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Corelight Open NDR vs Microsoft Sentinel comparison

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Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd)
Corelight Open NDR
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
12th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (19th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (4th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (7th)
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 12.1%, up from 12.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Corelight Open NDR is 2.1%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 8.9%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks12.1%
Microsoft Sentinel8.9%
Corelight Open NDR2.1%
Other76.9%
AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
reviewer2834367 - PeerSpot reviewer
Growth And Strategy Lead at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Network visibility has transformed how we detect nation state threats and protect critical industry
Before Corelight recently started pushing some of the agentic features, querying at times could be a little difficult, depending on your mastery of log scale. However, I think with a lot of the artificial intelligence that they are building in, it is getting a lot easier to query in the platform. I would definitely encourage them to continue down that path where anybody can hop into the platform and start running queries, whether it is a simple instruction like I want this, and an artificial intelligence process can actually build the query and do it. I think that would be super powerful. Cyber skill sets are in high demand, and there is a huge backlog in cyber talent. We cannot fill all the positions we need. The easier we can make these cyber systems for people to pick up and be effective on, I think is really key. Explainability of data is hyper important. In the past few artificial intelligence related updates we have gotten from Corelight, that has been one of the first questions our team has asked every time or that I have asked: show me what the model is doing, show me how it came to this analysis. Within Investigator platform, they are able to walk through and see exactly what data the artificial intelligence pulled from where and why it did what it did as far as making its suggestions. They have definitely built their system with artificial intelligence in mind up front, and having that openness as one of the key features of any of their artificial intelligence and machine learning processes in the platform is important. The issue with black boxes is obviously hallucinations from artificial intelligence and just not being able to trace to ground truth. When we are talking about these cyber incidents and being able to do forensics, you need to be able to pinpoint and tie everything together, and black boxes really obscure that and prevent you from doing so. Corelight has done a really good job of making sure that everything is explainable and everything is mapped when it comes to leveraging any of their artificial intelligence features.
Kallamuddin Ansari - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Consultant at HR Software Solution
Centralized monitoring has improved threat response but cost control still needs refinement
Based on real operations used in our corporate IT environment, the key features include log correlation and incident view. Microsoft Sentinel's biggest strength is how it correlates multiple related alerts into a single incident. This significantly reduces alert noise and helps the SOC focus on real threats instead of isolated events. Another valuable feature is KQL-based threat hunting with Kusto Query Language. The flexibility of this language allows us to build custom hunting queries based on our environment's behavior. This is extremely useful for detecting low and slow threats or hidden threats that default rules may miss. Cloud-native scalability and stability is another important feature. Being cloud-native, Microsoft Sentinel scales well for medium to large corporate environments without infrastructure management. Stability has been solid in day-to-day production. SOAR automation using playbooks is a feature we highly recommend. Microsoft Sentinel's SOAR functionality helps automate repetitive SOC tasks like alert enrichment and notification. This saves analyst time and improves response consistency.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"If you are looking for security, mainly for advanced threat prevention from ransomware and malware attacks, I would recommend Cortex."
"We have a complete overview of all our PCs and it's very easy to handle and to use the interface. It has a lot of benefits for us."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning."
"Stability-wise, it is good; I did not hear about any issues in terms of stability, and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can be trusted completely."
"The stability of the solution is very good. We have about 100 users on it right now, and we use it twice a week."
"From a single pane of glass, you can easily manage all of your endpoints."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks should be a stable solution."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has changed the way my security team detects, investigates, and responds to threats, as we are able to see the files, unwanted files, unsecured files, and unauthorized files, so we are quarantining them."
"Technical support seems to be good."
"It's an easy way for us to get visibility in a client's environment."
"It is easy to deploy and easy to handle."
"Our company has seen massive improvements in cybersecurity position for our clients."
"Corelight Open NDR has had a positive impact on my company, providing visibility as the Suricata engine can scan huge volumes of traffic, including north-south and east-west, revealing signatures and exposures I was not expecting and enabling me to catch them with Suricata alerts."
"The most valuable feature is the embedded IDS from Suricata."
"It's easy to create additional dashboards specific to supporting specific tasks."
"Corelight is easy to use."
"Sentinel lets us investigate threats and comprehensively respond from one console."
"The query language of Microsoft Sentinel is easy to understand and use."
"By implementing the SIEM along with Security Center, we have improved security to a mature level, and we are able to meet the compliance reporting and client requirements for security within the organization."
"After two years, the return on investment has been absolutely staggering because by deploying Sentinel, we pretty much have a 24/7 AI that's looking at signals, metrics, and alerts, making decisions, applying automated actions, and saving us from having to double the amount of staff we have now with about a 40% reduction in costs."
"I have seen tons of ROI with Microsoft Sentinel; that's the backbone for our security solution."
"In Azure Sentinel, we have found, they do have a store in their capability. AI and intelligence features. We found that to be very helpful for us because some other things we do need to integrate again or find another vendor for the store"
"Sentinel is the best solution that we use."
"The part that was very unexpected was Sentinel's ability to integrate with Azure Lighthouse, which, as a managed services solution provider, gives us the ability to also manage our customers' Sentinel environments or Sentinel workspaces. It is a big plus for us. With its integration with Lighthouse, we get the ability to monitor multiple workspaces from one portal. A lot of the Microsoft Sentinel workbooks already integrate with that capability, and we save countless amounts of money by simply being able to almost immediately realize multitenant capabilities. That alone is a big plus for us."
 

