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

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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)
5th
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)
12th
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 November 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is 3.5%, up from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 2.9%, up from 2.7% 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)3.5%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT2.9%
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

"We are satisfied with the technical support."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco NGIPS is the centralized user interface."
"Cisco technical support is great; they are helpful and responsive, and we are very happy with their capabilities."
"The security intelligence in the product is the best feature and give us all the information that we need in our network."
"I have found the filter and the antivirus to be most valuable."
"The tracking intelligence feature is very good. This solution provides us with the opportunity to detect threats in real-time."
"I've found the performance and stability to be the most valuable features of Cisco NGIPS. It is scalable as well."
"The solution is stable and reliable, it does the job well."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is reliability, and this solution is better than Check Point."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"There are a lot of features that I really appreciate with Firepower, which is why I advise most of my customers to go with Firepower."
"It is quite an intelligent product."
 

Cons

"We would like to see improvements in the dashboard features."
"The onboarding process could be made a little bit better."
"I recommend it to other users, but I am concerned about stability, as the stability is not adequate."
"The stability of the user console and some features could be easier to access."
"Customer service is lacking, and I would rate it as three out of ten."
"I would recommend this solution to others for medium, large, and enterprise businesses only."
"While the Management GUI and FMC could be improved, the devices themselves function well."
"Some Next-Generation Firewall solutions come with Intrusion Prevention. It would be nice if Cisco NGIPS included that."
"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 cloud can be improved."
"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."
"This is a good solution, but some others may have some advantages."
"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."
"The initial setup is a little difficult compared to other products in the market. It depends on the environment. If we are doing any migration, it might take months in a brown-field environment."
"This solution needs to be more customizable."
"We are unhappy with technical support for this solution, and it is not as professional as what we typically expect from Cisco."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing four out of 10."
"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."
"Cisco products are not cheap and this solution is no different."
"Licenses for this product are available for either one, or three year terms."
"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 highly priced but competitive regarding features and support services."
"The cost of the license depends on the level of support that you have with Cisco."
"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 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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) solutions are best for your needs.
921,714 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise9
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 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 know...
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: November 2026.
921,714 professionals have used our research since 2012.