Cisco Secure Network Analytics Reviews

We implemented Stealthwatch Cloud in order to provide our analysts with an additional tool for security monitoring.

This tool provides another method for security analysts to triage security alerts. The artifacts available in the tool provide better information for analyzing network traffic. 

It enables a holistic view of network traffic and general packet analysis. It's easy to identify anomalies without the use of signatures. The way in which we implemented Stealthwatch Cloud has enabled my team to analyze traffic behind proxies.

I have nothing negative to say about the product. I've become very familiar with it, it is intuitive and easy to learn. I'm happy that the deployment worked well.

If there was one improvement I’d suggest it would be that it detect traffic through an intranet. The product requires that traffic flow through a managed network device. The product is designed mostly for enterprise environments and not smaller environments or businesses.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability. Collecting NetFlow data is not hard, however, there is a chance you’ll end up with a huge amount of data that needs investigating. It might be a good idea to deploy gradually, by network segment.

Technical support has been excellent. I would not hesitate to work with them again. The engineer I worked with was knowledgeable.

No previous solution.

The deployment was a breeze. It is a very innovative and robust platform that allows us to bi-directionally stitch together data elements from NetFlow-enabled devices to provide a context for network utilization.

One thing to keep in mind is that pricing is based on flow. If your environment is a Cisco shop, there should be an option to bundle it with certain purchases.

I do not use this product on AWS but I would be interested in doing so. AWS continues to be an expanding initiative.

Stealthwatch is a great product. It's a paid product with a need for licensing but does DDoS detection, compromised machines, NetFlow collection, and integrates with Cisco Identity Services Engine and Firepower. I rate it a 10 out of 10 due to the great technical support received, ease of deployment, and ease of integration.

I suggest reviewing other products just to get an idea of what’s available on the market. Some that come to mind are Splunk, Sourcefire, Kentik, NfSen, Plixer Scrutinizer, FireEye, and Darktrace. It really depends on if your company is looking for a primary NetFlow tool or a tool that is a mixture of cyber security and NetFlow.

Another thing to keep in mind is that it will be easy to end up with more data than you need when first deploying. The product has the ability to categorize traffic based on severity level (yellow, red). When you deploy, it might be best to take a smaller, manageable approach to investigate traffic on a network. This way you won’t be overwhelmed with the amount of data you get.

We use Cisco Stealthwatch mostly for network visibility and security. I believe the solution reduces false-positives by flagging it as potential threats.

In terms of how this solution has affected network visibility, we're finding devices that junior network engineers, people who don't want to wait for proper channels, have added to the network. This solution enables us to find them and shut them down. 

It has reduced our incident response time. We can now narrow down where incidents are happening, so it very helpful for our organization.

The features I find most valuable is the deep level of knowledge that we get on every device as well as what other devices it's talking to. 

Analytics and threat detection capabilities are a little overwhelming. I would say it's about average. 

The solution reduces the amount of time it takes to detect and remediate threats.

So far we haven't had any issues with the stability of the solution. We haven't gone through a major upgrade cycle yet.

Our initial deployment was built out to the right size for our organization.

There hasn't been any need to ask for technical support since our initial deployment, where we used a reseller. 

The initial setup was straightforward but required a lot of data entry, to begin with building out the server types and network types. 

We used a reseller for the deployment, CDW.

We evaluated Plixer, but the fact that Stealthwatch was Cisco integrated, sold it for us.

My advice would be to really look at how many traffic rows you're generating on your network when you decide to do your deployment. Personally, it is too early to know if there is room for improvement, but I will rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Five engineers and I were testing this solution. We were looking for an NDR solution. We're cyber threat hunters, so we're looking to provide cyber hunting services for our clients. We're in the market for a network detection response solution so that we can monitor network traffic and analyze anomalies or anything that may be on the network that looks like normal traffic. We were using Stealthwatch to get a feel for it and to see whether or not it was going to be something that we would use in the future.

From what I understand, you can encrypt and unencrypt traffic moving in transit. This is one of the features that we liked about it. 

We didn't want to encrypt all the traffic, but there are certain things that we needed to pull out. Eventually, we determined that Stealthwatch wouldn't provide the machine learning model that we required.

