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Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cato SASE Cloud Platform
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
WAN Optimization (3rd), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (10th), Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions (7th), WAN Edge (7th), ZTNA as a Service (9th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (5th), Remote Browser Isolation (RBI) (3rd)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cato SASE Cloud Platform is 2.9%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.0%
Cato SASE Cloud Platform2.9%
Other94.1%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2697738 - PeerSpot reviewer
Product & Services Integrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Cloud security has unified global network design and has simplified threat visibility
I think all of the functionalities, such as the secure web gateway feature, are quite good. I also believe Cato SASE Cloud Platform is one of the only solutions that has not only a software firewall solution but also a physical software solution where you can change the company's firewalls and put in sockets from Cato SASE Cloud Platform, which I see as an advantage for them. The single-pass architecture has improved user experience with Cato SASE Cloud Platform as it provides security teams in companies a platform where they can easily obtain information if there are breaches or security issues. I assess the benefit of integrating WAN optimization as good. There is ease in making rules between WAN optimization, especially when it comes to global connections because of all their points of presence that are spread over the world. I think the real-time threat protection of Cato SASE Cloud Platform is also good. Their points of presence are quite efficient, and I do not see any delays in that area.
reviewer2772102 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Logging and customizable rules have helped improve threat monitoring and detection
The logging is mainly what I consider one of the best features with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. Being able to log and store it in a file allows you to push it to a centralized repository. The logging and reporting help improve incident response. You should always be logging threats, any sort of misconfiguration, and anything that could be an issue. It's important to at least log and monitor it. The basic rules provide a good baseline in assessing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT's ability in providing real-time analytics for threat detection, but as a professional, you should look to constantly modify that baseline. They provide extensive customizability so you can define your own rules. The customizability allows it to be adaptable in protecting against diverse network threats to the constant change.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The WAN aggregation feature is the most valuable."
"One of the advantages of Cato is that they provide a static IP from their cloud and assign it to us, and this is a service that comes with an additional cost but is cheap compared to getting it from my service provider."
"The product is efficient and easy to use."
"The tool's advantage is that it provides a hassle-free solution that is easy to manage across all customers. For instance, we have a few customers with as few as 50 users, including one with a branch in Vietnam and others with thousands of users."
"The query and the SD-WAN are useful features of the solution."
"The main features we use are the firewall and secure web gateway."
"I would definitely recommend Cato Networks to other users."
"The Cato SASE Cloud Platform supports my customers' needs for connectivity and security by removing the throttling from the headquarters and putting a firewall in the cloud, instead of having to use a costly MPLS network to perform security inspection on all traffic from various branches."
"The tool's most valuable feature is threat detection, which is important because we have multiple layers not only in Cisco."
"The whole solution is very good, and stable."
"We primarily use this solution as an intrusion prevention system for external firewalls and deploy the solution on-premises."
"Solid intrusion detection and prevention that scales easily in very large environments."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"If you compare it to other vendors, the technical support from Cisco is excellent."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to be more granular. Its reports are not very in-depth."
"The solution is not cheap."
"The tool should improve its interface."
"They can't do one-to-one NAT (Network Address Translation) in AP (their access point), and that is something that Palo Alto can do."
"There isn't much to improve as we have a close relationship with them, providing information for research and development."
"The product may be complex for users with few years of experience."
"The platform lacks strong security features on the edge. All security features are on the cloud."
"The price could be better."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT can scale, but if you have too much, you could fill up your log files, which I consider when discussing scalability."
"Performance needs improvement."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"I want to see a better dashboard for the product. The dashboard can be a bit modified or enhanced."
"The cloud can be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is not an issue for us, as it is priced more competitively than some other vendors."
"You pay yearly based on the speed of your network. If you increase the speed of your network, you increase the cost for your throughput. It is by bandwidth for the most part and then licenses for VPN. There is some per-seat licensing for VPN access, but the majority of it is minimal. It is like $30 a year per client. The rest is based on how much bandwidth you'll use. You pay for that upfront for the year, and if you have to increase it, you increase it, and then they let you send more data through. There are no additional costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The product is very competitively priced, and that's compelling. They don't charge the customer based on the operational cost like other brands such as Palo Alto. Cato has its own fully-fledged cloud, with their own data centers, equipment, and so on, which is an advantage. I rate the solution five out of five for affordability."
"The pricing of this solution depends on what you need. It is based on bandwidth."
"The solution is reasonably priced since Cato Networks provides features like SASE and monitoring, which I am very happy with currently."
"Cato Networks is an expensive product, but it works out of the box, so that's the usual trade-off, make versus buy. If you decide to buy a product that doesn't require much programming, then you'd want to go for Cato Networks, which will work naturally, and immediately without any complex setup. However, the product is a little bit more expensive than the competitors. On a scale of one to five, I'd rate the pricing for Cato Networks as four."
"Cato Networks seems more expensive than Cisco Meraki."
"The solution's pricing is flexible."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"I don't know the exact amount, but most of the time when I go to a company with a proposition, they will say, "This thing that you are selling is good, but it's expensive. Why don't you propose something like FortiGate, Check Point, or Palo Alto?" Cisco device are expensive compared to other devices."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Cato Networks?
I can see that I am a consultant at a reseller and I am the architect of Cato SASE Cloud Platform designs. In the baseline, I usually recommend Cato SASE Cloud Platform for international companies ...
What advice do you have for others considering Cato Networks?
It is difficult to find types of companies I would not recommend Cato SASE Cloud Platform to, and I believe you can use Cato SASE Cloud Platform in most environments, although there could be some c...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cato Networks?
I do not find it particularly expensive, but for some companies, they may not have the budget to be at that level of security for their networks.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five. There are some other tools in the market that are more expensive than Cisco. There are no additional c...
What needs improvement with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
I have not had much experience with the community-driven rule set while utilizing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. I don't have experience with recognizing zero-day vulnerabilities, but based on my knowledg...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
Endpoint protection is the main use case. The main aspect involves specifying different rules, and when network traffic hits these rules, it will try to block the traffic or at least log the traffi...
 

Also Known As

Cato Networks
Sourcefire SNORT
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Paysafe, AdRoll, Pet Lovers Centre, Arlington Orthopedics, Humphreys & Partners Architects
CareCore, City of Biel, Dimension Data, LightEdge, Lone Star College System, National Rugby League, Port Aventura, Smart City Networks, Telecom Italia, The Department of Education in Western Australia
Find out what your peers are saying about Cato SASE Cloud Platform vs. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.