Cisco Secure Network Analytics Reviews

We are a system integrator and I have implemented this solution for one of our customers.

This solution is normally used for anomaly detection and malware detection.

It is deployed on-premises.

The organization now have a better overview how their traffic is flowing.

The most valuable feature is anomaly detection, where it finds things that are not allowed internally.

The usability of this solution needs to be improved.

The initial setup of this solution can be simplified.

The stability of this solution is good.

We have three people who are using this solution.

I would rate technical support for this solution highly.

We used Darktrace before.

The initial setup of this solution is complex.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to know the whole infrastructure before beginning. Also, before starting, you have to know about the licensing of the equipment.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is for it to run our call center 24/7 365 days a year. 

There's a lot of stuff on the new version we haven't had the chance to work with yet. 

We're trying to upgrade to the newest release. We're running a version that's three versions behind. 

So far we've had a good experience with stability. We've run into some issues with the configuration. 

It's not scalable due to our own implementation. Everything that I read though, indicates that it can be scalable. 

Most of the engineers I've worked with have been really good. Very knowledgeable and easy to work with.    

We've used Cisco for around ten years. Prior to that, we were using Nortel. We had a relationship with a Cisco account manager prior to the collaboration products. 

We had engineers that set it up. There were some problems that Cisco support came to fix. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

Check the vendors and the options out there to see how they can meet your needs. 

Our primary use case for Stealthwatch is endpoint security.

Being able to graph and show data to management has improved our organization. We can show the data to the higher-ups. It shows them that it's picking up on these anomalies and doing its job.

It has reduced our incidence response time by around 30%. The solution has improved our efficiency in operations around 30% through basic cost-cutting. It has reduced the amount of admin support time by around 15%.

The most valuable feature is its ability to track anomalies in real time. It increases our time-to-value ratios.

They should include Citrix VDIs in the next release.

It's stable.

It's challenging to scale as big as our environment.

I highly recommend their technical support.

We knew we needed to switch because we had a gap in visibility. We picked this solution because we're a Cisco shop.

The setup was of moderate complexity because of the Citrix environment.

We used a reseller for the deployment called Presidio. We had a good deployment with them.

We also looked at FortiGate.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco HyperFlex HX a six only because of the challenges we had with Citrix.

You need a dedicated team to manage all of these products and their integration together.

We use the solution primarily for IDS/IPS.

It's a dependable product that is able to pinpoint where we have vulnerabilities if they occur.

Being able to look at the Layer 7 application and get information about intrusion attempts is the most valuable feature for us. 

The GUI could use some improvement. Being able to find features more easily would be a  great improvement if it was simplified.

We used to have an older version of the firmware and we were always having problems with it. Now, they have really good firmware. They came up with some new revision to the code, and so it's a lot more stable.

We haven't scaled it out more than what our initial scale was. I am only just imagining adding more sensors. When we configured it initially, we really didn't have a fundamental knowledge of exactly what to do with our network and the infrastructure. So we kind of had to let it sit there for about a month or two to learn — or get used to — the network and the product.

I haven't personally had the opportunity to use technical support, but my staff has. As far as I know, it is good. We have the Smart Net total care. We can get a TAM (Technical Account Manager), and so we can escalate straight through to a tier-two or tier-three person. So we get somebody immediately.

We just immediately went with Stealthwatch and did not have a previous solution.

The initial setup was pretty complex because of the size of our environment. The product itself is complex. We had to have an advanced working knowledge of networks already before deploying the solution.

We did not use a vendor team for the deployment.

We did evaluate another product called WhiteHat Security. The decision eventually came down to sticking with the system of the products. We wanted to kind of keep our products all in one family.

I would give the solution an eight out of ten. Any detraction is just because of how complex it is. Of course, you can deploy a solution in many different ways. You have to decide what you want to cover. You have choices to monitor your egress or your ingress if you want to look for vulnerabilities and remediations within your in-house network or your DMZ network. Whichever thing you want to do, you have to understand the possibilities of the equipment's ability to meet your needs so that you can scale it when you are ready. 

We went and bought what we needed to for a small deployment — like a POC — and we just kind of wanted to keep it that way just to get something in. And then we'd scale it out later. After, you can go in and raise your thresholds. There's a lot of stuff that's in the box. To really finely tune it to work to your benefit, you have to kind of let it digest. I think initially we were a bit too aggressive and we started creating stuff. We started getting a lot of noise — a lot of emails coming in. When that happened it wasn't time to fool around anymore.

We use this solution for NetFlow statistics.

This solution allows us to be more agile when it comes to troubleshooting our NetFlow and our network systems.

Using the Cognitive Analytics feature, we have complete visibility that we didn’t have before. We have a higher level of visibility for our systems and structures.

It has reduced our incident response time. 

The most valuable feature is the graphical analytics that it provides for mobile data.

