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Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Corelight Open NDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 22, 2026

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 Network Analytics
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
3rd
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (32nd), Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)
Corelight Open NDR
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
5th
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 5.8%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Corelight Open NDR is 4.7%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Detection and Response (NDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Network Analytics5.8%
Corelight Open NDR4.7%
Other89.5%
Network Detection and Response (NDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Akash Das Barman - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Trainee at DataSpace Academy
Network analytics has reduced investigation time and provides deeper visibility into lateral movement
Several features often look very promising during evaluation or implementation but end up being used only lightly in day-to-day operations. Advanced reporting and scheduled compliance reports look very attractive for audit and compliance teams at implementation time and can generate structured reports for visibility, risk posture, and traffic summaries. In practice, many teams do not rely on it heavily because SIEM tools or GRC platforms already handle reporting better. Built-in threat intelligence feeds represent another area where expectations do not always match usage. The platform includes threat intelligence-based detection and classifications. Initially, teams expect to depend on this heavily, but later SOC teams often prefer their own threat intelligence feeds or correlate intelligence inside SIEM instead. The built-in feeds are used but not as a primary detection source. Automated incident summaries and guided investigation views are designed to simplify triage by automatically grouping related activity into incidents. However, teams often move away from them due to various factors affecting adoption.
reviewer2834367 - PeerSpot reviewer
Growth And Strategy Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Network visibility has transformed how we detect nation state threats and protect critical industry
Before Corelight recently started pushing some of the agentic features, querying at times could be a little difficult, depending on your mastery of log scale. However, I think with a lot of the artificial intelligence that they are building in, it is getting a lot easier to query in the platform. I would definitely encourage them to continue down that path where anybody can hop into the platform and start running queries, whether it is a simple instruction like I want this, and an artificial intelligence process can actually build the query and do it. I think that would be super powerful. Cyber skill sets are in high demand, and there is a huge backlog in cyber talent. We cannot fill all the positions we need. The easier we can make these cyber systems for people to pick up and be effective on, I think is really key. Explainability of data is hyper important. In the past few artificial intelligence related updates we have gotten from Corelight, that has been one of the first questions our team has asked every time or that I have asked: show me what the model is doing, show me how it came to this analysis. Within Investigator platform, they are able to walk through and see exactly what data the artificial intelligence pulled from where and why it did what it did as far as making its suggestions. They have definitely built their system with artificial intelligence in mind up front, and having that openness as one of the key features of any of their artificial intelligence and machine learning processes in the platform is important. The issue with black boxes is obviously hallucinations from artificial intelligence and just not being able to trace to ground truth. When we are talking about these cyber incidents and being able to do forensics, you need to be able to pinpoint and tie everything together, and black boxes really obscure that and prevent you from doing so. Corelight has done a really good job of making sure that everything is explainable and everything is mapped when it comes to leveraging any of their artificial intelligence features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Time to value is very good for Stealthwatch."
"Most valuable features are the network maps and server and network response time."
"The network visibility feature opens up a whole new pane of glass that didn't exist before, so when you talk about being able to look into your network and understand what's there for security events, impostering, and everything that Stealthwatch can bring to the table, there's nothing else that a typical customer's going to have installed today that will give them any of that information."
"When we saw what Lancope can do, not just from a visibility perspective, but from a network and security perspective, we jumped on board."
"The most valuable feature we got out of Stealthwatch is to be able to, while troubleshooting, go deep into one of our interfaces and verify what the bandwidth is and if there's any activity there that's causing problems."
"This solution enables us to find them and shut them down, and it has reduced our incident response time because we can now narrow down where incidents are happening, so it is very helpful for our organization."
"AI provides suggested common lines and protection features that help safeguard networks from various threats or unwanted situations."
"There are already many functionalities, so I don't think there is anything to improve."
"It's easy to create additional dashboards specific to supporting specific tasks."
"Technical support seems to be good."
"It is easy to deploy and easy to handle."
"Our company has seen massive improvements in cybersecurity position for our clients."
"Corelight is easy to use."
"Corelight makes much easier the remediation of cyber attacks; instead of facing a chaotic amount of logs, Corelight provides correlated metrics that allow pivoting to find, in seconds, all the data related to an alert, detection, or asset."
"It's an easy way for us to get visibility in a client's environment."
"Corelight Open NDR has had a positive impact on my company, providing visibility as the Suricata engine can scan huge volumes of traffic, including north-south and east-west, revealing signatures and exposures I was not expecting and enabling me to catch them with Suricata alerts."
 

