We performed a comparison between Cortex XDR by Palo Alto networks and Microsoft defender for endpoint based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint seems to be a slightly superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks rather expensive to purchase. Some reviewers also felt that the ease of deployment could be improved.
"I'm only using the AMP (advanced malware protection) which is protecting my file system from all the malicious things that might happen. It should protect all kinds of things that might happen on the servers, things that I cannot see."
"It is extensive in terms of providing visibility and insights into threats. It allows for research into a threat, and you can chart your progress on how you're resolving it."
"Among the most valuable features are the exclusions. And on the scalability side, we can integrate well with the SIEM orchestration engine and a number of applications that are proprietary or open source."
"Device Trajectory is one of the most valuable features. We're able to dig in and really understand how things came to be and where to focus our efforts."
"The entirety of our network infrastructure is Cisco and the most valuable feature is the integration."
"The threat Grid with the ability to observe the sandboxing, analyze, and perform investigations of different malicious files has been great."
"The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is that there is a lot more malware slipping through my email filters than I expected."
"The most valuable feature is signature-based malware detection."
"Monitoring is most valuable."
"The most valuable feature is that you can select remote access of any machine for sandboxing."
"Threat identification and detection are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The integrations are out-of-the-box, as are the playbooks."
"Cortex XDR's most valuable feature is its intelligence-based dashboards."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks should be a stable solution."
"I've found the solution to be highly scalable for enterprises."
"The management capabilities, allow an IT organization to get quite a good picture of attempted cyber attacks."
"The installation is straightforward."
"It's a very solid security system, and the advanced hunting and everything really lets you dive deep into things."
"This solution definitely increases our security posture. When you are reviewing your existing fleet or endpoints and based on the configuration that you put out of your Defender for Endpoint, you then receive a security score from Microsoft. Depending on what rules you have configured, what policies you have deployed, and what attack surface reduction rules that you have set up and deployed, it is almost gamifying information security in the sense that you are always trying to achieve a higher score. The more hardening you perform on your endpoints, the better score you receive. This generally tends to give you a better peace of mind, but also makes you secure at the same time."
"It can reach our applications and PC activities in the cloud."
"We are able to productively integrate with existing on-prem, hybrid, or cloud applications."
"The solution can scale as needed."
"It's an enterprise solution that provides a centralized console and it supports all the platforms that we use, including Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, and Android."
"We are a Microsoft shop, and Defender is a Microsoft solution that provides some security at a reasonable cost."
"We had a lot of noise at the beginning, and we had to turn it down based on exclusions, application whitelisting, and excluding unknown benign applications. Cisco should understand the need for continuous updates on the custom Cisco exclusions and the custom applications that come out-of-the-box with the AMP for Endpoints."
"We don't have issues. We think that Cisco covers all of the security aspects on the market. They continue to innovate in the right way."
"The thing I hate the most, which they have not fixed, is when it creates duplicate entries within a console. If you have a computer and you upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, or you upgrade your agent from version 6 to 7, it creates a new instance in there instead of updating the information. Instead of paying a license for one computer, I have to license two computers until I manually go in, search for all the duplicate entries, and clean them out myself."
"In Orbital, there are tons of prebuilt queries, but there is not a lot of information in lay terms. There isn't enough information to help us with what we're looking for and why we are looking for it with this query. There are probably a dozen queries in there that really focus on what I need to focus on, but they are not always easy to find the first time through."
"They could improve the main dashboard to more clearly show me the things that I want to see. When I open the dashboard right now, I see a million things and they are not always the things that I need."
"I would like to see integration with Cisco Analytics."
"In terms of the user experience, if the UX design could be much simpler [that would improve things]... if they could make it more intuitive for someone who is not an engineer so that they still can read what's going on in their webpage and understand, that would be something."
"This product has issues with the number of false positives that it reports."
"They've been having some issues with updating their endpoint agents, and it has been quite frustrating."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console."
"The solution lacks real-time, on-demand antivirus."
"We have found that there are times Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks does not detect some of the viruses, we have to use another protection solution called Kaspersky."
"We would also like to have advanced tech protection and email scanning."
"In general, the price could be more competitive."
"Cortex does not offer an on-premises solution. However, some customers would prefer not to be on the cloud. It would be ideal if it could offer something on-prem as well."
"I would like to see them include NDR (Network Detection Response)."
"It's not quite a mature solution just yet. It needs more time to grow and develop."
"The reporting in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should improve. The solution has limited features."
"It's not easy to create special allowances for certain groups of users. It can be a little heavy-handed in some areas where Microsoft has decided to lock a feature out, meaning they make it hard to make an exception... One company we work with needed to use about 20 different thumb drives for about 20 users. To make that exception for them was very difficult. In fact, you can't really make an exception. But what you can do is allow them to use it and, while it will still alert, you can actually suppress those alerts."
"We encountered some issues when we were trying to enable automatic updates from our group policy."
"We would like more customization."
"This solution is not secure, which is why I have moved to Linux."
"Microsoft Defender in the basic form is not very useful for managing the security environment. The free version is not capable of covering the needs of centralized management, EDR, and behavioral analysis. If you don't have the commercial version, you can't have centralized management and set up the policies and other things. Each client is a standalone installation, which is not useful for security in an enterprise model."
"Windows Firewall is integrated with Windows Defender. Over the last few days, I have had a problem with defining a wildcard on Windows Firewall. For example, I wanted to pull out the connection of my program and install a software package with a lot of executable files. I wanted to prevent it from accessing the internet. I could not select executables by using a wildcard. I had to select a single executable with its full name."
More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
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Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in EPP (Endpoint Protection for Business) with 45 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 3rd in EPP (Endpoint Protection for Business) with 115 reviews. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks writes "Easy to set up, reliable, and always scanning". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint writes "Enables ingestion of events directly into your SIEM/SOAR, but requires integration with all Defender products to work optimally". Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne, Symantec Endpoint Security, Trend Micro Apex One and Check Point Harmony Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Sophos Intercept X, Symantec Endpoint Security, SentinelOne and Malwarebytes. See our Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
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We monitor all EPP (Endpoint Protection for Business) 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.