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

7.8

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)

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.1%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is 5.7%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention	5.7%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT	3.1%
Other	91.2%

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2772102

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.

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Partha Dash

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.

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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

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

"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 solution is rather easy to use."

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

"The most valuable feature is the visibility that we have across the virtual environment."

"The tool's most valuable feature is threat detection, which is important because we have multiple layers not only in Cisco."

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

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

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT pros

"The application control and vulnerability protection are the most valuable features."

"I rate Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention as nine out of ten."

"The most valuable feature of Palo Alto Threat Prevention for our company is the next generation firewall."

"With the IP address flag, I was able to see that I was being hacked. The moment there was an interaction between somebody on my network and that IP, the solution was able to flag it, and we were able to protect ourselves."

"It is a stable product."

"Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention is the market leader as far as security gateways and endpoint protection. Additionally, the threat database that is used is one of the best."

"It effectively prevents malware, ransomware, and other attacks."

"I find the malware protection very handy."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention pros

Cons

"I don't think this solution is a time-based control system, because one cannot filter traffic based on time."

"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."

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

"The cloud can be improved."

"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."

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

"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT can scale, but if you have too much, you could fill up your log files, which I consider when discussing scalability."

"Performance needs improvement."

More Cisco Sourcefire SNORT cons

"While Palo Alto excels in certain setups, they need to improve the user experience in distributed working conditions."

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

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

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

"In Africa, the technical support is probably not as good as in Europe and the USA because it's a specific premium support, partner-enabled premium support and all of that. But it's really good, I don't really have any complaints, it's fairly good. I'll give them 80%."

"The pricing has improved with the newer generation of their Firewalls, but the price could always be lower. In comparison with other solutions, I believe they're quite competitive."

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

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

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."

"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."

"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."

"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."

"The pricing has improved with the newer generation of their Firewalls, but the price could always be lower."

"There is an initial, expensive investment but the return is good."

"The pricing could be lower."

"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 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."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

University

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

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?

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...

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?

Fortinet FortiGate vs Cisco Sourcefire SNORT

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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