Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention comparison

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

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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

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Palo Alto Networks Advanced...

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

7th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.5%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is 7.5%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Featured Reviews

Jack Poon

Treasury Specialist at Dah Sing Bank

Offers ease of setup and good documentation

When it comes to the product's deployment phase, we have a lot of vendor support. We have a lot of skills here in Hong Kong. Our company doesn't find any problem deploying Cisco solutions. The solution is deployed on an on-premises version. Speaking about the time required to deploy the solution, I would say that we have quite a lot of previous experience with deploying Cisco products. We have our company's standard design document, which we need to follow. We have a standard testing procedure for all those features. We just take out some appropriate parts and then compile them into one document for an individual project. It is actually quite easy for us to do the documentation, so it just takes one or two hours, and we can do the implementation because all the materials and testing procedures are already in our company standard documents, so it is not that difficult for us.

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Nasir Akbar

Presales Engineer at SAUDI PARAMOUNT COMPUTER SYSTEMS

Numerous support challenges arise but unique security features impress

In this scenario with Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention, I did not get any opportunity to work on it. The only thing I did was forward the logs to the SIEM ( /categories/security-information-and-event-management-siem ) solution.For government entities, they are not allowing configuration changes. For non-government users, there is a support portal to get the configuration file and upload it to the portal. We can identify misconfigurations and where the loop is very big, so we can get the report and establish it. In Saudi Arabia specifically, the support service needs improvement. When customers have incidents with Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention and want to open a case with the Palo Alto team, the available number in Saudi Arabia leads to a long procedure. They're not able to answer within one or two hours. This needs to be implemented. They may need to open offices in Dubai or other places for Arabic-speaking people to access TAC support.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is easy to configure and the reporting is great. It's also very user-friendly."

"Cisco technical support is unbeatable. It offers a premium service every time."

"I like most of Cisco's features, like malware detection and URL filtering."

"Solid intrusion detection and prevention that scales easily in very large environments."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically learn the traffic in our environment, and change the merit recommendations based on that."

"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."

"The solution can be integrated with some network electors like Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco ISE, and Active Directory to provide the client with authentication certificates."

"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."

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT pros

"The sandboxing tools offer great prevention for cloud feeds."

"The user interface is a bit more professional than some free products."

"Edge protection is a valuable feature."

"Most of the features of Palo Alto Threat Prevention are alright. I recommend features like content filtering, IP address, & intelligent firewalls. The reporting feature is very good."

"You can scale the product."

"It's a monster, it's got so many beautiful features. We do deal with other firewalls and we've got a better idea of what other firewalls' capabilities are, any comparison with the Palo Alto I liked the quality of service on the applications that you can control the amount of bandwidth an application is allowed to consume. The best feature is the quality of the application quality of service."

"The most valuable features are the simplicity, transparency, and overall ease of management."

"One of the most valuable features is the anti-malware protection."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention pros

Cons

"We are unhappy with technical support for this solution, and it is not as professional as what we typically expect from Cisco."

"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."

"The implementation could be a bit easier."

"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."

"If the price is brought down then everybody will be happy."

"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."

"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."

"The pricing needs to be improved. We have lots of low-budget clients around us. Budget constraints are always a deterrent in our market."

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT cons

"Mission learning techniques should continue to expand and detect unknown threats on the fly."

"Right now we are focusing on email. If Palo Alto can increase the features related to email filtering and the new malware, it would help us protect our systems."

"The solution needs to improve its local technical support services. There is no premium support offered in our market."

"Palo Alto's maintenance needs to be improved."

"The solution could benefit from improved AI analytics to predict potential attacks before they occur, similar to NDR systems."

"The organization mail security solutions could be improved. There is no mail security solution available."

"The application’s pricing and dashboard need improvement. It could be user-friendly."

"The price of licenses should be lowered to make it less costly to scale our solution."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention cons

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."

"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 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."

"The cost involves the price of the hardware, which is expensive. However, most of the Palo Alto solutions are expensive."

"Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is quite competitive, offering extensive threat detection and prevention capabilities, though it is priced higher than some alternatives."

"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."

"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."

"From one to ten, with one being the most expensive, I would rate the pricing of Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention a one out of ten. It is my understanding that Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention is the most expensive one."

"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."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?

The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet.

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?

Cisco offers the Cisco DNA Center, which is a source that provides crucial information for us to monitor performance, and see whether there is any trouble. We are using Cisco DNA center, but again,...

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 do you like most about Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention?

It is a stable product.

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...

Fortinet FortiGate IPS vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Comparisons

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Compared 18% of the time

Trend Micro TippingPoint Threat Protection System vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 9% of the time

ExtremeCloud IQ vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 8% of the time

Zscaler Cloud IPS vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Compared 8% of the time

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Fortinet FortiGate IPS vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

Compared 15% of the time

Forcepoint Next Generation Firewall vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

Compared 13% of the time

Darktrace vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

Compared 11% of the time

Check Point IPS vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

Compared 10% of the time

Trend Micro TippingPoint Threat Protection System vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

Compared 6% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

Download Cisco Sourcefire SNORT product report

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

Download Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention product report

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention report

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT

No data available

Overview

Snort is an open-source, rule-based, intrusion detection and prevention system. It combines the benefits of signature-, protocol-, and anomaly-based inspection methods to deliver flexible protection from malware attacks. Snort gained notoriety for being able to accurately detect threats at high speeds.

Cisco

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is a cloud-based security service that combines cutting-edge technologies, including machine learning, artificial intelligence, and expert human monitoring, to effectively thwart advanced threats like malware, zero-day attacks, and command-and-control threats. It offers inline protection, scrutinizing all network traffic irrespective of port, protocol, or encryption. An integral component of Palo Alto Networks' security platform, it enjoys widespread adoption across diverse organizations. With its robust security capabilities, it's an ideal choice for entities of all sizes, particularly those in high-risk sectors such as finance, healthcare, and government agencies, seeking to safeguard their networks from a broad spectrum of advanced threats.

Palo Alto Networks

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

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention