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Arista NDR vs Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Darktrace 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Arista NDR is 3.3%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 6.3%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 16.6%, down from 25.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Detection and Response (NDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Darktrace16.6%
Cisco Secure Network Analytics6.3%
Arista NDR3.3%
Other73.8%
Network Detection and Response (NDR)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1719513 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
it's much easier to create your own queries and hunt for threats
We take in IOCs from my SOC and from AlienVault, and then we focus on traffic that hits IOCs and alerts us to it. The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually. Awake didn't support the manual importation of CSV and JSON in version 3.0, but they added it in version 4.0. It's helpful, but it still has to be a specific CSV format. Automated IOCs are on the roadmap. Hopefully, they will be able to automate the ingestion of IOCs by Q1 next year. I'm currently leveraging Mind Meld, an open-source tool by Palo Alto, to ingest IOCs from external parties. I aggregate those lists and spit them out as a massive list of domains, hashes, file names, IPS. Then we aggregate those into their own specific categories, like a URL category. Awake ingests that just like the Palo Alto firewall does, and then it alerts me if traffic attempts to go into it. Some of that is already on the Palo Alto firewall, which blocks it, but that doesn't mean that there is no attempted communication. I want to know if there's a communication attempt because there might be an indicator on that specific device trying to reach an IOC. Yes, my Palo Alto blocked it, but there's still something odd sitting there, and what if it can reach a different IOC that I don't have information about? I want to focus on it. I could do that by leveraging Awake if it could ingest the IOCs automatically. That's something I leverage Awake for today. I still have to manually import it, which is cumbersome because I have to manipulate the files that I get from the different IOC providers into a specific format that it understands. Once they add the ability to automate that, it'll be more useful.
Muhammad Harun-Owr-Roshid - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at BRIGHT-i SYSTEMS LIMITED
Have streamlined network visibility and troubleshooting while seeing benefits from AI integration
In terms of improvements for Cisco Secure Network Analytics, from the implementation point of view, now that AI is in use, some other features need to be upgraded considering AI solutions. Proper management of the database is also important; it should be centralized for easier data collection from a single database. When precise manual analysis is needed, it's sometimes difficult, so having a centralized database will allow network admins to find actual scenarios more effectively, especially since some information may not be visible on the GUI. Cisco should upgrade their hardware part to run the database, because sometimes it cannot handle the load while all features are running in the network. The database management should indeed be centralized because while AI runs behind the systems, central management is essential. For example, in a network with 100 Cisco switches, a few routers, firewalls, and access points, all data generated should be preserved in a central database. This approach simplifies management and analysis for troubleshooting, as GUI interfaces may not always provide visible information. Centralizing the database will allow for better understanding of which information is preserved for each specific device.
AM
Technical Consultant - Unix Platform Services at BITS AND BYTE IT CONSULTING PVT LTD
Consistent threat hunting and anomaly detection deliver valuable insights for network security management
In terms of improvement for Darktrace, pricing is the main concern. Pricing bothers me and this is one of the major factors when choosing a solution. When we get feedback from customers, that's the only felt need. When we factor in Darktrace, we do it only limited. We put it on where the perimeters and connections are, but still, some gray areas are left out, especially if we have multiple branches. We need Darktrace on each branch to get the data out, and I suggest having some kind of a centralized product that gets data from multiple sources to aggregate and provide the data.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Arista NDR's scalability is very good, making it easy to add more hardware components. You can order additional hardware and integrate it by stacking it with the existing setup. This feature cannot be seen in other NDR tools."
"Awake Security gets a solid nine (out of 10) based on our experience, which is based on their technology, professionalism, and communication."
"The most valuable portion is that they offer a threat-hunting service. Using their platform, and all of the data that they're collecting, they actually help us be proactive by having really expert folks that have insight, not just into our accounts, but into other accounts as well. They can be proactive and say, 'Well, we saw this incident at some other customer. We ran that same kind of analysis for you and we didn't see that type of activity in your network.'"
"Awake has really easy of use; it was just far easier to use as far as seeing rich, actionable data than LogRythm, with less of a learning curve to understand what they were trying to represent."
"Awake's MNDR has affected our overall security posture very positively."
"When I create a workbench query in Awake to do threat hunting, it's much easier to query. You get a dictionary popup immediately when you try to type a new query. It says, "You want to search for a device?" Then you type in "D-E," and it gives you a list of commands, like device, data set behavior, etc. That gives you the ability to build your own query."
"Awake’s technology, artificial intelligence, and human expertise within the MNDR service have really increased our security abilities."
"Other solutions will say, "Hey, this device is doing something weird." But they don't aggregate that data point with other data points. With Awake you have what's called a "fact pattern." For example, if there's a smart toaster on the third floor that is beaconing out to an IP address in North Korea, sure that's bizarre. But if that toaster was made in North Korea it's not bizarre. Taking those two data points together, and automating something using machine-learning is something that no other solution is doing right now."
"The deployment was a breeze. It is a very innovative and robust platform that allows us to bi-directionally stitch together data elements from Netflow-enabled devices to provide a context for network utilization."
"The fact that it can identify down to an IP address of a system that is causing problems, or potentially causing problems, is very valuable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is data hoarding because it catches threats on a frequent basis that we had no idea of."
"Cisco Secure Network Analytics has increased the visibility of what is happening in our network, and I think that's the most important reason to use it. We can see what is really happening instead of just looking at numbers from routers or switches."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the logging, keeping threats under control, and keeping our data and environment secure."
"There are already many functionalities, so I don't think there is anything to improve."
"The most valuable feature is anomaly detection, where it finds things that are not allowed internally."
"The solution has increased our threat detection rate. Cisco Stealthwatch has not reduced our incident response times. It has not reduced the amount of time it takes us to detect immediate threats. It has reduced false positives."
"Darktrace's most valuable features are that it understands the network environment and is able to trace the traffic and alert on anomalies."
"Darktrace is very useful for us because it has a large number of models for detecting threats."
"The investigative part of Darktrace is valuable, especially the automation features. It allows setting up checks and provides guidance on mitigating situations, which is very useful. There are different modules that you can add to the console for protection."
"Overall, this is a good product that seems to be working well."
"Darktrace has improved our knowledge of abnormal phenomenen which could have potentially be hazardous for the organization."
"The most valuable part of the product is the whole package, as the features included in the Enterprise Immune System are complete and effective and its detection engine is ridiculously good."
"We are able to detect a lot of things, actually, and see what is happening in our network."
"Its AI technology supports cybersecurity by learning my environment and accurately responding to threats."
 