The solution's analytics and threat detection capabilities are fantastic.

The initial setup is complex, as there is a lot to configure.

It's a rock-solid solution and we do a lot with it.

We bought the biggest box there is, so it's as big as it's going to get.

Technical support is good, although we haven't had any issues.

We switched solutions because we were doing network segmentation and the Cisco program that we were enrolled in required Stealthwatch to be embedded into our core.

The initial setup of this solution is complex. There is a lot to configure, and we're a big university so there is a lot of work that needed to be done.

We bought this solution through three different resellers and the experience was great.

We evaluated Plixer, but half of our medical center was already very familiar with Stealthwatch so it was an easy transition for us.

The vendors on our shortlist were ePlus and First Light. We split the load between them.

My suggestion for people researching this type of solution is to look at Stealthwatch because there is a lot of analytics and a lot of tools.

This is a solid solution, and a necessary tool to add insight into our network.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for this solution is to work on it so that we can learn enough about it to sell it to our customers.

This solution has improved our organization because it allowed us to find a lot of stuff we could look deeper into, like strange traffic patterns, and clean it up. It hasn't really improved our threat detection rate but it has definitely reduced our incident response time as we wouldn't have been able to detect threats or immediate risks without this solution. It has also reduced false positives. 

The most valuable feature about this solution is that it gives me insight into my network. It has great analytics and threat protection capabilities to detect faults and find viruses and trions. I can definitely say that this solution saves us time, money and administrative work.

When it comes to time to value, it gets new insights, so it's worth the time and it allows me to know more of what's going on in the network.

We are still running it but so far it has been really stable.

We are a very small company, so scalability isn't a problem for us. But I believe it is scalable.

Although I wasn't involved in the initial setup myself, it looked straightforward. 

We installed the solution ourselves because we are Cisco partners.

The issue of network security is growing daily and we are dealing with all the Cisco products. We have the Duo, the Firepower Soft and we plan to extend. 

I will rate this solution a nine out of ten because I have very deep insights. But I don't see any room for improvement yet. I would advise others to do a proof of concept first.

We really just use the product for behavior analytics of our employees. When we have issues or when there is some type of an investigation from a security perspective, we pull up Stealthwatch and start trying to see what that user was doing. If there are any anomalies in their activities we have to take action to correct it.

We don't need to monitor every device. The reports show everything that person's doing and what device they're running, et cetera, and we really only need specific things.

That was one of our problems in the initial deployment. We tried to overcome that by redeploying. I'm not sure exactly sure that it helped a lot. We're getting more data, but I'm not really sure it gives us a true picture.

It has improved our internal knowledge of what's going on with the network, and that's helpful. Overall we like the product, I'm just not sure it's giving us everything that we can really get out of it right now.

The ability to see a real-time picture of the network is the most valuable for us.

I would like to see more and cleaner reporting. For example, if I pull up Steven and I want to look and maybe compare him to what you've done in the past week, and compare that to the past six months, the point would be to see what the difference in activity looks like over this time. I don't see that capability in reporting to date. You see that trend but you don't really see a straightforward comparison. That right there is key to what we want to see about the normal activity.

The product is very stable. No problems at all.

I can't really comment on the customer service as that is not part of my turf. That's in the neck of the engineering team.

There wasn't really a big decision making effort. The product came with the big suite of things that we purchased, so we decided to take advantage of it and deployed it.

I was involved in the deployment. The initial setup should have been easier than it was — fairly easy overall. I think my engineering department made it more difficult. We should have deployed it based on the exact specifications of the vendor. On our team, we've got people who think they know more than the vendor. Any trouble goes back to our entire team not following the directions to the letter during the setup. They should have made sure they followed the exact steps to get everything running, and then actually go dig into any other need they're trying to solve for specifically. After that make sure to get reporting to match issues that are important to solve for because that's what makes it useful.

We dealt directly with Cisco for the implementation.

Overall the product is good. I'd give it a seven out of ten. That's mostly because of the deployment and then the reporting and trying to get the stuff out of it in a way that we want it.

Our primary uses for this solution are threat management and traffic management.

Our network visibility is pretty significant right now, where we use it within our data centers and even on the OT side of the house. It’s given us pretty good visibility.

This solution has increased our threat detection rate by forty to sixty percent.

Using this solution has helped us to improve threat-remediation timeframe.

It has reduced your incident response time. We use the solution's encrypted traffic analytics. It has significantly improved our capabilities. 

The most valuable features of this solution are the logging, keeping threats under control, and keeping our data and environment secure.

It is time-consuming to set it up and understand how the tool works.

In our environment, the way we've implemented in phases, the stability is good.

We're going to be looking at this, and I'm hoping that it is scalable across our environment.

I would rate the technical support for this solution extremely well. The professional services have been really good for us.

