Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Splunk User Behavior Analytics comparison

Cisco and Splunk are both solutions in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category. Cisco is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.0, while Splunk is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.8. Cisco holds a 3.1% mindshare in ID, compared to Splunk’s 2.4% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Read 20 Cisco Sourcefire SNORT reviews

1,284 Views
1,104 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Splunk User Behavior Analytics

Read 25 Splunk User Behavior Analytics reviews

3,375 Views
844 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Splunk User Behavior Analytics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and Splunk User Behavior Analytics compete in the cybersecurity domain. Splunk holds the upper hand due to its advanced analytics capabilities offering superior insights.

Features: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT provides real-time network traffic monitoring, a comprehensive intrusion detection system, and an adaptable open-source rule-based alert system. Splunk User Behavior Analytics offers advanced threat detection, comprehensive log analysis, and detailed insights into user actions. It is desirable for situations requiring extended feature sets and sophisticated analytics.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve in areas such as providing more intuitive reporting tools, enhancing user-interface design, and integrating more automated threat intelligence updates. Splunk User Behavior Analytics might focus on reducing deployment complexity, offering more out-of-the-box integrations, and optimizing cost-effectiveness for small to medium-sized enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is known for its easy deployment model and strong community support, allowing quick implementation. Splunk User Behavior Analytics, while requiring more detailed setup due to its complexity, benefits from thorough documentation and professional support, appealing to organizations seeking extensive guidance.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT has a low initial setup cost, offering ROI through proactive threat mitigation. Splunk User Behavior Analytics requires a higher initial investment but justifies this with significant ROI via enhanced security insights and improved operational efficiency, attracting businesses prioritizing long-term returns and deep analytics.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Splunk User Behavior Analytics Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Splunk User Behavior Analytics

February 2026

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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)

15th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Splunk User Behavior Analytics

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

14th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.1%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk User Behavior Analytics is 2.4%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk User Behavior Analytics	2.4%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT	3.1%
Other	94.5%

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2772102

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.

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Siva Kuppala

Enterprise Architect at Wipro Limited

Offers intuitive deployment with strong customer support and advanced analytics features

There are improvements that could be made to Splunk User Behavior Analytics as any product will have advantages and disadvantages. Scalability is one consideration. For example, the advantages include rapid auto scaling to meet demand. A disadvantage is that it can lead to cost overrun if not properly factored or governed. The speed of deployment offers faster provisioning as an advantage, but it can require substantial automation skills and infrastructure as code expertise, which can be challenging. Cloud provides major operational benefits such as agility, automation, resilience, and global access when setting up on Cloud. However, it introduces challenges such as cost control, complexity, and vendor dependency. For example, global reach allows deployment of apps and services closer to users worldwide, but data sovereignty concerns exist and region selection must align with compliance requirements.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is rather easy to use."

"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."

"The whole solution is very good, and stable."

"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."

"It is quite an intelligent product."

"The solution can be integrated with some network electors like Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco ISE, and Active Directory to provide the client with authentication certificates."

"Cisco technical support is unbeatable. It offers a premium service every time."

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT pros

"Features like alerts and auto report generation are valuable."

"The most valuable features are the indexing and powerful search features."

"Splunk is highly valuable for query purposes."

"The product is at the forefront of auto-remediation networking. It's great."

"We are really pleased with Splunk and its features. It would be practically impossible to function without it. To provide a general overview of the system, it's important to note that the standard log files are currently around 250 gigabytes per day. It would be impossible to manually walk through these logs by hand, which is why automation is essential."

"The best features in Splunk User Behavior Analytics include anomaly detection, behavioral profiling, and risk scoring and prioritization functionality."

"The solution's most valuable feature is Splunk queries, which allow us to query the logs and analyze the attack vectors."

"The solution is extremely scalable. Our customers are regularly scaling up after installing Splunk."

More Splunk User Behavior Analytics pros

Cons

"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."

"While the alerts they offer are good, it could improve it in the sense that they should be more detailed to make the alerts more useful to us in general. Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives. Due to the fact that the alerts aren't detailed, we have to go dig around to see why is it being blocked. The solution would be infinitely better if there was just a bit more detail in the alert information and logging we receive."

"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."

"We are unhappy with technical support for this solution, and it is not as professional as what we typically expect from Cisco."

"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."

"The cloud can be improved."

