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Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL] vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytic...
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Plixer Scrutinizer
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (53rd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

Olivier CHAMBELANT - PeerSpot reviewer
Beneficial cloud deployment
Opening a ticket with support can be difficult but once it is open the support does a good job. They want us to provide a lot of information, such as the order number and when it was bought. It takes a long time, they can improve by having a faster response time.
Ronald Jansen - PeerSpot reviewer
Reporting is extensive, flexible, and can be custom-made in just a short time
In terms of additional features I'd like to see in the next release of Plixer Scrutinizer, I can't think of any because you can do some integration with other monitoring tools that are not strong in NetFlow or don't have NetFlow at all. There are also some integration possibilities in the product, plus there are alerts, too. Plixer Scrutinizer is a pretty complete product. There was a price lift because previously the product was privately owned, and now there is some external capital in the organization, so pricing could be lower, though, for Plixer Scrutinizer, there is almost no competition at this price point.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"When it comes to scalability, there's no size limit. It varies based on licenses and requirements."
"The product helps me to see malware."
"Monitoring the traffic, making sure you have the visibility."
"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is scalable because it is on the cloud."
"The logs in Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud are very good when doing the API integration in the team. It is able to give you important information for the correlations."
"It tells you if there is any communication going to command and control servers, or if there is any traffic that violates your internal policy, or if any data hoarding is happening where data is being dumped from your machine to outside of the environment. It provides all such meaningful reports to help you understand what's happening."
"The tool's best feature is its ability to monitor network traffic. It will also inform users whether the traffic generated by a network is legitimate. The tool helps to capture and analyze the network traffic."
"We have had many requests to understand in the network which devices are connected to others. Most people don't have this information or are able to establish a map of data flow everywhere around the network. Scrutinizer can really help with this. We are using it to understand who is talking to what, how, and which protocols can help us to improve security and analyze flow."
"As a network engineer, the ability to identify what traffic on the link is consuming all the bandwidth at any given time, and provide immediate feedback to the business, is the most valuable feature."
"The solution helps to enrich the data context of our network traffic. It allows me to see what applications are most in use on a slightly historical basis, going back a day or week at tops. It allows me to tune QoS or traffic shaping around what's being used. It saves me from having to unnecessarily upgrade, if I don't need to."
"One feature I found most valuable in Plixer Scrutinizer is the very extensive reporting. Reporting is very flexible, though sometimes you need a little bit of support from Plixer Scrutinizer to create custom-made reporting in a very short time. Reporting is a very strong feature of the product."
"It's agnostic as far as what your network gear is. As long as it supports an sFlow, JFlow, NetFlow, some kind of flow monitoring, Plixer will support it very well."
"We didn't experience any bugs."
"Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features."
"The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is a bit complex in terms of deployment and configuration"
"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud could improve the graphical user interface. It could be a more user-friendly graphical user interface. so that. Not everybody's a cyber security professional, most of the customers that I deal with are not very skilled. The terms that they use in the solution are quite understandable for a normal CIO."
"The product needs to improve its user-friendliness. It is very tricky and you need to study it before using the standard functionalities."
"The initial setup of Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is complex."
"When I used to work on it, I just didn't see anything new happening for about a year and a half. Providing newer data and newer reports constantly would help. There should be more classifications and more interesting data."
"The product's price is high."
"If we migrate these things to an event or send us an email if there is any critical event, I would like to configure these things on the initial launch. Because if a system is compromised, there will be a lot of data movement from one post to another post to the outside. Then, we should also get an alert on email as well. We have since we have integrated these things. But a direct email for critical alerts should be there. So, I would like to enhance the critical event configuration."
"I wish the reporting side was easier to work with, but it does a decent job. I also wish the reporting side was a little more intuitive or they offered more reporting examples."
"The visual acuity of how it presents data can sometimes be confusing. It takes a bit for people to spin up how to look at the graphs."
"They're working on the security areas, so it can provide more insight. What they have is still pretty much IP-concentric. If they were to make it IP and URL, they'd be a little bit ahead on that."
