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Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Threat Stack Cloud Security Platform [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 4, 2025

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
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (14th)
Threat Stack Cloud Security...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Jack Poon - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
VR
Pivotal for SOX and Sarbanes-Oxley compliance as well as security in AWS, but needs work on the application layer side
It certainly has a lot of capabilities and we're not using much of what it can do. That's something that, as we mature as an organization, we'll expand into. The one thing that we know they're working on, but we don't have through the tool, is the application layer. As we move to a serverless environment, with AWS Fargate or direct Lambda, that's where Threat Stack does not have the capacity to provide feed. Those are areas that it's blind to now, so that's the biggest area for improvement. They're currently looking at changing that with an acquisition, but as it stands right now, that's the only spot that I consider weak.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has a huge rate of protection. It's has a low level of positives and a huge rate of threat protection. It's easy to deploy and easy to implement. It has an incredible price rate compared to similar solutions."
"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."
"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."
"I like most of Cisco's features, like malware detection and URL filtering."
"The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet."
"The solution is rather easy to use."
"The whole solution is very good, and stable."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT are the dashboard for monitoring events."
"We like the ability of the host security module to monitor the processes running on our servers to help us monitor activity."
"It is scalable. It deploys easily with curl and yum."
"Threat Stack has connectivity."
"An important feature of this solution is monitoring. Specifically, container monitoring."
"Every other security tool we've looked is good at containers, or at Kubernetes, is good at AWS, or at instance monitoring. But nobody is good at tying all of those things together, and that's really where Threat Stack shines."
"There has been a measurable decrease in the meantime to remediation... because we have so many different tech verticals already collated in one place, our ability to respond is drastically different than it used to be."
"The most valuable feature is the SecOps because they have our back and they help us with the reports... It's like having an extension of your team. And then, it grows with you."
"It has been quite helpful to have the daily alerts coming to my email, as well as the Sev 1 Alerts... We just went through a SOX audit and those were pivotal."
 

Cons

"The cloud can be improved."
"I would like to have analytics included in the suite."
"With the next release, I would like to see some PBR, so that you can do the configuration with the features."
"If the price is brought down then everybody will be happy."
"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."
"To be frank, the product is not really stable, although they're working on that. Whenever I go to the technical community with an issue, they will usually say that it is not there yet, but the technical team are working on it. The issues are not insolvable. I think they should just keep working on the product to make sure that the product can become very stable. The technical support is great. I appreciate that. We have a lot of communities supporting Firepower now, so you can find help for whatever issue you have."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"I would like further support of Windows endpoint agents or the introduction of support for Windows endpoint agents."
"It shoots back a lot of alerts."
"The compliance and governance need improvement."
"Some features do not work as expected."
"They could give a few more insights into security groups and recommendations on how to be more effective. That's getting more into the AWS environment, specifically. I'm not sure if that's Threat Stack's plan or not, but I would like them to help us be efficient about how we're setting up security groups. They could recommend separation of VPCs and the like - really dig into our architecture. I haven't seen a whole lot of that and I think that's something that, right off the bat, could have made us smarter."
"The API - which has grown quite a bit, so we're still learning it and I can't say whether it still needs improvement - was an area that had been needing it."
"The solution’s ability to consume alerts and data in third-party tools (via APIs and export into S3 buckets) is moderate. They have some work to do in that area... The API does not mimic the features of the UI as far as reporting and pulling data out go. There's a big discrepancy there."
"The user interface can be a little bit clunky at times... There's a lot of information that needs to be waded through, and the UI just isn't great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"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."
"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."
"We find the licensing and pricing very easy to understand and a good value for the services provided."
"It is very expensive compared to some other products. The pricing is definitely high."
"What we're paying now is somewhere around $15 to $20 per agent per month, if I recall correctly. The other cost we have is SecOps."
"It came in cheaper than Trend Micro when we purchased it a few years ago."
"It is a cost-effective choice versus other solutions on the market."
"I'm happy with the amount that we spend for the product that we get and the overall service that we get. It's not cheap, but I'm still happy with the spend."
"Pricing seems to be in line with the market structure. It's fine."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
University
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
Real Estate/Law Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
 

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,...
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Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT
Threat Stack, CSP,
 

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
StatusPage.io, Walkbase, Spanning, DNAnexus, Jobcase, Nextcapital, Smartling, Veracode, 6sense
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