"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."

"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT can scale, but if you have too much, you could fill up your log files, which I consider when discussing scalability."

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT cons

"We want to have an automated system for bot hunting that enables us to detect anomalies predictively based on historical data. It would be helpful if Splunk included process mining as an alternative option. We have a threat workflow, but it would be useful if we could supplement that with some process mining capabilities over time."

"They should work to add more built-in correlation searches and more use cases based on worldwide customer experiences. They need more ready-made use cases."

"I would like improved downward integration with other tools such as McAfee and other GCP solutions."

"In the future I would like to see simplified statistics and analytical threats."

"The dashboard part could be improved. While using it, I noticed two options: Classic, which is adequate yet only in black and white, and another one that is more advanced or smart."

"If the price was lowered and the setup process was less complex, I would consider rating it higher."

"It could be easier to scale the solution if you are using it on-premise, not in the cloud."

"The solution is much more expensive than relative competitors like ArcSight or LogRhythm. It makes it hard to sell to customers sometimes."

More Splunk User Behavior Analytics cons

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."

"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."

"We have a three-year license for this solution."

"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."

"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."

"The licensing costs is around 10,000 dollars."

"I hope we can increase the free license to be more than 5 gig a day. This would help people who want to introduce a POC or a demo license for the solution."

"My biggest complaint is the way they do pricing... You can never know the pricing for next year. Every single time you adjust to something new, the price goes up. It's impossible to truly budget for it. It goes up constantly."

"I am not aware of the price, but it is expensive."

"There are additional costs associated with the integrator."

"Pricing varies based on the packages you choose and the volume of your usage."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

University

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?

The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Splunk User Behavior Analytics?

The solution's most valuable feature is Splunk queries, which allow us to query the logs and analyze the attack vectors.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk User Behavior Analytics?

Splunk User Behavior Analytics is a premium product. Compared to all other products in the market, it is the most expensive one in all aspects including professional service and licenses, even the ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Splunk User Behavior Analytics?

Splunk User Behavior Analytics is still an immature product, so it still needs some R&D to be able to be mature in the market. The prediction, algorithms, and ML codes behind Splunk User Behavi...

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 15% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 12% of the time

Fortinet FortiGate vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 10% of the time

ExtremeCloud IQ vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 9% of the time

Check Point IPS vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT Competitors

Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management vs Splunk User Behavior Analytics

Compared 23% of the time

Exabeam vs Splunk User Behavior Analytics

Compared 8% of the time

Dtex Systems vs Splunk User Behavior Analytics

Compared 7% of the time

Darktrace vs Splunk User Behavior Analytics

Compared 5% of the time

Coralogix vs Splunk User Behavior Analytics

Compared 5% of the time

More Splunk User Behavior Analytics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

January 2026

Download Cisco Sourcefire SNORT product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk User Behavior Analytics

January 2026

Download Splunk User Behavior Analytics product report

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT

Caspida, Splunk UBA

Overview

Snort is an open-source, rule-based, intrusion detection and prevention system. It combines the benefits of signature-, protocol-, and anomaly-based inspection methods to deliver flexible protection from malware attacks. Snort gained notoriety for being able to accurately detect threats at high speeds.

Cisco

Splunk User Behavior Analytics is a behavior-based threat detection is based on machine learning methodologies that require no signatures or human analysis, enabling multi-entity behavior profiling and peer group analytics for users, devices, service accounts and applications. It detects insider threats and external attacks using out-of-the-box purpose-built that helps organizations find known, unknown and hidden threats, but extensible unsupervised machine learning (ML) algorithms, provides context around the threat via ML driven anomaly correlation and visual mapping of stitched anomalies over various phases of the attack lifecycle (Kill-Chain View). It uses a data science driven approach that produces actionable results with risk ratings and supporting evidence that increases SOC efficiency and supports bi-directional integration with Splunk Enterprise for data ingestion and correlation and with Splunk Enterprise Security for incident scoping, workflow management and automated response. The result is automated, accurate threat and anomaly detection.

Splunk

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

8 Securities, AAA Western, AdvancedMD, Amaya, Cerner Corporation, CJ O Shopping, CloudShare, Crossroads Foundation, 7-Eleven Indonesia

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Splunk User Behavior Analytics

February 2026

Free Report: Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Splunk User Behavior Analytics

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