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CylancePROTECT vs Intercept X Endpoint (Sophos) comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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 Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (7th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersec...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Intercept X Endpoint
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (16th), ZTNA (10th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th), Ransomware Protection (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity is 1.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Intercept X Endpoint is 1.5%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
Intercept X Endpoint1.5%
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity1.3%
Other93.8%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

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.
Sooraj Makkancherrry - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Operations Manager at Philips
Doesn't have daily updates, which is important for healthcare IT
I face challenges with the exclusion policy - it still scans folders we told it not to, causing issues. When we contact support, they tell us to update the latest agent, but we can't do that immediately due to medical device protocols and validation testing. I wish support would try to understand our issues better instead of giving this standard response. The machine learning feature they use often tells us to upgrade the agent or add things to the exclusion list, which isn't unacceptable. It's a very good and new technology as a tool and antivirus. But sometimes, it doesn't work properly with our medical devices and products, quarantining files it shouldn't even after we add them to exclusions. This is tricky for us.
AM
IT Head at Dee Development
Has struggled to detect major threats but has offered basic protection over time
Intercept X Endpoint could learn from CrowdStrike in terms of overall performance and filtering because performance is most important, especially these days as Windows is getting buggier and buggier, which puts a huge load on the PC, and even with the most advanced CPUs and everything in place, it still lags in performance in so many places, thanks to Windows' clumsy design of these collaboration suites that make it extremely heavy on PC's resources. The interface of Intercept X Endpoint is quite old-fashioned. The Sophos interfaces, including for Intercept X Endpoint, are quite bad actually; to be very honest, even in UTM boxes, they are not great at all. You can hardly see a very small portion of windows while it's creating the firewall rules, and we have been complaining about this for quite some time, but there hasn't been any improvement on those grounds. Intercept X Endpoint's anti-ransomware capabilities failed us during a bad attack, and just because of our own backup policies, we could restore our normal operations; otherwise, if we had to depend on this solution, we would have been long dead because the infection was so bad, it couldn't even detect the infection. Intercept X Endpoint cannot handle zero-day attacks; in my experience, last year, we had this major issue with a malware attack, and it happened just because of our backup policies that we were able to recover without any support from Sophos, which just told us they would charge us some 1 Crore in rupees. Intercept X Endpoint should improve their implementation; things will never be perfect for the new world. This new world is always facing new kinds of attacks and new ways to compromise the system. They need to learn fast, implement fast, and sometimes redesigning the solution is the solution—not just patchwork. There was a time we used to love Sophos because of its fresh design and innovative thought. In my experience, when technical companies are led by MBA professionals, they lose their shine on the technical part and become more dependent on target sales; it turns into a marketing-centric operation that loses the technical focus completely.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is that it is a comprehensive solution that contains everything the organization may need when using endpoints."
"The product has an intuitive dashboard."
"The tool is easy to use."
"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"Cortex is the best tool for endpoint detection, and I have used it to verify hashes or domains to identify malicious activity, trigger playbooks that automate and gather endpoint logs, block malicious processes, and update incident tickets, showcasing end-to-end processes with automation in investigation and reducing the analysis workflow."
"Its interface and pricing are most valuable. It is better than other vendors in terms of security."
"The protection offered by this product is good, as is the endpoint reporting."
"Even if an endpoint loses connection to the Internet, I know that endpoint is protected against 99.99% of the threats in the wild today."
"It actively monitors the behavior and activity of processes and will, without hesitation, terminate at root anything it determines to be suspect."
"The CylancePROTECT agent is very low on CPU usage, so it has virtually no adverse impact on my servers, desktops, or workstations."
"It provides good insight into the programs, applications, or websites that may need attention."
"I've found the AI engine in CylancePROTECT to be particularly effective for technology and in preventing unknown threats."
"We are quite security-focused. Blackberry Protect as an endpoint solution for our service really delivers what we are expecting."
"It secures different entry points into the network."
"The most valuable feature of CylancePROTECT is the support."
"Scalability is good."
"I have found the most valuable feature to be the EDR."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is less hash-based than competitors."
"I am impressed with the tool's common dashboard feature. The solution is also easy to deploy and manage. Reporting is also easy with the software."
"The package we use also comes with spam filtering features, which are quite useful."
"Intercept X Endpoint positively impacts my organization by protecting me from viruses and attacks, thus preventing loss of productivity."
"There do not seem to be any limitations to the scalability of this product."
"What I have found the most valuable about Sophos Intercept X is the ease of use with management administration and the solution's ability to stop exploits and ransomware."
 

