Vectra AI vs WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service comparison

Vectra AI and WatchGuard are both solutions in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category. Vectra AI is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.0, while WatchGuard is ranked #26. Vectra AI holds a 11.3% mindshare in ID, compared to WatchGuard’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Vectra AI users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of WatchGuard users who would recommend it.

Vectra AI

Read 45 Vectra AI reviews

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2,624 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

WatchGuard Intrusion Preven...

Read 5 WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service reviews

150 Views
96 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

Vectra AI

WatchGuard Intrusion Preven...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Vectra AI and WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service both aim to enhance network security through intrusion detection and prevention. Vectra AI appears to have an advantage with its advanced threat detection capabilities due to its sophisticated artificial intelligence features, while WatchGuard is preferred for its cost-effective solutions and robust protective measures.

Features: Vectra AI offers AI-driven threat detection, real-time network visibility, and advanced analytics for proactive response. WatchGuard provides versatile deployment options, seamless integration with existing security infrastructures, and comprehensive threat prevention.

Room for Improvement: Vectra AI could improve its user-friendliness, reduce the need for technical expertise during deployment, and optimize integration with non-cloud infrastructures. WatchGuard may enhance its threat detection capabilities, increase scalability for larger enterprises, and refine its analytics engine for more precise insights.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Vectra AI focuses on seamless cloud integration with extensive support for diverse IT environments, requiring technical involvement but benefiting from comprehensive assistance. WatchGuard offers easier deployment with streamlined models for cloud and on-premises setups, supported by responsive customer service and noted for quicker execution due to its user-friendly approach.

Pricing and ROI: Vectra AI involves higher setup costs due to advanced features but offers substantial ROI with improved network control. WatchGuard provides a more affordable entry point with high ROI through cost-effective operations and scalable threat management. The affordability of WatchGuard is attractive, while Vectra AI's value may justify its cost for organizations needing high-level threat analysis.

To learn more, read our detailed Vectra AI vs. WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Vectra AI vs. WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service

April 2025

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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

Vectra AI

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (15th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (10th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)

WatchGuard Intrusion Preven...

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

26th

Average Rating

6.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Vectra AI is 11.3%, up from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service is 0.4%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Featured Reviews

Mohammad Alkurdi

Owner at Fortibits

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.

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Gianluca Vinci

Owner at SharkTech Systems Engineering

Helps us protect published resources with a valuable alarm system

Our primary use case for the solution is to protect published resources The alarm system is valuable because it alerts us if an external intruder tries to attack published resources. The user interface can be improved because it is sometimes difficult to manage functionality. For example, the…

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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

"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."

"The fact that we get the visualization of what's happening on our network, which is a way of improving our security in-depth is most valuable."

"The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system."

"The UI is easy to use and when we send detection to everybody, they easily understand what we are asking at the time."

"Vectra AI can bring the ability to detect intrusion on the network more so than legacy IDS tools."

"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."

"We particularly like the user experience around the dashboard, which we find to be much more straightforward than the dashboard of some of the competitive products... Vectra is a really easy system to understand and use to prioritize where we need to focus our security resources."

"The packet-capturing feature is very useful."

More Vectra AI pros

"It works right out of the box. You just have to enable it and you can start working."

"The most important feature of this solution is the SLAs."

"The alarm system is valuable."

"The VPN and the filtering features are the most valuable. Its VPN is very strong, and its services are very nice. The main problem in India is the service. There are not enough Check Point and Fortinet Firewall services, but for this product, the service is very good."

"The initial setup was straightforward and, because we only need intrusion detection and prevention, we needed only about four hours to deploy it."

Cons

"The rules for threats are not always precise and Vectra AI should improve this."

"Some of their integrations with other sources of data, like external threat feeds, took a bit more work than I had hoped to get integrated."

"One of the things that we are missing a bit is the capability to add our own rules to it. At the moment, the tech engine does its thing, but we have some cool ideas to make additional rules. There should be an option in the platform to add custom rules, or there should be some kind of user group where we can suggest them for the roadmap and see if they get evaluated and get transparent communication on whether they will be implemented in the product or not."

"The advantages of the integration are not entirely out-of-the-box. You have to do it manually."

