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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 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 Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Palo Alto Networks Advanced...
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is 4.5%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention4.5%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.0%
Other92.5%
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.
Partha Dash - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Network Tech Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Advanced protection enables us to confidently secure against evolving threats
Palo Alto Networks can improve Advanced Threat Prevention by catering to the growing adoption of AI and agentic tooling. The Threat Protection modules should have the necessary intelligence to protect against those types of threats, as AI will be there to do a human job; this is an evolving area. From an Advanced Threat Protection perspective, the technology associated with Palo Alto Networks, such as their sandboxing environment, is quite good. However, Palo Alto needs to focus on how to bring that technology to end users and how easy it is to use, especially in a hybrid environment where users work from various locations. While Palo Alto excels in certain setups, they need to improve the user experience in distributed working conditions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"I would recommend this solution; it's reliable and scalable, with easy installation and integration."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"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 most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."
"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."
"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."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."
"We are currently using the URL filtering feature, which is the most popular."
"The most valuable feature is its use of machine learning to detect potentially unknown threats."
"The sandboxing tools offer great prevention for cloud feeds."
"It protects us from cyber attacks."
"For those who want a next-gen firewall that's easy to configure and easy to operate, I think you should go for Palo Alto."
"Everything has been okay with the solution. We are using all of the features."
"One of the most valuable features is the anti-malware protection."
"Edge protection is a valuable feature."
 

Cons

"The utopia is to see everything from one dashboard, but sometimes that's not very possible."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"The main dashboard of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT could improve."
"This is a good solution, but some others may have some advantages."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"A lot of Cisco equipment is very good, but in judging the model of this solution that we have, I feel that it is the worst."
"While the alerts they offer are good, it could improve it in the sense that they should be more detailed to make the alerts more useful to us in general. Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives. Due to the fact that the alerts aren't detailed, we have to go dig around to see why is it being blocked. The solution would be infinitely better if there was just a bit more detail in the alert information and logging we receive."
"The organization mail security solutions could be improved. There is no mail security solution available."
"The technology firewall anomaly network could stand improvement."
"The installation was complicated."
"Palo Alto's maintenance needs to be improved."
"Some bugs, which will be rectified by Palo Alto in the next update."
"It's not so easy to set up a test environment, because it's not so easy to get the test license. The vendor only gives you 90 days for a test license; it's a tough license to get."
"While Palo Alto excels in certain setups, they need to improve the user experience in distributed working conditions."
"The application’s pricing and dashboard need improvement. It could be user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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 price of the solution is higher than others on the market. A price reduction would be beneficial if it does not impact their database quality."
"The pricing has improved with the newer generation of their Firewalls, but the price could always be lower."
"It is an expensive solution and I would like to see a drop in price."
"The pricing and the licensing are pretty competitive at this stage. As a reseller, I would like to see the price come down a little bit so I can compete better against other firewalls because we do that all the time."
"Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is quite competitive, offering extensive threat detection and prevention capabilities, though it is priced higher than some alternatives."
"It's not too expensive."
"The product’s pricing is expensive for small companies."
"If you want to have all of the good features then you have to pay extra for licensing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Performing Arts
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
 

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 tools in the market that are more expensive than Cisco. There are no additional c...
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...
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would prefer Arbor.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention?
Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention requires an add-on license and is considered expensive compared to competitors like Cisco AMP and FortiGate ( /products/fortinet-fortigate-reviews ) fi...
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention?
Palo Alto Networks can improve Advanced Threat Prevention by catering to the growing adoption of AI and agentic tooling. The Threat Protection modules should have the necessary intelligence to prot...
 

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
University of Arkansas, JBG SMITH, SkiStar AB, TRI-AD, Temple University, Telkom Indonesia
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.