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

"The solution is good at scaling."
"In general, I have nothing negative to say about this product."
"Ir's signature-based. We are also using the anomaly baseline formation, where it links the network, then anything that goes away from the norm is also flagged. Those are the two most valuable features."
"From a cybersecurity past perspective, it has aligned the features in accordance with our strategic needs."
"Cisco NGIPS is working well overall with our current needs."
"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."
"It has increased our security posture and has contributed substantially to our security maturity by stopping threats."
"This is a stable solution."
"The tool's most valuable feature is threat detection, which is important because we have multiple layers not only in Cisco."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"The URL filtering is very good and you can create a group for customized URLs."
"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."
"I like most of Cisco's features, like malware detection and URL filtering."
"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 technical support is unbeatable. It offers a premium service every time."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
 

Cons

"The price is a little high. It's hard to find solutions that are easy on the budget and strike a balance between affordability and features."
"The pricing is very expensive. They should make their equipment more affordable."
"The solution requires better management. When it comes to central management capabilities, improvements can be made."
"We would like to see some improvement in the configuration process for this solution, as it is currently quite complex."
"Currently, this product is difficult to manage. It needs to be more user-friendly."
"Cisco NGIPS should work on its shortcomings related to the issues that stem from bugs and performance."
"Scalability I would say, it has some limitations in the large deployment."
"What I don't like about Cisco recently is they keep changing the names, which makes it hard for customers and sometimes even us as engineers to know what is the solution they are speaking about. For example, with AMP, now they call it Secure Endpoint and I don't know if in the next couple of years they're going to change it to something else. They should keep the names the same."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"The cloud can be improved."
"This is a good solution, but some others may have some advantages."
"The implementation could be a bit easier."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"If the price is brought down then everybody will be happy."
"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."
"The pricing needs to be improved. We have lots of low-budget clients around us. Budget constraints are always a deterrent in our market."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are licensing fees depending on the features that you are using."
"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 solution is pricey, but worth it."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing four out of 10."
"We get cut in price since we use other Cisco products. We have the whole bundle of Cisco solutions."
"Cisco products are not cheap and this solution is no different."
"When it comes to pricing you pay for a permanent licensing structure. One, three, and five-year options. There are no extra costs."
"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."
"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."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) solutions are best for your needs.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
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 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: November 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.