Cons

"Stealthwatch is still maturing in AI. It uses artificial intelligence for predictions, but AI still needs to mature. It is in a phase where you get 95% correct detection. As its AI engine learns more, it will become more accurate. This is applicable to all the devices that are using AI because they support both supervised and unsupervised machine learning. The accuracy in the case of supervised machine learning is dependent on the data you feed into the box. The accuracy in the case of unsupervised machine learning is dependent on the algorithm. The algorithm matures depending on retrospective learning, and this is how it is able to detect zero-day attacks."
"It's too complicated to install, when starting out."
"At my company, we might not be using it enough with other applications that we have that can integrate with it."
"The initial setup of this solution is complex."
"I think the interface is a little lacking. The interface seems like it just needs to be modernized. It's been the same interface now, ever since I've seen it probably four years ago."
"Cisco could improve the administration for the customers."
"I would like the search page available with Cisco Stealthwatch to be more intuitive. The previous release was better than the current one for the UI."
"Stealthwatch needs improvement when it comes to speed."
"In the next release, building a graphical user interface would be helpful."
"Machine learning could be a good improvement, but it's very costly."
"They can enhance the interface of the product. They can make it more interactive and also easier to use for feature access."
"The solution’s architecture is complex and difficult to understand. There are multiple machines and VMs."
"Before Corelight recently started pushing some of the agentic features, querying at times could be a little difficult, depending on your mastery of log scale."
"It's an expensive solution and the price could be reduced."
"Corelight hasn’t added features in a long time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing costs are outrageous."
"Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside>in traffic."
"The tool is not cheaply priced."
"The solution is expensive. It costs several hundred thousand dollars per year (depending on how many flows you are collecting)."
"NetFlow is very expensive."
"It has a subscription model. There is yearly support, and there is also three-year support. It depends on what the customers want."
"It is worth the cost."
"Today, we are part of the big Cisco ELA, and it is a la carte. We can get orders for whatever we want. At the end of the day, we have to pay for it in one big expense, but that is fine. We are okay with that."
"It's a yearly fee and depends on what you are looking for."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Stealthwatch?
Regarding cost, for the Bangladesh context, Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a little bit high-priced because we are a developing country, making it tough to manage affordable solutions. However, ...
What needs improvement with Cisco Stealthwatch?
In terms of improvements for Cisco Secure Network Analytics, from the implementation point of view, now that AI is in use, some other features need to be upgraded considering AI solutions. Proper m...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Stealthwatch?
Our customers mainly use Cisco Secure Network Analytics to get whole network visibility and easy troubleshooting to find actual problems and also to mitigate loopholes or findings immediately to pr...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Corelight?
I have a fortunate experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Corelight Open NDR, as being a principal architect, I get to sit outside of that conversation and just choose the best prod...
What needs improvement with Corelight?
Corelight Open NDR does not need any improvements or additional features in the next releases. The product is excellent at what it does, and I believe what they have done with it, taking an open-so...
What is your primary use case for Corelight?
I have been using Corelight Open NDR solution for approximately three years. I leverage the Suricata engine heavily for alerting on indicators of compromise as my main use case for this solution.
 

Also Known As

Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
Corelight Open NDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
CarrefourEdnonGrand Canyon EducationSektorCERTTietoevryVolkswagen Financial Services
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Corelight Open NDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,803 professionals have used our research since 2012.