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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 2.7% compared to last year.
ExtraHop Reveal(x), on the other hand, focuses on Network Traffic Analysis (NTA), holds 6.3% mindshare, down 14.2% since last year.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT2.9%
Darktrace9.8%
Fortinet FortiGate7.9%
Other79.4%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ExtraHop Reveal(x)6.3%
Darktrace15.1%
Cisco Secure Network Analytics8.4%
Other70.2%
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 is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"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."
"I would recommend this solution; it's reliable and scalable, with easy installation and integration."
"We primarily use this solution as an intrusion prevention system for external firewalls and deploy the solution on-premises."
"It is quite an intelligent product."
"If you compare it to other vendors, the technical support from Cisco is excellent."
"With Cisco Sourcefire SNORT, we've been able to prevent and detect intrusion in our network and actually decrease our SLA (Service Level Agreement)."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"Reveal X integrates seamlessly with CrowdStrike. If you see something sketchy on the network, you can quarantine devices through ExtraHop and it'll push to the CrowdStrike server."
"The ability ExtraHop Reveal(x) has to mitigate risk from external IP addresses has been a lifesaver for us."
"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."
"ExtraHop has improved our service drastically, and in that sense, it has saved us money because we can quickly identify problems."
"The solution offers a friendly GUI for security features."
"ExtraHop Reveal(x) is highly recommended and very good."
"The solution's ability to decrypt SSL traffic is its most valuable feature."
"The best features of ExtraHop Reveal(x) for me are the depth it provides, especially the picturization where the connection is established; it's absolutely remarkable."
 

Cons

"The main dashboard of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve."
"While the alerts they offer are good, it could improve it in the sense that they should be more detailed to make the alerts more useful to us in general. Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives. Due to the fact that the alerts aren't detailed, we have to go dig around to see why is it being blocked. The solution would be infinitely better if there was just a bit more detail in the alert information and logging we receive."
"This solution needs to be more customizable."
"This is a good solution, but some others may have some advantages."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT can scale, but if you have too much, you could fill up your log files, which I consider when discussing scalability."
"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."
"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."
"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."
"I would like to see improvements in areas where events are getting dropped; we're not able to view complete insights."
"ExtraHop Reveal(x) could improve by allowing a longer look back in the feature. Right now you have a limit of 30 days to look back on your activity. I've used Darktrace before, and they allow you the ability to play back events. This would be a good feature to have in ExtraHop Reveal(x)."
"I would rate the price a three out of five. It could be less expensive."
"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 more cloud capability."
"Currently, we have to check manually as we do not receive any notifications about new patches, maintenance, or firmware releases."
"The solution's reporting part and GUI are areas with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"Setting up ExtraHop is complex because we needed a nuanced understanding of the data flows into our data center."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"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."
"I would rate the price a three out of five. It could be less expensive."
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Top Industries

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