We did not use another solution prior to this one, and we choose this solution based on Cisco's recommendation after they reviewed our requirements.

The initial setup of this solution is complex. it wasn't necessarily the tool that was complex, but the environment. It had to do with the way our network is and the requirements that we needed to be implemented. This is where the complexity came from.

We had a partner to assist us with the deployment.

Cisco was the only vendor that we considered for this solution.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to have your requirements identified very clearly before you start.

The analytics and threat detection capabilities are pretty extensive. We still need to use other tools and mechanisms to analyze data, but it does the job that we’re looking for.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case of this solution is for troubleshooting network issues.

This solution has improved my organization because when I have users who are having issues with patching slowness it gives me the ability to be able to proactively troubleshoot and determine what the issue is.

The most valuable features are its abilities to analyze data streams and determining what is inside those data streams to troubleshoot a problem. It is also easy to use. 

I would like to see better filters. You should be able to filter the data out to more rapidly find what you're looking for.

It's very stable. 

Stealthwatch is very scalable.

Their technical support is very good. The turnaround has been great. 

We used them when we had a bug and the data stream was showing us data reports that weren't accurate. The support helped us with that. 

We switched and chose this solution because of the reseller's recommendation. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy, the instructions were there. It was pretty straightforward to operate. Your learning curve could be a little bit difficult, but it's up and coming.

We used a reseller for the deployment called SEBok Limited. 

I have not seen ROI yet. 

Stealthwatch was the only choice. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. It does change the way we troubleshoot and it is relatively easy to use once you learn it. I would recommend it to someone considering it. 

We use this solution primarily for the TLS audit in our on-premise environment, and to assist our customers.

We are a reseller, and we are able to show demos of this solution pretty quickly. It gets people really excited.

The network visibility has vastly improved for the organizations that I assist with their services. Generally, they do not have lateral visibility into their network. We come in and deploy Cisco ISE, which helps them segment, but they still can’t prove what is going on. Now, with this solution, they have the ability to not only show what a user has tried to do, but they can show where inside of the network it was stopped. From that point, they have verification and can take action.

Our customers are happy with the threat detection rate. I would estimate that it has increased by eighteen to fifty-two percent. This solution definitely improves the incident response time. We always try to help our customers understand this advantage.

It has reduced the amount of time it takes to detect and remediate threats. I’d imagine that it makes it faster for most of our customers. A lot of them spin their wheels trying to get this information out of there, but they don’t actually see the value until they realize that the right search will show the flow immediately. It gets those answers to them quickly.

It helps with the administration. When it comes to creating documentation, you can export those things and paste them onto the back of the report.

I would say that the time to value is approximately a week. It takes this long because the machine learning component has to learn your network first.

The most valuable features are encrypted threat analysis and the ability to run jobs on entire flows.

The reporting feature is helpful for creating documentation because you can export relevant information and paste it into the back of the report.

I’ve found that the solution's analytics and threat detection capabilities are very useful. I would like it to be able to better integrate with Firepower, but it meets the needs that it was promising from the beginning.

I would like this product to have better integration with Cisco Firepower. That is the easiest way to pair.

Eliminating Java from the SMC would improve this solution.

It would be better to let people know, upfront, that is doesn't give you nice, clear information, as seen in the demos, without Cisco ISE installed. Most of my customers are ISE-based so it doesn't matter, but I have to break the news to the ones who are not.

This solution is pretty stable for the most part. I don't like Java, so that's the thing that needs to go, but for the most part, it is a great solution.

This is a really scalable solution. We have done some pretty large deployments, and I have seen the scalability.

I haven't needed to contact technical support for this solution. 

We did not use another solution prior to this one. It was like the wild wild west. We set this up in our lab because the internal IT couldn't figure out what everybody was doing. They now have insight into who did what, which is important because we have a lot of intellectual property to protect.

The initial setup is straightforward for me, so when I work with our customers the setup is straightforward for them.

It is a basic, three-tier model that includes flow sensors, flow collectors, and the SMC (Stealthwatch Management Control). These are all named appropriately, so people can understand what is being talked about when they hear it.

After the installation is complete, it takes about a week for the machine learning component to learn your network.

We implement this solution for our customers.

This solution is expensive. Our fees are approximately $3,000 USD.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this one.

If I knew somebody who was researching this solution I would ask them: "How can you prove that when you set a policy, a person can't access this system?" This solution allows you to see any way that they've jumped through the network to try and get to that point. It is a pretty solid solution for this. 

The biggest lesson that I have learned is how poorly implemented campus networks are. They’re just poor.

Many people do not understand the Encrypted Traffic Analysis, but it improves the ability to analyze the traffic so it is a valuable feature.

This is a good solution, but Java is still in the SMC, the Firepower integration is not really there, and I would really appreciate people being told about the necessity of ISE beforehand.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.