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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Fortinet FortiWeb 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 Sourcefire SNORT
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (13th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and Fortinet FortiWeb aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is designed for Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) and holds a mindshare of 3.0%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiWeb, on the other hand, focuses on Web Application Firewall (WAF), holds 4.8% mindshare, down 7.4% since last year.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.0%
Darktrace10.2%
Fortinet FortiGate9.2%
Other77.6%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiWeb4.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.7%
Cloudflare5.2%
Other82.3%
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

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.
HameedAhmed - PeerSpot reviewer
Joint Director at PAA
Security threats have been reduced through seamless deployment and strong integration with other tools
I have used Fortinet FortiWeb's integration features. We have easily integrated all of the applications with the product. Most of the applications we are using are in-house built. My technical team is looking after the best features. I have not used it extensively for maybe two and a half years. I have been involved in the installation, but I am not actually using the product. I work with it from time to time but not extensively. I would assess Fortinet FortiWeb's adaptive machine learning and artificial intelligence as having new patches installed regarding artificial intelligence, but when we bought it, I think the learning feature was there. Now they have installed artificial intelligence features through patches. We have a complete portfolio of Fortinet in our organization, including FortiMail, Fortinet FortiWeb, and FortiGate, along with multi-factor authentication. All of the products are from Fortinet. Fortinet tools integrate with each other and work in conjunction. I think Fortinet FortiWeb has helped us meet regulatory compliance because we are not a regulatory organization, but our sister organization is regulatory. We have regulatory compliance with the International Civil Aviation Authority, whose audit teams have checked our data center and these security products, and they are satisfied with us. The question about leveraging Fortinet FortiWeb's automated policy management does not pertain to my domain because I am not so technical, but I am in a management role now. My engineer is more technical than me. I would rate this product an eight point five out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."
"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 most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"The solution is stable."
"Scalability is something that Cisco has always cared about."
"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."
"If you compare it to other vendors, the technical support from Cisco is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is reliability, and this solution is better than Check Point."
"The machine learning feature reduces the false positives."
"If someone wants to use the internet with an application website or any other internet application, content filtering is very useful to filter all the requests that are coming to the server so that no one can hack or harm the system."
"The most valuable feature is the web application firewall (WAF)."
"FortiWeb Web Application Firewall blocks attacks from application layers and provides protection."
"L-7 protection makes possible to protect legacy/not up-to-date servers/applications without changing the application code."
"Also, if you serve files or you accept files with your server, Fortiweb has built-in antivirus. The Fortinet product family also provides good IP intelligence (botnet C&C, etc.)."
"It offers some feedback and suggestions that guide our system development while helping our vendors to update their applications and fix any issues or bugs."
"It’s an all-in-one solution that lowers the cost of having multiple solutions and gave us more Wi-Fi control capability."
 

Cons

"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"There are some bugs in this solution and troubleshooting them is complicated."
"I want to see a better dashboard for the product. The dashboard can be a bit modified or enhanced."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup is a little difficult compared to other products in the market. It depends on the environment. If we are doing any migration, it might take months in a brown-field environment."
"I would like to see support for throughput up to 10 gbps and WAN support."
"Their documentation is fairly complete, but it's sometimes a little bit difficult to search for exactly what you're looking for to resolve an issue. There have been times when we've gone to try to search for areas that we needed to get information on, and it has not always been extremely clear exactly how a particular thing needs to be set up."
"New releases and old releases have some bugs, some features do not work as good as we want but every new release the Fortinet team fixes up problems."
"Describing security rules should be improved. It's tricky to define new feature tools when you want to describe an attack pattern and want to block it."
"We haven't faced any significant issues with FortiWeb Web Application Firewall. But they can lower the pricing, since it is a concern, especially in South Africa and the technical support, could be more responsive at times."
"Fortinet FortiWeb could improve in reference architecture for different deployment scenarios."
"The documentation for the machine learning could be better. They do not provide proper documentation explaining how the solution works or how to configure it."
"It costs too much."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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."
"FortiWeb is more expensive than some competing products."
"The cost isn't expensive."
"It is an expensive suite and it is an expensive solution, but it is a manageable one for an enterprise."
"The pricing is pretty good. We do pass a lot of traffic through our API servers. Something like 100 gigs of web traffic is a fair amount for reduced JSON API calls, but the cost is $50. For that peace of mind, we have thousands and thousands of customers that are protected by that $50, so it's a no-brainer."
"Keep a loose margin between your actual bandwidth and the product sizing when using hardware appliances. Only virtual machines are upgradable to larger sizes."
"The license cost depends on the size of the box or the size of the solution. It can go from €200 Euros to a few hundred thousand Euros a year depending on your size."
"It is fine now. We had to earlier negotiate the price."
"Previously, for each project, the cost was $800 to $1,000 per application. Now, it's $100 to $120. For some of the applications, there is a 90% reduction, and for some of the applications, there is a 50% reduction. We're paying only $500 to $600."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise37
 

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 your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiWeb?
The pricing for Fortinet FortiWeb varies with different models having different prices. It depends on the requirement. For VM machines, the price increases based on CPU configurations of 2, 4, or 8...
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiWeb?
There is room for improvement in Fortinet FortiWeb. The team was only from FortiGate itself. They are making new firmware versions and releasing them before checking, which leads to many bugs in th...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiWeb?
Fortinet FortiWeb is very good as a web application solution. I have been working with Fortinet FortiWeb since 2020.
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT
FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF)
 

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
Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Darktrace, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS). Updated: June 2026.
903,147 professionals have used our research since 2012.