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Intercept X Endpoint vs VMware Carbon Black App Control 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
113
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Intercept X Endpoint
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (15th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (20th), ZTNA (12th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (12th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (16th), Ransomware Protection (4th)
VMware Carbon Black App Con...
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Application Control (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Intercept X Endpoint1.7%
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.8%
CrowdStrike Falcon6.0%
Other85.5%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
Application Control Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Carbon Black App Control10.3%
ThreatLocker Zero Trust Platform17.2%
Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange Platform11.9%
Other60.6%
Application Control
 

Q&A Highlights

TT
IT Manager at a wellness & fitness company with 51-200 employees
Dec 03, 2020
 

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.
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.
AS
Security Administrator at EJADA
We can isolate problem machines and limit their access
We use App Control to scan the network for virtual machines that have unauthorized applications. We can isolate the problem VMs and control application access.  More than two years. I rate Carbon Black App Control 10 out of 10 for stability. I rate App Control six out of 10 for scalability.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its interface and pricing are most valuable, and it is better than other vendors in terms of security."
"The product is very good, it has caught a lot of exploits that most products would not."
"I have found the solution to be very easy in respect of the integration and configurable."
"The stability of the solution is very good. We have about 100 users on it right now, and we use it twice a week."
"The stability is pretty good except for one or two cases, and based on the performance, it's been okay with pretty high performance, no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"Palo Alto is constantly adding new features."
"It is a simple platform to use."
"We use it for malicious connections from malicious websites, to identify payloads that might be inside the traffic, to identify malicious processes or bugs that are running on the network, and any activities that tend to lead to data infiltration."
"Very stable solution."
"The EDR (Enhanced Data Detection and Response) and the DLP (Data Loss Prevention) components are valuable assets."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The stability of the solution is pretty good, we've never had issues with instability and it's reliable without bugs, glitches, crashes, or freezes."
"If they are looking for something that is simple and reliable, then this is a good choice."
"Without Intercept X, I think Sophos would have lost the antivirus fight and stayed as a UTM vendor."
"Machine learning is used to detect the threat and it does so by prioritizing the suspicious activities."
"Also, the synchronized security, in which things work with each other, provides us with a pretty automated remediation methodology which cuts down on much of the manual steps and workload."
"It offers a sense of security where anything that comes in, regardless of what it is, unless you approve it manually, it's not going to run."
"We have been dealing with VMware Carbon Black App Control for one year, and during this time we have already made sure that this is the best solution to protect our user machines and servers."
"If any malicious activity, like VAT viruses, anything RNE, ZOD malware, or something similar, comes in we know that unless we approve it, it's going to be blocked."
"The visibility is valuable."
"We use App Control to scan the network for virtual machines that have unauthorized applications. We can isolate the problem VMs and control application access."
"The effectiveness of application whitelisting is very good."
"The API integration is good."
"The visibility, reporting, and the ability to stop or prevent malicious or undesired applications from being installed are the most valuable features."
 

Cons

"There is a severe gap in functionality between Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For example all folder restriction settings are Windows only. Traps 5.0+ does not have SAML / LDAP integration."
"The only issues that we have are, one the cost, two the dashboard is not very intuitive, even though you can drill down within the dashboard, we usually have to gather information from other sources to determine locations and if its a false positive."
"Currently, if you use Palo Alto endpoint protection as the only solution it's very complicated to remove pre-existing threats."
"There are some default policies which sometimes affect our applications and cause them to run around."
"However, if you do not have Palo Alto in your environment, you are paying these additional services just for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, so it is not a cost-effective solution."
"One thing that was missing was the integration part. Currently, they don't have out-of-box integration with IBM QRadar, or if they have the integration, the integration doesn't work well."
"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."
"I don't like that they have different types of licenses. For example, if users select a license, they think they will have all the platforms they need to improve their network or security. But after some time, Palo Alto Networks changed their licensing, and some of the features that, for example, were free at the beginning now have a cost. I think the integration can be improved. For example, a lot of tools are just integrated through APIs."
"It would be a value-add if they can include integration with other technologies or solutions, like Fortinet, Blue Coat, etc."
"The price of this product should be reduced because it is a little high."
"Intercept X Endpoint sometimes slows down machines due to high CPU utilization and significant RAM consumption during scanning."
"The policies could be nicer to manage."
"Pricing is high."
"It's a big issue that there isn't a way to do remote deployment. It's actually difficult because you have to depend on a third party to make sure it actually works."
"The initial setup with the centralized console was a little bit challenging."
"There is room for improvement in terms of stability and updates."
"Its setup is very complex, and it requires guidance from the support team, but it is well worth the effort."
"The initial setup is somewhat complex."
"I rate App Control six out of 10 for scalability."
"The solution should have overhead in keeping lists of applications that you want don't want to run."
"I would like to see the addition of some more features that are in other, similar solutions."
"Carbon Black does not use the database for identifying the file, the fields, or malware."
"Its initial setup is very complex. We got help from their implementation team because if it is not set up properly, you can really hinder the operation of your environment and things won't execute or run."
"Another issue is that even sometimes if you approve, for example, Adobe as a publisher, you say any product or anything that's from Adobe has to run. It generally runs, but especially in a large environment and with a lot of users, sometimes, due to some certification validation issues or some other issue, it might stop the process from running. Genuine processes like Adobe and Chrome can get blocked. so that needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am using the Community edition."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"I don't like that they have different types of licenses."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"The price of this solution is a little high compared to competitors because they do not have a proper pricing structure."
"You can pay monthly, but most of our customers choose annual subscriptions because they are less expensive."
"On a per-user basis, my company has to pay a certain amount of money."
"You can purchase a license for one to three years."
"The price is pretty good."
"The price of Sophos Intercept X is expensive. The license is paid on an annual basis. There are extra features that can be added depending on the endpoints. The solution is priced twice as much as the Comodo solution."
"When you start going to the EDR technologies and the MTR, it is a little bit expensive. It's a very good technology, and obviously, you're going to pay for it, but the pricing could do a little bit of work."
"Its price is reasonable and what is expected for these types of products."
"We pay a fee for support, which is renewed annually."
"The pricing for this product is competitive and our customers who told us that often, Carbon Back is the cheaper solution."
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Answers from the Community

TT
IT Manager at a wellness & fitness company with 51-200 employees
Dec 3, 2020
Dec 3, 2020
Officially the answer is Intercept X and anti-virus from other mfgs. can co-exist on an endpoint. Carbon Black is a bit more than just AV, so I would get a free 30-day trial of Int X and try it on one endpoint.
2 out of 3 answers
BA
Sales and Mktg Manager at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Dec 12, 2019
Officially the answer is Intercept X and anti-virus from other mfgs. can co-exist on an endpoint. Carbon Black is a bit more than just AV, so I would get a free 30-day trial of Int X and try it on one endpoint.
AL
President/Owner at LibreTech
Dec 13, 2019
I’m not sure but if you are using Sophos Intercept X I would suggest just adding the Sophos EDR component.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business76
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
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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 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...
What needs improvement with Sophos Intercept X?
Intercept X Endpoint can be improved in several ways. Currently, it is only available on the cloud, and having it ava...
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Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Sophos Intercept X
CB Protection, Carbon Black CB Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Flexible Systems
Kaas Tailored, Core-Mark, Indeed, Hologic, Landmark Credit Union, Project Worldwide
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