Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Vectra AI comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

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.
To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Vectra AI Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Q&A Highlights
Question: I'm building a next-gen AI powered threat intelligence platform. What's missing from existing solutions?
Answer: I that feel there are two old problems still there in the market: 1-Vendors don't talk to each other. 2-Whoever is focusing on endpoint is missing the network and human side and the opposite is also true. I love, for example, what Darktrace is doing in the network side and the playback option to know what happened in my network during a long holiday, for example, things will never be caught by a second-generation AV but I need to have a solid 2nd gen. AV besides the total high cost of Darktrace which by the way is worth it for IT pros but not for business owners. We need to have something like virus total but for risks and threats beyond viruses where all vendors work on this and all endpoint customers with different vendors connect to it to be secured.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"I believe this solution has reduced our incident response time.""If you are using Darktrace or NAC solutions you can integrate Stealthwatch.""The solution allowed us to not only get gain insight but also start collaborating with other tools.""Great network monitoring, looking at anomaly detection and evaluation.""I value the feature which enables me to detect devices talking to suspect IPs.""The most valuable part is that Stealthwatch is part of a portfolio of security devices from Cisco. Cisco literally can touch every single end point, every single ingress and egress point in the network. Nobody else has that.""Stability is the most valuable feature we have seen in this solution.""From what I understand, you can encrypt and unencrypt traffic moving in transit. This is one of the features that we liked about it."

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"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.""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.""It is doing some artificial intelligence. If it sees a server doing a lot of things, then it will assume that is normal. So, it is looking for anomalous behavior, things that are out of context which helps us reduce time. Therefore, we don't have to look in all the logs. We just wait for Vectra to say, "This one is behaving strange," then we can investigate that part.""The UI is easy to use and when we send detection to everybody, they easily understand what we are asking at the time.""One of the most valuable features of the platform is its ability to provide you with aggregated risk scores based on impact and certainty of threats being detected. This is both applied to individual and host detections. This is important because it enables us to use this platform to prioritize the most likely imminent threats. So, it reduces alert fatigue follow ups for security operation center analysts. It also provides us with an ability to prioritize limited resources.""One of the things that we didn't expect to happen was that our network team also jumped on it faster than we thought. In most cases, if it's a security tool that's working on the network part, they can also use it to find out certain flaws that have been in the system. Certain flaws, related to some legacy stuff, were already there for quite a few years, which they couldn't explain at first, but we could explain them based on the timing of certain things.""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.""Vectra AI can bring the ability to detect intrusion on the network more so than legacy IDS tools."

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Cons
"The reporting of day-to-day metrics still has room for improvement.""One update I would like to see is an agent-based client. Currently StealthWatch is network based.""The GUI could use some improvement. Being able to find features more easily would be a great improvement if it was simplified.""I would like to see better filters.""Cisco Stealthwatch needs more integration with device discovery. We have to do a lot of hard work to figure out what things are. Better service integration is required.""I would like to see some improvement when it comes to reporting.""The usability of this solution needs to be improved.""It's a good solid solution but integration with Network Access Control products with Cisco ISE would be good."

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"I'd like to be able to get granular reports and to be able to output them into formats that are customizable and more useful. The reporting GUI is lacking.""The main improvement I can see would be to integrate with more external solutions.""ExtraHop has better features that seem more advantageous when compared to Vectra.""Vectra is still limited to packet management. It's only monitoring packet exchanges. While it can see a lot of things, it can't see everything, depending on where it's deployed. It has its limits and that's why I still have my SIEM.""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.""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.""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.""Some of the customization could be improved. Everything is provided for you as an easy solution to use, but working with it and doing specific development could be worked on a bit more in the scope of an incident response team."

More Vectra AI Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It is worth the cost."
  • "Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside>in traffic."
  • "Pricing is much higher compared to other solutions."
  • "​Licensing is done by flows per second, not including outside (in traffic)."
  • "Today, we are part of the big Cisco ELA, and it is a la carte. We can get orders for whatever we want. At the end of the day, we have to pay for it in one big expense, but that is fine. We are okay with that."
  • "NetFlow is very expensive."
  • "One of the things which bugs me about Lancope is the licensing. We understand how licensing works. Our problem is when we bought and purchased most of these Lancope devices, we did so with our sister company. Somewhere within the purchase and distribution, licensing got mixed up. That is all on Cisco, and it is their responsibility. They allotted some of our sister company's equipment to us, and some of our equipment to them. To date, they have never been able to fix it."
  • "The licensing costs are outrageous."
  • More Cisco Secure Network Analytics Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "The license is based on the concurrent IP addresses that it's investigating. We have 9,800 to 10,000 IP addresses."
  • "There are additional features that can be purchased in addition to the standard licensing fee, such as Cognito Recall and Stream."
  • "We have a desire to increase our use. However, it all comes down to budget. It's a very expensive tool that is very difficult to prove business support for. We would like to have two separate networks. We have our corporate network and PCI network, which is segregated due to payment processing. We don't have it for deployed in the PCI network. It would be good to have it fully deployed there to provide us with additional monitoring and control, but the cost associated with their licensing model makes it prohibitively expensive to deploy."
  • "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."
  • "The pricing is very good. It's less expensive than many of the tools out there."
  • "The pricing is high."
  • "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."
  • More Vectra AI Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Answers from the Community
    Cara Wolf
    C.J. Oosthuizen - PeerSpot reviewerC.J. Oosthuizen
    Reseller

