FortiGate vs SELKS
FortiGate
fortinet.com
SELKS
stamus-networks.comSide by side
| Figure | FortiGate | SELKS |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software | 7.8 (#11) | 8.3 (#7) |
| Deployment | FortiGate NGFW solutions are designed for physical, virtualized, and cloud deployments. | The archive page offers a Docker Compose package for Linux and Debian-based ISO images with or without a desktop, deployable on bare metal or a virtual machine. |
| Founded | 2000 | 2014 |
| Integrations | Fortinet describes its Security Fabric as providing consolidated visibility across Fortinet solutions and an ecosystem of over 500 third-party solutions. | The documented deployment can send logs to a Splunk indexer and optionally authenticate users through LDAP or LDAPS. |
| Intended users | Fortinet presents use cases for data centers, campuses, branches, public and private clouds, and harsh industrial environments. | Stamus Networks describes SELKS as suitable for many small-to-medium organizations and says practitioners, researchers, educators, students, and hobbyists use it to explore Suricata. |
| Support | Fortinet provides FortiCare support services and links to customer support and RMA resources. | The maker directs users to GitHub for documentation, issues, and the wiki, and to Discord for questions and help. |
Plans
In their own words
SELKS
SELKS is a free, open-source software package for network intrusion detection and prevention, network security monitoring, and threat hunting, built around Suricata. Its web interface manages Suricata rulesets, threat intelligence sources, custom rules, and IoC data files. Predefined filters and contextual views support threat hunting; thresholding and suppression can help reduce noisy alerts. SELKS 10 includes Suricata, Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, Stamus Community Edition, and functionality from Arkime, Evebox, and CyberChef. It can capture packets tied to detection events and export session PCAP files for investigation or playback in SELKS or other tools. Deployment options include Docker Compose for Linux and Debian-based ISO images, with or without a desktop, on bare metal or a virtual machine. SELKS is licensed under GPL 3.0-or-later. Stamus Networks says it stopped actively enhancing the legacy product on January 1, 2025, and has no future releases planned. The maker says SELKS was not designed for enterprise deployment.