No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 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

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS)
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is 3.3%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.1%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS)3.3%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.1%
Other93.6%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer373227 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Marketing strengths shine but regaining user trust needs significant effort
There are numerous things that could be improved about Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) to get it back on track. Sollution for small branches: when we have to connect a lot very small branches (or sometimes only an ATM) we need something small, with LTE and with reasonable price. Cisco response is SDWAN but it is not always the case. Recently Cisco released some small firewalls but I have not tried them yet. Central management with FMC is a very good idea, but sometimes local management or monitoring is helpfull. With Cisco You have to decide: central or local. You cannot have both. Regarding usability, when you commit configuration on Cisco, it sometimes takes very long. Commits also take some time for the competition, but Cisco is definitely lagging behind the rest in this respect. Last but not least, for me as a professional is lack of CLI. With CLI, I can configure every firewall on the market except Cisco. CLI is very important in professional working, and IMHO it was an unwise decision by Cisco to remove it. Graphical interfaces are very nice, but when you've got thousands of objects in a big installation and have to configure many things, CLI is a much faster way to do it.
reviewer2772102 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the way the tool pushes the packets from the node level."
"The tracking intelligence feature is very good; this solution provides us with the opportunity to detect threats in real-time."
"Cisco NGIPS is working well overall with our current needs."
"The technical support is impressive."
"The Malware Detection, threat defense, sandboxing, VPN and mail security have all been valuable features of Cisco NGIPS."
"The best thing about Cisco is their good marketing force; we appreciate doing business with Cisco all the time, and I'd love to sell and install Cisco switches and other things."
"The integration with the Cisco portfolio is very helpful."
"Cisco NGIPS is highly stable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"The solution is stable."
"Users have access to intelligent security automation as one of the features, which can easily automate your event impact assessment so your IPS policy tuning can be done as well as your network behavior analysis, and you can do real-time contextual awareness with correlation of events created on your applications, user devices, operating systems, or vulnerabilities, with all of this real-time data captured including your apps and port scans."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"The solution can be integrated with some network electors like Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco ISE, and Active Directory to provide the client with authentication certificates."
"If you compare it to other vendors, the technical support from Cisco is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
 

Cons

"The file trajectory, the trace in contamination files, could be improved."
"I recommend it to other users, but I am concerned about stability, as the stability is not adequate."
"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"It has room for improvement when it comes to integrating machine learning and AI into it where even if you don't have a baseline that is of length for anomaly detection, it could do more like an AI style machine learning. It learns on its own."
"I would recommend this solution to others for medium, large, and enterprise businesses only."
"Cisco can do better on their documentation because the product is really hard to understand."
"I would rate Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) six out of ten. The lack of automation and AI capabilities affects the rating."
"I would like to see integration with monitoring tools such as Nagios or BMC."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives."
"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."
"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."
"I want to see a better dashboard for the product. The dashboard can be a bit modified or enhanced."
"A lot of Cisco equipment is very good, but in judging the model of this solution that we have, I feel that it is the worst."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco products are not cheap and this solution is no different."
"The price for additional throughput is the highest in the industry."
"This is an expensive product, with the biggest cost being the license that keeps the service going."
"The licensing can be billed annually or in multi-year contracts such as three, four, or five years."
"The weakness of Cisco Firepower is the cost. Some of the customers see it as very expensive."
"Licenses for this product are available for either one, or three year terms."
"I would rate the pricing 4 out of 5."
"They are very expensive in some places and not reasonable at times for many customers. I have had customers choose another solution because of the high price."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"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."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) solutions are best for your needs.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise27
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco NGIPS?
I would rate the price for Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) as high.
What needs improvement with Cisco NGIPS?
I am aware that we are not measuring some metrics or tracking access through Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS). In my opinion, Cisco could improve the Web GUI for Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS).
What is your primary use case for Cisco NGIPS?
Our main use case for Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is in-line traffic control, and we are using IPS in an in-line mode.
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...
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...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
Endpoint protection is the main use case. The main aspect involves specifying different rules, and when network traffic hits these rules, it will try to block the traffic or at least log the traffi...
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire NGIPS, Firepower NGIPS
Sourcefire SNORT
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Electric Power, Huntington Bank, Keycorp, Nationwide, Transunion, Marriott, Inova Health, Ford, Thomson Reuters, Dow Chemical, Equifax, Chevron, Walmart, Coca Cola
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.