Cons

"Currently, we are monitoring all USB drives and ports but we would like to improve our device control capabilities."
"Previously, the endpoint would leave the environment, not being on our VPN, essentially unable to interact with the server to upload files. It was unable to retrieve new file verdicts. It was using a thing called "local analysis" to determine if something was a malicious file or not. There was no dynamic analysis."
"It's more focused on network communication. If a customer wants to increase the level of protection and start working with documents, it's impossible to integrate these features into the system. It's more of a communication-oriented system than a content security-oriented system."
"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."
"It is an enterprise-level solution. Its price could be less expensive."
"While using Cortex, I noticed some aspects that could be improved, such as increasing the synchronization speed between XDR and Xnor."
"The encryption is not up to the mark."
"The dashboard could use some significant improvement, just making it more useful with more information. It has a limited amount of information right now. It is customizable, but I'd love to see a better out-of-box dashboard."
"The security scripting needs improvement. It needs deeper security for scripting."
"The product needs to continue to offer better alerts. In particular, around false positives. It needs to reduce them from happening."
"Making the dashboards a bit modern to make them easier to search would also be helpful."
"I would say one thing that they might need to bring in is protection for mobile devices."
"If they can add more features on top of their Persona feature that would be ideal."
"We would like to see secure integration and multi-factor authentication to be able to access the administration dashboard."
"It could have integration with industrial base HMIS or Human Machine Interfaces Solutions. This is the industrial environment where you have a control center for all the automation that's happening, whether it is oil, gas, or chemical manufacturing. They often have to set up a computer at the back and watch the other stuff to get alerts. In these autonomous or on-premises environments, they often don't have access to email readily. Integration with other industrial solutions, such as HMIS, will allow them to communicate and get an alert that something has been found. This way, they can react to it sooner than having somebody watch the screen and keep checking the screen. Rockwell has its own suite. Similarly, Honeywell has its own suite. There's also an independent HMI/historian solution provider out there called VTSCADA. We actually get asked if we can get it to show up on a screen, which is difficult. Getting those alerts to work within an industrial environment would be a huge plus."
"The solution’s technical support could be improved."
"The tool is not stable on Linux systems."
"This solution is not in the high ratings on many of the top review sites. This solution has to be near the top for me to continue using it."
"The pricing could be a bit lower to match the normal retail pricing."
"Intercept X Endpoint is a very heavy solution that consumes a lot of RAM and should be made lighter."
"From my perspective, what needs to be improved in Intercept X Endpoint are the weak points of this solution and what needs to be eliminated or enhanced."
"Intercept X could enhance its support services, particularly in terms of response time and resource allocation."
"The detection and the AI capabilities should be improved upon."
"Intercept X Endpoint sometimes slows down machines due to high CPU utilization and significant RAM consumption during scanning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"It's way too expensive, but security is expensive. You pay for your licensing, and then you pay for someone to monitor the stuff."
"The tool's price is moderate."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. I have customers that have voiced that the solution is good for the value but if I want to sell more of the solution the price reduction would help."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"Our licensing cost for the solution is around $4,000 for six months. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"This cost of the license is approximately $5 USD monthly per user."
"CylancePROTECT is worth the money, but I'm not sure of its exact price. I can't remember off the top of my head."
"Review closely how many endpoints you actually need before buying into a pricing level. Deal and deal with the VAR of your choice."
"The monthly fee is $55 USD per user."
"The tool is not that expensive."
"The initial end-point cost may seem a little high (~$55/device/year) but when you look at the total peace of mind that the solution provides, with no reboots for updates, and negligible performance impact, it is well worth it."
"It's not so heavily priced; rather, it's average and decent."
"You can purchase a license for one to three years."
"The solution is not expensive."
"The price of the product is okay, in my opinion. The tool's cost per user and per annum basis is around INR 700 to 800."
"We renew the license for one year at $10,000."
"We have an annual subscription."
"I have found the price of Sophos Intercept X to be reasonable."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"We are happy with the pricing across all Sophos products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business42
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business75
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise22
 

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 do you like most about Blackberry Protect?
It is a good endpoint solution. It is very easy to manage and detect the threat immediately. It will take the necessa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Blackberry Protect?
The price is reasonable for us at the moment. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with Blackberry Protect?
I face challenges with the exclusion policy - it still scans folders we told it not to, causing issues. When we conta...
How does Crodwstrike Falcon compare with Sophos Intercept X?
I like that Crowdstrike Falcon allows me to easily correlate data between my firewalls. Its detection and machine lea...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos Intercept X?
Intercept X Endpoint has some impact on the budget. It is quite costly when measuring Intercept X Endpoint's protecti...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Blackberry Protect
Sophos Intercept X
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Panasonic, Noble Energy, Apria Healthcare Group Inc., Charles River Laboratories, Rovi Corporation, Toyota, Kiewit
Flexible Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs. Intercept X Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,813 professionals have used our research since 2012.