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CrowdStrike Falcon vs Microsoft Security Exposure Management comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
CrowdStrike Falcon
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
138
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (6th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (1st), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (1st), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (1st), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (1st), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Security Exposure...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CrowdStrike Falcon9.9%
Wazuh6.8%
SentinelOne Singularity Complete5.8%
Other77.5%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Security Exposure Management3.2%
Pentera14.0%
Cymulate13.3%
Other69.5%
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)
 

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.
Waleed Omar - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Security Specialist at Arab Open University
Provides effective real-time threat detection with potential for cost optimization
Some features such as device control, firewall management, and file analysis are standalone products that we need to purchase separately. If these features came out of the box within the product, it would be much more beneficial for us. Other providers such as SentinelOne include these features in their base product. We attended a CrowdStrike Falcon event where they discussed some shallow AI features, but we cannot see these in our panel yet. We work with different solutions such as Darktrace and SocRadar, where AI features are automatically displayed in our dashboards after release. However, for CrowdStrike Falcon, we cannot see these features.
Kim Haroun - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate IT Analyst at Walton Arts Center
Automate phishing simulations and reduce third-party security costs through AI integration
I consider integrating AI into our system to be one of the most valuable features of Microsoft Security Exposure Management because, as I mentioned, humans get tired and cannot work 24/7. AI can store more knowledge than a human brain. Therefore, using and integrating AI into our system is going to help us become more secure and improve our scores faster, in my opinion.My impression of Microsoft Security Exposure Management's ability to provide unified security insights across multi-cloud, SaaS, identity, OT, IoT, and non-Microsoft tools is quite positive. I was very impressed with the keynotes and the session about the new Security Copilot and cloud agents. I feel this will change the IT perspective significantly. People will start thinking about how to use AI and integrate it to make our environment more secure and work more efficiently, allowing us to focus on more innovative tasks. You do not have to sit down all the time; you can let the agent run automatically and follow a more secure path. I believe this is going to be a really great innovation. I evaluate the impact of Microsoft Security Exposure Management on our SOC operations efficiency from pre- to post-breach protection positively. We utilize a third-party security platform named Recon, which helps us monitor external attacks. However, we also have Microsoft Defender as a secondary secure layer. We receive notifications when users access untrusted websites or download large amounts of data from untrusted apps. As soon as we receive a notification, we contact our third party, Recon. With the changes I learned, I feel we no longer need a third-party tool. We can build an agent just like Recon did, and integrate it into our system to handle all the work, which means saving tons of money for the company, making everyone happy. The critical asset management feature of Microsoft Security Exposure Management helps in tagging and prioritizing high-value assets significantly. We also use a third-party organization for managing critical vulnerabilities and utilize the HPS dashboard. They provide us with monthly patches since Microsoft has a monthly update cycle. They show us pending updates or indicate if there are updates several months behind, highlighting critical vulnerabilities we must address. However, integrating Microsoft vulnerability management with the agent will be very beneficial. We can eliminate third-party tools and utilize the agent correctly, inputting the necessary knowledge that will save us a lot of money.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is its machine-learning capabilities. Additionally, there is full integration with other solutions."
"The tool's use cases are relevant to security."
"The positive impacts I see from Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks include a complete 360-degree view of our security posture altogether, being a uniform platform where we are ingesting logs from multiple resources."
"The integrations are out-of-the-box, as are the playbooks."
"The most valuable features of this product are the management capabilities, which allow an IT organization to get quite a good picture of attempted cyber attacks, and its out-of-the-box investigation capabilities."
"Cortex XDR is stable, offering high quality and reliable performance."
"It can automatically correlate events and logs, which is very helpful for an IT administrator. It can correlate different kinds of malware activities over a network, agent, or host system. You do not need to do it manually. It is a good feature. It is also a user-friendly solution. We have deployed it on the cloud because our space does not provide any flexibility for on-premises deployment, but Palo Alto has added some flexibility to install it on-premises. It must be like the same Cortex XDR agent for all the VPN services, web filtering services, and everything else."
"The live terminal is probably the best thing ever. It gives you the access to get straight onto any machine."
"CrowdStrike provides a lot of visibility in their tool."
"I like the Overwatch feature the most."
"The real-time analytics aspect of CrowdStrike performs well because we get all logs in real-time, with no delay, allowing us to take action immediately."
"Without CrowdStrike, our environment is risky for the developers. As it is now, we have not had any security issues for two years."
"All the features are beneficial."
"It has definitely minimized resources. When everything was on-prem, there was a lot more work maintaining it. One of the big value tickets: I don't have lists of hundreds of exceptions for certain applications that I have to maintain, add, delete, and move. The very nature of the product has lessened my workload considerably."
"It allows us to determine root cause, do the analysis, a lot quicker."
"The EDR is amazing and ease of integration with Splunk is a big plus."
"With the new agent deal, we are set to eliminate all third-party tools once we are ready, which will save us at least $100,000 per year."
 

