support our business needs."
"There were certain things I didn't know about it, but I've always been able to just contact our IT company."
"When we did our last update, we had some trouble with the initial syncing process to get our messaging to go through. But we were also moving a store and a lot was changing during that process. I don't think it was on Kerio's end. It just coincided with the update. Once we got our third-party IT guy involved it was resolved very quickly."
"Kerio Control has just improved on their biggest problem, which was to introduce better support for high-availability requirements in production."
"Kerio Control could improve by having higher availability and adding a mobile VPN channel. These additions are needed. The VPN is working fine on the Kerio Control but there needs to be a VPN client on the mobile phones, both for iOS and Android. This would be very good for us."
"There were certain things I didn't know about it, but I've always been able to just contact our IT company. They've been able to walk me through certain things. It was quite a monumental task to set up a public site. Support really had to help me with setting up the VLANs and walk me through it. It was not possible for me to figure that out on my own, but that's what they're here for. That could have been a little bit easier laid out."
"I would like for them to add more security features."
"I have had a few issues with HTTPS decryption. The solution also does not show the actual user's Internet usage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"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."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"It gives us a lot. It does prove to be a very robust product for the cost."
"The price is fine."
"We have to pay approximately EUR 175 for the product."
"KerioControl's pricing is reasonable. The license for KerioControl is annual. It's difficult to specify an exact cost since it varies depending on the number of users and additional software combined with it. For example, a basic box might cover 25 users, but licenses can be purchased starting from 10 users."
"Search and compare."
"KerioControl's pricing is good."
"On the low-end device that I use, it has unlimited IP addresses. So, they have a subscription model where, on the higher models, you pay X dollars for 10 IP addresses. Then, if you want any more, you have to pay more on the model. On the low-end model, it has unlimited IP addresses, because if you have too many users, the thing will just slow you down and stop working. At some point, you need to say, "Okay, I've grown to a point where performance is impacted. I need to get some bigger hardware." If I get to that stage, I will possibly look at using one of the virtual appliances and putting it on some bigger hardware."
"Its price is fair. There are no additional costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
 

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 Business44
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

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 KerioControl?
KerioControl offers good pricing as one license covers all features needed without extra payment. The price for the product is rated as ten out of ten.
What needs improvement with KerioControl?
Regarding KerioControl's application awareness and control feature, I have not used it much.
What is your primary use case for KerioControl?
With KerioControl, we usually use them for site-to-site VPNs for most of our clients. With multiple offices, we use KerioControl as our solution.
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT
No data available
 

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
Triton Technical, McDonald's
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. KerioControl and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.