Cons

"It's important that Awake continues to develop its APIs to be able to help intertwine their product into the overall security architecture of a company, just because it is a single tool."
"There's room for improvement with some of the definitions, because I don't have time and I'm not a Tier 4 analyst."
"Arista NDR needs to open legal offices to be closer to customers and partners. It needs more visibility in the NDR market in the Middle East. While they are doing well, they lack sufficient engineers. They need to hire more engineers to meet the demand and expand their presence. The current team is good but not enough to fully capture the market."
"One concern I do have with Awake is that, ideally, it should be able identify high-risk users and devices and entities. However, we don't have confidence in their entity resolution, and we've provided this feedback to Awake. My understanding is that this is where some of the AI/ML is, and it hasn't been reliable in correctly identifying which device an activity is associated with. We have also encountered issues where it has merged two devices into one entity profile when they shouldn't be merged. The entity resolution is the weakest point of Awake so far."
"When I looked at the competitors, such as Darktrace, they all have prettier interfaces. If Awake could make it a little more user-friendly, that would go a long way."
"When I looked at the competitors, such as Darktrace, they all have prettier interfaces. If Awake could make it a little more user-friendly, that would go a long way."
"One thing I would like to see is a little bit more education or experience on AWS cloud for their managed services team. We've explained how we have the information set up, that the traffic coming in goes to the AWS load balancer and then gets sent on to our internal servers... but when I get notices they always tell me this traffic is coming from the IPs belonging to the load balancers, not the source IPs. So a little bit more education for their team about how AWS manages the traffic might help out."
"I enjoy the query language, but it could be a bit more user-friendly, especially for new users who come across it... They should push it more into a natural language style as opposed to a query language."
"It is time-consuming to set it up and understand how the tool works."
"I think the interface is a little lacking. The interface seems like it just needs to be modernized. It's been the same interface now, ever since I've seen it probably four years ago."
"I would like to see more expansion in artificial intelligence and machine learning features."
"I would like the search page available with Cisco Stealthwatch to be more intuitive. The previous release was better than the current one for the UI."
"I would like Cisco to make it easier for the administrators to use it."
"The overall visibility into the actual device itself would be helpful. I don't just want support-specific data, but also to be able to see information such as CPU and other internal components or usage of the devices."
"The usability of this solution needs to be improved."
"Cisco Stealthwatch needs more integration with device discovery. We have to do a lot of hard work to figure out what things are. Better service integration is required."
"In an upcoming release, there could be more customizable playbooks or a library of playbooks to choose from."
"It's quite expensive to have."
"The stability isn't good but I like the product."
"Darktrace could improve by being more user-friendly."
"The management user interface needs improvement."
"I would like for the product to work on the endpoints as well. I would like to see enhanced visibility into the endpoints and network but this solution only sits on the network itself."
"There are still some issues with the network capturing or blocking traffic even after implementing exceptions. It requires more learning in this area."
"My only criticism of the product is that its licensing model isn't flexible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has saved thousands of dollars within the first day. Our ROI has to be in the tens of thousands of dollars since October last year."
"Awake's pricing was very competitive. It's not a cheap option though. It's an investment to utilize it, but it's one that we decided was worth the cost, with the managed services. At our scale, it was a much better option to utilize their software and their managed services to handle this, rather than hiring another person to be an analyst. It was quite cost-effective for us."
