Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System vs Vectra AI comparison

Hillstone S-Series Network ...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System and Vectra AI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Darktrace, Check Point Software Technologies, Vectra AI and others in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS).

To learn more, read our detailed Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Report (Updated: March 2025).

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

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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

Hillstone S-Series Network ...

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

22nd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Vectra AI

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (15th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (10th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 11.3%, up from 10.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Featured Reviews

reviewer1080873

Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Complements any firewall

The core processors are there and it's able to generate reports for that. It also complements any kind of firewall. For example, if an end user is using Palo Alto as a firewall, they'd need another layer of firewall like the S-Series that will protect internal servers. It's something that complements any firewall in the market.

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Mohammad Alkurdi

Owner at Fortibits

Innovative detection features enhance monitoring

The advantages of the integration are not entirely out-of-the-box. You have to do it manually. When I'm doing tier response, an out-of-the-box solution is not available. You need to have a Linux server, and from the Linux server, you must perform AI tasks, and there is a lot to be handled in the back end. This is a major consideration about them. The recall feature, if it can be placed in some areas instead of the cloud, and charged for, would be better. Recall the storage where you watch all the traffic, and you can recall it and try to analyze it in the back end. It’s cloud-based. If they offer it on-prem, it would be better. I think they have a solution, but I have never tested it, to be honest with you.

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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

"Setup is straightforward with the same reliability and scalability as the firewall series."

"The most useful feature is the anomaly detection because it's not signature-based. It picks up the initial part of any attack, like the recon and those aspects of the kill chain, very well."

"There are many detection features available."

"It's easy to manage, and I love the UX. It's very well designed. When we are looking for something, it's quite easy to find it."

"One of the things that we didn't expect to happen was that our network team also jumped on it faster than we thought. In most cases, if it's a security tool that's working on the network part, they can also use it to find out certain flaws that have been in the system. Certain flaws, related to some legacy stuff, were already there for quite a few years, which they couldn't explain at first, but we could explain them based on the timing of certain things."

"It gives you access, with Recall, to instant visibility into your network through something like a SIEM solution. For us, being able to correlate all of this network data without having to manage it, has provided immediate value. It gives us the ability to really work on the stuff where I and my team have expertise, instead of having to manage a SIEM solution..."

"It provides various dashboards that facilitate the identification of connections and can detect data exfiltration, meaning data sent from your environment to another."

"One of the key advantages for us is we define a 24/7 service around it. We use far more of Vectra alerts than we do with our SIEM product because we understand that when we get an alert from Vectra we actually need to do something about it."

"It has reduced the time it takes to respond to attacks. That comes back to the proactive point. It makes us able to lower down in the kill chain, we can react now, rather than reacting to incidents that happened, we can see an instant, in some cases, as it's being implemented, or as it's being launched."

More Vectra AI pros

Cons

"Lack of tools to help educate end users"

"Some of their integrations with other sources of data, like external threat feeds, took a bit more work than I had hoped to get integrated."

"I would like to see data processed onshore. Right now, the cloud components, like Office 365, must be processed on servers outside of Australia. I would like to see a future adoption of onshore processing."

"The solution has not reduced the security analyst workload in our organization because we still need to SIEM. Unfortunately, while Vectra, for us, is a brilliant tool for network investigations, giving wonderful visibility, it doesn't go the whole way to replace our SIEM that is needed for compliance. So, I still have the same amount of alerting and logging that I did before. It gives us more defined ability to see incidents, but it doesn't give us enough information to satisfy a PCI or 27001 audit."

"They use a proprietary logging format that is probably 90% similar to Bro Logs. Their biggest area of improvement is finishing out the remaining 10%. That 10% might not be beneficial to their ML engine, but that's fine. The industry standard is Zeek Logs or Bro Logs, or Bro or Zeek, depending on how old you are. While they have 90% of those fields, they're still missing some fields. In very rare instances, some community rules do not have the fields that they need, and we had to modify community rules for our logs. So, their biggest area of improvement would be to just finish their matching of the Zeek standard."

"I would like more integrations with IOCs and threats currently on the Internet. I would also like to know which threats are based on zero-day attacks, current botnets, etc. Therefore, I would like more information on external threats."

"There could be an option where Vectra manages the solution remotely, and when there is an attack, there could be a notification center to give us information about the attack."

