We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Network Analytics and Vectra AI based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Most valuable features are the network maps and server and network response time."
"The most valuable feature is having visibility into the data segments throughout our network."
"It provides good visibility to the customers. People are still evaluating it, but it provides visibility and helps them to take action to remediate and mitigate the issues that are highlighted on the dashboard. It has good integration with the Cisco switching platform."
"The most valuable feature we got out of Stealthwatch is to be able to, while troubleshooting, go deep into one of our interfaces and verify what the bandwidth is and if there's any activity there that's causing problems."
"Cisco Stealthwatch has reduced the amount of time to detect an immediate threat."
"I believe this solution has reduced our incident response time."
"The deployment was a breeze. It is a very innovative and robust platform that allows us to bi-directionally stitch together data elements from Netflow-enabled devices to provide a context for network utilization."
"I value the feature which enables me to detect devices talking to suspect IPs."
"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."
"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."
"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 administrative privilege detection feature is the most valuable feature. The admin accounts are often highly accessible to the high-risk component of the environment. If those accounts are compromised or are being used in a suspicious manner, that's high-fidelity events for us to look into."
"Cognito Streams gives you a detailed view of what happens in the network in the form of rich metadata. It is just a super easy way to capture network traffic for important protocols, giving us an advantage. This is very helpful on a day-to-day basis."
"It does a reliable job of parsing out the logs of all the network traffic so that we can ingest them into our SIEM and utilize them for threat hunting and case investigations. It is pretty robust and reliable. The administration time that we spend maintaining it or troubleshooting it is very low. So, the labor hour overhead is probably our largest benefit from it. We spend 99% of our time in Vectra investigating cases, responding to incidents, or hunting, and only around 1% of our time is spent patching, troubleshooting, or doing anything else. That's our largest benefit from Vectra."
"We often use the new feature to create PCAP files from the whole data traffic. It makes it much easier to find network problems such as whether the server is responding to a request. It has nothing to do with security, but it helps a lot to find other problems."
"It keeps up with the network traffic, which is a good thing. It provides more context to plain alerts compared to using an older system. So, it helps an analyst reduce the information overload."
"We've had problems with element licensing costs so scalability is a concern."
"One update I would like to see is an agent-based client. Currently StealthWatch is network based."
"The initial setup was complex."
"We had some trouble with the installation as we migrated from our previous solution."
"I would like Cisco to make it easier for the administrators to use it."
"It's not great as a standalone solution."
"Cisco Stealthwatch can improve by having bundled packages for popular add-ons. It would be a lot easier for people implementing it, have let's say a better way to use the product."
"I would like to see better filters."
"The solution needs to become more proactive. When Vectra AI is the primary solution in an environment - like it is in our case - you must work on response time. We have a small team so response time at endpoint level is vital."
"The solution has not reduced the security analyst workload in our organization because we still need to SIEM. Unfortunately, while Vectra, for us, is a brilliant tool for network investigations, giving wonderful visibility, it doesn't go the whole way to replace our SIEM that is needed for compliance. So, I still have the same amount of alerting and logging that I did before. It gives us more defined ability to see incidents, but it doesn't give us enough information to satisfy a PCI or 27001 audit."
"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."
"You are always limited with visibility on the host due to the fact that it is a network based tool. It gives you visibility on certain elements of the attack path, but it doesn't necessarily give you visibility on everything. Specifically, the initial intrusion side of things that doesn't necessarily see the initial compromise. It doesn't see stuff that goes on the host, such as where scripts are run. Even though you are seeing traffic, it doesn't necessarily see the malicious payload. Therefore, it's very difficult for it to identify these type of host-driven complex attacks."
"The rules for threats are not always precise and Vectra AI should improve this."
"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."
"I would like more integrations with IOCs and threats currently on the Internet. I would also like to know which threats are based on zero-day attacks, current botnets, etc. Therefore, I would like more information on external threats."
"Other alternatives, like Darktrace, have a fancier UI."
More Cisco Secure Network Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Network Analytics is ranked 4th in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) with 57 reviews while Vectra AI is ranked 2nd in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) with 41 reviews. Cisco Secure Network Analytics is rated 8.2, while Vectra AI is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Network Analytics writes "Increased the visibility of what is happening in our network". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Vectra AI writes "Integrates well with other security solutions and provides good technical support". Cisco Secure Network Analytics is most compared with Darktrace, Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics, ThousandEyes, Arista NDR and Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline, whereas Vectra AI is most compared with Darktrace, ExtraHop Reveal(x), Arista NDR, Corelight and Trend Micro Deep Discovery. See our Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Vectra AI report.
See our list of best Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) vendors and best Network Detection and Response (NDR) vendors.
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CylancePROTECT is AI-powered endpoint protection that will scan your endpoint devices with AI and Machine Learning security. It does not work with traditional signature-based protection and will cover your endpoints against the latest malware and event Potential Unwanted Programs. We are also a Darktrace partner and if interested we can demo both Cyber Security solutions to your company. If you are interested in more information about CylancePROTECT and Darktrace and would like to run a free POC, please contact me at cj@groveis.com.
Raffael Marty, Vice President, Forcepoint Research and Intelligence, said: "There is no artificial intelligence in the field of information security, and it is unlikely to be developed in 2019." Most of unsupervised machine learning-based network anomaly detection solution does not provide why the anomaly has been aroused and whether the anomaly is malicious or not. Most of such solution's pricing model is based on number of endpoints but I prefer to have flat fee subscription-based.
The most important thing to get traction is your business approach and some kind of openness for 3rd parties. NOBODY needs "fancy Dashboards"!
Most of the known vendors like Darktrace is extremely "sales offensive" and they don't have a clear sales strategy (direct or channel). A free POV (30days) is a common approach to attract new customers, but the outcome is not really important. It says nothing about the PAINS on the customer site.
Know your competitors!!!! There are many AI CyberSec Startups and Technologies - 99% are using "Machine Learning" what needs more time to the realtime reaction in critical phases. Preferred is Deep Learning like DeepInstinct offers.
Pricing Model per IP´s is pretty usual - but you need flexibility.
Thank you I’m not really interested in being sold to. I’m asking about what works, what doesn’t and pricing models. I don’t want any demos.
Thank you for your comments...what if the malware does not present as anomalous?
We are an Endpoint focused firm represented a Pyramid of EP based protection services (email & web filter, coupled with EP protection, cyber insurance and dark web monitoring). Our key AI product offering is Cylance, world class in it's ability to protect you where over 95% of all hacks occur, the End Point. Cylance is typically sold as a manged service due to some of the complexities of tailoring the product to fit your business needs. Typically the service is price per EP, per month.
Thank you, I am familiar with Darktrace and really like the product. I'd like to know your thoughts on additional features and pricing preferences.
In my opinion, the best response always comes from the source. I have many contacts at Darktrace that can precisely answer these and other questions. Please let me know if you would like me to arrange for a scheduled call.