"The pricing seems pretty reasonable for what we get out of it. We also found it to be more competitive than some other vendors that we've looked at."
"Because I represent a hedge fund, I have some leverage. I told them that they had to meet my conditions if they wanted me as a client. It was the same way with Awake. They wanted an initial four-year agreement. Initially, we signed on for a one-year contract, but they wanted the four-year deal when it came time for the renewal. I told them that I was not doing that. I said that they either had to do it on my terms, or I'd go somewhere else."
"The solution is very good and the pricing is also better than others..."
"Awake Security was the least expensive among their competitors. Everyone was within $15,000 of each other. The other solutions were not providing the MNDR service, which is standard with Awake Security's pricing/licensing model."
"We switched to Awake Security because they were able to offer a model that was significantly less expensive and the value that we get out of it is higher."
"It has a subscription model. There is yearly support, and there is also three-year support. It depends on what the customers want."
"One of the things which bugs me about Lancope is the licensing. We understand how licensing works. Our problem is when we bought and purchased most of these Lancope devices, we did so with our sister company. Somewhere within the purchase and distribution, licensing got mixed up. That is all on Cisco, and it is their responsibility. They allotted some of our sister company's equipment to us, and some of our equipment to them. To date, they have never been able to fix it."
"The licensing costs are outrageous."
"Pricing is much higher compared to other solutions."
"​Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside (in traffic)."
"We pay for support costs on a yearly basis."
"Licensing is on a yearly basis."
"Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside>in traffic."
"There is an annual license to use Darktrace."
"Darktrace is quite an expensive solution."
"The cost of the solution is expensive for smaller businesses. They will not be able to afford it or might not need this type of security solution."
"If you consider the features and the cost of market leaders, we are satisfied with the pricing."
"We had an issue with pricing initially and had to cancel some of the features of the projects to fit the budget. I would like to see pricing that is not broken up into parts so that we can buy the whole package once. Darktrace is more expensive than an average solution, but it's functionality won't match that of an average solution."
"They are too expensive compared with other vendors."
"The cost of the solution can be reduced to make it more appealing to customers."
"When it comes to large installations, it can be expensive, but for small accounts it's fine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Stealthwatch?
Regarding cost, for the Bangladesh context, Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a little bit high-priced because we are...
What needs improvement with Cisco Stealthwatch?
In terms of improvements for Cisco Secure Network Analytics, from the implementation point of view, now that AI is in...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Stealthwatch?
Our customers mainly use Cisco Secure Network Analytics to get whole network visibility and easy troubleshooting to f...
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing u...
Which is better - SentinelOne or Darktrace?
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Darktrace?
Concerning pricing for the product, I would say it is somewhat expensive.
 

Also Known As

Awake Security Platform
Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

- Dolby Laboratories- Seattle Genetics- ARM Energy- Ooma- Prophix- Yapstone
Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
Irwin Mitchell, Open Energi, Wellcome Trust, FirstGroup plc, Virgin Trains, Drax, QUI! Group, DNK, CreaCard, Macrosynergy, Sisley, William Hill plc, Toyota Canada, Royal British Legion, Vitol, Allianz, KKR, AIRBUS, dpd, Billabong, Mclaren Group.
Find out what your peers are saying about Darktrace, Vectra AI, TrendAI and others in Network Detection and Response (NDR). Updated: February 2026.
885,728 professionals have used our research since 2012.