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CrowdSec vs Snort
March 10, 2025 | Author: Michael Stromann
10★
CrowdSec is an open-source and collaborative security stack leveraging the crowd power. Analyze behaviors, respond to attacks and share signals across the community.
13★
Snort is the foremost Open Source Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) in the world. Snort IPS uses a series of rules that help define malicious network activity and uses those rules to find packets that match against them and generates alerts for users.
See also:
Top 10 Intrusion Detection Systems
Top 10 Intrusion Detection Systems
If you’ve ever worried about malicious actors trying to sneak into your network, both CrowdSec and Snort have your back. They sit there, watching packets go by like particularly paranoid lifeguards at a beach where the sharks have lasers. Both scan for threats, both send alerts when something looks dodgy and both can be integrated into larger, more complicated security setups that make IT professionals weep with either joy or frustration. They’re like two different breeds of guard dogs—one trained to sniff out trouble, the other to bark loudly at anything that moves.
CrowdSec, however, has a slightly different approach. Instead of just watching traffic and growling, it actively shares information about threats with the rest of its kind, like a particularly well-organized flock of cyber-aware pigeons. It prefers to focus on behavior-based detection rather than just looking at a list of known bad guys, making it great for catching sneaky, never-before-seen threats. It was created in 2020, which in cybersecurity terms is about five minutes ago and it hails from France, because even intrusion detection systems can have a certain je ne sais quoi. It’s lightweight, scalable and written in Go, which makes it sound vaguely athletic.
Snort, on the other hand, is a grizzled veteran of the field, having been around since 1998, back when the internet was mostly made up of GeoCities pages and dial-up modems. It relies heavily on signature-based detection, meaning it’s fantastic at catching known threats but might be slightly perplexed by something truly new—rather like an elderly detective who refuses to use Google. It’s backed by Cisco, which means it’s deeply entrenched in corporate and government networks where serious people in suits frown at dashboards all day. If CrowdSec is a cyber-pigeon network, Snort is an old-school security guard with a clipboard, checking IDs and tutting disapprovingly at suspicious behavior.
See also: Top 10 Intrusion Detection Systems
CrowdSec, however, has a slightly different approach. Instead of just watching traffic and growling, it actively shares information about threats with the rest of its kind, like a particularly well-organized flock of cyber-aware pigeons. It prefers to focus on behavior-based detection rather than just looking at a list of known bad guys, making it great for catching sneaky, never-before-seen threats. It was created in 2020, which in cybersecurity terms is about five minutes ago and it hails from France, because even intrusion detection systems can have a certain je ne sais quoi. It’s lightweight, scalable and written in Go, which makes it sound vaguely athletic.
Snort, on the other hand, is a grizzled veteran of the field, having been around since 1998, back when the internet was mostly made up of GeoCities pages and dial-up modems. It relies heavily on signature-based detection, meaning it’s fantastic at catching known threats but might be slightly perplexed by something truly new—rather like an elderly detective who refuses to use Google. It’s backed by Cisco, which means it’s deeply entrenched in corporate and government networks where serious people in suits frown at dashboards all day. If CrowdSec is a cyber-pigeon network, Snort is an old-school security guard with a clipboard, checking IDs and tutting disapprovingly at suspicious behavior.
See also: Top 10 Intrusion Detection Systems
