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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)
8th
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 June 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is 3.4%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.0%, 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)3.4%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.0%
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

"It has good intelligence. It does a great job at stopping threats."
"Cisco NGIPS is a stable tool...The technical support provided by Cisco NGIPS is okay."
"You can trust it because of the originality score and with what we've used so far too, I see the difference in the old version and this new one."
"This is one of the most stable solutions in the firewall world."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco NGIPS is the centralized user interface. You have the ability to quickly push out configurations across your environment using the Cisco UI. It's a powerful capability of that solution."
"We use the solution for cybersecurity purposes. The tool helps us to identify anomalies that come from internal or external networks."
"We have found the IPS detection to be a very valuable feature of this solution, and it is easy to use to stop policy violations."
"Cisco support is really great; especially when you have a priority case, when everything is down, you can get an engineer in 15 minutes."
"Solid intrusion detection and prevention that scales easily in very large environments."
"If you compare it to other vendors, the technical support from Cisco is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is reliability, and this solution is better than Check Point."
"Cisco technical support is unbeatable. It offers a premium service every time."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"Scalability is something that Cisco has always cared about."
"It has a huge rate of protection. It's has a low level of positives and a huge rate of threat protection. It's easy to deploy and easy to implement. It has an incredible price rate compared to similar solutions."
 

Cons

"The time it takes for the product to mature, the maturity journey, the product maturity cycle, takes too long."
"As it is now, I cannot say that I am 80% secure against my applications being attacked."
"The cost of adding additional throughput is very high and is an area of concern."
"The file trajectory, the trace in contamination files, could be improved."
"The solution should contain the sandbox features which we find in Check Point."
"Should include additional security features."
"Currently, this product is difficult to manage. It needs to be more user-friendly."
"I would like to see integration with monitoring tools such as Nagios or BMC."
"The pricing needs to be improved. We have lots of low-budget clients around us. Budget constraints are always a deterrent in our market."
"The cloud can be improved."
"The main dashboard of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve."
"The utopia is to see everything from one dashboard, but sometimes that's not very possible."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that. Whenever I go to the technical community with an issue, they will usually say that it is not there yet, but the technical team are working on it. The issues are not insolvable. I think they should just keep working on the product to make sure that the product can become very stable. The technical support is great. I appreciate that. We have a lot of communities supporting Firepower now, so you can find help for whatever issue you have."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a very affordable product."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"Cisco NGIPS is an expensive product."
"When it comes to pricing you pay for a permanent licensing structure. One, three, and five-year options. There are no extra costs."
"It is expensive. It has separate licensing for all the features, and every feature set seems to require another license. Licensing is on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs besides the standard licensing fee."
"We pay for the IPS license to use this solution."
"We get cut in price since we use other Cisco products. We have the whole bundle of Cisco solutions."
"There is a license required to use Cisco NGIPS and it can be a one or three-year license."
"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."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
8%
 

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: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.