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Cisco Catalyst Switches vs. Cisco Secure Network Analytics

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco Catalyst Switches

    Score9.1 out of 10
    N/ACisco's Catalyst is one of that company's brand of network switches.N/A

    Cisco Secure Network Analytics

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ACisco Stealthwatch is a network behavior analysis product based on technology acquired by Cisco with its Lancope acquisition in 2015.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesCisco Secure Network Analytics
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesCisco Secure Network Analytics
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesCisco Secure Network Analytics
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches
    They have been market stable and consistant making them the leader
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches
    For scalability, and preparation of the network of the future
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches
    We believe in Cisco technology and we trust in Cisco Catalyst Switches and their stability and quality. Another very important point is the presence of the brand in Argentina and the excellent partner environment that Cisco has created within our region. We feel so secure using …
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco Catalyst Switches
    We have not really used many other solutions other than Cisco.
    Incentivized
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    600 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    96%
    Delivers good value for the price
    531 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    11 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    600 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    490 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    12 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    568 Answers
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesCisco Secure Network Analytics
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    RUCKUS Ethernet Switches
    Score1 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    Cisco Ethernet Switches
    Score9.1 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesCisco Secure Network Analytics
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (774 ratings)
    9.5
    (14 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.9
    (40 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    8.6
    (46 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Availability
    8.8
    (14 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    9.3
    (14 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.5
    (38 ratings)
    7.9
    (2 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (12 ratings)
    7.0
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.8
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.1
    (9 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.2
    (14 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    7.9
    (36 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.2
    (37 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco Catalyst SwitchesCisco Secure Network Analytics
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    Well-suited for big companies like mine, where we have a lot of users that we have to connect together. Getting all the switches into one big stack that you can just manage all at one time is fantastic for ease of use. Not suited for maybe smaller mom and pop shops or smaller companies that don’t have as many. They could probably go with something much easier to manage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Few products operate off the Netflow or RAP/SPAN traffic versus the endpoint. Of those products, many operate from the aggregate traffic of uplinks/downlinks, whereas Secure Network Analytics focuses on viewing all traffic to give per-endpoint comprehensive data analytics. SNA is a great product for network visibility and detection, and to preserve that focus, other options such as remediation or quarantined are deferred to other products in the security ecosystem. SNA uses Machine Learning models to determine traffic behavioral compliance, which is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it mitigates zero day attacks changing traffic patterns, but conversely, it requires training to know acceptable traffic patterns. Unfortunately, many adopters of SNA do not spend the time giving it the user input and so the ML models never gets the correct weights and parameters to work from.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • Easy-to-use management interfaces. The CLI commands go across the whole Cisco Catalyst Switches 9000 series, so it makes it easy, the code being the same on the 9000 series. Just being able to do port channels, trunks, and connecting up edge switches to it with the Cisco Catalyst Switches 9000 Series.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • A silent tool.
    • A great way to get visibility of all the conversations of the network.
    • Easy to find out the internal and the external threats.
    • Easy to track performance.
    • Network monitoring is very easy to understand and control.
    • Attacks can be easily detected along with encrypted traffic.
    • Historic records of the attack and reports make it even better.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • One thing is that these, every time Cisco gets a new switch, they just make an amendment to the power supply, so they'll just put a knob on it. So let's say if you lose any power supply unit, you'll have to purchase another one, which costs a lot of extra money because we have a lot of another power supply units from the redundant, which we can use, but we can't now because they have just tweaked the modeling of that. Which makes no sense, particularly to me because it's an extra money making machine kind of a thing. But that's fine.
    • Another thing is these ports, I believe they are a bit less of, if I can say the quality of the oldest switches, they were quite sturdy. As I said earlier, the new switches, they're very light and when you lift them you feel it. So that's one thing, which I think the quality or the material which we are using has gone down.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • Some of the jobs can be difficult to setup until you know how they were designed
    • Unless coupled with other Cisco products, you may not get all of the information you would like to have
    • If you have a network that already has many issues it may take a lot of time to see the value in the product; it would take time to weed everything which this product will detect for you to use it to find that needle in the haystack
