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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Fortinet FortiWeb 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)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (4th)
 

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 2.9%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiWeb, on the other hand, focuses on Web Application Firewall (WAF), holds 4.0% mindshare, down 7.5% 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)
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiWeb4.0%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.3%
Cloudflare5.0%
Other83.7%
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

"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 is rather easy to use."
"I like most of Cisco's features, like malware detection and URL filtering."
"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 solution is stable."
"In general, the features are all great. However, if I need to take hardware for ASA, because they need to upgrade to Firepower, we want to create rules. For that, most of the time we go to the command line. Right now Firepower is working really hard on the grid. You can apply all those rules to the grid. Even if you want to monitor the logs, for example, the activity will tell you which particular user has been blocked because of that rule. Firepower's monitoring interface is very good, because you can see each and every piece. ASA also had it, but there you needed to type the command and be under the server to see all that stuff. In Firepower you have the possibility to go directly to the firewall. The way the monitoring is displayed is also very nice. The feature I appreciate most in Firepower is actually the grid. The grid has worked very well."
"There are a lot of features that I really appreciate with Firepower, which is why I advise most of my customers to go with Firepower."
"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 solution is good; it has a preferable price, stability and security, all which recommend it to other users."
"Peace of mind web site protection"
"The tool's HTTP traffic, website fixing, and blocking are fantastic. It is user-friendly with easy configuration."
"We were able to protect our web servers from outside attacks."
"The most valuable feature is ease of use."
"The solution is easy to configure and deploy."
"With FortiWeb you can just apply a high-security profile and move on."
"With the fear of cyber attack, the most important thing we can do is protect the web application, and FortiWeb helps us protect it from attacks like DDoS while maintaining our cyber security posture."
 

Cons

"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"Performance needs improvement."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"A lot of Cisco equipment is very good, but in judging the model of this solution that we have, I feel that it is the worst."
"This solution needs to be more customizable."
"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."
"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."
"I want to see a better dashboard for the product. The dashboard can be a bit modified or enhanced."
"I know that we have run into some issues with an SSL certificate and how it functions. Sometimes this breaks connectivity or just limits certain websites that are whitelisted."
"When there is downtime at their data center, it becomes a transit point issue for us, causing downtime in our environment as well."
"The product lacks features offered by enterprise-level firewall tools."
"The solution could offer more integration opportunities."
"The product’s stability could be improved."
"Centralized management of multiple devices, and GUI improvement, could reduce the learning curve."
"Capacity-wise, since there is hardware involved, it cannot scale too much."
"I see no room for improvement at the moment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"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's an expensive solution, although there are no additional costs."
"It is a cost-effective product. If you need an extra module in the product, there will be an extra cost in addition to the licensing fee."
"There are no licensing costs."
"The pricing is average; the product is neither particularly expensive nor affordable."
"The maintenance fee for this product could be improved."
"​The pricing is reasonable."
"Due to the situation in Iran with the sanctions, the price of this solution is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

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 Business61
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: September 2026.
915,325 professionals have used our research since 2012.