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Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Versa Director comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Cisco Secure Network Analytics
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
32nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (4th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (6th), Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
Versa Director
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
89th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is 0.9%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Versa Director is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Secure Network Analytics0.9%
Versa Director0.4%
Other98.7%
Network Monitoring Software
 

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.
reviewer2146131 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oracle Apps Functional Consultant at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
A cost-effective solution to monitor customer networks
We are not getting any issues with the integrations. Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management. People must rely on and utilize it to enhance anything they want to increase, as it helps minimize the product. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Stealthwatch increased our threat detection rate a little bit, as well as our incident response time."
"From what I understand, you can encrypt and unencrypt traffic moving in transit. This is one of the features that we liked about it."
"The most valuable feature is NetFlow. The beginning of any security investigation starts with NetFlow data."
"AI provides suggested common lines and protection features that help safeguard networks from various threats or unwanted situations."
"It has improved my organization's network visibility from zero because before we had installed this solution, we weren't doing anything to protect us from threats."
"I believe this solution has saved our organization a lot of time, money, and administrative work."
"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."
"Another notable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is its Layer 7 visibility, which allows us to monitor and analyze network communications at the application layer."
"Versa Director has easier customer reports, utilization monitoring, graphic shaping monitoring, configuration, template shaping, and deduplication compared to Fortinet and Cisco."
"Versa Director is a beneficial product for the environment my company has."
"Versa Director's best feature is the ease of configuration and customer and vendor management."
"Versa Director is the fastest engineering tool and is ideal for use without product management."
"The most valuable feature of Versa Director is analytics."
"I think the most valuable functionality is some of the policy pieces that are quite useful."
 

Cons

"Cisco Stealthwatch is scalable with money. It's expensive."
"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."
"The licensing costs are outrageous, but Stealthwatch has a good time to value."
"The reporting of day-to-day metrics still has room for improvement."
"We determined that Stealthwatch wouldn't provide the machine learning model that we required."
"The overall visibility into the actual device itself would be helpful. I don't just want support-specific data, but also to be able to see information such as CPU and other internal components or usage of the devices."
"Complexity on integration is not so straightforward and you really need an expert to help build it out."
"It's too complicated to install, when starting out."
"I think the one area that could be improved is that there are a lot of features; that is also an advantage but it makes things a little difficult, so I'd like to see some simplification so that there is less bloat."
"Versa Director's on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software are not integrated, so you have to buy a separate subscription for the SSL VPN."
"It requires some simplification."
"What needs improvement in Versa Director is maturity because, from an operating point of view, it's not mature enough. You'll still need to do a lot of research on Versa Director, so if it could mature faster, that would be very good."
"Versa could be more AI-oriented."
"Versa Director's deployment process is not the best."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our fees are approximately $3,000 USD."
"Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside>in traffic."
"We pay for support costs on a yearly basis."
"There are additional licenses needed for the number of so-called network flows. It's hard to plan the number of flows you need in the network, this is a problem. The price of the Cisco Stealthwatch is relatively inexpensive"
"Licensing is on a yearly basis."
"NetFlow is very expensive."
"The tool is not cheaply priced."
"The pricing for this solution is good."
"Having to buy separate licenses for the on-prem SD-WAN hardware and SSL VPN software makes Versa Director very costly compared to other solutions like Fortinet and Cisco."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise52
No data available
 

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?
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Stealthwatch?
My main use case for Cisco Secure Network Analytics has been network visibility and anomaly-based threat detection within the enterprise environment. In security operations and VAPT-related activit...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
Versa Networks Director
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Versa Director and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.