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Check Point IPS vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

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

Check Point IPS
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
14th
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 April 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Check Point IPS is 3.7%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.1%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Check Point IPS3.7%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.1%
Other93.2%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

GR
Support at a security firm with 51-200 employees
Real-Time Blocking Improves Response and Reduces Manual Logs
The best feature in my experience with Check Point IPS is the real-time prevention because it uses thousands of preventive protections based on both known exploit signatures and behavioral analysis to detect and block threats before they reach vulnerable systems. I find the behavioral analysis feature of Check Point IPS to be a most valuable feature because it can detect sophisticated threats that do not match known signatures. For example, when I need to view anomaly detections, instead of relying solely on known attack patterns, Check Point IPS monitors network traffic for unusual behavior such as unexpected protocol use, abnormal data flows, or suspicious command sequences. Check Point IPS impacts my organization positively because it has had a strong positive impact by strengthening our network defense, reducing manual work, and improving our incident response times.
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

"Once we installed our Check Point firewall and activated and configured the various software blades and services, we successfully locked down our network with a near 100% success rate in preventing security threats."
"The best feature in my experience with Check Point IPS is the real-time prevention because it uses thousands of preventive protections based on both known exploit signatures and behavioral analysis to detect and block threats before they reach vulnerable systems."
"Check Point IPS manages risk categories very well and accordingly helps us protect each of our devices in real-time."
"The solution's IPS functionality and firewall functionality are the solution's most valuable features."
"Check Point IPS is very easy to configure. It's part of Check Point's blade architecture, where firewall, VPN, and IPS configurations are identical, making the learning curve minimal. The feature can be enabled with a straightforward process, allowing default or customized configurations."
"The best features that Check Point IPS offers are its AI features and built-in AI; it automatically gets upgraded on the threat signatures regularly from Check Point Cloud, so whenever any zero-day attack is detected, it downloads that signature into the firewall and prevents that threat."
"This is a very stable product."
"Now we have a state-of-the-art, true, and efficient Next-Generation firewall, and the IPS blade is the heart of it."
"Scalability is something that Cisco has always cared about."
"With Cisco Sourcefire SNORT, we've been able to prevent and detect intrusion in our network and actually decrease our SLA (Service Level Agreement)."
"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"It has a huge rate of protection, a low level of positives, is easy to deploy and implement, has an incredible price rate compared to similar solutions, and has a good support channel and technical assistance."
"The whole solution is very good, and stable."
"If you compare it to other vendors, the technical support from Cisco is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
 

Cons

"Threat Prevention policies are not very easily manageable as there are several profiles/policies/etc. Therefore, there are several ways to add exceptions and check the configuration."
"This is an expensive solution, higher than other products on the market."
"The only thing they could maybe improve is that we notice right away that the performance decreases when we enable the IPS, especially beyond the CPU and memory usage. If you want to enable the IPS and you have a lot of traffic, it can have an impact. The performance could be improved."
"There are a lot of false positives. I would like to see integration with some kind of network detection and response in order to make some automation on IPS configuration."
"The pain point that I have with this solution is contacting technical support."
"Check Point IPS could be improved through adaptive policy tuning because its policies often require manual tuning to balance prevention protection and performance."
"Improvements could include more attractive dashboards, visual analytics, and automated attack path correlation in SmartEvent to enhance situational awareness and attack identification."
"Check Point IPS' main problem is it is mostly software based. The performance is dependent on the CPU power, and the limited number of patterns."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"There are some bugs in this solution and troubleshooting them is complicated."
"I want to see a better dashboard for the product. The dashboard can be a bit modified or enhanced."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that. Whenever I go to the technical community with an issue, they will usually say that it is not there yet, but the technical team are working on it. The issues are not insolvable. I think they should just keep working on the product to make sure that the product can become very stable. The technical support is great. I appreciate that. We have a lot of communities supporting Firepower now, so you can find help for whatever issue you have."
"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company pays for the yearly licensing of Check Point IPS. It is a very expensive tool."
"The module has a considerable cost but you can save by purchasing a package with several modules instead of making a single purchase."
"It is a reasonably priced product."
"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is very cheap and ten means it is very expensive. The product is expensive."
"You can pay for Check Point IPS yearly, or you can go with a three-year license. There's no extra cost apart from the standard licensing fee."
"Pricing for this solution is negotiable and I'm happy with our pricing."
"The pricing for Check Point IPS is competitive and brings good value for the money."
"The price of this product should be reduced."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
10%
Security Firm
6%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Check Point IPS?
The most valuable feature of the solution is called tunneling. Tunneling is one of the major security features that hackers cannot penetrate through.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Check Point IPS?
I have saved around two or three hours a week since I started using Check Point IPS. My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Check Point IPS is great, and I have no problem with t...
What needs improvement with Check Point IPS?
Check Point IPS is working well for our organization. In the future, more automated and more AI-based intelligence could be fed into Check Point IPS, and that would be helpful for us.
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

Check Point Intrusion Prevention System
Sourcefire SNORT
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Morton Salt, Medical Advocacy and Outreach, BH Telecom, Lightbeam Health Solutions, X by Orange, Cadence, Nihondentsu, Datastream Connexion, Good Sam, Omnyway, FIASA, Pacific Life, Banco del Pacifico, Control Southern, Xero, Centrify
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 Check Point IPS vs. Cisco Sourcefire SNORT and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
889,855 professionals have used our research since 2012.