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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
68
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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 Check Point IPS is 3.3%, down from 3.9% 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 (%)
Check Point IPS3.3%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.0%
Other93.7%
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

"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"User-friendly and easy to implement."
"There's an automatic update after every 2 hours which makes sure that the database is up to date and providing zero-day vulnerability protection."
"Check Point IPS manages risk categories very well and accordingly helps us protect each of our devices in real-time."
"The possibility of customizing the rules is great."
"Check Point is one of the best security brands worldwide."
"I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10."
"What I like best about Check Point IPS is that it can prevent attacks. I also like that it has a log feature."
"There are a lot of features that I really appreciate with Firepower, which is why I advise most of my customers to go with Firepower."
"The most valuable feature is reliability, and this solution is better than Check Point."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"It is quite an intelligent product."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."
"I would recommend this solution; it's reliable and scalable, with easy installation and integration."
"Scalability is something that Cisco has always cared about."
 

Cons

"For a smaller organization or smaller environment, the cost for Check Point IPS is a little bit high, so that can be made more budgetary for small organizations."
"At least 60% of all the alarms generated by the IPS are false positives or something that's not important to look at, and this generates a significant workload for my team."
"The hardware-based version of Check Point IPS could be more scalable. Right now, it's not scalable."
"The solution needs enhanced reporting. The reporting on Cisco Stealthwatch and Darktrace is much bigger. The visibility that they grant for the filtering capabilities over large infrastructures are far superior."
"The scalability of Check Point IPS is on point, while the customer support is sometimes a bit slow."
"It would be good to update the public documentation of Check Point so that we can generate improvements and best practices based on the documentation."
"Enhancements are necessary for the proficiency of notifications in the event of a Social Security incident, whether through email or alternative channels such as SMS."
"Occasionally there are glitches and errors like false positives, which would be a nice area of this solution to improve upon."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"The cloud can be improved."
"The utopia is to see everything from one dashboard, but sometimes that's not very possible."
"A lot of Cisco equipment is very good, but in judging the model of this solution that we have, I feel that it is the worst."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT can scale, but if you have too much, you could fill up your log files, which I consider when discussing scalability."
"I want to see a better dashboard for the product. The dashboard can be a bit modified or enhanced."
"This is a good solution, but some others may have some advantages."
"The pricing needs to be improved. We have lots of low-budget clients around us. Budget constraints are always a deterrent in our market."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think that the price of support is around $40,000 USD or $50,000 USD per year."
"The pricing for Check Point IPS is competitive and brings good value for the money."
"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."
"The pricing model can be more competitive."
"My company pays for the yearly licensing of Check Point IPS. It is a very expensive tool."
"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."
"Enabling IPS does not require any additional license purchase from OEM, as it comes by default with the NGFW bundle."
"The module has a considerable cost but you can save by purchasing a package with several modules instead of making a single purchase."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
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 Business51
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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 primary use case for Check Point IPS?
Check Point IPS is used as a security feature to prevent zero-day attacks and the execution of malicious files in our network. Check Point IPS is an Intrusion Prevention System that prevents malici...
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: August 2026.
908,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.