We performed a comparison between Darktrace and SentinelOne based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on our users’ reviews, we would conclude that SentinelOne is a stronger, more secure solution than Darktrace. Reviewers say that SentinelOne offers a deeper and more thorough level of security. Additionally, SentinelOne provides equal protection across Windows, Linux, and macOS. It can also support legacy infrastructure as well as newer environments. The single-pane feature helps protect numerous endpoints with a very lean team, saving time and money.
"The product's scalability is good."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"Defender helps us prioritize threats across our organization."
"Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple."
"Provides great network protection."
"Ability to see events and exactly what traffic or website the device had tried to connect to that raised the alert or issue."
"It is very stable and easy to use."
"We are able to detect a lot of things, actually, and see what is happening in our network."
"The models, triggers, and alerts are customizable."
"One thing I appreciate is Antigena Email, which is for email protection."
"One member of staff is enough for deployment and maintenance because Darkforce is AI-driven. It does a lot of things by itself."
"I am impressed with the product's ability to give insights into network traffic."
"SentinelOne is very simple to install and very simple to manage. It's very aggressive, so it does protection well, and it seems to be stopping attacks that other solutions cannot."
"The product can scale as needed."
"The overall product quality is good."
"It is great for security monitoring and blocking when needed."
"Most of the features are valuable. As a system integrator, agent deployment is valuable. It also fits the requirements of most of the clients."
"The best part of the agent is that users can't remove or disable it, so endpoints will be safe. I can control it from the portal. I can see when it's updated and I can push updates from the portal. The greatness of SentinelOne is that our end-users don't see anything to do with the agents. Some of them don't even know it's on their laptops. And that's a good thing."
"It delivers the type of security which we were hoping for, since we have a lot of different endpoint users utilizing different types of software. We have people who only use Office software, like email, Word, and PDFs. Then, we have people who use some applications that other people wrote. We also write applications in-house using people who develop software. Therefore, we have some machines using very high-end developer software for mechanical development, electronic development, and software development. Those users are used to managing their PC on their own. The centralize platform allows us to differentiate between those three groups of people. We have overall control and can oversee the security levels at all the endpoints. They have not yet been blocked in any way when performing the functions"
"It protects your machine, and it does an excellent job using AI to determine an attack and stop the attack. Its most powerful feature is prevention, and it can unwind ransomware activity as well. So, it is a really useful product in that sense."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"They can improve their security in a way where a customer can know if all their attachments are safe or not to open through a report. The solution does its job perfectly, but it never reports to the customer whether those attachments have been stopped before or not."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should improve the troubleshooting tools. It's unclear whether the device is blocked at the firewall level or at the device itself. The granularity needed for troubleshooting is currently lacking. From my perspective, Microsoft should address this issue to benefit many users who likely share the same sentiment."
"There's room for improvement regarding the time frame for retrieving emails."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 could improve by giving customers information on techniques to prevent threats. For example, information about best practices on how to protect their own devices against hackers and scammers, such as educational information or training. This would help others have a better understanding of cyber security. Additionally, there can be more security features added."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"This product needs more in terms of prevention. The detection capabilities work well but once a threat has been detected, Darktrace should work to prevent it from doing anything malicious."
"Darktrace does not have any capabilities to configure."
"They just need to work on their price. In terms of features, we are trying to understand all the features that we have. We're still exploring everything that we have so that we can fully utilize it. At this point in time, it is not about the features. It is more about utilization. We're just trying to utilize everything to full capacity."
"The initial setup is more complex and time-consuming than some solutions."
"Darkforce could be improved in the range of the interface; how to interact with the actions it's taking or not taking."
"The pricing model is a little too high and could be more flexible."
"Darktrace could improve its features, such as monitoring and detecting ransomware."
"The interface is too mathematical and it should be simplified."
"The management console."
"There aren't enough reporting capabilities for decision-makers."
"The channel policy has room for improvement."
"The way Singularity Complete handles blocking external mass storage is annoying because it is so difficult to unblock single endpoints."
"They could add “right click>scan” where most users were trained to do so in handling flash drives."
"I would like to see a better control panel for the managed service side of it."
"They can improve the administrative interface. They can make it more user-friendly."
"It would help if they could get all the relevant threat information, the related events, in one place. Currently, we need to go to a number of places and do research. If they could have it all in one place, that would help investigations."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
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Darktrace is ranked 13th in Email Security with 65 reviews while SentinelOne Singularity Complete is ranked 2nd in EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) with 174 reviews. Darktrace is rated 8.2, while SentinelOne Singularity Complete is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Darktrace writes "Great autonomous support, offers an easy setup, and has responsive support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SentinelOne Singularity Complete writes "Provides peace of mind and is good at ingesting data and correlating". Darktrace is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Vectra AI, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Secure Network Analytics and ExtraHop Reveal(x), whereas SentinelOne Singularity Complete is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, ThreatLocker Protect, Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Bitdefender GravityZone EDR.