ExtraHop and Vectra both leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning. With Cisco, it looks like you have to do some provisioning. When it's pulling out, it doesn't automatically detect certain things that you're looking for. It didn't automatically pull certain communications out of the traffic so and we had to do some manual configurations to pull this stuff out. Overall, that's really the only thing. We didn't see anything else wrong with it other than that. It seemed like a pretty good product.

In the next release, I would like to see more artificial intelligence as far as pulling out certain packets in the traffic because it's an NDR that monitors your traffic, and because there's so much traffic in general. For us, when we serve hedge funds, most of them have a lot of stuff going on their network. Transactions, talking to clients, customers, all the rest of this stuff over the wire. They've got data feeds from several sources as well — Bloomberg, Reuters. Monitoring all of that coming in and out of their network is a lot of work. I would like to have seen more artificial intelligence to detect more anomalous behavior in the network.

A UBA feature that profiles user behaviors would also be a nice addition. They have an app, but that's not a UBA feature. It just monitors all the endpoints, etc.

I used Cisco Stealthwatch for a 30-day trial.

We didn't notice any bugs or glitches. 

As it's in the cloud, I would imagine that it scales easily. Still, we didn't use it long enough to worry about scaling it. 

We only needed to contact technical support once. They were very helpful. They walked us through everything. 

It was fairly easy to set up. It took us about 20 minutes to set it up. All we had to do was click a bunch of buttons and look through the documentation. The documentation is pretty straightforward. Overall, it took about 20 minutes.

Overall, It seemed like a good product. Cisco's behind the name — I would recommend it. Cisco's got a suite of security and network products. I think it's pretty durable. It works for non-technical people, too. You'll have to do some fine-tuning and you probably should have experienced staff looking after it, but it's a pretty good product in my opinion.

We're looking at other products that are more automated like Darktrace, ExtraHop, and Vectra. Any solution that cuts down the time it takes to analyze and sift through the logs, etc. I'm pretty sure that Cisco does it, but there's some fine-tuning that you'll need to do to make it fully automated to where you can cut down the time required to inspect logs and things of that nature. 

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight. 

Cisco is a huge company. I would imagine that they would probably try to lead the way as far as network detection systems or network detection response systems or solutions are concerned. I just thought that maybe they would have had more automated functionality because it saves time. It saves time for the analysts who have to look through all of the logs and try to correlate all of that stuff and see what's anomalous behavior, etc. 

Clearly, there are things on the network, certain conversations you could pull out of the network, but we didn't see that. We didn't see a lot of that. We thought that that would have been included in the solution. I guess we just expected more from Cisco. 

Our primary use case for this solution is to monitor east, west, north, and south traffic so that we can see what's going on in the network internally. You don't get that granularity with anything else. We have an ASA that gets north and south traffic. So we're just really interested in this one by itself.

Cisco Stealthwatch has improved our organization's analytics and threat protection capabilities by catching threats early on. We are still at the baselining stage, but I can also say that our organization improved dramatically when we found out that a host was constantly talking to an FTP server. It turned out to be an employee that was going to be terminated and he was trying to pull data from the FTP server constantly. He pulled three or four GBs and we caught it with this tool. It saved us a net fortune.

The solution has also increased our threat detection rate dramatically and that gives us time to remediate those threats.

The most valuable feature of this solution is data hoarding because it catches threats on a frequent basis that we had no idea of. Like if certain hosts were talking to certain hosts. With this tool, we got that kind of information and it allows us to see when two hosts are talking when they shouldn't be talking at all.

One thing I would like to see improved is if it could automatically be tied through ISE, instead of you having to manually get notifications and disable it yourself. I am the only network admin at my facility, and when I'm on vacation for a week and there is an attack, I'm the only individual that gets alerts. Essentially there's a push button that you click to implement the policy through ISE to block that host or some other network essentially segregated from your internal network. I would like to see an automatic block function.
I haven't noticed any downfall as far as CPU usage or any congestion, but it is still too early to say. Once I get a better understanding of it and get past the baselining, I can probably answer better and in more depth, because I don't know everything about it. I just understand the fundamental idea of it and what I can do from the dashboard. 

