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Nagios Network Analyzer vs Vectra AI 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

Nagios Network Analyzer
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (12th)
Vectra AI
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (4th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (14th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (10th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Nagios Network Analyzer and Vectra AI aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Nagios Network Analyzer is designed for Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) and holds a mindshare of 1.2%, up 0.9% compared to last year.
Vectra AI, on the other hand, focuses on Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS), holds 11.2% mindshare, up 10.7% since last year.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

Gilbert Mwiinga - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively monitors the uptime of all equipment and network connectivity
There is room for improvement on the setup side. It's not very user-friendly, especially for those who aren't tech-savvy. I find it a bit hard to set up initially. It could be done better to make it easier to configure. It would be beneficial for users. For additional features, I have an idea. I'm not sure if it's already there, but it would be great to have a feature that maps the network and shows which devices are connected. It could provide information about how traffic flows and offer a visual representation of how devices are physically connected to each other. It would be like a network audit feature that displays the connections between switches and other devices. So, in future releases, a network mapping and visualization feature would be valuable.
Mohammad Alkurdi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is highly customizable and can be integrated well with third-party software."
"Network tracking is the most valuable feature of Network Analyzer."
"The solution offers very good system monitoring. It's easy to manage your network, as well as your hardware and software. It's really useful."
"I have found that it has a good GUI and user-friendly administration."
"Its initial setup process is straightforward."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The network monitoring feature, especially, stands out to me."
"The solution is useful for monitoring network devices."
"The solution provide visibility into behaviors across the full lifecycle of an attack in our network, beyond just the Internet gateway. It makes our security operations much more effective because we are now looking not just at traffic on the border, but we're looking at east-west internal traffic. Now, not only will we see if an exploit kit is being downloaded, but we would be able to see then if that exploit kit was then laterally distributed into our environment."
"The most valuable feature for Cognito Detect, the main solution, is that external IDS's create a lot of alerts. When I say a lot of alerts I really mean a lot of alerts. Vectra, on the other hand, contextualizes everything, reducing the number of alerts and pinpointing only the things of interest. This is a key feature for me. Because of this, a non-trained analyst can use it almost right away."
"The initial setup was pretty straightforward."
"The dashboard gives me a scoring system that allows me to prioritize things that I should look at. I may not necessarily care so much about one event, whereas if I have a single botnet detection or a brute force attack, I really want to get on top of those."
"Vectra AI can bring the ability to detect intrusion on the network more so than legacy IDS tools."
"The UI is easy to use and when we send detection to everybody, they easily understand what we are asking at the time."
"It has helped us to organize our security. We get a better overview on what is happening on the network, which has helped us get quicker responses to users. If we see malicious activity, then we can quickly take action on it. Previously, we weren't getting an overview as fast as we are now, so we can now provide a quicker response."
"One of the most valuable features is all the correlation that it does using AI and machine learning. An example would be alerting on a host and then alerting on other things, like abnormal behavior, that it has noticed coming from the same host. It's valuable because we're a very lean team."
 

Cons

"There are some loopholes you need to be aware of from a security perspective."
"It's very hard to install materials. You need a lot of documentation. They should make it easier to install and configure the solution."
"The bandwidth for its front-end version needs enhancement."
"The graphics and reports can be a little bit better."
"There is room for improvement on the setup side."
"They need to have some automation models embedded in them."
"I think the reports can be improved. They're adopted."
"Nagios Network Analyzer should integrate an application monitoring solution to monitor application bandwidth usage."
"In education as a sector, we are looking at AI a lot in terms of how it can be used as part of the teaching and learning side of things. It would be great to have Vectra AI look at a better way to enhance the security posture related to the AI tools in our portfolio."
"Some of the customization could be improved. Everything is provided for you as an easy solution to use, but working with it and doing specific development could be worked on a bit more in the scope of an incident response team."
"One thing which I have found where there could be improvement is with regard to the architecture, a little bit: how the brains and sensors function. It needs more flexibility with regard to the brain. If there were some flexibility in that regard, that would be helpful, because changing the mode of the brain is complex. In some cases, the change is permanent. You cannot revert it."
"One of the things I am not so happy about when it comes to Vectra is the scoring board."
"You are always limited with visibility on the host due to the fact that it is a network based tool. It gives you visibility on certain elements of the attack path, but it doesn't necessarily give you visibility on everything. Specifically, the initial intrusion side of things that doesn't necessarily see the initial compromise. It doesn't see stuff that goes on the host, such as where scripts are run. Even though you are seeing traffic, it doesn't necessarily see the malicious payload. Therefore, it's very difficult for it to identify these type of host-driven complex attacks."
"It would be commercially beneficial if Vectra AI had something like Darktrace's Antigena Email or something similar to email protection."
"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."
"Other alternatives, like Darktrace, have a fancier UI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They charge around ten thousand per month for one thousand nodes. That is their overall cost, but it differs on which company you are applying to, whether you are a service provider or an enterprise."
"The solution is cost-efficient."
"I rate Nagios Network Analyzer's pricing a six out of ten."
"We have a desire to increase our use. However, it all comes down to budget. It's a very expensive tool that is very difficult to prove business support for. We would like to have two separate networks. We have our corporate network and PCI network, which is segregated due to payment processing. We don't have it for deployed in the PCI network. It would be good to have it fully deployed there to provide us with additional monitoring and control, but the cost associated with their licensing model makes it prohibitively expensive to deploy."
"At the time of purchase, we found the pricing acceptable. We had an urgency to get something in place because we had a minor breach that occurred at the tail end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017. This indicated we had a lack of ability to detect things on the network. Hence, why we moved quickly to get into the tool in place. We found things like Bitcoin mining and botnets which we closed quickly. In that regard, it was worth the money."
"Vectra's pricing is too high. All schools will not be able to afford it. Vectra will only end up targeting higher education and higher value independence purely because of the price. A lot of schools would love to have a product like Vectra AI, but they simply can't because they struggle to even pay the high E5 licensing from Microsoft. When you're up against that, Vectra AI is never going to be within the sector's price range."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"From a pricing perspective, they are very commercially competitive. From a licensing perspective, just be conscious that some of their future cloud solutions come with additional subscriptions. Also, if you're outside of the US, you will get charged freight for the device back to your country."
"The pricing is very good. It's less expensive than many of the tools out there."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nagios Network Analyzer?
The solution is useful for monitoring network devices.
What needs improvement with Nagios Network Analyzer?
It’s an old solution. It has an old-fashioned interface. The product must provide a compliance testing feature.
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 ...
What do you like most about Vectra AI?
The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?
It is very acceptable when you compare it with Darktrace, for example.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NuBlue, St.Elisabeth Hospital, Akamit Systems, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, ValueClick, Sunrise Banks
Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios Network Analyzer vs. Vectra AI and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.