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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)
7th
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 April 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is 3.3%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.1%, up from 2.3% 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

"We have found the product to be quite stable."
"Technical support is quite good. With firewalls, the last cases I had with Cisco were professionally handled quite quickly and it was great."
"This is a stable solution."
"Cisco NGIPS is a stable tool...The technical support provided by Cisco NGIPS is okay."
"The Malware Detection, threat defense, sandboxing, VPN and mail security have all been valuable features of Cisco NGIPS."
"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."
"You can do zero-day prevention and detection. It's quite useful."
"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."
"With Cisco Sourcefire SNORT, we've been able to prevent and detect intrusion in our network and actually decrease our SLA (Service Level Agreement)."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"Solid intrusion detection and prevention that scales easily in very large environments."
"The whole solution is very good, and stable."
"The most valuable feature is reliability, and this solution is better than Check Point."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
 

Cons

"Our customers are still facing many bugs on the system. It has matured noticeably, but we are still facing multiple stability issues on Firepower. There are more than 80 or 90 bugs for each release node. It's a considerable number of bugs."
"I think the part of IPS and everything else needs to be better equated to the real needs or current needs of the business compared to the other manufacturer, because it is not straightforward, a way to configure it compared to the other competitors."
"We would like to see improvements in the dashboard features."
"Regarding additional features, they should speed up their technology to the market because, compared with other security vendors, Cisco is a little behind on the Gartner and technical front."
"The biggest problem with most Cisco products is that the interface is lagging behind the competition. The user interface could be updated and improved."
"The feedback from some of our customers is that they weren't interested in Cisco because it was too complicated to deploy, especially in cloud-related areas."
"I'd like to see some cloud management. Cisco maybe already has it, however, my company doesn't use it as cloud management."
"The file trajectory, the trace in contamination files, could be improved."
"Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives."
"The price of this solution could be improved."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"If the price is brought down then everybody will be happy."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"The implementation could be a bit easier."
"We are unhappy with technical support for this solution, and it is not as professional as what we typically expect from Cisco."
"The main dashboard of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"I usually work with Fortinet and FortiGate which is a lower cost in comparison with Cisco NGIPS."
"It is highly priced but competitive regarding features and support services."
"The price of Cisco NGIPS could be reduced. It is more expensive than other solutions."
"I would rate the pricing four out of 10."
"We pay for the IPS license to use this solution."
"Pricing depends on negotiation with the vendor, although I can say that it is moderate."
"We get cut in price since we use other Cisco products. We have the whole bundle of Cisco solutions."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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 do you like most about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet.
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...
 

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.
886,077 professionals have used our research since 2012.