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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs ExtraHop Reveal(x) comparison

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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 Sourcefire SNORT
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (12th)
ExtraHop Reveal(x)
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (7th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Security Systems solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is designed for Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) and holds a mindshare of 2.9%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
ExtraHop Reveal(x), on the other hand, focuses on Network Traffic Analysis (NTA), holds 5.9% mindshare, down 13.0% since last year.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT2.9%
Darktrace10.2%
Fortinet FortiGate7.4%
Other79.5%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ExtraHop Reveal(x)5.9%
Darktrace14.3%
Cisco Secure Network Analytics9.3%
Other70.5%
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Henri Heuvel - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Consultant at Axians
Cloud-based administration streamlines network security management
ExtraHop Reveal(x) can improve regarding integration capabilities. For instance, the market is getting really flooded with Microsoft Sentinel, and I know there is an integration possible, but the tools on the market right now indicate that integration should not be a skill from an integrator point of view. It should be quite easy for customers to integrate that solution into SOCs, SIEMs, or any other integration with other tools. There are various integrations from which there's a manual on how to do it, but specifically, the Microsoft portfolio, particularly Sentinel, integration is not yet there. If you score them on a scale of one to ten, ExtraHop scores around a 7.5 to an 8 on an integration basis, but there's actually room for improvement on that side. In the older days, ExtraHop had a license model where you could do all you can eat, so if you had a sensor with 10 gig of capacity, you could use all the entire 10 gig of throughput. They changed that to an asset-based license model, and that's an absolute downside of the solution, where it is harder for smaller companies to acquire the solution itself. That has given us quite some problems in positioning the solution properly within the network, so the licensing model is an absolute downside where they need to improve.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"Cisco technical support is unbeatable. It offers a premium service every time."
"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."
"Scalability is something that Cisco has always cared about."
"The whole solution is very good, and stable."
"It is quite an intelligent product."
"This solution makes life a lot easier as there are fewer man-hours required and we no longer need too many resources to manage it."
"The solution offers a friendly GUI for security features."
"We've done our due diligence and research on other products such as Riverbed and NetScout, and this product is by far the supreme leader."
"With ExtraHop Reveal(x), it gives me more visibility into the packets. It doesn't provide the entire packet capture, but it offers more information on how connections are made at the network layer. This can be helpful for detecting network attacks. Additionally, I really like the customizable dashboards and reports. The incident dashboard and alerts provide a good summary initially, and diving deeper into them gives more detailed information. It's also great for analyzing specific attacks and victim logs. The feature that tracks the full attack chain makes it easier to monitor the progress of attacks. Plus, it's connected to the Netria.com app, which I find useful for certain tasks."
"The best features of ExtraHop Reveal(x) include the cloud-based Reveal(x) 360, which is an absolute plus; you've got one point of administration where you can attach multiple vendors or solutions or sensors, and that's good."
"The solution works well for sending sensors."
"The security features of this solution are the most valuable."
"Reveal(x)'s stability is excellent."
"ExtraHop Reveal(x) is one of the tools that works out of the box when it comes to threat hunting."
 

Cons

"This solution needs to be more customizable."
"The main dashboard of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"The utopia is to see everything from one dashboard, but sometimes that's not very possible."
"This is a good solution, but some others may have some advantages."
"I want to see a better dashboard for the product. The dashboard can be a bit modified or enhanced."
"The cloud can be improved."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The solution's reporting part and GUI are areas with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"They used to have the ability to decode Citrix sign-on, setup, and tear down. Unfortunately, Citrix has stopped sharing that knowledge. Citrix has continued to change its model of processing, making it harder and harder to troubleshoot."
"I would like to see improvements in areas where events are getting dropped; we're not able to view complete insights."
"I would like to see more cloud capability."
"They changed that to an asset-based license model, and that's an absolute downside of the solution, where it is harder for smaller companies to acquire the solution itself."
"I think the tuning capabilities could be improved. We're working on minimizing false positives. Apart from that, everything seems fine to me."
"There is a little training online, but it'd be cool if ExtraHop provided certifications. CrowdStrike does elective training that gives you a certification as a Falcon administrator. It'd be nice to see ExtraHop have something like that"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"I would rate the price a three out of five. It could be less expensive."
"I rate ExtraHop Reveal(x) six out of 10 for affordability. We pay for an annual license. It's always one of those trade-offs. You get a lot of value, but ExtraHop isn't exorbitantly priced. You can pay extra for additional features like the ability to decode HL7 traffic, which is crucial for EMR environments."
"The solution is based on an annual subscription model and is expensive."
"I rate the price of ExtraHop Reveal(x) a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We just did an assessment for our 47 datacenters around North America. The top two enterprise-level network monitoring solutions were ExtraHop first, Riverbed SteelCenter second. Their negotiated c...
What open source tool can one use to measure bandwidth from one's upstream service provider?
One I am looking closely at is AppNeta. They have an appliance that can digest the flow and do a better job than Netflow. The other one we are using is ExtraHop. This has both a Datacenter Hig...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExtraHop Reveal(x)?
We manage the setup cost ourselves, so I am quite happy with that. I also had engagement with professional services from ExtraHop, and it wasn't bad, but I was not impressed; it's not academic work...
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT
Reveal(x), Revealx
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Wood County Hospital
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Darktrace, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS). Updated: September 2026.
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