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Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) vs Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System 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 IPS (NGIPS)
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Hillstone S-Series Network ...
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
22nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
1
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 Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is 3.3%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System is 1.4%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS)3.3%
Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System1.4%
Other95.3%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer373227 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Marketing strengths shine but regaining user trust needs significant effort
There are numerous things that could be improved about Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) to get it back on track. Sollution for small branches: when we have to connect a lot very small branches (or sometimes only an ATM) we need something small, with LTE and with reasonable price. Cisco response is SDWAN but it is not always the case. Recently Cisco released some small firewalls but I have not tried them yet. Central management with FMC is a very good idea, but sometimes local management or monitoring is helpfull. With Cisco You have to decide: central or local. You cannot have both. Regarding usability, when you commit configuration on Cisco, it sometimes takes very long. Commits also take some time for the competition, but Cisco is definitely lagging behind the rest in this respect. Last but not least, for me as a professional is lack of CLI. With CLI, I can configure every firewall on the market except Cisco. CLI is very important in professional working, and IMHO it was an unwise decision by Cisco to remove it. Graphical interfaces are very nice, but when you've got thousands of objects in a big installation and have to configure many things, CLI is a much faster way to do it.
reviewer1080873 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Complements any firewall
The core processors are there and it's able to generate reports for that. It also complements any kind of firewall. For example, if an end user is using Palo Alto as a firewall, they'd need another layer of firewall like the S-Series that will protect internal servers. It's something that complements any firewall in the market.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Cisco NGIPS is the centralized user interface. You have the ability to quickly push out configurations across your environment using the Cisco UI. It's a powerful capability of that solution."
"I've found the performance and stability to be the most valuable features of Cisco NGIPS. It is scalable as well."
"Cisco Firepower is a good investment because one product can cover such a large part of the NIST security framework."
"Among all the different solutions I have worked with, such as Palo Alto many other firewalls, Cisco has the support, documentation, and design, and the documentation is widely available and it can help you a lot with implementation, making the implementation much easier."
"Good IPS and VirtualBox features."
"This solution has helped improve productivity and detect attacks before they happen."
"Cisco NGIPS is working well overall with our current needs."
"Technical support is quite good. With firewalls, the last cases I had with Cisco were professionally handled quite quickly and it was great."
"Setup is straightforward with the same reliability and scalability as the firewall series."
"Setup is straightforward with the same reliability and scalability as the firewall series."
 

Cons

"Better integration with other products, such as a SIEM tool, would provide better peer visibility about your security posture."
"We don't like its licensing model. It has separate licensing for all the features. For instance, to get URL filtering, you need to buy another license. Every feature set seems to require another license. Unless you purchase them all upfront, you find some surprises and realize that you can't do that because you need another license. Its logging isn't quite as good as it used to be in our previous solution. We used to have Cisco ASA, and we could view the logs a lot easier than NGIPS (also known as Firepower). We saw real-time logging, but we don't see that as much in Firepower."
"The price of Cisco NGIPS could improve."
"Customer service is lacking, and I would rate it as three out of ten."
"It has room for improvement when it comes to integrating machine learning and AI into it where even if you don't have a baseline that is of length for anomaly detection, it could do more like an AI style machine learning. It learns on its own."
"Cisco Firepower was unusable for five years. Some people installed it and had many bad experiences with it, so they decided to buy something else."
"The SSL decrypt could be improved, but it's normal. All the devices in our platform need a lot of memory or CPU to do the SSL decrypt. This is an issue to improve in all platforms, not only in Cisco."
"The user interface needs some improvement, it is a little rudimentary and not very intuitive."
"Lack of tools to help educate end users"
"Lack of tools to help educate end users"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a very affordable product."
"In our company, we know that the price of Cisco products is high, especially for its switches, routers and IOS. The price of Cisco products may be twice its original price if you plan to extend some of its features."
"There is a license required to use Cisco NGIPS and it can be a one or three-year license."
"Pricing depends on negotiation with the vendor, although I can say that it is moderate."
"We buy the licensing on a yearly basis, when we renew our contract. It is around $14,000."
"It could be less expensive."
"The pricing could be improved. Our customers have a yearly license."
"When it comes to pricing you pay for a permanent licensing structure. One, three, and five-year options. There are no extra costs."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise27
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco NGIPS?
I would rate the price for Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) as high.
What needs improvement with Cisco NGIPS?
I am aware that we are not measuring some metrics or tracking access through Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS). In my opinion, Cisco could improve the Web GUI for Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS).
What is your primary use case for Cisco NGIPS?
Our main use case for Cisco Secure IPS (NGIPS) is in-line traffic control, and we are using IPS in an in-line mode.
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Also Known As

Sourcefire NGIPS, Firepower NGIPS
Hillstone S-Series NIPS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Electric Power, Huntington Bank, Keycorp, Nationwide, Transunion, Marriott, Inova Health, Ford, Thomson Reuters, Dow Chemical, Equifax, Chevron, Walmart, Coca Cola
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