Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs. Kemp Flowmon ADS

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

Flowmon ADS is a customizable anomaly detection solution with excellent scalability capabilities and quick integration into the organization environment. Flowmon ADS provides a large set of essential detections out of the box, which allows to quickly acquire an awareness of potential problems in the monitored network. Custom configuration, filters, and false-positive flagging make the system highly customizable for diverse environments. Powerful dashboards make summaries and reporting a breeze. We use the Flowmon Anomaly Detection System daily for event detection and incident handling. It provides high-quality detection methods with low false-positive rates.

• 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

• Kemp Flowmon ADS provides a large set of essential detections out of the box, which allows us to quickly acquire an awareness of potential problems in the monitored network.
• Custom configuration, filters, and false-positive flagging make the system highly customizable for diverse environments.
• Powerful dashboards make summaries and reporting a breeze.

• There are things that you can search for a particular type of traffic, but you cannot create an alert to alert on that type of traffic. An example of that is a particular encryption type. So like RC4 encryption is prohibited within DHS. I can search for traffic using it, but I can't create a rule alerting on that traffic type.

Incentivized

• Multi-license policy
• Outdated GUI
• Limited use of AI methods

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

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

We haven't had too many issues with the uptime and availability of CSNA, but the application does have a lot of dependancies and we have seen issues after an upgrade that caused an outage for several hours.

Incentivized

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.

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

After integrating and developing a lot of security features in MF NNM, we were not able to meet the requirements from the customer. After the alternative research, we got to know about this Cisco Secure Network Analytics tool and after implementing the same, we finally were able to win CSAT. MF NNM had a support-related issue as well. It took more than a month to solve for couple of issues frequently. Whenever there is a problem or need their support, reaching out to them has always been a challenge.

Incentivized

• 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

• Early detection of cyber security events and incidents.
• Processing a large number of network flows on input (which means more than 60K flows per second)
• Parameterization of detection methods.
• The possibility to decide on the false-positive rate within the output of each method.