We performed a comparison between Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and SentinelOne based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both products receive high marks from reviewers. However, SentinelOne comes out on top in this comparison due to its impressive security and EDR features, attractive price, and impressive ROI.
"My clients like Defender's file integrity monitoring. They're monitoring Windows and Linux system files."
"It has great stability."
"We also use Microsoft Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, Defender for Identity, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. They are all integrated and it was very easy to integrate them. In my experience with the integrations, it was just a click of a button and things were integrated. It's just a button."
"Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise."
"Email protection is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender XDR."
"The most valuable feature is the DLP because that's where we can have an added data protection layer and extend it not just to emails but to the documents that users are working on. We can make sure that sensitive data is tagged and flagged if unauthorized parties are using it."
"Microsoft 365 Defender's most valuable feature is the ability to control the shadow IP."
"It has been great for us. Previously, we didn't have a solution to protect us, especially from malware, whereas now, we are getting protection up front, especially from the malware attacks coming through emails or endpoints."
"The solution doesn't need a high level of technical training."
"We can use Cortex XDR to get the entire graph of the incidents from source to destination, and we can take remedial action."
"When the pandemic started, Palo Alto came up with many solutions, which helped with the quick shift from on-premises to the cloud."
"If the user leaves our premises or network, Palo Alto Traps will still be on that endpoint and will still apply our policies."
"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks should be a stable solution."
"The dashboard is customizable."
"The one feature of Palo Alto Networks Traps that our organization finds most valuable is the App ID service."
"It has a one-click button that we can use to reverse all those dodgy changes made by the virus program and bring the system quickly back to what it was. That's one of the most important features."
"The Microsoft integrations are most valuable right now."
"The reporting part is awesome."
"The GUI is really easy to use."
"Singularity has the same features as other antivirus products, but it provides an added layer of security and vulnerability protection. It's also light on resources. Singularity doesn't use a lot of CPU or memory."
"The visibility component is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature of Singularity Complete is the Ranger function."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the user-friendly interface."
"The abundance of sub-dashboards and sub-areas within the main dashboard can be confusing, even if it all technically makes sense."
"The support team is not competent or responsive."
"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."
"There is definitely scope for improvement in the automation area. Because the solution is a SaaS platform, we don't have the overall ability to automate stuff.... There is no direct way to go ahead because it's a SaaS platform."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is not a full-fledged EDR or XDR."
"The user interface of Microsoft 365 Defender could improve. They could make it simpler."
"Correctly updated records are the most significant area for improvement. There have been times when we were notified of a required fix; we would carry out the fix and confirm it but still get the same notification a week later. This seems to be a delay in records being updated and leads to false reporting, which is something that needs to be fixed."
"There are still some components, such as vulnerability management within the vendor product, where improved integration would be beneficial."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by adding a sandbox feature to better compete with their competitors which have it."
"The tool needs to be improved in terms of integration and interface."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"In an upcoming release, the solution could improve by proving hard disk encryption. If it could support this it would be a complete solution."
"The connection to the internet has not performed as expected."
"The solution lacks real-time, on-demand antivirus."
"There are some false positives. What our guys would have liked is that it would have been easier to manipulate as soon as they found a false positive that they knew was a false positive. How to do so was not obvious. Some people complained about it. The interface, the ESM, is not user-friendly."
"Every 30 or 40 days, there's a new version and we need to go and make sure our customer's laptops are upgraded."
"The update process can be better. It is very easy to deploy, but over a long period, the updating process can be a little messy. In some EDR solutions, you end up with a very good mechanism to push new versions. It could do with a little work in that area. It is not particularly difficult, but it could do with a little work."
"The only problem I have is they don't manually review the threat files. That's the only thing I'm concerned about."
"The channel policy has room for improvement."
"It's good on Linux, and Windows is pretty good except that the Windows agents sometimes ask for a lot of resources on the endpoints. That could be in the fine-tuning for scanning. In Mac, they are complaining about the same problems, that it's using a lot of resources, but that could also be that we have to configure what it is scanning and what it should not scan. Currently it scans everything."
"Although the SentinelOne firewall seems to offer potential benefits, in reality, it hasn't proven to be very helpful."
"Email security should also integrate with it to get more visibility on it."
"The solution’s distributed intelligence at the endpoint is pretty effective, but from time to time I see that the agent is not getting the full execution history or command-line parameters. I would estimate the visibility into an endpoint is around 80 percent. There is 20 percent you don't see because, for some reason, the agents don't get all of the information."
"I'd like to see more documentation."
More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
More SentinelOne Singularity Complete Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 80 reviews while SentinelOne Singularity Complete is ranked 2nd in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 177 reviews. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4, while SentinelOne Singularity Complete is rated 8.8. 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 SentinelOne Singularity Complete writes "Provides peace of mind and is good at ingesting data and correlating". Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, Symantec Endpoint Security and Microsoft Defender for Cloud, whereas SentinelOne Singularity Complete is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, ThreatLocker Protect and Trend Vision One. See our Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. SentinelOne Singularity Complete report.
See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors, best Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vendors, and best Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vendors.
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I haven't used Cortex. My worry with it and every other solution is how well does it perform when disconnected from the cloud/ the internet?
S1 - I have been using it for a couple of years now without an issue. I had been using Cylance prior. I've been very happy with the S1 solution. Works with or without the Internet.
Depends on the size, scope and needs of your environment.
XDR is an ok monitoring/alerting tool, especially if you have a Palo Alto firewall already and everything can integrate well together. However, S1 is a superior tool IMHO and can catch and fix things automatically if you so choose (magic quadrant agrees).
Cost-wise XDR is probably cheaper but I don't know specifics on-prem vs cloud. S1 is a cloud tool but is extremely fast and responsive compared to some other tools we POC'd and can support legacy devices w2k8 and below or Linux or VDI without having to special of workarounds. So again, it depends on your needs, environment and cost.
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne
SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. The ability to reverse damage caused by ransomware with minimal interruptions to the environment is note-worthy. Sentinel One works inconspicuously in the background, continually providing protection. It has an automated active EDR that will not only find issues but can fix them. I don’t know that any other solution does that.
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto has a nice console and is easy to use. One of my favorite things about it is that it will automatically connect and log various kinds of suspicious behavior - you don’t need to do it manually. Cortex XDR is very secure but it is missing some basic features. It doesn’t offer an on-prem solution and it doesn’t integrate so well with some third-party solutions.
SentinelOne can be challenging to set up and there seem to be some applications that do not function properly when SentinelOne is installed. I would like to be able to make the reporting more specific to my needs. It would be a more attractive option if the cost was lower.
Conclusions
The find-and-fix option that SentinalOne provides was a huge win for us. We feel it provides a deeper and more thorough level of security.