MFTECmd vs Packet Capture (cStor®): Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros and cons, compared head to head.
MFTECmd is a free digital forensics tool. Packet Capture (cStor®) is a commercial digital forensics tool by cPacket Networks. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best digital forensics fit for your security stack. Independent and vendor-neutral: we never sell rankings.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
Forensics teams and incident responders analyzing legacy Microsoft gateway appliances will get immediate value from MFTECmd's ability to extract and parse Forefront TMG and UAG configurations from command line, cutting through vendor-locked interfaces. The tool's free cost and zero licensing friction make it practical for one-off investigations without procurement overhead. Skip this if your infrastructure has already migrated off Forefront; MFTECmd's utility collapses entirely once those appliances leave your environment.
Enterprise and mid-market security teams investigating protocol-level incidents will find Packet Capture (cStor®) invaluable for its lossless capture at 10–200 Gbps paired with petabyte-scale persistent storage, letting you replay and forensically analyze traffic weeks or months after compromise. The onboard indexing and Wireshark integration mean you're not shipping raw PCAPs offsite for analysis; incident response happens at wire speed with full packet fidelity. This is deliberate forensics tooling, not a detection platform; if you need real-time threat hunting or automated anomaly flagging across the network, you'll want this feeding data to a separate NDR layer.