    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.

    reviewer973458 - PeerSpot reviewerreviewer973458 (CEO & Founder at a tech services company with 1-10 employees)
    Real User

    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.

    Jürgen Weiss - PeerSpot reviewerJürgen Weiss
    User

    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.

    Cara Wolf - PeerSpot reviewerCara Wolf
    User

    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.

    Cara Wolf - PeerSpot reviewerCara Wolf
    User

    Thank you for your comments...what if the malware does not present as anomalous?

    MarkBarrett - PeerSpot reviewerMarkBarrett
    User

    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.

    Cara Wolf - PeerSpot reviewerCara Wolf
    User

    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.

    Gerald Ostrofsky - PeerSpot reviewerGerald Ostrofsky
    MSP

    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.

    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of Cisco Secure Network Analytics is the Threat Intelligence integration.
    Top Answer:I would rate Cisco SNA as a nine out of ten in terms of costliness.
    Top Answer:Initially, I felt Cisco Secure Network Analytics lacked integration with Splunk. However, with Cisco's recent acquisition of Splunk, it seems this gap will be addressed. If this integration happens… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:Vectra AI generates relevant information.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Ranking
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    8.4
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    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Stealthwatch Enterprise, Lancope StealthWatch
    Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR
    Learn More
    Cisco
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    Overview

    Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a highly effective network traffic analysis (NTA) solution that enables users to find threats in their network traffic even if those threats are encrypted. It turns an organization’s network telemetry into a tool that creates a complete field of vision for the organization’s administrators. Users can find threats that may have infiltrated their systems and stop them before they can do irreparable harm.

    Cisco Secure Network Analytics Benefits

    A few ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Cisco Secure Network Analytics include:

    • Security scaling. Secure Network Analytics makes it easy for organizations to scale up their level of network protection to match the growth that their business is experiencing. It can be deployed on whatever type of system is necessary. Users will have their growth needs met at every stage of their business journey because the solution offers users the ability to use it on-premises or in the cloud and it can be consumed as a SaaS-based or license-based solution. Whenever any kind of device is added, Secure Network Analytics can automatically classify that device so that it is seamlessly integrated into its network protection system.
    • Detects threats as they appear. Users gain the ability to scan their network traffic for even the most advanced threats at all times. Secure Network Analytics easily identifies the early warning signs that are typically initiated before attacks are conducted by bad actors. Once these signs are found, users are warned so that they can take steps to prevent those threats from escalating. This also enables users to determine the source of the threat and whether it might have spread further than initially thought.
    • Eliminate blind spots. Organizations that use Secure Network Analytics can view their network traffic across both private networks and public cloud environments. The scanning power of the solution allows users to gain complete visibility with a fewer number of sensors than their competitors require to achieve a similar level of protection.

    Cisco Secure Network Analytics Features

    Some of the many features that Cisco Secure Network Analytics offers include:

    • Centralized security management. Secure Network Analytics’ Identity Services Engine feature enables users to control their network from a single graphical user interface. Administrators can simplify their jobs by controlling profiler, posture, guest, authentication, and authorization services from a single pane of glass.
    • Machine learning tools. Secure Network Analytics uses machine learning to generate alerts when malicious or suspicious activity is detected. It also analyzes the threat so that users gain insight into the nature of the dangers that confront them. Additionally, it examines the threats to determine whether they are actual threats or false alarms. This significantly reduces the number of false alarms that administrators have to spend time attempting to resolve.
    • Automation. Users can automate routine tasks that users would otherwise have to handle manually. This automation feature frees administrators and employees to handle other more critical tasks.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a solution that stands out even when compared to many other comparable products. Two major advantages that it offers are the way that it enables users to define the threshold at which the solution will issue a warning to administrators and the predefined alerts that it offers straight out of the box.

