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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

"The tool's most valuable feature is its detection panel. Managing and updating policies within Check Point IPS is easy and without issues. It provides a secure network."
"This actually drove revenue growth as fewer resources had to be spent from the IT department to fight cyber threats."
"The product's initial setup is easy."
"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."
"Check Point IPS has positively impacted our organization by helping us secure our environment, leading to fewer complaints about security issues."
"Now that the Check Point Intrusion Prevention System has improved our environment, we feel that we are more protected in our network."
"The threat database and integration help me in my day-to-day work with the Check Point ThreatCloud and behavior engine, as the solution effectively detects zero-day and encrypted traffic threats."
"The autonomous threat prevention is very easy to use. The APIs and SmartConsole tool also work well."
"The URL filtering is very good and you can create a group for customized URLs."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"I would recommend this solution; it's reliable and scalable, with easy installation and integration."
"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 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)."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"The whole solution is very good, and stable."
 

Cons

"So I don't think Check Point IPS is a great solution."
"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."
"The firmware upgrade process is quite cumbersome."
"One area where Check Point IPS could be improved is the language in the support, as it is currently only available in English."
"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."
"I observed on our management that sometimes IPS does not connect to the threat cloud, we have to check and improve it. Otherwise, all of the features are good."
"Occasionally there are glitches and errors like false positives, which would be a nice area of this solution to improve upon."
"This is an expensive solution, higher than other products on the market."
"The implementation could be a bit easier."
"Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"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 utopia is to see everything from one dashboard, but sometimes that's not very possible."
"If the price is brought down then everybody will be happy."
"The main dashboard of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for this solution is negotiable and I'm happy with our pricing."
"The module has a considerable cost but you can save by purchasing a package with several modules instead of making a single purchase."
"The pricing for Check Point IPS is competitive and brings good value for the money."
"Enabling IPS does not require any additional license purchase from OEM, as it comes by default with the NGFW bundle."
"The tool's licensing model is good. The licensing costs are yearly. I rate it an eight out of ten."
"The pricing model can be more competitive."
"It is a reasonably priced product."
"My company pays for the yearly licensing of Check Point IPS. It is a very expensive tool."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"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."
"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
13%
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.
886,906 professionals have used our research since 2012.