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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Darktrace comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 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 Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Darktrace
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (11th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (1st), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (1st), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (11th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (11th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th), AI Observability (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 2.9%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 10.0%, down from 14.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Darktrace10.0%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT2.9%
Other87.1%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2772102 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Logging and customizable rules have helped improve threat monitoring and detection
The logging is mainly what I consider one of the best features with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. Being able to log and store it in a file allows you to push it to a centralized repository. The logging and reporting help improve incident response. You should always be logging threats, any sort of misconfiguration, and anything that could be an issue. It's important to at least log and monitor it. The basic rules provide a good baseline in assessing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT's ability in providing real-time analytics for threat detection, but as a professional, you should look to constantly modify that baseline. They provide extensive customizability so you can define your own rules. The customizability allows it to be adaptable in protecting against diverse network threats to the constant change.
Pasan Jayarathna - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Cyberwell Solution
Monitoring has improved data loss detection and now spots abnormal internal file transfers quickly
In my understanding, the best feature Darktrace offers is the identification of copying files, which acts as a DLP, and it is a main concern for companies because users sometimes copy data outside without knowing, especially those without a technical background. When I mention the DLP-like feature and file copying detection, the alerts have been very timely, as we get an alert within a couple of minutes, which is excellent. Even if some developers are working after hours and copying files, our SOC team detects this, and most of the time they call us so we can identify the users. The alerts are quite accurate and proactive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"In general, the features are all great. However, if I need to take hardware for ASA, because they need to upgrade to Firepower, we want to create rules. For that, most of the time we go to the command line. Right now Firepower is working really hard on the grid. You can apply all those rules to the grid. Even if you want to monitor the logs, for example, the activity will tell you which particular user has been blocked because of that rule. Firepower's monitoring interface is very good, because you can see each and every piece. ASA also had it, but there you needed to type the command and be under the server to see all that stuff. In Firepower you have the possibility to go directly to the firewall. The way the monitoring is displayed is also very nice. The feature I appreciate most in Firepower is actually the grid. The grid has worked very well."
"The most valuable feature is reliability, and this solution is better than Check Point."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"With Cisco Sourcefire SNORT, we've been able to prevent and detect intrusion in our network and actually decrease our SLA (Service Level Agreement)."
"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"The URL filtering is very good and you can create a group for customized URLs."
"This solution makes life a lot easier as there are fewer man-hours required and we no longer need too many resources to manage it."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature of Darktrace is its ability to detect and counter threats before they occur."
"It has helped the organization to detect any malware affecting the machines...The network monitoring and the email monitoring features are very valuable for us."
"We are able to detect a lot of things, actually, and see what is happening in our network."
"It is very stable and easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it does not require human intervention to eliminate a threat; it blocks everything automatically."
"The solution is outstanding from a monitoring perspective."
"t was pretty as far as the granularity of what you were getting out of it."
"It is a very simple product to use."
 

Cons

"If the price is brought down then everybody will be happy."
"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"This solution needs to be more customizable."
"The cloud can be improved."
"With the next release, I would like to see some PBR, so that you can do the configuration with the features."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT can scale, but if you have too much, you could fill up your log files, which I consider when discussing scalability."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"Updates keep coming, which is great, but I prefer a unified UI experience. The intelligence section and the incident view should be seamlessly connected in one view to avoid jumping between pages."
"It would be helpful if they could recognize incidents and simplify the customer's challenge to identify what is happening."
"The one downside is the pricing, which is quite high."
"In terms of improvements, fine-tuning is the area where we have to spend some time because it works on unsupervised machine learning. It would be good if they can improve their algorithm or technical functionality to reduce the fine-tuning effort. They can also come up with something at the endpoint level. So far, Darktrace has been a network detection response (NDR) solution. It does not offer much at the endpoint level or on user-client devices or servers. There should be more visibility at the endpoint level. It would be good to have the detection and response at the endpoint level by Darktrace. It should also have integration with an agile environment so that we can have continuous development and continuous integration in the application development environment. This is currently not there. It should also have internet-facing platform visibility, which is currently missing. They also need to improve the reporting and management dashboards. Currently, these are not so easy for a non-technical person. All these features would make Darktrace much better, and they would also be helpful in selling more solutions."
"I did not use the AI features because they should make it more user-friendly which would be a benefit. Additionally, the solution could integrate with more SIEM or SOAR tools."
"Darktrace requires numerous configurations. It would be beneficial if the configuration could be made simpler."
"Darktrace does not have any capabilities to configure. So I would like to see supervised machines and capabilities in the next version."
"It takes time to go through the interface and pick up things. If it were a more straightforward interface, then it would free up time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"I don't know the exact amount, but most of the time when I go to a company with a proposition, they will say, "This thing that you are selling is good, but it's expensive. Why don't you propose something like FortiGate, Check Point, or Palo Alto?" Cisco device are expensive compared to other devices."
"The solution is about $6,000 per quarter."
"It is inexpensive considering what it can do and the competition."
"The tool's pricing is costly."
"Prior to negotiating, Darktrace offered their appliance and service for $80,000 per year."
"The pricing is very flexible for Darktrace. Sometimes, a customer does not have the appropriate budget, but Darktrace can handle that. They offer monthly payments, so the customer can acquire the solution very easily."
"It is expensive. I don't have the price for other competitors."
"The pricing is expensive. It costs over $100,000 a year."
"This solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
I have not had much experience with the community-driven rule set while utilizing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. I don't have experience with recognizing zero-day vulnerabilities, but based on my knowledg...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
Endpoint protection is the main use case. The main aspect involves specifying different rules, and when network traffic hits these rules, it will try to block the traffic or at least log the traffi...
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing user interface that makes setup easy and seamless. CrowdStrike Falcon offers a cl...
Which is better - SentinelOne or Darktrace?
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is meant for smaller to medium-sized businesses. It is also a good option for organ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Darktrace?
Concerning pricing for the product, I would say it is somewhat expensive.
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CareCore, City of Biel, Dimension Data, LightEdge, Lone Star College System, National Rugby League, Port Aventura, Smart City Networks, Telecom Italia, The Department of Education in Western Australia
Irwin Mitchell, Open Energi, Wellcome Trust, FirstGroup plc, Virgin Trains, Drax, QUI! Group, DNK, CreaCard, Macrosynergy, Sisley, William Hill plc, Toyota Canada, Royal British Legion, Vitol, Allianz, KKR, AIRBUS, dpd, Billabong, Mclaren Group.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Darktrace and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.