Cisco Secure IPS (formerly Firepower Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System, or NGIPS) is an intrusion detection response system that produces security data and enhances the analysis by InsightOps. The technology replaces the former Sourcefire 3D IPS. Cisco acquired Sourcefire in 2013.
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Splunk Enterprise
Score 8.6 out of 10
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Splunk is software for searching, monitoring, and analyzing machine-generated big data, via a web-style interface. It captures, indexes and correlates real-time data in a searchable repository from which it can generate graphs, reports, alerts, dashboards and visualizations.
Cisco Secure IPS is required for every organization and it gives us all the advanced security features for more visibility and control on our incoming and outgoing network traffic. We can easy to configure and management is also very easy. You can deploy in the existing network very easily. The price is very low and performance is very high and it works very quickly on threats and takes the necessary action.
I'm liking the newer products, and I'm looking forward to how they integrate with the overall product when they come together. Just log in and be able to query a large number of systems for similar issues or a unique one. That is a great fit for Splunk Enterprise, looking for a simple case or a simple String or something of that nature across multiple machines. It's a great fit for that to identify issues or particular software, whatever your scenario is, String, to find it across any particular server or group of servers, so that you can update or do a deployment or whatever it is you're looking to do.
The option to deploy it as a virtual machine in a UCS-E inside a Cisco Router is something to consider a lot. It simplifies a lot the deployment in places where you need to optimize resources and keep things simple. It also saves some money on unnecessary hardware.
Having the most complete license, we can have in the same box IPS, inspection for malware and URL filtering. As Cisco uses Talos Intelligence network to mitigate and evaluate risks, having this complete set of security features turns the box into a powerful resource to protect our remote locations. Considering the hyper-connected business we have today, it's almost impossible to think that we can run a business without this kind of protection.
The integration between Firepower NGIPS and other products, like Cisco ISE and Splunk, is also a key feature for this solution. In both cases, you can integrate the product to have the best of both. As a security appliance, it's very important for us to have all the logs centralized in Splunk and this is done simply connecting FMC (Firepower Management Console) to the Splunk collector.
We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.
You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.
We didn't have any major issues that let us need support. Only, for this reason, I think Cisco Firepower deserves the rating. Even for small issues, the partner that helped us during the project could solve it quickly. There are also tons of documents and other online resources to help maintain, administer and support the product.
Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.
The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.
Cisco Secure IPS is our first product. We were not using any other tools before. We are very happy with the Cisco Secure IPS features and customer support
A lot of products have natively inside their own dashboards and or their own logging repositories. And each one is difficult to learn or they're too complex or they're not verbose in the sense that they're not easy to mine the data that you're looking for. So that could be anything from the native logging that you find in other Cisco products. It's easier to use Splunk to draw the data that you're looking for as opposed to going to the individual's products themselves to get the logs that you're looking for.
Splunk has allowed developers to diagnose production issues when access of control was taken away from them to be allowed to view items in production environments and I believe that is invaluable.
At times some developers weren't super happy about using it, but it was more of the fact that they were used to having production access and not creating their splunk queries to get information.
Going one place to view logs was very beneficial to have.