"It does a little bit of packet capture on alert so you can look at the packet capture activity going on, but it doesn't collect a whole lot of data. Sometimes it's only one or two frames, sometimes it does collect more. That's why they have the addition of their Recall platform, because that really does help expand the capability."

"I would like to see a bit more strategic metrics instead of technical data. Information that I could show to my executive management team or board would be valuable."

"There is room for improvement in the documentation. We would like to have more details on how it detects what we see."

"Other alternatives, like Darktrace, have a fancier UI."

More Vectra AI cons

"The user interface and configuration can be improved."

"Regarding technical support, they could use more engineers."

"Multi properties could be added to the solution in the future to make it better."

"Its graphical user interface could be improved because not everybody is technical. There is a lack of knowledge, and they can give some training for this solution."

"I would like to see faster automatation."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The upfront pricing model that we have would have been more beneficial if it had been a recurring license fee, but that wasn't a massive issue for us. It's fairly priced."

"The pricing is high."

"There are additional features that can be purchased in addition to the standard licensing fee, such as Cognito Recall and Stream."

"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."

"From a licensing perspective, the Vectra detect platform is pretty doable. Also, the hardware prices are nothing that we're not used to. The stream part is a little overpriced compared to the detect part. The reason is that you need to stream data to detect events anyway, so the data is in there. The only thing that's not available is the UI to be able to look at the stream data, which is also on the appliances but is just not activated. That's mainly the thing that we want to improve on."

"At the time of purchase, we found the pricing acceptable. We had an urgency to get something in place because we had a minor breach that occurred at the tail end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017. This indicated we had a lack of ability to detect things on the network. Hence, why we moved quickly to get into the tool in place. We found things like Bitcoin mining and botnets which we closed quickly. In that regard, it was worth the money."

"Cost is a big factor, as always. However, I think we have a very good price–performance ratio."

"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."

More Vectra AI pricing and cost advice

"The price of the solution is not expensive, it is less than FortiGate."

"It is not expensive. Other products like Fortinet and Check Point are of the same price."

"The price of WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service is pretty reasonable compared to similar solutions."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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 ...

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What do you like most about Vectra AI?

The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?

It is very acceptable when you compare it with Darktrace, for example.

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Comparisons

Darktrace vs Vectra AI

Compared 31% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) vs Vectra AI

Compared 10% of the time

Corelight vs Vectra AI

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Vectra AI

Compared 6% of the time

Arista NDR vs Vectra AI

Compared 6% of the time

More Vectra AI Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Vectra AI

April 2025

Download Vectra AI product report

Buyer's Guide

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

April 2025

WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service report

Download WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service product report

Also Known As

Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR

WatchGuard IPS

Overview

Vectra AI is used for detecting network anomalies and potential malicious activities, providing visibility into network traffic and enhancing threat detection across environments.

Organizations deploy Vectra AI mainly on-premises with additional cloud components. It helps with compliance, incident response, security monitoring, detecting insider threats, and correlating network events. Vectra AI captures and enriches network metadata, provides detailed dashboards, reduces false positives, and supports cross-environment behavioral analysis to enhance threat detection and prioritization. While valued for its high accuracy and alert aggregation, it has room for improvement in UI/UX, packet management, and integration with SIEMs and other tools. It is noted for expensive pricing and limited proactive threat response features.

What are Vectra AI's most valuable features?

High accuracy in identifying threat locations
Aggregation of alerts into single incidents
24/7 threat detection
Visibility into the entire attack lifecycle
Risk score aggregation
Effective triaging of alerts
Integration with other tools

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Enhanced threat detection and prioritization
Comprehensive network visibility
Reduction in false positives
Better incident response capabilities
Improved compliance monitoring

In specific industries, Vectra AI is deployed to monitor complex networks and alleviate challenges in threat detection. It is particularly effective in sectors requiring stringent compliance and security measures, offering insights and capabilities crucial for protecting sensitive data and maintaining operational integrity.

Vectra AI

Online attacks and malware continue to evolve, using sophisticated methods to exploit victims. WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service (IPS) provides a preemptive approach to network security that adds an essential layer of threat detection and prevention. IPS protects your network from a wide range of malicious activities, including SQL injections, cross-site scripting, and buffer overflows.

WatchGuard

Sample Customers

Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association

Chester School District

Buyer's Guide

Vectra AI vs. WatchGuard Intrusion Prevention Service

April 2025

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