What is our primary use case?
Our company is in the retail arena, and we have stores, warehouses, and a data center. Right now, we're using Vectra AI in our offices and the data center. The major issue we had was that we were completely blind inside our data center in terms of seeing what traffic we had. Our main focus with Vectra AI was to see what's happening inside the data center through virtual sensors.
We're going to expand it to include our stores because the franchisees requested that we monitor the networks in all of the stores. Every shop in our company is a franchise, and they can do whatever they want to in their shops. We won't have any idea as to what's on the network in the shops. By using Vectra AI, we will have visibility into the network.
We have started the proof of concept for our warehouses as well.
How has it helped my organization?
We discovered a lot of things in our network and are correcting several misconfigurations. We are learning how some apps work together and how some things shouldn't happen. It's also easier for us to identify the source of a brute force, whereas before, we didn't even know we had a brute force.
What is most valuable?
The platform is well-designed around the quadrant. We know quickly how to investigate, and the detections are clear. I like Vectra AI's integration with Active Directory and the fact that it's easy to take in hand.
What needs improvement?
We have had a few issues with the integration of Vectra AI with EDR. Some filters have not been working. We've also had issues with the brain not being powerful enough.
In the next release, I would like to see more triage choices. From my point of view, Vectra is missing a lot of choices. This is an area that they could focus on.
Vectra is also moving to a full cloud model, and I am not sure if going full cloud and leaving the on-premises environment is the way to go. We are not sure whether we'll move to the cloud with Vectra because it's hosted by AWS, which is one of our competitors. We don't like to work with anything that works on AWS.
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Vectra AI
March 2025
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For how long have I used the solution?
We did a proof of concept two years ago and then deployed it in March, 2022.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We've had issues with stability. Vectra said that they underestimated the power we needed on our brain as it's very slow. We have delays that can be up to 40 seconds. We also had a hard drive that died. In one year, we've experienced three major issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have different types of deployment that impact scalability a lot. The good part is that if we want to see everything that gets into the data center, we only need a single sensor in the data center. However, if we want to go in-depth in every store, then it will be a long process because we'll have to deploy thousands of sensors.
Right now, our license is for 10,000 IPs, and we hope to increase it to 110,000. If we deploy Vectra AI in the warehouse as well, we will need 25,000 extra. When we upgrade the brain server, Vectra AI should be able to scale accordingly.
How are customer service and support?
When I contacted technical support, they usually take control of my laptop for an hour or more, and I can't do anything during that time. They do not explain anything and mute themselves for an hour or more. I don't know what they're doing or if they're even working on the issue.
However, they have been proactive because they know we have issues with our brain. If I have a bug, I've noticed that they usually respond quickly.
Thus, on a scale from one to ten, I would rate technical support at six.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
I've done four deployments in total, and Vectra AI is easy to deploy. On the admin interface, it's also easy to set up the integration with EDR.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is an expensive solution, but it's not the most expensive we've seen. We also know how much we're going to pay, unlike with some other providers where all of a sudden our license explodes.
We will probably need to deploy over a thousand physical sensors. This means that the cost will automatically go up to millions. They do not sell the smallest sensors that they had in the past, which we would be glad to have right now.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at ExtraHop, a VMware NDR solution, Carbon Black, and a solution from a French organization.
Carbon Black is oriented around VMware products. As such, it would have been okay for the data center, but we would have had to upgrade the entire physical infrastructure inside the data center. It would have been very expensive, and thus, we eliminated Carbon Black. The French competitor was eliminated because the solution was a few years behind.
We then talked with Vectra AI and were happy with what they offered us. We spoke with other companies that use it and found out that they were happy with it. Thus, Vectra AI got the opportunity to do the proof of concept.
What other advice do I have?
Overall, I would rate Vectra AI an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.