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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
72
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 March 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Check Point IPS is 4.1%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.1%, up from 2.2% 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 IPS4.1%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.1%
Other92.8%
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

"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."
"I would rate this solution a 9 out of 10."
"The reports are well written so that you can understand what type of attack has occurred, the originating IP address, and other details."
"If I could only keep one of my security solutions, it would be Check Point."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The autonomous threat prevention is very easy to use. The APIs and SmartConsole tool also work well."
"The Check Point IPS feature I find the most valuable is the firewall. It is great and easy to work with."
"Check Point IPS's cloud threat intelligence is outstanding."
"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"It has a huge rate of protection. It's has a low level of positives and a huge rate of threat protection. It's easy to deploy and easy to implement. It has an incredible price rate compared to similar solutions."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"We primarily use this solution as an intrusion prevention system for external firewalls and deploy the solution on-premises."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
"With Cisco Sourcefire SNORT, we've been able to prevent and detect intrusion in our network and actually decrease our SLA (Service Level Agreement)."
 

Cons

"The price has room for improvement."
"I would like the product to provide us with intelligence to understand what we really have in our environment."
"Having additional reports available would be helpful."
"In my opinion, the Check Point software engineers should work on the performance of the blade - when it is activated with the big number of the protections in place, the monitoring shows us the significant increase in the CPU utilization for the gateway appliances - up to 30 percents, even so, we are cherry-picking only the profiles that we really needed."
"Signature tuning should be more user-friendly in the tool because, as per my experience, signature tuning is tough in Check Point IPS."
"In my opinion, the Check Point software engineers should works on the performance of the blade - when it is activated with the big number of the protections in place, the monitoring shows us the significant increase in the CPU utilization for the gateway appliances - up to 30 percents, even so we are cherry-picking only the profiles that we really needed."
"Out of the box, the number of built-in reporting and dashboards related to the IPS logs and events has room for improvement."
"Pricing can be reduced for the solution."
"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives."
"While the alerts they offer are good, it could improve it in the sense that they should be more detailed to make the alerts more useful to us in general. Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives. Due to the fact that the alerts aren't detailed, we have to go dig around to see why is it being blocked. The solution would be infinitely better if there was just a bit more detail in the alert information and logging we receive."
"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."
"The initial setup is a little difficult compared to other products in the market. It depends on the environment. If we are doing any migration, it might take months in a brown-field environment."
"The cloud can be improved."
"This solution needs to be more customizable."
"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The module has a considerable cost but you can save by purchasing a package with several modules instead of making a single purchase."
"I give the price of the solution a five out of ten."
"The pricing for Check Point IPS is competitive and brings good value for the money."
"Pricing for this solution is negotiable and I'm happy with our pricing."
"The pricing model can be more competitive."
"I think that the price of support is around $40,000 USD or $50,000 USD per year."
"There is a license needed to use the Check Point IPS which is not expensive. However, the Check Point IPS device is expensive."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"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."
"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
Outsourcing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Security Firm
7%
University
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

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 do you like most about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet.
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...
 

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: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.