Cisco, McAfee, Juniper top IPS vendors

CALIFORNIA, USA: Cisco ranks highest overall on the resulting intrusion prevention systems vendor scorecard, followed by McAfee and Juniper.

This is according to market research firm Infonetics Research's study User Plans for Intrusion Prevention Systems: North America, a new survey of purchase decision-makers at large organizations using IPS.

Jeff Wilson, principal analyst, network security, Infonetics Research, said: “The top two drivers enterprises cite for deploying intrusion prevention systems are protecting data centres and limiting the impact of security problems. The re-architecture of data centers is top of mind for many large organizations, and security will be one of the very first considerations in a major data centre overhaul, so it makes sense that this is a critical driver for large businesses to invest in IPS.”

Report Highlights

Study respondents report that nearly 60 percent of their IPS devices are deployed in-band already.

One-third of respondents noted that the difficulty of keeping IPS products updated was a strong driver for not investing in new IPS solutions.

Respondents, all of whom have already deployed IPS, do not appear terribly concerned about false positive management, with only 15 percent citing it as a reason to deploy IPS out of band.

Fourty percent of respondents say they are considering IPS-as-a-service offerings.

About a quarter say they would prefer to buy IPS-as-a-service from a security-focused service provider, and about a fifth say they would turn to a major carrier.

Large organizations participating in Infonetics’ survey rated 6 IPS vendors (Cisco, IBM ISS, Juniper, McAfee, Sourcefire, and TippingPoint) on 8 criteria: technology, product roadmap, security, management, value, pricing, financial stability, and service and support.