Cons

"The GUI could be improved."
"In terms of areas of improvement, we have not completed our review of the product. We're also looking at other products. So, it's a little bit hard to tell what could be different because we have not completed the review of this product, but based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"It tends to do 99.9% of things. The only thing I'd like is single sign-on authentication into their cloud platform so that my users can be properly authenticated against it."
"There is a severe gap in functionality between Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For example all folder restriction settings are Windows only. Traps 5.0+ does not have SAML / LDAP integration."
"Every 30 or 40 days, there's a new version and we need to go and make sure our customer's laptops are upgraded."
"Fine-tuning the detection policy requires experience because the policy is very complex in Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, and we get high false positive alerts."
"I think sometimes Cortex XDR agent automatically stops event capturing from the device, and then even the dashboard does not get any notifications from the agent."
"Currently, if you use Palo Alto endpoint protection as the only solution it's very complicated to remove pre-existing threats."
"It's an expensive solution and the price could be reduced."
"They can enhance the interface of the product. They can make it more interactive and also easier to use for feature access."
"The solution’s architecture is complex and difficult to understand. There are multiple machines and VMs."
"Before Corelight recently started pushing some of the agentic features, querying at times could be a little difficult, depending on your mastery of log scale."
"Machine learning could be a good improvement, but it's very costly."
"In the next release, building a graphical user interface would be helpful."
"Corelight hasn’t added features in a long time."
"I would like to be able to monitor applications outside of the Azure Cloud."
"If you're looking to use canned queries, the interface could be a little more straightforward. It's not immediately intuitive regarding how you use it. You have to take a canned query and paste it into an operational box and then you hit a button... They could improve the ease of deploying these queries."
"At the network level, there is a limitation in integrating some of the switches or routers with Microsoft Sentinel. Currently, SPAN traffic monitoring is not available in Microsoft Sentinel. I have heard that it is available in Defender for Identity, which is a different product. It would be good if LAN traffic monitoring or SPAN traffic monitoring is available in Microsoft Sentinel. It would add a lot of value. It is available in some of the competitor products in the market."
"There is some relatively advanced knowledge that you have to have to properly leverage Sentinel's full capabilities."
"The solution could be more user-friendly; some query languages are required to operate it."
"In terms of features I would like to see in future releases, I'm interested in a few more use cases around automation. I do believe a lot of automation is available, and more is in progress, but that would be my area of interest."
"The AI capabilities must be improved."
"Sentinel still has some anomalies. For example, sometimes when we write a query for log analysis with KQL, it doesn't give us the data in a proper way... Also, the fields or columns could be improved. Sometimes, it is not giving the desired results and there is a blank field."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."
"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"The price was fine."
"It is present, but when compared to other competitive products, I would say it is not less expensive; however, when all of the other added values are considered, the price is reasonable."
"In terms of the cost Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very expensive because we are a Mexican company and when you translate dollars to pesos the cost is very high. The solution is very expensive for Mexican companies. I understand that they have international prices, but I do not think it offsets the price enough for many companies in countries, such as Mexico. The amount it is reduced is not a massive percentage."
"It is "expensive" and flexible."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"Every customer has to pay for a license because it doesn't work with what you get from a managed services provider."
"It's a yearly fee and depends on what you are looking for."
"Sentinel can be expensive. When you ingest data from sources that are outside of the cloud, you're paying a fair amount for that data ingestion. When you're ingesting data sources from within the cloud, depending on what your retention periods are, it's not that expensive."
"It is a consumption-based license model. bands at 100, 200, 400 GB per day etc. Azure Sentinel Pricing | Microsoft Azure"
"Currently, given our use case, the cost of Sentinel is justified, but it is expensive."
"We only pay for the amount of data we bring in, which is fair."
"Pricing for Microsoft Sentinel could always be lower, but it's workable. The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost, but the licensing per Microsoft Sentinel is fairly straightforward and transparent."
"Sentinel is costly."
"It is kind of like a sliding scale. There are different tiers of pricing that go from $100 per day up to $3,500 per day. So, it just kind of depends on how much data is being stored. There can be additional costs to the standard license other than the additional data. It just kind of depends on what other services you're spinning up in Azure, or if you're using something like Azure log analytics."
"The product is costly compared to Splunk."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise1
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise47
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Corelight?
I have a fortunate experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Corelight Open NDR, as being a principal ar...
What needs improvement with Corelight?
Corelight Open NDR does not need any improvements or additional features in the next releases. The product is excelle...
What is your primary use case for Corelight?
I have been using Corelight Open NDR solution for approximately three years. I leverage the Suricata engine heavily f...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel an...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingest...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Corelight Open NDR
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
CarrefourEdnonGrand Canyon EducationSektorCERTTietoevryVolkswagen Financial Services
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Corelight Open NDR vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.