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Arista NDR vs Cisco Secure Network Analytics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 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

Arista NDR
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
6th
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
10th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Secure Network Analytics
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
3rd
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (22nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) category, the mindshare of Arista NDR is 7.0%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 14.9%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1719513 - PeerSpot reviewer
it's much easier to create your own queries and hunt for threats
We take in IOCs from my SOC and from AlienVault, and then we focus on traffic that hits IOCs and alerts us to it. The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually. Awake didn't support the manual importation of CSV and JSON in version 3.0, but they added it in version 4.0. It's helpful, but it still has to be a specific CSV format. Automated IOCs are on the roadmap. Hopefully, they will be able to automate the ingestion of IOCs by Q1 next year. I'm currently leveraging Mind Meld, an open-source tool by Palo Alto, to ingest IOCs from external parties. I aggregate those lists and spit them out as a massive list of domains, hashes, file names, IPS. Then we aggregate those into their own specific categories, like a URL category. Awake ingests that just like the Palo Alto firewall does, and then it alerts me if traffic attempts to go into it. Some of that is already on the Palo Alto firewall, which blocks it, but that doesn't mean that there is no attempted communication. I want to know if there's a communication attempt because there might be an indicator on that specific device trying to reach an IOC. Yes, my Palo Alto blocked it, but there's still something odd sitting there, and what if it can reach a different IOC that I don't have information about? I want to focus on it. I could do that by leveraging Awake if it could ingest the IOCs automatically. That's something I leverage Awake for today. I still have to manually import it, which is cumbersome because I have to manipulate the files that I get from the different IOC providers into a specific format that it understands. Once they add the ability to automate that, it'll be more useful.
Sudhakar T - PeerSpot reviewer
Strong network security analytics with excellent encrypted traffic analysis features
Improvements are needed on the application layer for complete security analysis. The solution should have the ability to analyze security events not only at the network layer but also at the application and OS layers. There's a need for a more comprehensive licensing model where all necessary licenses are included by default.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The query language makes it easy to query the records on the network, to do searches for the various threat activities that we're looking for. The dashboard, the Security Knowledge Graph, displays information meaningfully and easily. I am able to find the information that I want to find pretty quickly."
"The security knowledge graph has been very helpful in the sense that whenever you try a new security solution, especially one that's in the detection and response market, you're always worried about getting a lot of false positives or getting too many alerts and not being able to pick out the good from the bad or things that are actual security incidents versus normal day to day operations. We've been pleasantly surprised that Awake does a really good job of only alerting about things that we actually want to look into and understand. They do a good job of understanding normal operations out-of-the-box."
"Arista NDR's scalability is very good, making it easy to add more hardware components. You can order additional hardware and integrate it by stacking it with the existing setup. This feature cannot be seen in other NDR tools."
"The query language that they have is quite valuable, especially because the sensor itself is storing some network activity and we're able to query that. That has been useful in a pinch because we don't necessarily use it just for threat hunting, but we also use it for debugging network issues. We can use it to ask questions and get answers about our network. For example: Which users and devices are using the VPN for RDP access? We can write a query pretty quickly and get an answer for that."
"The interface itself is clean and easy to use, yet customizable. I like that I can create my own dashboards fairly easily so that I can see what is important to me. Also, the query language is pretty easy to use. I haven't needed to use it a ton, but as I need to go in and do different queries based on their requests, it has been fairly simple to use."
"When I create a workbench query in Awake to do threat hunting, it's much easier to query. You get a dictionary popup immediately when you try to type a new query. It says, "You want to search for a device?" Then you type in "D-E," and it gives you a list of commands, like device, data set behavior, etc. That gives you the ability to build your own query."
"Other solutions will say, "Hey, this device is doing something weird." But they don't aggregate that data point with other data points. With Awake you have what's called a "fact pattern." For example, if there's a smart toaster on the third floor that is beaconing out to an IP address in North Korea, sure that's bizarre. But if that toaster was made in North Korea it's not bizarre. Taking those two data points together, and automating something using machine-learning is something that no other solution is doing right now."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to see suspicious activity for devices inside my network. It helps me to quickly identify that activity and do analysis to see if it's expected or I need to mitigate that activity quickly."
"Cisco Stealthwatch has reduced the amount of time to detect an immediate threat."
"The most valuable feature we got out of Stealthwatch is to be able to, while troubleshooting, go deep into one of our interfaces and verify what the bandwidth is and if there's any activity there that's causing problems."
"I value the feature which enables me to detect devices talking to suspect IPs."
"The most valuable feature about this solution is that it gives me insight of my network."
"It's a dependable product that is able to pinpoint where we have vulnerabilities if they occur."
"Stability is the most valuable feature we have seen in this solution."
"Another notable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is its Layer 7 visibility, which allows us to monitor and analyze network communications at the application layer."
"I believe this solution has reduced our incident response time."
 