We monitor all Email Security 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.
You should not compare SentinelOne to Darktrace - they solve completely different problems. These types of questions show the ongoing challenges in cybersecurity. As written below, SentinelOne is an Endpoint Detection and Response tool. It is to protect a laptop or workstation from an attack. EDR is a core requirement for cyber defense.
Darktrace is a network detection and response tool. NDR tools detect attacks occurring against the network. NDR is also a core requirement for cyber defense.
Regardless of the quality of either tool, you need to cover both your endpoint and your network. So if you decide one is better and choose it, you remain vulnerable to attack.
Cover your endpoint only, and I am going to hit you with an attack on your network. Cover your network only, and I will get you via an endpoint.
EDR tools - SentinelOne, Cybereason, CrowdStrike, Carbon Black to name a few.
NDR tools - Darktrace, Vectra, ExtraHop, Cyglass to name a few.
Comparisons of these tools by category would be more valuable.
An easy answer for me - pretty much exactly what @Janet Staver described.
DT was a good east-west network traffic tool that could tell you all about communications between systems (think NDR) but limited capacity, expensive boxes, that we outgrew.
S1 is an endpoint tool with deep inspection, a central console, and is cost-effective.
I have done a POC with Darktrace three different times at different orgs.
They are actually a borderline scam company. On each POC, I set up tests that even a free install of Suricata could detect. DT failed to detect anything in each case.
The other thing is that they call their alerts breaches. This is a BAD idea and they would not listen to reason on this. They will send out young, good-looking salespeople, but by the time you are done with your POC, they will be gone and replaced by someone else.
Their sales engineers are too young to have any experience with a security issue you may be dealing with. And I suspect after a few POCs they see that this does not work, at all, and leave! Stay away from Darktrace!
You can't compare these two solutions - they are different.
SentinelOne is an EDR similar to known EDRs (Sophos, Sandblast, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto XDR, etc.).
You need an agent to install to the endpoint to manage. You can integrate via API if you want to integrate to existing networks like Clearpass and micro-segmentation software like Guardicore.
Darktrace is an AI-based tool to analyze traffic for known cyber threats from the network level without any agent. Either mirror the port or redirect traffic from VLAN to the Darktrace sensor. The sensor notifies you if any devices are newly discovered to the network, or new users access the particular device. You can block that traffic or device to mobile devices or web UI. In addition, Darktrace also has a module to integrate to SaS like the Office365 email.
Both @Janet Staver and @ITSecuri7cfd are spot on.
As a security vendor, like ITSecuri7cfd points out, one tool is for the endpoint and one tool is for the network side.
If you looking for an EDR tool, you should look to compare solutions from Carbon Black, Crowdstrike, etc.
As for Darktrace, they are classified as an NDR tool. Within the NDR market, there are essentially 2 types of solutions; tools for smaller organizations that have limited resources and tools that are designed for organizations that have SOC teams that need better visibility and data.
If you want to learn more about NDR solutions in general we have written an ebook called "What to look for in an NDR platform": https://bricata.com/wp-content...
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is meant for smaller to medium-sized businesses. It is also a good option for organizations who have limited security resources but still need deep insights into threats and network intrusions. Darktrace also has an invaluable feature that produces weekly reports.
A unique feature Darktrace has to its name is its use of artificial intelligence for cybersecurity and machine learning capabilities. Darktrace is able to successfully detect threats over networks before it's even possible for them to spread. In addition, it notifies you with all the threat details. Although Darktrace is geared toward smaller-sized organizations, it does come with a hefty cost. The cost increases as the number of products that need to be monitored increases.
SentinelOne is a great product and effective for mitigating threats. It allows you to have granular control over your environments and your endpoints. SentinelOne has a central management console. It also provides insight into lateral movement threats, by gathering data from anything that happens to be related to the security of an endpoint. Another SentinelOne feature that’s fantastic is their one-click automation remediation, along with rollback for restoring an endpoint, which can often be very helpful.
SentinelOne is also known for its ability to decrease incident response time and has deep visibility that comes in handy quite often. However, the dashboard design isn’t wonderful. In contrast to Darktrace though, SentinelOne is efficient because minimal administrative support is required, and it offers a lot for a solution that is cost-effective.
Conclusion
While both SentinelOne and Darktrace boast many beneficial features, one outweighs the other when it comes to price. If Darktrace is within your budget, I would recommend it. But if not, SentinelOne is a great solution that makes a lot of sense.