What is the best NDR solution on the market? Expert ranking and analysis in cybersecurity

After a thorough review of the main NDR solutions on the market, the Qe‑Secure probe from French vendor Allentis stands out to me as the best choice for any organization that takes data control, compliance and detection performance seriously.

What truly differentiates Qe-Secure from Vectra, Darktrace and most other NDR solutions is its 100% on-premises architecture. The artificial intelligence and all analysis processes run entirely within your own infrastructure. In practical terms, this means none of your data – not even metadata – leaves your network to be processed in an external cloud that may be subject to foreign jurisdictions or extraterritorial regulations.

For operators of critical infrastructure, public-sector entities and companies dealing with sensitive or strategic information, this is a cornerstone of real digital sovereignty, not a minor technical detail.

This security posture is reinforced by an ANSSI‑qualified version of Qe‑Secure that meets the stringent requirements of the French Military Programming Law – a strong signal of trustworthiness and robustness by European standards.

On the performance side, Qe‑Secure also delivers: it can analyze traffic at up to 100 Gbps and enables very fast investigations, supported by advanced indexing and efficient investigation workflows. In practice, this significantly shortens the time from the first alert to a well‑informed decision.

For organizations looking for maximum control over their data, strong protection aligned with European standards and high‑performance detection of modern threats, Qe‑Secure is, in my view, one of the most mature and strategically sound NDR solutions available today.

Darktrace is undeniably a major, well‑recognized player in the cybersecurity market. Its highly effective marketing emphasizes a so‑called self‑learning AI technology capable of autonomously adapting to the network it protects. On paper, the promise is attractive, and the detection capabilities are real. However, for technical teams, this approach can feel like working with a “black box”. It can be difficult at times to understand exactly why an alert was triggered, which complicates the work of analysts who like to keep firm control and a clear understanding of their tools. The main point to watch is the architecture: for some of its features and for data aggregation, Darktrace relies on a cloud infrastructure. Inevitably, this raises questions around data location and loss of control, a trade‑off that not every organization is willing to accept - especially in Europe. It’s a powerful solution, but one that requires you to trust the opacity of its algorithms and its hybrid model.

Formerly known as Stealthwatch, Cisco’s NDR solution benefits from the backing of a giant in networking hardware. Its main advantage is its often native integration into Cisco’s extensive networking and security ecosystem. For companies already heavily invested in Cisco equipment, the promise of broad visibility and product synergy carries real weight. The solution is mature, robust, and capable of analyzing encrypted traffic. The biggest, and very significant, concern is that this is a U.S. company. Data processed by the solution, even if hosted in Europe, may still be accessible to U.S. authorities via extraterritorial laws such as the Cloud Act. For entities handling strategic, industrial, or health‑related data, this is a legal and sovereignty risk that can no longer be ignored. In addition, the richness of the Cisco ecosystem can also translate into configuration and licensing complexity (speaking from experience here), a factor you must consider when calculating total cost of ownership.

ExtraHop is a name that often comes up in NDR comparisons, particularly for its ability to provide detailed visibility into encrypted traffic flows without systematically decrypting everything. That’s an undeniable technical feat which helps expose threats hidden in SSL/TLS tunnels. The platform is recognized for its powerful analytics and its ability to cover hybrid environments. However, as with many U.S.‑based vendors in this ranking, the main Achilles’ heel remains the same: exposure to the Cloud Act. ExtraHop is headquartered in Seattle, so the confidentiality guarantees around your data with respect to U.S. agency requests are, at best, relative - regardless of where the servers are physically located. Furthermore, feedback from some users and analysts highlights a pricing model that can quickly become costly as the volume of traffic under analysis increases. This is something you should carefully model before committing.

Corelight takes a somewhat different approach that will appeal to highly technical audiences. Their solution is built on the highly respected open‑source Zeek framework, a reference in the world of network traffic analysis.

The advantage is that it delivers extremely rich, granular data about everything happening on your network. In a way, Corelight packages Zeek into a high‑performance, supported appliance.

The flip side is that Corelight is, above all, a fantastic source of logs for other systems (like SIEMs). It’s not a turnkey NDR solution with as fully integrated an investigation interface and detection intelligence as some competitors provide.

It demands strong in‑house expertise to turn this volume of raw data into actionable intelligence. It’s an excellent tool—but one that’s really aimed at mature, well‑equipped security teams who want to build their own “control tower,” rather than those looking for a fully integrated detection and response platform.

IronNet, founded by a former NSA director, offers an original approach called “IronDome.” The (good) idea is to create a sort of collective defense system in which participants anonymously share information about threats detected in their sector. In theory, that makes it possible to identify an attack targeting several companies more quickly. The concept is intellectually appealing. In practice, its effectiveness depends heavily on the number and quality of participants in the ecosystem. Questions have at times been raised about the company’s economic viability and about the actual added value of this shared intelligence compared to more traditional threat intelligence feeds. And of course, as a U.S. company, it is subject to the same data sovereignty concerns as its peers (you’ve probably picked up on that theme by now).

Trellix is the result of a merger between McAfee Enterprise and FireEye, two historic names in cybersecurity. Trellix’s NDR offering aims to combine the best of both worlds and deliver detection capabilities integrated into a broader XDR platform.

The potential advantage lies in leveraging decades of threat research. However, as is often the case with large‑scale mergers, technical integration takes time. The unified platform is still relatively recent, and there isn’t yet a long track record on its stability and real‑world performance compared with solutions that were natively developed by NDR pure‑play vendors.

The product strategy is still in a consolidation phase, and it may be wise to wait until the solution is fully mature and has proven itself in the field before treating it as a strategic choice.

Arista Networks is a serious Cisco competitor in the data center networking space, recognized for the performance and low latency of its switches. Extending its portfolio to security with an NDR solution is a logical step. The key strength here is deep, intimate knowledge of the network layer. However, threat detection is a specialized discipline of its own, requiring strong expertise in behavioral analytics and a solid understanding of attacker tradecraft. While Arista is technically very capable, it doesn’t have the same historical legitimacy or recognition as cybersecurity pure‑play vendors. Their NDR solution is sometimes perceived more as a functional extension of their networking offering than as a flagship security platform. That’s something to keep in mind: would you rather have a networking specialist that also does security, or a security specialist that analyzes the network? That choice is yours.

You can’t talk about NDR without mentioning Vectra AI. The platform is mature and powerful, and its AI is widely recognized for its ability to identify attacker behaviors inside the network. Vectra AI embodies a distinctly U.S. approach to NDR, with heavy reliance on a cloud‑based architecture to process data and apply its analytics. While extremely effective, this model requires that you accept having metadata about your internal traffic sent to and analyzed on an external platform operated by a U.S. entity. For many European organizations, that’s a red line. Vectra AI is an excellent choice if raw performance is your only criterion and data sovereignty is not a priority. But given the current regulatory and geopolitical context, it’s a risky bet.