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.
"We can use Defender to block and monitor for security purposes without needing multiple other products to do different tasks."
"We are connected to Microsoft and have every laptop enrolled. This acts as an endpoint. The tool helps me check security and compliance. I can also check what a device is doing."
"There is also one dashboard that shows us the status of many controls at once and the details I can get... It gives a great overview of many areas, such as files, emails, chats, and links. Even with the apps, it gives you a great overview. In one place you can see where you should look into things more deeply..."
"The 'Incidents and Alerts' tab is a valuable feature where we can find triggered alerts."
"The ability to hunt that IM data set or the identity data set at the same time is valuable. As incident response professionals, we are very used to EDRs and having device process registry telemetry, but a lot of times, we do not have that identity data right there with us, so we have to go search for it in some other silo. Being able to cross-correlate via both datasets at the same time is something that we can only do in Def"
"Within advanced threat hunting, the tables that have already been defined by Microsoft are helpful. In the advanced threat hunting tab, there were different tables, and one of the tables was related to device info, device alert, and device events. That was very helpful. Another feature that I liked but didn't have access to was deep analysis."
"Its most significant advantage lies in its affordability."
"All of the security components are valuable including, antiphishing, antispam, and stage three antivirus."
"Palo Alto is constantly adding new features."
"It'll not slow down your system when compared to others."
"The behavior-based detection feature is valuable."
"It blocks malicious files. It prevents attacks. It doesn't require many updates, it's a very light application."
"Being a cloud solution it is very flexible in serving internal and external connections and a broad range of devices."
"Cortex XDR can integrate the firewalls and determine the tendencies of the attacks. It's a new generation antivirus, with protection endpoints and detection response. It is very easy to use and everybody can operate the solution."
"One thing that I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, it is detecting all the suspicious or malicious binaries, and it has integration with Palo Alto Firewall."
"Monitoring is most valuable."
"Our clients have been able to survive a ransomware attack without even knowing that they had had files encrypted and automatically rolled back - even their Point of Sale (POS) system did not miss a beat and the business continued as normal without interruption."
"SentinelOne also provides equal protection across Windows, Linux, and macOS. I have all of them and every flavor of them you could possibly imagine. They've done a great job because I still have a lot of legacy infrastructure to support. It can support legacy environments as well as newer environments, including all the latest OS's... There are cost savings not only on licensing but because I don't have to have different people managing different consoles."
"The remediation and rollback features are pretty impressive."
"SentinelOne is very lightweight. It doesn’t consume much memory of endpoints. Endpoints don't hang, and machine performance doesn’t get impacted. Their technical support is also very nice."
"The solution has helped reduce our alerts."
"The solution can search for hidden and dormant threats on encrypted traffic in your environment."
"It is purely cloud-based, meaning you don't need to have something installed, such as a server on-prem. You have cloud management and can access it from anywhere, with integration with SSO, with one click. It's also very lightweight."
"SentinelOne gives us visibility into various high-level vulnerabilities on every gateway on the network. It helps us prevent vulnerable devices from being compromised. We primarily use Singularity for its EDR functions. We're happy with that."
"It would be highly beneficial if CoPilot could identify anomalies within the network and notify the IT team."
"A simple dashboard without having to use MS Sentinel would be a welcome improvement."
"Customers say they want absolutely seamless integration between other Microsoft solutions and Defender XDR, including the ability to change device settings within the Defender portal. They need to contact the IT team responsible for the device management tools to change some settings. They would prefer that those changes be initiated directly from the Defender portal or applied from Intune without involving the IT operations team."
"The advanced threat-hunting capabilities are phenomenal, and the security copilot enhances that, but some data elements could be better or have more context inside of the advanced tables themselves. The schemas feel a little limited to what they're building into the product. It's probably just a maturity thing. I imagine we'll see the features I want in the next year."
"There should be better information for experts on features in the solution. What I see when reading about features in Microsoft 365 Defender is that it is always general information. If Microsoft could go deeper into details for the experts about how to use the tools, usage of it would be more familiar and it would be easier to use."
"While the XDR platform offers valuable functionalities, it falls short of other solutions in its ability to deliver a cohesive identity experience."
"It would be beneficial to have a more seamless experience with everything consolidated in one place, particularly when dealing with aspects related to the Exchange console."
"The support could be more knowledgable to improve their offering."
"There's an overall lack of features."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console."
"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."
"We had a problem with getting our older endpoints up to date, but their newest updates have been really good. I've been pleased with it in terms of what our needs are. It's doing what we want it to do."
"The product's pricing needs improvement. They could provide more discounts. Additionally, the dashboard and control panel could be enhanced."
"If they had pulse rate detection, it would be better."
"I would like to see them include NDR (Network Detection Response)."
"The solution can never really be an on-premises solution based simply on the way it is set up. It needs metadata to run and improve. Having an on-premises solution would cut it off from making improvements."
"The application management needs improvements, but I understand that they are working on it. We talked to them a few months ago, and it is something they are trying to get up to speed and fix. This way, we will be able to disable critical apps or vulnerable apps through SentinelOne. We will be able to patch applications or disable applications through the Application Management tab."
"The SentinelOne portal is not user-friendly, which is one of its drawbacks."
"Since SentinelOne Hologram was an Attivo Networks product acquired by Microsoft, I have to install a different agent on endpoints for that product. It would be better if the same SentinelOne agent could be used for both the EDR and deception technology."
"We have had one or two occasions when we had to roll back off our Windows machine. Then, we had an issue with SentinelOne where we couldn't let the client make contact with the cloud service anymore. Therefore, the integration with the Windows Service Recovery could be improved in the future."
"The ability to have more direct purchasing for smaller groups and smaller businesses would be great."
"The biggest thing for me in terms of improvements is the online console. There are frequent updates, and sometimes we'll get a little agitated getting signed in."
"I rate Singularity Complete a seven out of ten for affordability. It's more expensive than our previous solution, but it does its job well. At the same time, there is some room for improvement. Cheaper is always better."
"SentinelOne Singularity Complete should focus on analytical data. Backend aggregation can make things faster in the front end."
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 176 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 "It provides a whole new level of visibility and integrates with most other vendors". 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 Wazuh, whereas SentinelOne Singularity Complete is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, ThreatLocker Protect and Symantec Endpoint Security. 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.