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snort VS Zabbix

Compare snort VS Zabbix and see what are their differences

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snort logo snort

Snort is a free and open source network intrusion prevention system.

Zabbix logo Zabbix

Track, record, alert and visualize performance and availability of IT resources
  • snort Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-20
  • Zabbix Landing page
    Landing page //
    2024-10-02

snort features and specs

  • Open Source
    Snort is open-source software, which means that it is free to use and has a community of developers who keep it updated and secure.
  • Real-time Traffic Analysis
    Snort provides real-time traffic analysis and packet logging capabilities, enabling quick detection and response to potential threats.
  • Flexibility
    The software supports a range of deployment options and can be customized to meet the specific security needs of an organization.
  • Signature-based Detection
    Snort uses a robust signature-based detection method to identify and respond to known threats based on rule sets.
  • Community Support
    There is a strong community of users and contributors who provide support, documentation, and regular updates to Snort.
  • Integration Capabilities
    Snort can be integrated with various other security tools and systems, enhancing its functionality and providing a comprehensive security solution.

Possible disadvantages of snort

  • Complex Setup
    Snort can be complex to configure and deploy, requiring a certain level of expertise in network security and intrusion detection systems.
  • High Resource Consumption
    The software can be resource-intensive, especially in large network environments, which may require significant hardware investments.
  • Signature Updates
    The effectiveness of Snort heavily depends on the timely updating of signatures to protect against new threats; failing to do so can leave vulnerabilities.
  • False Positives
    Like many IDS systems, Snort can generate false positives, which may lead to unnecessary alerts and the need for careful tuning to minimize them.
  • Limited Zero-Day Threat Detection
    While Snort is excellent at detecting known threats through its signatures, it is less effective against zero-day threats that are not yet documented.
  • Maintenance Burden
    Ongoing maintenance and monitoring are required to keep Snort effective, which can be time-consuming for security teams.

Zabbix features and specs

  • Open-source
    Zabbix is free and open-source, allowing for extensive customization and modification to meet specific needs without licensing costs.
  • Scalability
    Zabbix can handle a large number of devices and data points, making it suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.
  • Comprehensive Monitoring
    Zabbix offers a wide range of monitoring capabilities including servers, networks, cloud services, and applications.
  • Alerting and Notification
    It provides robust alerting mechanisms, allowing notifications via email, SMS, and other methods.
  • Flexible Configuration
    The system allows for detailed and flexible configuration, accommodating various specific monitoring requirements.
  • Extensive API
    Zabbix comes with a comprehensive API that allows for integration with third-party tools and custom automation scripts.
  • Strong Community Support
    As an open-source project, Zabbix has a strong community that can provide support and share best practices.

Possible disadvantages of Zabbix

  • Complex Setup and Configuration
    Initial setup and configuration can be complicated and time-consuming, often requiring a steep learning curve.
  • Resource Intensive
    Zabbix can be resource-intensive, particularly on the database side, which might require substantial hardware resources for large deployments.
  • User Interface
    The user interface is considered less modern and user-friendly compared to some commercial alternatives.
  • Documentation
    While comprehensive, the documentation can sometimes be difficult to navigate for new users.
  • Maintenance Effort
    Ongoing maintenance, such as updates and troubleshooting, can be labor-intensive.
  • Dependency on MySQL
    The heavy reliance on MySQL databases can be a disadvantage for users preferring other database technologies.
  • Initial Costs for Large Scale Deployments
    Although the software is free, the costs associated with setting up and maintaining the necessary infrastructure and hardware can be significant, especially for larger deployments.

Analysis of snort

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Snort is generally regarded as a reliable and effective tool for network security.

Why this product is good

  • Snort is considered a good intrusion detection and prevention system (IDPS) because it is open-source, highly configurable, and widely used by both professionals and organizations. It offers real-time traffic analysis and packet logging, robust rule-based logging, and protocol analysis, making it effective for detecting various types of network attacks and misuse.