It is extremely stable. I haven't had a crash since installing it.

It is very scalable. You only have to purchase more licensing. As far as I understand, it can become as big as you want it to become and how many net flows you can afford.

The technical support is awesome. Anytime I call Cisco Tech, they call me back within thirty minutes or an hour with an answer to solve the problem. The guides that they have within the product itself are pretty self-explanatory. As long as you're willing to sit down and read it, you don't even need to call tech.

My superior asked what this host was doing within our network, what data he was pulling and why he had it on this PC. We couldn't answer to say that he wasn't pulling data from that server or what data he was in fact pulling. So we had to find a solution to answer those questions. We are a Cisco shop so we kind of just went for this solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. They explained the steps that they were going to do and they had it deployed within about two hours. It didn't take long and now we're just doing the baseline, which takes about three months.

Yes, we used Network Center and they were good.

I can foresee that this solution will save us an immense lot of work in the future. Instead of having 20 people looking at logs and sifting through logs, you could have one individual simply sifting through this. It will be a lot easier and less time-consuming.
So the time to value of this solution is great. For every person you're going to pay about $70 or $80,000 a year, you would now only have to pay one individual instead of 20.

This solution is a little expensive. Open-source is obviously a key to victory in some people's eyes but with open-source, you can't pay anybody. So it could be a little cheaper, but it has great functionality. 

One thing I've learned from this solution is that there's a lot of stuff happening within internal networks that we weren't aware of. I am really satisfied with this solution and I will rate it a ten out of ten. 

Using Cisco Secure Network Analytics has revolutionized our network security. The integration with SRTIntel provides unparalleled visibility, going beyond imagination. SNA, along with the SMA feature, offers detailed insights and call relations, enabling effective threat detection and response. The combination with endpoint protection gives us precise control over traffic, ensuring a robust defense against cyber threats.

The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is the Threat Intelligence integration.

Initially, I felt Cisco Secure Network Analytics lacked integration with Splunk. However, with Cisco's recent acquisition of Splunk, it seems this gap will be addressed. If this integration happens quickly, it could complete the circle, making the platform more robust and offering a comprehensive solution for our network security.

I would rate the stability as a seven out of ten.

I would rate the scalability as a seven out of ten. It is most suitable for enterprise businesses.

I have had some issues with the tech support for Cisco Secure Network Analytics in Southeast Asia. They don't seem very familiar with the product, so we usually contact teams in Australia or Europe for help. Thankfully, the support from those regions has helped sort out our technical problems. Overall, I would rate the support as an eight out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Cisco Secure Network Analytics was quite straightforward and user-friendly. The graphical interface makes it easy for anyone familiar with traffic management to handle the setup without much hassle. Explaining the concept to customers is a breeze, and they quickly grasp the key features. I would rate the easiness of the initial setup as a nine out of ten. The deployment typically takes a relatively short amount of time, from five to six hours.

I would rate Cisco SNA as a nine out of ten in terms of costliness.

I would recommend Cisco Secure Network Analytics to others. Overall, I would rate it as a nine out of ten.

We use Stealthwatch to identify any risk or vulnerabilities in the environment.

Stealthwatch increased our threat detection rate a little bit, as well as our incident response time. It also reduced the amount of time it takes us to detect and remediate threats.

The cognitive analytics really helps us analyze the traffic.

The most valuable feature is its alerts and dashboard.

The solution's analytics and threat detection capabilities are also pretty reasonable.

It's too complicated to install when starting out.

Also, we have actually seen an increase in false positives with Stealthwatch. A few of the false positives were too early to detect.

Availability is another issue. You need a couple of days to get it to work.

It was pretty stable. The only thing is the whole infrastructure is pretty complex with a lot of sensors and the like. With that level of complexity in mind, I would say it is very stable.

Their technical support is very good.

The initial setup was complex. Sensor and controller installation was especially complex.

I would rate Stealthwatch as six out of ten. It is a good product but it needs a lot of work to complete the dot trace and other parts. It's not as competitive as others on the market.

