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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

"If I could only keep one of my security solutions, it would be Check Point."
"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."
"It protects against specific known exploits but also, with SandBlast integration, it is able to protect against unknown or zero-day attacks at the perimeter level."
"The most valuable feature is that it protects us against hundreds of different attack vectors, like ransomware. The protection is always being triggered. People try to access websites that are categorized as malware, so when the users do a DNS request for the IP of those malware websites, the IPS Blade replaces the real IP of the website that is malware with a bogus IP. The user gets an IP that doesn't exist and when he tries to access, it won't work."
"IPS signatures can be set quite granularly depending on your environment. You can filter on performance impact, severity, and confidence which makes sizing and adapting easier."
"There's less admin burden to detect these threats as Check Point IPS will do it all for you and suggest the best preventive actions to protect the network."
"The solution helps our clients because once IPS is implemented, they don't have to worry about the security of their most critical infrastructure, and they can focus on their core business rather than the IT side of things."
"Among its great features is the ability to detect outgoing malware or extraction of compromised data and stop it, thus safeguarding us by isolating the network, the equipment, or the identity of the affected users."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"The whole solution is very good, and stable."
"The tool's most valuable feature is threat detection, which is important because we have multiple layers not only in Cisco."
"Solid intrusion detection and prevention that scales easily in very large environments."
"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."
"In general, the features are all great. However, if I need to take hardware for ASA, because they need to upgrade to Firepower, we want to create rules. For that, most of the time we go to the command line. Right now Firepower is working really hard on the grid. You can apply all those rules to the grid. Even if you want to monitor the logs, for example, the activity will tell you which particular user has been blocked because of that rule. Firepower's monitoring interface is very good, because you can see each and every piece. ASA also had it, but there you needed to type the command and be under the server to see all that stuff. In Firepower you have the possibility to go directly to the firewall. The way the monitoring is displayed is also very nice. The feature I appreciate most in Firepower is actually the grid. The grid has worked very well."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
 

Cons

"There is a performance impact on the NGFW post-enabling the IPS blade/Module, which can even lead to downtime if IPS starts to monitor or block high-volume traffic."
"The hardware-based version of Check Point IPS could be more scalable. Right now, it's not scalable."
"Some challenges might exist with integration depending on the environment."
"Check Point IPS could be improved because the documentation is not intuitive."
"Sometimes it will not connect to the threat cloud."
"Improvement suggestions include more attractive dashboards, enhanced visual analytics, and automated attack path correlation in SmartEvent to improve situational awareness."
"Check Point IPS can be improved by addressing false positive and tuning overhead."
"The cost is high."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"The implementation could be a bit easier."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing needs to be improved. We have lots of low-budget clients around us. Budget constraints are always a deterrent in our market."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"Performance needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this product should be reduced."
"I give the price of the solution a five out of ten."
"Pricing for this solution is negotiable and I'm happy with our pricing."
"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."
"I think that the price of support is around $40,000 USD or $50,000 USD per year."
"It is a reasonably priced product."
"Enabling IPS does not require any additional license purchase from OEM, as it comes by default with the NGFW bundle."
"The pricing for Check Point IPS is competitive and brings good value for the money."
"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."
"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
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.