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Cisco
    They are consistently reliable and this switch in particular is a very affordable solution. We can place the Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches gear in areas that we normally would not place a switch because it is affordable enough to make it justifiable. And because it is a reliable solution, we are confident it will continue to provide service over the long haul.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Cisco Secure Network Analytics is a fantastic tool, but does require some setup and upkeep which may turn off smaller IT Security teams. However, once all the flows are set up and the product is functioning with the proper rules, the insight into your network is fantastic. For us, the product has a significant ROI and will be a product we keep up on.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cisco
    Cisco by and far does a great job with the Catalyst line. From a layer 2 dumb switch all the way up to ISP carrier grade switching within the Catalyst portfolio. The best part about it is command parity among the various tiers of product. The only differences are going to lie in what features are available per switch.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Strong and complete tool which gives comprehensive methods to discover cyber security incidents and prevent data leakage. In case of common use of Cisco StealthWatch and Cisco ISE, you will receive [the] ability [to] not just discover cyber security incidents but also dynamically respond to them. This makes StealthWatch one of most valuable products through[out] [the] whole Cisco Security product portfolio.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Cisco
    We have very few is any outages due to a Cisco hardware failure. Some of our gear is exposed to some pretty harsh environments, and they keep on ticking!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    I would rate Cisco Secure Network Analytics’ availability as 8 out of 10. The platform is highly stable and reliable, with users reporting minimal downtime and consistent performance once the system is properly deployed and configured.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Cisco
    No, the packets flow. Sometimes you will see collisions and broadcast storms can happen which will slow performance but that can be fixed and the packets will flow.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    We rarely have issues with the product. I have only had to contact support one time since we put it in and that was to see if another vendor was giving me accurate information on an issue I was having.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Overall winner because it exceeds our expectations by answering all our requirements and at the same time empowers our operations thru other built-in capabilities it has. Visibility is a key to security operations and Cisco StealthWatch really gives us a magnifying glass to check all logs in the network for threat intelligence and threat hunting.
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Cisco
    Cisco Networking Academy partners with many local Colleges and High Schools to provide great hands-on training. You do need to drive to learn the topic. The in-class session only go so far. You really need to apply this to the real world. Cisco makes it easy for business to connect via CLC or Cisco Learning Credits.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Cisco
    My own personal research to get the information I want is very handy and helped me many times
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Cisco
    The implementation of the Cisco Catalyst 1000 Series Switches is fairly seamless, especially if you are familiar with Cisco products. We have had Brocade switch gear in place too, and the differences between the manufacturers [are] not a major issue.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    Implementation of the product can be tedious, especially fine tuning its rules to customize it to your environment. However, after that is done, CSNA is a very useful and flexible product that would enhance the security posture of any corporate network.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    2960s, 9200s, 9400s, 3650s, 3800s. I think that this product is a lot better. I know I just complained about the noise, but it’s still much quieter than our other ones. So we do have a couple of public deployments, and once we swap these out, they complained less. Sometimes we have small offices that get the gear in with them, and these sound less like a jet engine. And yeah, these are a lot easier to manage as well. Everything in the same family. It’s a lot.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    I wasn't involved in the decision-making when it happened. It was a couple of years ago, but I can't think of the vendor's name. They used to be here at Cisco Live. But it was another NetFlow vendor, but they were strictly NetFlow and all they did was just a net flow and the Secure Network Analytics has like some of the security anomaly detection stuff built into it. And that was kind of a deciding factor of wanting more of the security focus of the net flow. The net flow was a bonus, but the security stuff was what we were looking for.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    We are exclusive Cisco at our organization. In truth part of the reason is, with one type of switch and one manufacturer, it is easier to support. It is also easier to give consistent training to our staff in our tech department
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • energy costs dropped by around 11 per cent on the access layer
    • management has become easier with DNA Center
    • ISSU software upgrades and fabric deployments have significantly reduced "planned" down times
    • network speed has increased, latency is at an all-time best within our own LAN
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cisco
    • It is a little pricey - in my organization, with budget cuts, I eventually had to replace it with an open source product (NTOP). While it works well for visibility, it simply isn't the same. If you can afford it, don't bother looking anywhere else - just get it.
    • Being able to detect, pivot out, and remmediate from one console was awesome.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Cisco Catalyst Switches Screenshots

    Product screenshotScreenshot of Catalyst 9200 SeriesScreenshot of Catalyst 9300 SeriesScreenshot of Catalyst 9400 SeriesScreenshot of Catalyst 9400 Series Additional ViewScreenshot of Catalyst 9500 Series