"Data retention needs improvement. Data retention is a thing where we are looking for a better way to collect flow data for a longer time to do forensic research on security incidents. By default, data retention is quite low. We need detailed data in safe storage for a longer time, e.g., for a couple of months. An improvement would be a way to export data into a secure long-term storage."
"There was a price lift because previously the product was privately owned, and now there is some external capital in the organization, so pricing could be lower, though, for Plixer Scrutinizer, there is almost no competition at this price point."
"The solution creates a visual map of a particular location and how the network flows. You need to spend time to generate all those maps. If they could figure out a way to reduce the time needed to generate the maps, that would be great."
"There is room for improvement around the data that they have on the website about solutions... they should have more templated solutions on their website. Going out and identifying how to do RTP performance with a Cisco router, or how to do application response times in an Arrista data center deployment was where most of the work was... They should spend some more time documenting solutions and putting together white papers."
"For updating the Scrutinizer platform, when we have the actual data, it never happens in one day. Every time we have the data, we are obliged to install a new server in order to integrate the old data, and every time it has a problem. Most of the time, we were obliged to scrap all the data because we couldn't transfer it to the new server. So, it would be very good if they could improve this part."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is quite expensive."
"The price of Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is expensive."
"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is an expensive enterprise solution."
"It's about €10,000 a year for initial license and yearly maintenance costs. In addition, the hardware costs are about €10,000 once every five years."
"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."
"There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade."
"We recently bought a license upgrade, so we will integrate more exporters. We upgraded from a 25 exporter license to a 50 exporter license. Therefore, there will be more flows, and this will be an extension. I don't know when we will purchase a faster server, because the server that we have is quite new."
"I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive."
"We just renewed. The pricing is 5,000 euro per year. This is the final price. All tax (20 percent) is included."
"The licensing cost for Plixer Scrutinizer is in the middle. It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive. Its licensing model is based on how many exporters, how many devices export information to the system. Plixer Scrutinizer has different modules you could add such as the security module which would cost extra."
"Currently, the license for Plixer Scrutinizer is subscription-based and at a yearly fee. The price would depend on the amount of traffic you pull in. For example, there are several blocks from a 10K flow, a 40K flow, and a 100K flow, and based on the number of devices that you receive the flows from, that's the license, and it is not a per-interface pricing model, so that is a very strong, very competitive pricing feature of Plixer Scrutinizer. Licensing for the product is also not based on the number of storage, compared to some competing products that are priced based on the amount of storage you need, particularly based on the retention and the amount of data. Plixer Scrutinizer licensing is based on the device, and it's more in the direction of $10,000 because, with just $1,000, you don't have anything."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
38%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud?
When it comes to scalability, there's no size limit. It varies based on licenses and requirements.
What needs improvement with Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud?
There are two areas of improvement. Firstly, extend the log retrieval limit to at least three months. For example, there is a limit on the number of log messages that can be received. So, I would l...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud?
We are using Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics, also known as Cisco's WatchCloud, to monitor user activity in the cloud. Specifically, we are looking for users who are uploading or downloading data beyo...
What do you like most about Plixer Scrutinizer?
Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Plixer Scrutinizer?
I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive.
What needs improvement with Plixer Scrutinizer?
I don't have deep enough knowledge to comment on what requires improvements in Plixer Scrutinizer. In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required.
 

Also Known As

Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud, Observable Networks
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Options, Schneider Electric, Washington University in St Louis, Gotcha, Kraft Kennedy, PartnerRe, Sumologic, Veterans United, AFGE, Agraform, Artesys, Dynamic Ideas Financials, Department of Agriculture and Commerce
Oxford Networks, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, UltiSat, Wipro, West Aurora School District 129, SUNY Geneseo College, Bloomington Public Schools, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Kitsap Credit Union, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County Houston Texas, Carilion Clinic, Banner Health, IDEXX Laboratories, Phibro Animal Health Corporation, Goodwill Industries, Parmalat, Armstrong Coal Company, Flybe, James Walker
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