Flowmon vs Vectra AI comparison

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Flowmon

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

Vectra AI and Flowmon are competing in the cybersecurity and network monitoring space. Vectra AI gains an advantage in threat detection through AI automation, while Flowmon offers more comprehensive network performance insights.

Features: Vectra AI provides AI-driven threat detection and automation, enabling proactive incident response. It also emphasizes superior threat intelligence. Flowmon offers extensive network monitoring, traffic analysis, and performance management tools, providing holistic network visibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Vectra AI is recognized for quick deployment and reliable customer support, enhancing the onboarding process. Flowmon may require a more detailed setup process but offers comprehensive technical support.

Pricing and ROI: Vectra AI presents competitive setup costs and a strong ROI from efficient security responses. Flowmon, despite a higher initial investment, delivers long-term value with its extensive network optimization capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Flowmon vs. Vectra AI Report (Updated: December 2024).

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Flowmon vs. Vectra AI

December 2024

Helped 823,875 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Flowmon

Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)

16th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (43rd)

Vectra AI

Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (2nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (9th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Flowmon is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 20.1%, up from 20.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Detection and Response (NDR)

Featured Reviews

Pifu Lin

Senior System Engineer at DYNASAFE TECHNOLOGIES PTE. LTD.

Quick identification of network issues enhances performance monitoring

We will try to Proof of Concept (POC) to a client in Taiwan. We just use the features for the Network Performance Monitor (NPM) Flowmon is more easy to understand and helps find network issues more quickly. We need this solution to monitor the network performance. We started using it three…

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Tony Whelton

Director IT at Wellington College

Integrates well with other security solutions and provides good technical support

The biggest feature for us, because we are heavy Microsoft users, is its integration with Office 365. On top of Vectra AI, we use all of the Microsoft security platforms, such as Defender ATP and Sentinel. Having full integration and a central platform to look at all of the threats that are coming through from the different platforms is a huge benefit for us. With one nice front dashboard, we can look at the high-volume threats rather than all of the noise. We do get a lot of noise as our students all own their own devices. With Vectra AI, we can look at threats in a controlled manner, which saves us an extraordinary amount of time. Even if I doubled the manpower, I doubt that I would still have the same visibility that I have with the correct security platform. Vectra AI's Threat Detection and Response platform has done remarkably well. We're well-versed in using the security dashboard from Microsoft Defender, and we're at the stage where we are checking both. We haven't fully switched to relying on only the Vectra dashboard yet. In terms of Vectra AI Attack Signal Intelligence for empowering security analysts within our organization, we have complete faith in the data that's coming through from Vectra. If we could also have what's happening at the front-end, that is, the firewall, then it would give us the complete security front dashboard.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Flowmon is more easy to understand and helps find network issues more quickly."

"The solution is stable."

"It is an open platform, so in terms of integration, we are quite happy. We can integrate it with other SNMP solutions. We can also integrate it with security solutions, such as a SIEM solution."

"The artificial intelligence and automatic detection system in Flowmon Solution are perfect for every, type of customer, such as government and commerce."

"Most of their use cases, including deployment, are managed by the tool itself, requiring less manual input from our team."

"One of the most valuable features is all the correlation that it does using AI and machine learning. An example would be alerting on a host and then alerting on other things, like abnormal behavior, that it has noticed coming from the same host. It's valuable because we're a very lean team."

"The solution's ability to reduce alerts, by rolling up numerous alerts to create a single incident or campaign, helps in that it collapses all the events to a particular host, or a particular detection to a set of hosts. So it doesn't generate too many alerts. By and large, whatever alerts it generates are actionable, and actionable within the day."

"The most valuable feature for Cognito Detect, the main solution, is that external IDS's create a lot of alerts. When I say a lot of alerts I really mean a lot of alerts. Vectra, on the other hand, contextualizes everything, reducing the number of alerts and pinpointing only the things of interest. This is a key feature for me. Because of this, a non-trained analyst can use it almost right away."

"The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system."

"The key feature for me for Detect for Office 365 is that it can also concentrate all the information and detection at one point, the same as the network solution does. This is the key feature for me because, while accessing data from Office 365 is possible using Microsoft interfaces, they are not really user-friendly and are quite confusing to use. But Detect for Office 365 is aggregating all the info, and it's only the interesting stuff."

"Vectra AI helped our team be more productive and save time. We have less work thanks to it."

"The initial setup was pretty straightforward."

More Vectra AI pros

Cons

"The licensing price could be better."

"It would be helpful to have more details about the monitoring of the infrastructure. It should have support for SNMP. This is something that is currently not there in the product."

"I do not know the detailed pricing."

"If there was better visualization in Flowmon Solution it would be good."

"An area for improvement in Vectra AI is reporting because it currently needs some details. For example, when you download a report from Vectra AI, you won't see complete information about the alerts or triggers. Another area for improvement in the tool is that sometimes, an alert has high severity, yet it's marked as low severity. Vectra AI should have a mechanism to change the severity level from low to high or critical."

"Other alternatives, like Darktrace, have a fancier UI."

"In comparison with a lot of systems I used in the past, the false positives are really a burden because they are taking a lot of time at this moment."

"I'd like to be able to get granular reports and to be able to output them into formats that are customizable and more useful. The reporting GUI is lacking."

"We would like to see more information with the syslogs. The syslogs that they send to our SIEM are a bit short compared to what you can see. It would be helpful if they send us more data that we can incorporate into our SIEM, then can correlate with other events."

"A blind spot that I have is around the ease with which you can automate threat intervention."

"One of the things that we are missing a bit is the capability to add our own rules to it. At the moment, the tech engine does its thing, but we have some cool ideas to make additional rules. There should be an option in the platform to add custom rules, or there should be some kind of user group where we can suggest them for the roadmap and see if they get evaluated and get transparent communication on whether they will be implemented in the product or not."

