Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs ExtraHop Reveal(x) comparison

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) provides intrusion prevention, malware detection, and DDoS protection with modularity, third-party integration, and cloud capabilities, focusing on flexibility, automation, and real-time threat detection, while offering centralized management and ease of upgrading.

Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is designed to support network security through an open platform, delivering features such as anomaly detection and security intelligence. Users benefit from robust technical support, making it a reliable choice for enterprises seeking to protect their network infrastructures. However, improvements are needed in user-friendliness, interface complexity, and integration with third-party tools. There is a demand for better reporting, sandboxing capabilities, and enhanced AI-driven threat detection and response times, especially for zero-day attacks. Pricing remains a concern due to high costs and licensing complexity.

• Intrusion Prevention: Detect and block malicious activities across networks to maintain security.
• Malware Detection: Identify and mitigate malicious software in real time.
• DDoS Protection: Safeguard against distributed denial-of-service attacks that can disrupt operations.
• Integration: Seamlessly connect with third-party tools for enhanced functionality.
• Cloud Capabilities: Use cloud-based resources for scalable and flexible security solutions.
• Real-Time Threat Detection: Identify potential threats instantly to prevent exploitation.

• Cost Efficiency: Centralized management and hardware-free upgrading help reduce expenses.
• Flexibility: Modular design and open platform ensure adaptability to changing needs.
• Support: Access to expert technical assistance ensures smooth operations.
• Scalability: Cloud deployment options offer enhanced scalability for growing demands.

Businesses deploy Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) in both on-premises and cloud environments, addressing needs like compliance audits and integration with platforms such as Cisco Talos and Umbrella. Its implementation strengthens perimeter security, enhances cybersecurity in enterprise and banking sectors, and ensures effective threat management for network defense.

ExtraHop Reveal(x) is a highly effective network traffic analysis (NTA) solution that leverages a cloud-native architecture to empower organizations to overcome a world filled with increasingly sophisticated threats. It identifies 25% more threats than its competitors. Additionally, organizations that employ Reveal(x) say they resolve issues 77% percent faster than they would if they were using other similar solutions.

ExtraHop Reveal(x) Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy ExtraHop Reveal(x) include:

• Total network visibility. Reveal(x) gives users the ability to view every component of their network and devices connected to it in real time. It can automatically recognize and classify the devices that are communicating across an organization’s network. These devices are scanned by powerful decryption software that reveals hidden threats and the details of critical transactions without compromising privacy or compliance rules. Organizations are given full East-West visibility across both physical data centers and cloud environments. Threats that are on the periphery are brought to the attention of the administrators tasked with watching out for them.

• Identify threats in real time. Reveal(x) extracts more than 5,000 features from the L2-L7 security layers at any given time, feeds them into its machine learning engine, and presents them to its rule-based detection feature. These features make it possible for the solution to identify the most severe threats. Users can conduct a threat triage and address the threats that their system detects in the order of severity that these threats represent.

• Ease of use. Users of Reveal(x) can easily make full use of its event remediation features without expending long periods of time learning them. Its workflows are designed so that administrators can go from a security event to the cause of the event in only a couple of clicks. What would normally take hours can be completed in moments.

ExtraHop Reveal(x) Features

• Integration suite. Reveal(x) enables users to utilize a robust suite of integrations. If users feel they are missing important capabilities, they can bolster their security feature toolbox with those offered by third-party solutions. Phantom, Splunk, and Palo Alto are three examples of solutions that Reveal(x) enables users to connect to in order to fill in a gap in their security capabilities.

• Automated inventory. Reveal(x) automatically creates a detailed inventory of all of the devices that it discovers and classifies. This keeps an always up-to-date record of all of the devices that are communicating in a given network.
  
  
• Machine learning. Reveal(x)’s real-time application analytics is driven by a machine learning engine. It detects anomalies in an organization’s network traffic, thus enabling users to keep ahead of any and all threats while reducing the number of false positives that administrators have to sort through.

Reviews from Real Users

ExtraHop Reveal(x) is a solution that stands out when compared to many other similar solutions. Two major advantages that it offers are its versatility and its ability to quickly identify the root cause of an application’s issues.

John B., the senior monitoring engineer at a financial services firm, says, “It's useful for different teams in our organization. The cybersecurity team uses it because it has got great analytics for anomaly detection, malware detection, and ransomware. It's used by the networking people because it's great to be able to get the three-way handshake between systems to see how your network is doing. The microservices for DNS use it because they like to be able to see how their DNS services are operating and how many DNS requests are being rejected, denied, or dropped. Application people love it because it fully decrypts their traffic.

Henry S., a systems engineer at LifePoint Health, writes, "When there are performance issues with an HTTP app, ExtraHop enables us to identify the causes within a few minutes. We can see what transactions are being impacted by something that may be happening within the server environment."