We are a system integrator and a partner of Cisco. We are providing Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions, and depending on a customer's requirement, we propose it. This product was launched recently, and it is new in the Cisco portfolio. We have supplied this solution to some of the customers.

It is used for network protection for those segments that are not covered by the firewall. It is used for doing ransomware detection in terms of east-west traffic. A firewall can't detect that because it is mostly focused on north-south traffic. So, in the segments that are left out from the firewall, the StealthWatch network detection platform is able to see the malware that is sent to the devices.

It provides good visibility to the customers. People are still evaluating it, but it provides visibility and helps them to take action to remediate and mitigate the issues that are highlighted on the dashboard. It has good integration with the Cisco switching platform.

Stealthwatch is still maturing in AI. It uses artificial intelligence for predictions, but AI still needs to mature. It is in a phase where you get 95% correct detection. As its AI engine learns more, it will become more accurate. This is applicable to all the devices that are using AI because they support both supervised and unsupervised machine learning. The accuracy in the case of supervised machine learning is dependent on the data you feed into the box. The accuracy in the case of unsupervised machine learning is dependent on the algorithm. The algorithm matures depending on retrospective learning, and this is how it is able to detect zero-day attacks.

It is stable.

It supports vertical scalability. When you size the product, you need to calculate the number of endpoints. You can add multiple regions and multiple consoles. If you are adding multiple branches, it can be easily accommodated.

Cisco tech support is very helpful. They have different tech support management options.

Its setup is easy. Its setup is not complex. Its implementation takes about one to two weeks. It takes about a week to gather the data, and after that, you can start doing an analysis of the gathered data.

It has a subscription model. There is yearly support, and there is also three-year support. It depends on what the customers want.

Cisco Stealthwatch is a good product. I would rate it an eight out of 10.

Our primary use case of Stealthwatch is for flow analysis, to see what's running on the network and to check for anomalous behavior. Stealthwatch runs in the background and analyzes flows, producing summary reports based on the information it receives. You can look for anything that's out of place, for example, background checking on a file transfer where there's a query as to whether it's a legitimate transfer. It's quite a powerful tool that questions what's going on. We are integrators and I'm the chief technology officer. We're gold partners with Cisco. 

The solution has been beneficial because it's cut down the amount of time involved in doing complex scenarios and research. It's the virtual tap capability that enables you to get into the environment and see the traffic.

The best feature is the network monitoring, looking at anomaly detection and evaluation. For our operations team, a valuable feature is the ability to do the taps and access that via Stealthwatch. 

The visualization could be improved, the GUI is not the best. Stealthwatch was purchased from a company called Lancope and the look and feel of the tool is a little different from some of Cisco's other security tools. There could be a little bit more machine learning type capability built into it. Some competitors are coming out with material in that area and there's a significant amount of competition moving to AI that could potentially give the competition an edge if Cisco doesn't maintain investment.

I've been using this solution for five years. 

The solution is very stable. 

This solution is highly scalable. We have a couple of clients with fairly large networks, more than a thousand network segments that are using Stealthworks. Maintenance requirements depend on the size of the implementation and are carried out by a network engineer. It's usually a couple of hours every few months for a small client, a couple of days every few months for a larger client. It's a matter of watching interim product releases to decide when you want to move the product up. You don't want to get too far out of date, but you also don't want to implement every single upgrade.

Technical support has been good, similar to other areas of Cisco support. 

The initial setup is relatively straightforward from my standpoint, but I'm a networking guy. I imagine that there are security specific people who might find it a little bit more complicated to install. We're integrators so we carried out our own deployment. Deployment can take hours or months, depending on the size of the network.

This is an expensive solution and the license is expensive. The cost is an area where a lot of clients are a little uncomfortable. The license cost is based on the size of the environment you're managing.

If you have a network administrator who's been a system admin, they'll have a relatively straightforward time of it. But if you have somebody that's only been a network jockey who hasn't done any systems admin work, there'll be a learning curve. It requires a couple of different skill sets, both on the sys admin side, and being network savvy. It's solidly reliable although it can be complicated at times to run, but it's important to take into account that it's supporting a complicated environment. 

I rate this solution an eight out of 10.