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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)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Check Point IPS is 5.0%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.6%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

Jeroen Devroede - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable tool that provides its users with intrusion protection functionalities
Based on what I hear from my full-time firewall administrators, the upgrade process or the maintenance of the devices for each firmware upgrade requires one to break the cluster and run a specific moment at a time, a single node concept. I hear from my admin that the firmware upgrade process is quite cumbersome. Our company has made Check Point very well aware of the cumbersome firmware upgrade process, including the other customers as well. The aforementioned details can be considered for improvement. The price of the product needs to be improved since it is an expensive solution. All the components of Check Point IPS are expensive, while licenses of the product exceed all its other expenses. If you have a data center without infrastructure, you will suffer from losses on a monthly and yearly basis due to DDoS attacks, which we know about since we have the data for ourselves. It is up to each customer to determine how long he can lose his data center, and then you count if it is possible to lose it for that amount of time, and if you don't, then pay the price for the firewall.
Jack Poon - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers ease of setup and good documentation
When it comes to the product's deployment phase, we have a lot of vendor support. We have a lot of skills here in Hong Kong. Our company doesn't find any problem deploying Cisco solutions. The solution is deployed on an on-premises version. Speaking about the time required to deploy the solution, I would say that we have quite a lot of previous experience with deploying Cisco products. We have our company's standard design document, which we need to follow. We have a standard testing procedure for all those features. We just take out some appropriate parts and then compile them into one document for an individual project. It is actually quite easy for us to do the documentation, so it just takes one or two hours, and we can do the implementation because all the materials and testing procedures are already in our company standard documents, so it is not that difficult for us.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Behavior analytics and monitoring capabilities of Check Point IPS are valuable, especially for cybersecurity purposes."
"I can generate reports for management automatically based on the threats of the last day/week/whatever is needed."
"The number of the IPS protections is amazing - after the latest update I see more than 11000 in the SmartConsole."
"I can easily monitor all of our connected devices and I get instant notification of reconnections and new connections, which removes some of the monitoring burden."
"Real-time protection has blocked most threats that could affect system operations."
"The integration of IPS with the firewall is quite efficient."
"The most valuable feature of Check Point IPS is the management of devices and policies."
"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."
"The URL filtering is very good and you can create a group for customized URLs."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"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 most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"It is quite an intelligent product."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."
 

Cons

"There is an issue with precision."
"The service that we want to see in the future is a capacity to segment the IPS services by equipment."
"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."
"Signature tuning should be more user-friendly in the tool because, as per my experience, signature tuning is tough in Check Point IPS."
"The cost is high."
"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."
"Having additional reports available would be helpful."
"Improvement suggestions include more attractive dashboards, enhanced visual analytics, and automated attack path correlation in SmartEvent to improve situational awareness."
"If the price is brought down then everybody will be happy."
"The implementation could be a bit easier."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"Performance needs improvement."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"We are unhappy with technical support for this solution, and it is not as professional as what we typically expect from Cisco."
"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

"The tool's licensing model is good. The licensing costs are yearly. I rate it an eight out of ten."
"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 give the price of the solution a five out of ten."
"The pricing model can be more competitive."
"My company pays for the yearly licensing of Check Point IPS. It is a very expensive tool."
"The pricing for Check Point IPS is competitive and brings good value for the money."
"The module has a considerable cost but you can save by purchasing a package with several modules instead of making a single purchase."
"Enabling IPS does not require any additional license purchase from OEM, as it comes by default with the NGFW bundle."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
Comparisons with Fortinet show that Check Point IPS is relatively more expensive, but we found it cheaper to retain it rather than switch.
What needs improvement with Check Point IPS?
I believe Check Point IPS can be improved by making it more proactive and predictive and fine-tuning the false positives. When I say more proactive and predictive, I believe they can improve on the...
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?
Cisco offers the Cisco DNA Center, which is a source that provides crucial information for us to monitor performance, and see whether there is any trouble. We are using Cisco DNA center, but again,...
 

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: June 2025.
859,687 professionals have used our research since 2012.