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Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Cisco Secure Workload comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Network Analytics
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (22nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (3rd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (5th)
Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cisco Security Portfolio
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (16th), Microsegmentation Software (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Cisco Security Portfolio category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 11.7%, down from 16.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 7.6%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cisco Security Portfolio
 

Featured Reviews

Sudhakar T - PeerSpot reviewer
Strong network security analytics with excellent encrypted traffic analysis features
Improvements are needed on the application layer for complete security analysis. The solution should have the ability to analyze security events not only at the network layer but also at the application and OS layers. There's a need for a more comprehensive licensing model where all necessary licenses are included by default.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The fact that it can identify down to an IP address of a system that is causing problems, or potentially causing problems, is very valuable."
"The most valuable feature is its alerts and dashboard."
"The solution's analytics and thrust detection capabilities are good. We're still adjusting it. It's a little hypersensitive, but it is working right now."
"The most valuable feature is integration."
"Provides easily identifiable anomalies that you can't see with signature detections."
"The most valuable feature we got out of Stealthwatch is to be able to, while troubleshooting, go deep into one of our interfaces and verify what the bandwidth is and if there's any activity there that's causing problems."
"Overall, the implementation is very good."
"The most valuable feature is NetFlow. The beginning of any security investigation starts with NetFlow data."
"Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations. It saves an enormous, enormous amount of time."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."
"It's stable."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
 

Cons

"One update I would like to see is an agent-based client. Currently StealthWatch is network based."
"One thing I would like to see improved is if it could automatically be tied through ISE, instead of you having to manually get notifications and disable it yourself."
"I would like to see more expansion in artificial intelligence and machine learning features."
"We are continuing down the road of ACI and ISE with Cisco, so we would like to see the continuation of Stealthwatch integrating into ISE for exchange of information, and also, more into the ACI environment too."
"The ability to be natively integrated into Port Aggregator would be beneficial because it would reduce just one more component that's needed in order to have that type of view."
"Initially, I felt Cisco Secure Network Analytics lacked integration with Splunk."
"We would like the solution to make more advances in the way that Extreme Networks has been doing."
"I would like to see more and cleaner reporting. For example, if I pull up Steven and I want to look and maybe compare him to what you've done in the past week, and compare that to the past six months, the point would be to see what the difference in activity looks like over this time. I don't see that capability in reporting to date. You see that trend but you don't really see a straightforward comparison. That right there is key to what we want to see about the normal activity."
"It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge."
"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."
"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes."
"It has an uninviting interface."
"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."
"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."
"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."
"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside (in traffic)."
"Today, we are part of the big Cisco ELA, and it is a la carte. We can get orders for whatever we want. At the end of the day, we have to pay for it in one big expense, but that is fine. We are okay with that."
"It has a subscription model. There is yearly support, and there is also three-year support. It depends on what the customers want."
"We pay for support costs on a yearly basis."
"This is an expensive product. We have quit paying for support because we don't want to have to upgrade it and keep paying for it."
"The tool is not cheaply priced."
"Pricing is much higher compared to other solutions."
"The yearly licensing cost is about $50,000."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
29%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
27%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Stealthwatch?
The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is the Threat Intelligence integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Stealthwatch?
The organization experienced challenges with licensing as Cisco has multiple licensing factors, and there are concerns about the price. Cisco solutions are considered to be very expensive.
What needs improvement with Cisco Stealthwatch?
Improvements are needed on the application layer for complete security analysis. The solution should have the ability to analyze security events not only at the network layer but also at the applic...
What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?
The product provides multiple-device integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?
CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discovery. This raises questions about the resources required to discover and write po...
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?
We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, provid...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
Cisco Tetration
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Cisco Secure Workload and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.