Recommended for

  • Network security professionals looking for a robust intrusion detection and prevention system.
  • Organizations needing a cost-effective and customizable security solution.
  • IT departments that require a well-documented and community-supported security tool.

Analysis of Zabbix

Overall verdict

  • Zabbix is generally considered a good choice for organizations looking for a comprehensive and scalable monitoring solution. Its open-source nature means it doesn’t involve direct licensing costs, though it may require investment in resources to set up and maintain.

Why this product is good

  • Zabbix is known for being a robust open-source monitoring solution that provides extensive features for monitoring networks, servers, applications, and cloud resources. It offers real-time monitoring, alerting, reporting, and visualization functionalities. The flexibility to configure custom metrics and alerts makes it suitable for diverse monitoring scenarios. Additionally, Zabbix's capability to integrate with other IT systems and support for a wide range of devices adds to its appeal.

Recommended for

    Zabbix is recommended for IT departments in medium to large enterprises that need detailed infrastructure monitoring and have the technical expertise to customize and maintain the system. It's also suitable for environments where open-source tools are preferred and where extensive customization of monitoring configurations is necessary.

snort videos

Network Intrusion Detection Systems (SNORT)

More videos:

  • Review - Intrusion Detection System for Windows (SNORT)
  • Review - Massive Beer Review 2692 Bolero Snort Brewing Crushable Hazie IPA

Zabbix videos

An overview of Zabbix 4.0 and how we are using it.

More videos:

  • Review - Zabbix Monitoring Solution - Overview
  • Review - ZABBIX Network Discovery For Dynamic Deployments

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to snort and Zabbix)
Security & Privacy
100 100%
0% 0
Monitoring Tools
3 3%
97% 97
Cyber Security
100 100%
0% 0
Log Management
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using snort and Zabbix. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare snort and Zabbix

snort Reviews

8 Best Open Source SIEM Tools
Snort is an open-source intrusion detection and prevention system that you can use for real-time network traffic analysis and packet logging on IP networks. You can also use Snort to detect attacks or possible probes. You can configure Snort to work in three main modes:
Source: www.logiq.ai
The Top 14 Free and Open Source SIEM Tools For 2022
It is also equipped with log analysis capabilities and the ability to display traffic or dump streams of packets to log files. Users have access to a user manual, FAQ file and guides on how to locate and use Oinkcode. Snort has three great uses:
Source: logit.io

Zabbix Reviews

  1. Stan
    · Founder at SaaSHub ·
    Indispensable

    Zabbix has been part of my toolbox for quite some time. I can easily say it's an indispensable tool for me now.

    Managing a dozen servers without Zabbix would be unimaginable. I'm monitoring all of this: CPU, Memory, Hard-drives, website response times, downtime. The UI might be a bit "old school", but everything works flawlessly.

    With regards to hard-drive monitoring, I love the machine learning option that allows you to "predict" the number of days before running out of space. That's quite helpful, as I've got some of my servers down due to running out of space multiple times in the past (before I was using Zabbix).

    👍 Pros:    Open-source|It can monitor everything
    👎 Cons:    The ui is a bit unintuitive in some cases

Self Hosting Like Its 2025
If you’re looking for straightforward monitoring and the thought of setting up a full Zabbix or Grafana stack seems daunting, this software is a real lifesaver. With just one deployment, you can monitor your services and receive notifications through a wide variety of channels including…
Source: kiranet.org
11 Best Nagios Alternatives (Free & Open Source) in 2024
Unlimited scaling: Zabbix is a flexible software that lets you monitor anything you want. It is highly scalable as it helps you manage both multi-tenant enterprise environments and your home.
Source: www.guru99.com
The Best Nagios Alternatives for Server, Application and Network Monitoring
Zabbix is a very strong competitor to Nagios and its development is very encouraging. Zabbix is completely free to use, which makes it a competitor to Nagios Core. Zabbix beats Nagios in the free monitoring market because it has a good frontend, which Nagios Core lacks and it also provides NetFlow monitoring, which isn’t present in Nagios Core – that is a separate paid...
The 10 Best Nagios Alternatives in 2024 (Paid and Open-source)
Zabbix, a widely adopted open-source monitoring tool, offers a range of practical features. It allows you to monitor various aspects of your system, including transactions, application performance, and real browser monitoring. With ready-to-use templates for different servers and operating systems, Zabbix simplifies the monitoring process.
Source: betterstack.com
Top 11 Grafana Alternatives & Competitors [2024]
Zabbix offers a unified view of the entire IT infrastructure through its user-friendly web-based interface. It delivers potent visualization capabilities through customizable dashboards, complemented by robust alerting mechanisms and comprehensive support for alert escalations.
Source: signoz.io

