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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Darktrace vs Trellix 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 10.3%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Trellix Intrusion Prevention System is 3.0%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Darktrace10.3%
Trellix Intrusion Prevention System3.0%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.0%
Other83.7%
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.
BS
Large account Manager at Softcell Technologies Limited
Has offered reliable threat protection and detailed network insights but could expand features beyond existing capabilities
The best features of Trellix Intrusion Prevention System include advanced ATP (Advanced Threat Protection), which uses signatures, behavior analysis, and machine learning to stop zero-day exploits and malware advanced persistent threats (APTs). They track and collect data from APTs, which allows them to track malicious files entering the environment. The system offers inline prevention and real-time automatic blocking of malicious packets before they reach the network. It integrates with the Trellix ecosystem and provides application visibility and control. The solution provides deep insight into network traffic, applications, and protocols for better information. All packets coming through the application are analyzed and reported. They share intelligence updates regularly to protect from different malicious files and sector-specific threats. It supports both on-premise and cloud environments.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The whole solution is very good, and stable."
"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."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"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."
"Users have access to intelligent security automation as one of the features, which can easily automate your event impact assessment so your IPS policy tuning can be done as well as your network behavior analysis, and you can do real-time contextual awareness with correlation of events created on your applications, user devices, operating systems, or vulnerabilities, with all of this real-time data captured including your apps and port scans."
"The tool's most valuable feature is threat detection, which is important because we have multiple layers not only in Cisco."
"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."
"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 that it gives us visibility of rogue traffic that is on the network."
"We're very pleased with Darktrace so it is a bit difficult to pinpoint areas for improvement."
"The product can scale."
"Based on our experience with DarkTrace, I would advise that if they are comparing prices, ROI and everything, I think Darktrace is better than FireEye."
"DT console and alerting system allow getting detailed information about the behavior of users and malicious external or internal threats."
"The product is extremely stable and mature."
"In terms of features, the data or information they collect and unsupervised machine learning are very valuable. Its unsupervised machine learning has reduced our team's effort. Both Darktrace and Vectra work on unsupervised machine learning that learns the behavior or develops a profile on its own, which allows our security team to do some other tasks rather than spending time on Darktrace or Vectra. Because of unsupervised machine learning, its detection capability is quite good. Along with that, if we utilize the integration feature properly, the automated incident response capability of Darktrace is quite useful."
"Darktrace is extremely stable."
"The threat intelligence updates are very accurate."
"The solution is very stable, reliable, and free of bugs or glitches, and it does not crash or freeze."
"McAfee NSP is much more stable than Cisco."
"The best feature of the Trellix Intrusion Prevention System is the rules that Trellix provides, I think that's the best value from IPS."
"There's a good dashboard you can drill down into. It helps you easily locate intrusions and the source of attacks."
"It has a lot of functions, such as firewall. We are administrators, and we create some rules to protect our network. We also monitor the traffic in and out and have disk encryption on-premises. When we detect malware, we scan for the virus on the PC. We can then delete or block the malware."
"We feel safer now."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
 

Cons

"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"The main dashboard of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve."
"The initial setup is a little difficult compared to other products in the market. It depends on the environment. If we are doing any migration, it might take months in a brown-field environment."
"I did not experience any pain points that required improvement. Maybe a couple of false-positives, but that's about it."
"The pricing needs to be improved. We have lots of low-budget clients around us. Budget constraints are always a deterrent in our market."
"The implementation could be a bit easier."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"We are unhappy with technical support for this solution, and it is not as professional as what we typically expect from Cisco."
"Its documentation is not up to the mark. At times, I have a lot of trouble finding a solution. Even when I posted questions on the community chats, it took a lot of time for me to get answers. That's something that can be improved. Darktrace can focus on creating a more interactive community. If there are more people from Darktrace to focus on community chats, it would be better."
"The level of tracking within the network from the transmission level up to the machine level can use improvement."
"In terms of improvements, fine-tuning is the area where we have to spend some time because it works on unsupervised machine learning."
"They just need to make it a little bit more accurate as far as their alerts are concerned. It does generate some false positives that you have to tune. You have to do a lot of tuning when you first get it because of the false positives, but once it is all tuned up and ready to go, it will do its thing from there."
"Upper management wasn't sold on the value proposition."
"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."
"In an upcoming release, there could be more customizable playbooks or a library of playbooks to choose from."
"It would be useful if there was a way to check to see if there are certain devices that are not in sync with the solution. I'm not sure if this is an option or not."
"We would like to have a simpler version. Some settings and functions on the McAfee console are complex and complicated. I want the management console to be simpler."
"There are limited resources for configuration guidance."
"The Network Security Managers could be more stable, agile, and work faster. When it comes to instability, there is room for improvement."
"Currently, the settings and confirmations on the McAfee console are complex and complicated for our branches."
"Some of the documentation is not as straightforward as it could be. It's much too general - especially in areas related to updates."
"The area of concern where the tool needs improvement is how the product prompts users at a network level that helps prevent any wireless network attacks through alerts and notifications."
"Trellix Intrusion Prevention System does not provide virtual patching."
"The technical support must be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"In the ballpark, we're talking about $30K, $50K, and up. It can even be as much as $50K or $100K."
"It is inexpensive considering what it can do and the competition."
"It is a very expensive product."
"It is expensive."
"Our customers feel that the price of Darktrace is quite high compared to other solutions."
"The cost of the solution is expensive for smaller businesses. They will not be able to afford it or might not need this type of security solution."
"The tool's pricing is costly."
"The solution is about $6,000 per quarter."
"The tool is competitively priced."
"I rate the product’s pricing an eight out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five. There are some other t...
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 hav...
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 traff...
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing u...
Which is better - SentinelOne or Darktrace?
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Darktrace?
Concerning pricing for the product, I would say it is somewhat expensive.
What needs improvement with McAfee Network Security Platform?
Trellix Intrusion Prevention System does not provide virtual patching. Patching involves updates on the OS side to ad...
What is your primary use case for McAfee Network Security Platform?
We do not use Trellix Intrusion Prevention System; rather, we sell the Trellix Intrusion Prevention System solution. ...
What advice do you have for others considering McAfee Network Security Platform?
I have experience working with other tools, specifically Trellix solutions such as DLP, EDR, and MDR, as well as with...
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT
No data available
McAfee Network Security Platform, McAfee NSP, IntruShield Network Intrusion Prevention System, IntruShield Network IPS
 

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.
Desjardins Group, HollyFrontier, Nubia, Agbar, WNS Global Services, INAIL, Universidad de Las Américas Puebla (UDLAP), Cook County, China Pacific Insurance, Bank Central Asia, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, City of Chicago, Macquarie Telecom, Sutherland Global Services, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, United Automotive Electronic Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Darktrace, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS). Updated: May 2026.
899,052 professionals have used our research since 2012.