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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) (14th)
Fortinet FortiWeb
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (1st)
 

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 3.1%, up 2.1% compared to last year.
Fortinet FortiWeb, on the other hand, focuses on Web Application Firewall (WAF), holds 8.1% mindshare, up 7.9% since last year.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.1%
Fortinet FortiGate13.9%
Darktrace12.2%
Other70.8%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
Web Application Firewall (WAF) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Fortinet FortiWeb8.1%
F5 Advanced WAF7.8%
Imperva Application Security Platform7.6%
Other76.5%
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

"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"I like most of Cisco's features, like malware detection and URL filtering."
"Both the internal firewall management and the cloud can be managed by a single console."
"Deployment can be straightforward"
"The product has a very user-friendly dashboard."
"The ease of configuration is valuable. We have Azure WAF, we have OCI WAF, and we also have Cloud Armor for GCP, but their configuration isn't very easy. It's pretty simple in FortiWeb, and we can enable or configure whatever we want."
"The features of FortiWeb Web Application Firewall (WAF) that have proven most effective in protecting web applications include web filtering, DDoS protection, geo-location blocking, and blocking SQL injection attacks."
"The platform's stability is good."
"The solution is easy to configure and deploy."
"Fortinet FortiWeb is priced well."
 

Cons

"Performance needs improvement."
"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"With the next release, I would like to see some PBR, so that you can do the configuration with the features."
"The cloud can be improved."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"We are unhappy with technical support for this solution, and it is not as professional as what we typically expect from Cisco."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"The automation piece can be improved. Although they say it can be automated very well, there is still manual work. Its usability should be improved in terms of automation because we want to build an infrastructure with code, but you can't do that easily with this solution. If they can give us APIs in the firewalls that we can tap into, it would be perfect."
"Fortinet FortiWeb could improve in reference architecture for different deployment scenarios."
"Fortinet's customer support needs improvement. The expertise of engineers varies across different time zones, affecting the effectiveness of the support provided, especially during our daytime."
"Centralized configuration using FortiManager – like what exists for NGFW FortiGate appliances - would improve the configuration."
"The solution is rather complicated. If you know what to do, it's not bad, but it's complicated for a first time user to configure the solution. What I'd like to improve are the custom signatures."
"Sometimes, even if you follow the documentation, it doesn't work as expected."
"The interface could have the interdependent elements arranged sequentially and wizards that go through most common deployment actions."
"Lacks functionalities that are available in other solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"Cheaper than others."
"The solution is cheaper compared with other solutions. It has a yearly license."
"It is a cheap solution."
"The tool is really expensive."
"The solution gives us the best price to performance ratio."
"FortiWeb has a good presence because of its price."
"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 to use Fortinet FortiWeb is approximately $14,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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 Enterprise36
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet.
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 do you like most about Fortinet FortiWeb?
The WAF profiles has been effective at mitigating web-based threats.
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...
 

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: December 2025.
880,315 professionals have used our research since 2012.