Cons

"If he is using a smaller company, he can depend on some other tools because Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a bit expensive."
"The downsides of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks are that in many incidents, when I enter the causality chain, there are numerous logs."
"I would like to see them include NDR (Network Detection Response). Then it would work well with SIEM Response."
"It would be good if they could make an exception for applications."
"They are charging for Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA) services, so if the per GB data could be provided at a certain level free of cost or at the same cost which the customer is taking for the entire bundle, that would be better."
"The product's pricing needs improvement. They could provide more discounts. Additionally, the dashboard and control panel could be enhanced."
"If you compare it to SentinelOne, which has more functionalities and detection capabilities on an open platform, the pricing on SentinelOne is far more reasonable and cheaper than Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks."
"The configuration could be simplified. I would like to see better protection, specifically to protect email applications."
"I would also like to see the endpoint firewall component produce some level of logging and feedback."
"The skillsets needed to run CrowdStrike Falcon are extensive if you want to get the most value out of the tool."
"CrowdStrike should add support for ransomware protection."
"CrowdStrike Falcon could improve the logs by making them free to the API."
"We sometimes get false positives."
"The performance could be better."
"I would like a centralized deployment where I could roll out or push it to all endpoints."
"Whenever there is a feature release (upgrade) where we push to all the endpoints, it causes something to be blocked without us knowing."
"I find the pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Microsoft Security Exposure Management a bit confusing because they do not clearly communicate what licenses are needed to access all features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"The price was fine."
"This is an expensive solution."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"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."
"I would like them to further reduce the price, because it is quite pricey at the moment."
"As I'm part of the technical team, not the budgeting team, I don't have information on CrowdStrike Falcon pricing."
"The tool is a little bit expensive compared to other products, but I think it's okay owing to its quality."
"The other administrator and I can log in to check the exact details of what happened, what was running, and what caused the detection. We know exactly what was happening on the end users PC and we can tell if it's something that we actually need or something that's malicious."
"We pay between $30-50 per user for a yearly license, which is more expensive than SentinelOne or Bitdefender. However, CrowdStrike gives better value for money."
"CrowdStrike Falcon is one of the more expensive endpoint solutions on the market."
"This solution offers annual subscriptions. The pricing for this solution could be reduced."
"Years ago, when we bought CrowdStrike, you got everything it had. I was a little concerned when they broke this out into a la carte modules where you can buy EDR, Spotlight, etc., picking and choosing off the menu. I was a little worried that the solution would get watered down. However, I realized in my previous organization when we had the full suite that there were a bunch of features in it that we didn't have time to operationalize. So, I warmed up to it. I get the whole, "Look, you can pick and choose. Okay, everybody buys a steak, but do you want mashed potatoes, or do you want lobster mac and cheese?" So, you can pick the sides that you want, so you can buy the solution that you want and operationalize versus paying a lot of money and getting a bunch of things, but not using 60 percent of the tools in the box."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise48
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise33
Large Enterprise62
No data available
 

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,...
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing u...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never pu...
Is Crowdstrike Falcon better than Trend Micro Deep Security?
I like that Crowdstrike allows me to easily correlate data between my firewalls. What’s most useful for my needs is t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Security Exposure Management?
I find the pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Microsoft Security Exposure Management a bit confusing because the...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Security Exposure Management?
I see potential for improvement in Microsoft Security Exposure Management, specifically in how they present their age...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Security Exposure Management?
My main use cases for Microsoft Security Exposure Management involve using a third-party tool called Infosec for all ...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
CrowdStrike Falcon XDR, CrowdStrike Falcon Threat Intelligence, CrowdStrike Identity Protection, CrowdStrike Falcon Surface, CrowdStrike Falcon Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
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Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, TrendAI and others in Extended Detection and Response (XDR). Updated: February 2026.
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