    Gerald J., the information technology operations supervisor at Aboitiz Equity Ventures, Inc., writes, “StealthWatch lets me see the ports running in and out and the country. It has excellent reporting, telemetry, and artificial intelligence features. With the telemetry, I can set thresholds to detect sudden changes and the alarms go through the PLC parts. I can see all the ports running on that trunk.”

    A senior security engineer at a tech services company, says, “Cisco Stealthwatch has predefined alerts for different types of security issues that might happen in the network. Whether it's PCs or servers that are used for botnets or Bitcoin mining we receive the alerts automatically. This functionality is what we receive from the solution out of the box.”

    Vectra threat detection and response is a complete cybersecurity platform that collects, detects, and prioritizes security alerts. The Cognito platform for Network Detection and Response (NDR) detects and responds to attacks inside cloud, data center, Internet of Things, and enterprise networks. The platform also provides automated response capabilities for low-level threats and escalates more severe anomalies to security personnel.

    Cognito captures data for multiple relevant sources and enriches it with context and security insights. It starts by deploying sensors across different networks in datacenters, IoT, or enterprise networks. The algorithm extracts relevant metadata from network and cloud traffic. The information can also be non-security information that can help investigation. 

    The data is enriched with security context to support critical use cases, such as threat detection, investigation, hunting and compliance. The platform is machine learning-based, which enables it to adapt to any new and current threat scenario. It detects, clusters, prioritizes, and anticipates attacks by using identity and host-level enforcement. 

    With the Vectra platform, a person can investigate 50 threats in just two hours. By prioritizing alerts and leveraging threat intelligence, it provides faster results.Vectra solves today’s security challenges for network detection and response. 

    One of Vectra’s best features is the emphasis they put in pairing research and data science for security insights. It offers behavior codification with unsupervised, supervised, and deep learning models. 

    The pricing is according to a subscription model with a free trial available.Vectra is available for Office 365, Azure AD and AWS Brain.

    Features of Vectra AI

    • AI-based threat detection and response. 
    • Detects attacks in real time with behavior-based threat detection. 
    • Consolidates and correlates thousands of events, detecting threats. 
    • Enriches threat investigation with a chain of evidence and data science security insights. 
    • Machine learning techniques, including deep learning and neural networks. 
    • Gives visibility into cyberattackers and analyzes all network traffic. 
    • Continuous updates with new threat detection algorithms. 
    • Provides encryption at rest and in transit. For the AWS version, it offers AES-256 encryption via AWS Key Management Service. 
    • Guaranteed availability according to the SLA of the service selected. 
    • Does not connect to public sector networks. 

    Benefits of Vectra AI

    • Behavioral models use AI to find unknown attackers. 
    • Context increases the accuracy of threat hunting. 
    • Allows for proactive action by prioritizing the most relevant information. 
    • Provides a clear picture and extensive context for investigations. 
    • Aids decision-making in the incident response process. 
    • Helps working with large datasets by capturing metadata at scale. 
    • Automates time-consuming analysis. 
    • Reduces the security analysts’ workloads on threat investigations. 

    Other advantages of Vectra services include that they can be deployed in the public, private, or hybrid cloud. Support is available via email or online ticketing with an average of 4 hours of response. Phone support is available 24/7. 

    Vectra provides full on-site and online training and documentation. Regarding the user interface, it supports several types of web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. However, it is not available for mobile devices.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Here’s what PeerSpot users of Vectra AI have to say about it:

    "One of the core features is that Vectra AI triages threats and correlates them with compromised host devices. From a visibility perspective, we can better track the threat across the network. Instead of us potentially finding one device that has been impacted without Vectra AI, it will give us the visibility of everywhere that threat went. Therefore, visibility has increased for us." - Dave W., Operations Manager at a healthcare company

    "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.” - T.S., Senior Security Engineer at a manufacturing company

    Sample Customers
    Edge Web Hosting, Telenor Norway, Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana, Webster Financial Corporation, Westinghouse Electric, VMware, TIAA-CREF
    Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company23%
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company27%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    University11%
    Mining And Metals Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise76%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise73%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise64%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Vectra AI
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Vectra AI and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Secure Network Analytics is ranked 4th in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) with 7 reviews while Vectra AI is ranked 2nd in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) with 22 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 "Improved our organization greatly but greater customizability would be beneficial". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Vectra AI writes "We have become more proactive, and significant noise reduction means one analyst can handle things ". 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, Trend Micro Deep Discovery and Corelight. 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.

    We monitor all Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.