A new review of five IDS products is a breath of fresh air. Reviewers say Gartner’s analysis is based on a profound misunderstanding of what network IDSs are good for and who should use them. The review focuses on real tasks by presenting scenarios, like “What happened to Paul?”, a Windows 2000 system deployed as a sacrificial lamb. The reviewers explain they didn’t review Snort as an open source product because “Snort requires the security analyst to also be a system integrator””]
Source: https://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2003/10/ids-review-addresses-issues-that.html