We performed a comparison between Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft 365 Defender based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cortex XDR offers an intuitive interface, advanced identification of risks, expandability, and compatibility with various other solutions. Microsoft 365 Defender offers effortless integration with other Microsoft solutions. Users praised its flexibility and comprehensive protection against multiple threat types. Cortex XDR could use enhancements in hard disk encryption, security integration, and customer education. Microsoft 365 Defender could upgrade its machine learning and AI capabilities. Some users suggested adopting Zero Trust features.
Service and Support: Some customers were impressed with Palo Alto's support, while others reported mixed experiences. Some of our reviewers were satisfied with Microsoft's support, but others complained about slow responses and lackluster problem-solving capabilities.
Ease of Deployment: Some users thought Cortex XDR’s deployment was fast and straightforward, while others consider it to be a complex and time-consuming task that requires thorough planning. Setting up Microsoft 365 Defender is potentially complex and may involve integrating with existing policies. Some users reported longer deployment times.
Pricing: Some reviewers said Cortex XDR is expensive, but others said it was reasonable for the robust feature set Cortex offers. Some users say that Microsoft 365 Defender is good value, but other users perceive it as more expensive than similar competing products.
ROI: Cortex XDR creates value by ensuring system and data security rather than a financial return on investment. Microsoft 365 Defender offers savings, attack prevention, consolidation of security measures, and proactive threat detection.
Comparison Results: Our users prefer Cortex XDR over Microsoft 365 Defender. Cortex XDR offers a comprehensive platform with excellent visibility, protection, and control over network endpoints. Users appreciate the simplicity and efficiency of Cortex XDR's initial setup, as well as its ease of maintenance and updates. Microsoft 365 Defender receives mixed reviews about its initial setup, pricing, and customer support.
"It notifies us if there's any suspicious file on any PC. If any execution or similar kind of thing is happening, it just alerts us. It doesn't only alert. It also blocks the execution until we allow it. We check whether the execution is legitimate or not, and then approve it or keep it blocked. This gives us a little bit of control over this mechanism. Fortinet FortiEDR is also very straightforward and easy to maintain."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the ability to customize it and to reduce its size. It lets you run in a very small window in terms of memory and resources on legacy cash registers."
"The console is easy to read. I also like the scanning part and the ability to move assets from one to the other."
"Fortinet FortiEDR made our clients feel secure and more at ease, knowing that they had an EDR solution that would close the gap in their security posture."
"The product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls."
"Ability to get forensics details and also memory exfiltration."
"The solution was relatively easy to deploy."
"Being a cloud solution it is very flexible in serving internal and external connections and a broad range of devices."
"Cortex XDR's most valuable feature is its intelligence-based dashboards."
"The information the dashboard provides is very clear."
"We've had a significant increase in blocking with a decrease in false positives, because it's looking at how the files work, not just a list of files that it's been told to look for."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The anti-exploit is impenetrable. We chose Traps because it is the only product that we were not able to get anything past."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is easy to use and does not consume a lot of hardware resources."
"The ability to kind of stitch everything together and see the actual complete picture is very useful. I guess you'd call it a playbook. Some people call it the forensics analysis of what was happening on particular endpoints when they detected some malicious behavior, and what transpired before that to cause that. It is also very user friendly. The way they have done everything and integrated all the solutions that they've purchased over the years to make it a very seamless, effective product is very good. One thing about Palo Alto is that they take the products or services that they purchase and make them seamless for the end user as compared to some companies that purchase other companies and then just kind of have their products off to the side or keep different interfaces. Palo Alto doesn't do that."
"The most valuable features are spam filtering, attachment filtering, and antivirus protection."
"Microsoft XDR's system of analysis and investigation is super convenient for our customers. It integrates with other Microsoft solutions like Defender for 365 to protect email traffic from malicious external web links and phishing."
"The visibility into threats is also very impressive because Microsoft helps you predict things and provides analytics to help you really improve your security. And all of this technology works across the domain, so it is pretty helpful in terms of threat analytics."
"The solution is well integrated with applications. It is easy to maintain and administer."
"The attack simulation is excellent; initially, this feature wasn't very robust, but Microsoft improved what we could achieve with it. We can now customize our practice phishing emails and include our company logo, for example. Attack simulation also helps integrate with third-party solutions where applicable and provides an overview of our security architecture through testing. The summary includes areas for improvement in our protection and what steps we need to take to get there."
"I like how Microsoft XDR and the other Microsoft products are integrated into a single unified security stack covering identity access management, endpoint protection, email, cloud applications, etc."
"The timeline feature is excellent. I also like the phishing simulation. We have phishing campaigns to educate employees and warn them about these threats."
"The incident threat response and its ability to facilitate effective remediation against threats are the standout features."
"We've had a lot of false positives; things incorrectly flagged that require manual configuration to allow. Even worse, after we allow a legitimate program, it sometimes gets flagged again after an update. This has caused a lot of extra work for my team."
"Detections could be improved."
"I think cloud security and SASE are areas of concern in the product where improvements are required. The tool's cloud version has to be improved in terms of the security it offers."
"Everything with Fortinet having to do with their cloud services. They need to invest more in their internal infrastructure that they are running in the cloud. One of the things I find with their cloud environment compared to others' is that they go cheap on the equipment. So it causes some performance degradation."
"Making the portal mobile friendly would be helpful when I am out of office."
"We find the solution to be a bit expensive."
"Cannot be used on mobile devices with a secure connection."
"We'd like to see more one-to-one product presentations for the distribution channels."
"We would also like to have advanced tech protection and email scanning."
"Cortex XDR is trickier to configure than other Palo Alto products. This is one area where we are not so satisfied."
"The licensing model is complex to understand. It requires expertise to explain how the licensing works. You need expertise to guide you through the subscription plan."
"It should support more mobile operating systems. That is one of the cons of their infrastructure right now."
"The dashboard could use some significant improvement, just making it more useful with more information. It has a limited amount of information right now. It is customizable, but I'd love to see a better out-of-box dashboard."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by adding a sandbox feature to better compete with their competitors which have it."
"The setup is quite easy. We had appropriate support from the manager. One thing that was missing was the integration part."
"The price could be a little lower."
"This solution could be improved if it included features such as those offered by Malwarebytes."
"The design of the user interface could use some work. Sometimes it's hard to find the exact information you need."
"There are still some components, such as vulnerability management within the vendor product, where improved integration would be beneficial."
"The support team is not competent or responsive."
"The support could be more knowledgable to improve their offering."
"The message trace feature for investigating mail flow issues should add more detailed information to the summary report... if they could extend the summary report a little bit, make it more descriptive, ordinary administrators could understand what happened and that the emails failed at this or that point. That way they would know the location to go to try to correct it and to prevent it from occurring again."
"In the beginning, it's difficult to navigate the system because it is quite large. Just trying to find your way and understand how the system works can be hard. After spending quite a lot of time searching it's a lot easier, but I wish it were a bit more user-friendly when you're trying to find things."
"There could be a way to proactively monitor unusual activity ."
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Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 80 reviews while Microsoft Defender XDR is ranked 5th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 78 reviews. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Defender XDR is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks writes "Perfect correlation and XDR capabilities for network traffic plus endpoint security". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender XDR writes "Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot". Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, Symantec Endpoint Security and Check Point Harmony Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Defender XDR is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, Wazuh and Microsoft Entra ID. See our Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Microsoft Defender XDR report.
See our list of best Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vendors and best Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vendors.
We monitor all Extended Detection and Response (XDR) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.