Social recommendations and mentions

snort might be a bit more popular than Zabbix. We know about 7 links to it since March 2021 and only 5 links to Zabbix. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

snort mentions (7)

  • What is a Denial of Service (DoS) Attack? A Comprehensive Guide
    Snort - Open-source Intrusion Prevention System for network security. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Who does check linux distros of malware - open source
    Linux has (free) tools to improve security and detect/remove malware: Lynis,Chkrootkit,Rkhunter,ClamAV,Vuls,LMD,radare2,Yara,ntopng,maltrail,Snort,Suricata... Source: over 1 year ago
  • NETGATE 4100 - Snort Fatal Error on new install
    Okay I figured it out. The problem occurs when you're only using the community rules for Snort. If you go to snort.org and register for a free or subscriber "oink" code, enter the code in pfSense and update the rules then it magically works as expected. My best guess is that unicode information get's added when the new rules are updated. At any rate, this worked for me. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Trying to learn Rogue Device Detection
    Snort (not an insult) https://snort.org/. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Snort Subscriber Ruleset - Not Downloaded - error code 422 - md5 download failed
    422 supposedly means the requested file doesn't exist, and sure enough if you look on the snort.org rules downloads page there is no file for version 29180. Source: over 3 years ago
View more

Zabbix mentions (5)

  • Learning Resources
    Official Zabbix trainings, documentation on zabbix.com ? Source: over 2 years ago
  • zabbix installation
    Hallo, do you know a howto to install zabbix on an ubuntu 20.04 ? I tried the manuals from zabbix.com for MySQL Apache but it didn't work. Source: about 3 years ago
  • How I am getting experience as a linux admistrator (Follow Up)
    He suggested that I indeed should set up a home-lab. To be specific he said that I should create a minimal install of Centos 8 and install zabbix server on it (https://zabbix.com) and monitor a whole bunch of other VMs, services and stuff.. He said that I should set up a variety of VMs and also maybe host a website on one of them. And then if I was able to do that, I could help to share a load of zabbix related... Source: about 3 years ago
  • Ubuntu Impish 21.10 / Zabbix 6.0 LTS
    This is a fresh 21.10 install, using the install repo as detailed on the zabbix.com download page. Source: over 3 years ago
  • One dev conference speaker's family member died, need your help to fill the speaking slot on Nov 27/28
    Well, if you can't find anyone, I am more than happy to fill the slot with something regarding Zabbix - just let me know ;). Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing snort and Zabbix, you can also consider the following products

Suricata - Suricata is a high performance Network IDS, IPS and Network Security Monitoring engine.

Datadog - See metrics from all of your apps, tools & services in one place with Datadog's cloud monitoring as a service solution. Try it for free.

Next-Generation Intrusion Prevention System (NGIPS) - Cisco Firepower NGIPS (Next-Generation IPS) provides contextual awareness, security intelligence, and advanced threat protection against attacks and malware.

Nagios - Complete monitoring and alerting for servers, switches, applications, and services

McAfee Network Security Platform - McAfee Network Security Platform guards all your network-connected devices from zero-day and other attacks, with a cost-effective network intrusion prevention system.

Dynatrace - Cloud-based quality testing, performance monitoring and analytics for mobile apps and websites. Get started with Keynote today!