"They use a proprietary logging format that is probably 90% similar to Bro Logs. Their biggest area of improvement is finishing out the remaining 10%. That 10% might not be beneficial to their ML engine, but that's fine. The industry standard is Zeek Logs or Bro Logs, or Bro or Zeek, depending on how old you are. While they have 90% of those fields, they're still missing some fields. In very rare instances, some community rules do not have the fields that they need, and we had to modify community rules for our logs. So, their biggest area of improvement would be to just finish their matching of the Zeek standard."

More Vectra AI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution could be better."

"The licensing fee accrues only once, but that of support is annual."

"It works with a permanent license, and then you can pay for the support. For the gold support, you need to pay yearly."

"Vectra's pricing is too high. All schools will not be able to afford it. Vectra will only end up targeting higher education and higher value independence purely because of the price. A lot of schools would love to have a product like Vectra AI, but they simply can't because they struggle to even pay the high E5 licensing from Microsoft. When you're up against that, Vectra AI is never going to be within the sector's price range."

"At the time of purchase, we found the pricing acceptable. We had an urgency to get something in place because we had a minor breach that occurred at the tail end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017. This indicated we had a lack of ability to detect things on the network. Hence, why we moved quickly to get into the tool in place. We found things like Bitcoin mining and botnets which we closed quickly. In that regard, it was worth the money."

"The solution's pricing was 50 percent lower than the other vendors shortlisted."

"We are running at about 90,000 pounds per year. The solution is a licensed cost. The hardware that they gave us was pretty much next to nothing. It is the license that we're paying for."

"Their licensing model is antiquated. I'm not a fan of their licensing model. We have to pay for licensing based on four different things. You have to pay based on the number of unique IPs, the number of logs that we send through Recall and Stream, and the size of our environment. They need to simplify their licensing down to just one thing. It should be based on the amount of data, the number of devices, or something else, but there should be just one thing for everything. That's what they need to base their licensing on. Cost-wise, they're not cheap. They were definitely the most expensive option, but you get what you pay for. They're not the cheapest option."

"We have a desire to increase our use. However, it all comes down to budget. It's a very expensive tool that is very difficult to prove business support for. We would like to have two separate networks. We have our corporate network and PCI network, which is segregated due to payment processing. We don't have it for deployed in the PCI network. It would be good to have it fully deployed there to provide us with additional monitoring and control, but the cost associated with their licensing model makes it prohibitively expensive to deploy."

"Its cost is too much. It's an investment that we can afford. It's a lot, but it's worth it."

"My company pays for the Vectra AI licensing fee yearly. I know the figure because my company recently renewed the license, and it's okay, at least for the financial sector."

More Vectra AI pricing and cost advice

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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions are best for your needs.

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823,875 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Flowmon Anomaly Detection System?

The artificial intelligence and automatic detection system in Flowmon Solution are perfect for every, type of customer, such as government and commerce.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Flowmon Anomaly Detection System?

I don't understand the price. I am in deployment, so I do not know the detailed pricing.

What needs improvement with Flowmon Anomaly Detection System?

If there was better visualization in Flowmon Solution it would be good.

What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?

The two platforms take a fundamentally different approach to NDR. Corelight is limited to use cases that require the eventual forwarding of events and parsed data logs to a security team’s SIEM or ...

What do you like most about Vectra AI?

The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?

Vectra is cheaper in terms of pricing and features compared to Darktrace.

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Flowmon

Comparisons

Darktrace vs Flowmon

Compared 22% of the time

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Flowmon

Compared 7% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Flowmon

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs Flowmon

Compared 6% of the time

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Darktrace vs Vectra AI

Compared 36% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) vs Vectra AI

Compared 12% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Vectra AI

Compared 6% of the time

Arista NDR vs Vectra AI

Compared 5% of the time

Corelight vs Vectra AI

Compared 5% of the time

More Vectra AI Competitors

Product Reports

Network Monitoring Software

December 2024

Download Flowmon product report

Download Vectra AI product report

November 2024

Also Known As

Flowmon Anomaly Detection System

Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR

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Progress Software

Overview

Flowmon is a professional tool for effective network troubleshooting, performance monitoring, capacity planning, encrypted traffic analysis and cloud monitoring. Instead of just the red/green infrastructure status, it helps NetOps teams to understand user experience while keeping the amount of data noise and analytical work to a minimum. Flowmon is a part of the Kemp product portfolio.

Vectra AI is used for detecting network anomalies and potential malicious activities, providing visibility into network traffic and enhancing threat detection across environments.

Organizations deploy Vectra AI mainly on-premises with additional cloud components. It helps with compliance, incident response, security monitoring, detecting insider threats, and correlating network events. Vectra AI captures and enriches network metadata, provides detailed dashboards, reduces false positives, and supports cross-environment behavioral analysis to enhance threat detection and prioritization. While valued for its high accuracy and alert aggregation, it has room for improvement in UI/UX, packet management, and integration with SIEMs and other tools. It is noted for expensive pricing and limited proactive threat response features.

What are Vectra AI's most valuable features?

High accuracy in identifying threat locations
Aggregation of alerts into single incidents
24/7 threat detection
Visibility into the entire attack lifecycle
Risk score aggregation
Effective triaging of alerts
Integration with other tools

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Enhanced threat detection and prioritization
Comprehensive network visibility
Reduction in false positives
Better incident response capabilities
Improved compliance monitoring

In specific industries, Vectra AI is deployed to monitor complex networks and alleviate challenges in threat detection. It is particularly effective in sectors requiring stringent compliance and security measures, offering insights and capabilities crucial for protecting sensitive data and maintaining operational integrity.

Sample Customers

SEGA

Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association