IBM Security Network IPS vs Vectra AI comparison

IBM and Vectra AI are both solutions in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category. IBM is ranked #23, while Vectra AI is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.2. IBM holds a 0.6% mindshare in ID, compared to Vectra AI’s 11.9% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Vectra AI users who would recommend it.

IBM Security Network IPS

Read 4 IBM Security Network IPS reviews

279 Views
204 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Vectra AI

Read 44 Vectra AI reviews

5,797 Views
2,912 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Security Network IPS

Vectra AI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

IBM Security Network IPS and Vectra AI compete in the network security space. IBM Security Network IPS has the upper hand in cost-effectiveness and customer service, while Vectra AI excels in advanced AI-driven threat detection.

Features: IBM Security Network IPS offers comprehensive intrusion prevention, threat intelligence integration, and real-time attack prevention. It supports centralized management via IBM SiteProtector, ensuring smooth integration with transaction systems. Vectra AI utilizes AI-driven technology for proactive threat detection and response, employing machine learning to identify threats early. Its feature set includes Cognito Recall and Cognito Detect, providing network visibility and aggregated risk scores for prioritizing threats efficiently.

Room for Improvement: IBM Security Network IPS could enhance its AI capabilities and improve analytical sophistication to match its competitors. Further development in threat detection precision and user interface could benefit IBM. Vectra AI could streamline its initial setup process and reduce dependency on user intervention for complex configurations. Efforts to minimize false positives and simplify fault rectification processes would enhance its overall performance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Security Network IPS is appreciated for its straightforward deployment and extensive customer service, aiding in easy implementation. Vectra AI, while involving a more complex setup due to its advanced features, provides substantial support to overcome these complexities. IBM’s simplistic installation is a strong point, whereas Vectra's thorough post-deployment service optimizes its AI functionality.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Security Network IPS is known for a favorable pricing model and promising ROI, catering to various budgetary needs. Vectra AI, despite higher initial costs, delivers a significant long-term security ROI with its advanced threat detection, deemed worthwhile for organizations seeking innovation. Balancing upfront costs with cutting-edge features, Vectra provides substantial value over time.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Security Network IPS vs. Vectra AI Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Security Network IPS vs. Vectra AI

January 2025

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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

IBM Security Network IPS

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

23rd

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Vectra AI

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (9th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of IBM Security Network IPS is 0.6%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 11.9%, up from 9.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Featured Reviews

Jacob_Koithra

Project & Program manager at Shell Grp

User-friendly and has a good blocking feature but is quite expensive

Defining the new security rules and policies sometimes becomes a challenge. Integration with other platforms becomes a challenge as well. I'd like to see more integration with other tools and technologies. XGS 7100 has an end of support for the 30th of December 2022. Many are losing support. All the products of the XGS, including XGS 3100, 4100, 5100, and 7100, support is ending in December 2022. We need to know what is the plan post that? Do we need to spend money on them? Will that be extended? There has been no communication on the website either. It's an expensive device.

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Mohammad Alkurdi

Owner at Fortibits

Innovative detection features enhance monitoring

The advantages of the integration are not entirely out-of-the-box. You have to do it manually. When I'm doing tier response, an out-of-the-box solution is not available. You need to have a Linux server, and from the Linux server, you must perform AI tasks, and there is a lot to be handled in the back end. This is a major consideration about them. The recall feature, if it can be placed in some areas instead of the cloud, and charged for, would be better. Recall the storage where you watch all the traffic, and you can recall it and try to analyze it in the back end. It’s cloud-based. If they offer it on-prem, it would be better. I think they have a solution, but I have never tested it, to be honest with you.

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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

"The most valuable feature is its simplicity."

"The initial setup is simple."

"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."

"It provides various dashboards that facilitate the identification of connections and can detect data exfiltration, meaning data sent from your environment to another."

"Vectra AI generates relevant information."

"It does a reliable job of parsing out the logs of all the network traffic so that we can ingest them into our SIEM and utilize them for threat hunting and case investigations. It is pretty robust and reliable. The administration time that we spend maintaining it or troubleshooting it is very low. So, the labor hour overhead is probably our largest benefit from it. We spend 99% of our time in Vectra investigating cases, responding to incidents, or hunting, and only around 1% of our time is spent patching, troubleshooting, or doing anything else. That's our largest benefit from Vectra."

"The core product provides excellent visibility, but my favorite feature is Vectra Recall."

"It's easy to manage, and I love the UX. It's very well designed. When we are looking for something, it's quite easy to find it."

"One of the key advantages for us is we define a 24/7 service around it. We use far more of Vectra alerts than we do with our SIEM product because we understand that when we get an alert from Vectra we actually need to do something about it."

"It keeps up with the network traffic, which is a good thing. It provides more context to plain alerts compared to using an older system. So, it helps an analyst reduce the information overload."

More Vectra AI pros

Cons

"In the future, I would like to see a hybrid option so that we can work both on-premises and in the cloud."

"I'd like to see more integration with other tools and technologies."

"I would like to see a bit more strategic metrics instead of technical data. Information that I could show to my executive management team or board would be valuable."

"There is room for improvement in the documentation. We would like to have more details on how it detects what we see."

"In education as a sector, we are looking at AI a lot in terms of how it can be used as part of the teaching and learning side of things. It would be great to have Vectra AI look at a better way to enhance the security posture related to the AI tools in our portfolio."

"Neither Vectra nor Darktrace have a function like a status health check on my log sources and traffic sources."

"Integration with other security components needs improvement. It should have true integration as opposed to just being a separate pane of glass."

"One of the things I am not so happy about when it comes to Vectra is the scoring board."

"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."

"The main improvement I can see would be to integrate with more external solutions."

More Vectra AI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of operations is very low."

"Vectra's licensing model could scale to our research network, which has multiple, 100-gigabit links."

"From a pricing perspective, they are very commercially competitive. From a licensing perspective, just be conscious that some of their future cloud solutions come with additional subscriptions. Also, if you're outside of the US, you will get charged freight for the device back to your country."

"The solution is low-cost and affordable."

"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."

"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."

"From a licensing perspective, the Vectra detect platform is pretty doable. Also, the hardware prices are nothing that we're not used to. The stream part is a little overpriced compared to the detect part. The reason is that you need to stream data to detect events anyway, so the data is in there. The only thing that's not available is the UI to be able to look at the stream data, which is also on the appliances but is just not activated. That's mainly the thing that we want to improve on."

"Vectra AI's pricing is cheaper than that of Darktrace."

"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."

More Vectra AI pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

17%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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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 ...

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What do you like most about Vectra AI?

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

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

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

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Comparisons

Darktrace vs IBM Security Network IPS

Compared 100% of the time

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Darktrace vs Vectra AI

Compared 35% 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

Buyer's Guide

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

December 2024

Download IBM Security Network IPS product report

Buyer's Guide

Vectra AI

December 2024

Download Vectra AI product report

Also Known As

Security Network Intrusion Prevention System, IBM Security Network Protection, XGS, GX

Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR

Learn More

IBM

Vectra AI

Overview

IBM Security Network Intrusion Prevention System appliances are designed to stop constantly evolving threats before they impact your business. This means providing both high levels of protection and performance, while lowering the overall cost and complexity associated with deploying and managing a large number of point solutions.

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

Equifax, Christian Hospital Centre

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

Buyer's Guide

IBM Security Network IPS vs. Vectra AI

January 2025

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