Cons

"Be prepared to update your SOPs to have your analysts work in another tool separately. There are some limitations in the integrations right now. One of the things that I want from a security standpoint is integration with multiple tools so I don't need to have my analysts logging into each individual tool."
"One concern I do have with Awake is that, ideally, it should be able identify high-risk users and devices and entities. However, we don't have confidence in their entity resolution, and we've provided this feedback to Awake. My understanding is that this is where some of the AI/ML is, and it hasn't been reliable in correctly identifying which device an activity is associated with. We have also encountered issues where it has merged two devices into one entity profile when they shouldn't be merged. The entity resolution is the weakest point of Awake so far."
"They've been focused on really developing their data science, their ability to detect, but over time, they need to be able to tie into other systems because other systems might detect something that they don't."
"I enjoy the query language, but it could be a bit more user-friendly, especially for new users who come across it... They should push it more into a natural language style as opposed to a query language."
"Arista NDR needs to open legal offices to be closer to customers and partners. It needs more visibility in the NDR market in the Middle East. While they are doing well, they lack sufficient engineers. They need to hire more engineers to meet the demand and expand their presence. The current team is good but not enough to fully capture the market."
"I would like to see the capability to import what's known as STIX/TAXII in an IOC format. It currently doesn't offer this."
"The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually."
"I would like to see a bit more in terms of encrypted traffic. With the advent of programs that live off the land, a smart attacker is going to leverage encryption to execute their operation. So I would like to see improvements there, where possible. Currently, we're not going to be decrypting encrypted traffic. What other approaches could be used?"
"The solution should have the ability to analyze security events not only at the network layer but also at the application and OS layers."
"We are continuing down the road of ACI and ISE with Cisco, so we would like to see the continuation of Stealthwatch integrating into ISE for exchange of information, and also, more into the ACI environment too."
"If they can make this product more web-based, that would be amazing."
"The overall visibility into the actual device itself would be helpful. I don't just want support-specific data, but also to be able to see information such as CPU and other internal components or usage of the devices."
"One update that I would like to see is an agent-based client. Currently, Stealthwatch is network-based. A local agent could help manage endpoints."
"Cisco could improve the administration for the customers."
"One update I would like to see is an agent-based client. Currently StealthWatch is network based."
"They should include Citrix VDIs in the next release."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Awake's pricing was very competitive. It's not a cheap option though. It's an investment to utilize it, but it's one that we decided was worth the cost, with the managed services. At our scale, it was a much better option to utilize their software and their managed services to handle this, rather than hiring another person to be an analyst. It was quite cost-effective for us."
"We switched to Awake Security because they were able to offer a model that was significantly less expensive and the value that we get out of it is higher."
"Because I represent a hedge fund, I have some leverage. I told them that they had to meet my conditions if they wanted me as a client. It was the same way with Awake. They wanted an initial four-year agreement. Initially, we signed on for a one-year contract, but they wanted the four-year deal when it came time for the renewal. I told them that I was not doing that. I said that they either had to do it on my terms, or I'd go somewhere else."
"The solution is very good and the pricing is also better than others..."
"Awake Security was the least expensive among their competitors. Everyone was within $15,000 of each other. The other solutions were not providing the MNDR service, which is standard with Awake Security's pricing/licensing model."
"The solution has saved thousands of dollars within the first day. Our ROI has to be in the tens of thousands of dollars since October last year."
"The pricing seems pretty reasonable for what we get out of it. We also found it to be more competitive than some other vendors that we've looked at."
"Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside>in traffic."
"Today, we are part of the big Cisco ELA, and it is a la carte. We can get orders for whatever we want. At the end of the day, we have to pay for it in one big expense, but that is fine. We are okay with that."
"It has a subscription model. There is yearly support, and there is also three-year support. It depends on what the customers want."
"​Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside (in traffic)."
"We pay for support costs on a yearly basis."
"The solution is expensive. It costs several hundred thousand dollars per year (depending on how many flows you are collecting)."
"There are additional licenses needed for the number of so-called network flows. It's hard to plan the number of flows you need in the network, this is a problem. The price of the Cisco Stealthwatch is relatively inexpensive"
"The tool is not cheaply priced."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Computer Software Company
29%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Arista NDR?
Arista NDR's scalability is very good, making it easy to add more hardware components. You can order additional hardware and integrate it by stacking it with the existing setup. This feature cannot...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arista NDR?
The tool's pricing is expensive but it is competitive.
What needs improvement with Arista NDR?
Arista NDR needs to open legal offices to be closer to customers and partners. It needs more visibility in the NDR market in the Middle East. While they are doing well, they lack sufficient enginee...
What do you like most about Cisco Stealthwatch?
The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is the Threat Intelligence integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Stealthwatch?
The organization experienced challenges with licensing as Cisco has multiple licensing factors, and there are concerns about the price. Cisco solutions are considered to be very expensive.
What needs improvement with Cisco Stealthwatch?
Improvements are needed on the application layer for complete security analysis. The solution should have the ability to analyze security events not only at the network layer but also at the applic...
 

Also Known As

Awake Security Platform
Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

- Dolby Laboratories- Seattle Genetics- ARM Energy- Ooma- Prophix- Yapstone
Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
Find out what your peers are saying about Arista NDR vs. Cisco Secure Network Analytics and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.