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Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System vs Vectra AI 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Hillstone S-Series Network ...
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
24th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Vectra AI
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (16th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (9th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 8.0%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Vectra AI8.0%
Hillstone S-Series Network Intrusion Prevention System1.0%
Other91.0%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1080873 - PeerSpot reviewer
Complements any firewall
The core processors are there and it's able to generate reports for that. It also complements any kind of firewall. For example, if an end user is using Palo Alto as a firewall, they'd need another layer of firewall like the S-Series that will protect internal servers. It's something that complements any firewall in the market.
Mohammad Alkurdi - PeerSpot reviewer
Innovative detection features enhance monitoring
The advantages of the integration are not entirely out-of-the-box. You have to do it manually. When I'm doing tier response, an out-of-the-box solution is not available. You need to have a Linux server, and from the Linux server, you must perform AI tasks, and there is a lot to be handled in the back end. This is a major consideration about them. The recall feature, if it can be placed in some areas instead of the cloud, and charged for, would be better. Recall the storage where you watch all the traffic, and you can recall it and try to analyze it in the back end. It’s cloud-based. If they offer it on-prem, it would be better. I think they have a solution, but I have never tested it, to be honest with you.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Setup is straightforward with the same reliability and scalability as the firewall series."
"One of the key advantages for us is we define a 24/7 service around it. We use far more of Vectra alerts than we do with our SIEM product because we understand that when we get an alert from Vectra we actually need to do something about it."
"What I like best about Vectra AI is that it alerts you about suspicious activities."
"Vectra produces actionable data using automation. That has helped us. It's less manpower now to look at incidents, which has definitely increased efficiency. Right now, in a lot of cases, our mean time to detection is within zero days. This tells me by the time something happened, and we were able to detect it, it was within the same day."
"Most of their use cases, including deployment, are managed by the tool itself, requiring less manual input from our team."
"The biggest feature for us, because we are heavy Microsoft users, is its integration with Office 365. On top of Vectra AI, we use all of the Microsoft security platforms, such as Defender ATP and Sentinel. Having full integration and a central platform to look at all of the threats that are coming through from the different platforms is a huge benefit for us."
"The packet-capturing feature is very useful."
"One of the most valuable features is all the correlation that it does using AI and machine learning. An example would be alerting on a host and then alerting on other things, like abnormal behavior, that it has noticed coming from the same host. It's valuable because we're a very lean team."
"Vectra AI is the best. It is a major product in our cybersecurity."
 

Cons

"Lack of tools to help educate end users"
"In comparison with a lot of systems I used in the past, the false positives are really a burden because they are taking a lot of time at this moment."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation. We would like to have more details on how it detects what we see."
"The false positives and the tuning side of it is something that could use improvement. But that could be from our side."
"Neither Vectra nor Darktrace have a function like a status health check on my log sources and traffic sources."
"One thing which I have found where there could be improvement is with regard to the architecture, a little bit: how the brains and sensors function. It needs more flexibility with regard to the brain. If there were some flexibility in that regard, that would be helpful, because changing the mode of the brain is complex. In some cases, the change is permanent. You cannot revert it."
"Multiple appliances are required for Vectra AI, making it less convenient compared to competitors."
"What is most important for us is to have one place where we can manage a few brains because we are based on a zero-trust network. As a result, each customer needs to have a separate brain. For the SOC team, we need to have one place where the SOC analyst can go to visit the website and from that site manage all of the customers. Right now, Vectra AI doesn't have this capability, and I would really like to have this feature."
"We would like to see more information with the syslogs. The syslogs that they send to our SIEM are a bit short compared to what you can see. It would be helpful if they send us more data that we can incorporate into our SIEM, then can correlate with other events."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It's relatively on the pricier side, but when compared to other solutions. It's not the most budget-friendly option, but it can be considered somewhat more cost-effective in comparison to other alternatives."
"We are running at about 90,000 pounds per year. The solution is a licensed cost. The hardware that they gave us was pretty much next to nothing. It is the license that we're paying for."
"Vectra is a bit on the higher side in terms of price, but they have always been transparent. The reason that they are this good is that they invest, so they need to charge accordingly."
"The license is based on the concurrent IP addresses that it's investigating. We have 9,800 to 10,000 IP addresses."
"It is an expensive solution, but it's not the most expensive we've seen. We also know how much we're going to pay, unlike with some other providers where all of a sudden our license explodes."
"My company pays for the Vectra AI licensing fee yearly. I know the figure because my company recently renewed the license, and it's okay, at least for the financial sector."
"Their licensing model is antiquated. I'm not a fan of their licensing model. We have to pay for licensing based on four different things. You have to pay based on the number of unique IPs, the number of logs that we send through Recall and Stream, and the size of our environment. They need to simplify their licensing down to just one thing. It should be based on the amount of data, the number of devices, or something else, but there should be just one thing for everything. That's what they need to base their licensing on. Cost-wise, they're not cheap. They were definitely the most expensive option, but you get what you pay for. They're not the cheapest option."
"There are additional features that can be purchased in addition to the standard licensing fee, such as Cognito Recall and Stream."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise27
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?
The two platforms take a fundamentally different approach to NDR. Corelight is limited to use cases that require the eventual forwarding of events and parsed data logs to a security team’s SIEM or ...
What do you like most about Vectra AI?
The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?
It is very acceptable when you compare it with Darktrace, for example.
 

Also Known As

Hillstone S-Series NIPS
Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet, Darktrace, Check Point Software Technologies and others in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS). Updated: October 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.