"One of the things that we are missing a bit is the capability to add our own rules to it. At the moment, the tech engine does its thing, but we have some cool ideas to make additional rules. There should be an option in the platform to add custom rules, or there should be some kind of user group where we can suggest them for the roadmap and see if they get evaluated and get transparent communication on whether they will be implemented in the product or not."

"The solution needs to become more proactive. When Vectra AI is the primary solution in an environment - like it is in our case - you must work on response time. We have a small team so response time at endpoint level is vital."

More Vectra AI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Vectra's licensing model could scale to our research network, which has multiple, 100-gigabit links."

"My company pays for the Vectra AI licensing fee yearly. I know the figure because my company recently renewed the license, and it's okay, at least for the financial sector."

"Their licensing model is antiquated. I'm not a fan of their licensing model. We have to pay for licensing based on four different things. You have to pay based on the number of unique IPs, the number of logs that we send through Recall and Stream, and the size of our environment. They need to simplify their licensing down to just one thing. It should be based on the amount of data, the number of devices, or something else, but there should be just one thing for everything. That's what they need to base their licensing on. Cost-wise, they're not cheap. They were definitely the most expensive option, but you get what you pay for. They're not the cheapest option."

"From a licensing perspective, the Vectra detect platform is pretty doable. Also, the hardware prices are nothing that we're not used to. The stream part is a little overpriced compared to the detect part. The reason is that you need to stream data to detect events anyway, so the data is in there. The only thing that's not available is the UI to be able to look at the stream data, which is also on the appliances but is just not activated. That's mainly the thing that we want to improve on."

"The solution is low-cost and affordable."

"The solution's pricing was 50 percent lower than the other vendors shortlisted."

"The upfront pricing model that we have would have been more beneficial if it had been a recurring license fee, but that wasn't a massive issue for us. It's fairly priced."

"The pricing is very good. It's less expensive than many of the tools out there."

More Vectra AI pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?

The two platforms take a fundamentally different approach to NDR. Corelight is limited to use cases that require the eventual forwarding of events and parsed data logs to a security team’s SIEM or ...

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What do you like most about Vectra AI?

The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?

It is very acceptable when you compare it with Darktrace, for example.

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Comparisons

Fortinet FortiGate IPS vs Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System

Compared 63% of the time

Darktrace vs Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System

Compared 37% of the time

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Darktrace vs Vectra AI

Compared 33% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) vs Vectra AI

Compared 11% of the time

Corelight vs Vectra AI

Compared 6% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Vectra AI

Compared 6% of the time

Arista NDR vs Vectra AI

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Download Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System product report

Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System report

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Also Known As

Hillstone S-Series NIPS

Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR

Overview

Hillstone Network-based IPS (NIPS) appliance operates in-line, and at wire speed, performing deep packet inspection, and assembling inspection of all network traffic. It also applies rules based on several methodologies, including protocol anomaly analysis and signature analysis to block threats. Hillstone NIPS can be deployed in the network to inspect traffic left undetected by perimeter solutions, and is an integral part of network security systems for its high-performance, no compromise, best-of-breed protection capability and broad and flexible deployment scenarios.

Hillstone Networks

Vectra AI is used for detecting network anomalies and potential malicious activities, providing visibility into network traffic and enhancing threat detection across environments.

Organizations deploy Vectra AI mainly on-premises with additional cloud components. It helps with compliance, incident response, security monitoring, detecting insider threats, and correlating network events. Vectra AI captures and enriches network metadata, provides detailed dashboards, reduces false positives, and supports cross-environment behavioral analysis to enhance threat detection and prioritization. While valued for its high accuracy and alert aggregation, it has room for improvement in UI/UX, packet management, and integration with SIEMs and other tools. It is noted for expensive pricing and limited proactive threat response features.

What are Vectra AI's most valuable features?

High accuracy in identifying threat locations
Aggregation of alerts into single incidents
24/7 threat detection
Visibility into the entire attack lifecycle
Risk score aggregation
Effective triaging of alerts
Integration with other tools

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Enhanced threat detection and prioritization
Comprehensive network visibility
Reduction in false positives
Better incident response capabilities
Improved compliance monitoring

In specific industries, Vectra AI is deployed to monitor complex networks and alleviate challenges in threat detection. It is particularly effective in sectors requiring stringent compliance and security measures, offering insights and capabilities crucial for protecting sensitive data and maintaining operational integrity.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)