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Microsoft Defender XDR vs SanerNow CyberHygiene Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

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 Detection and Response (EDR)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
SanerNow CyberHygiene Platform
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
43rd
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (47th), Patch Management (19th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 2.6%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SanerNow CyberHygiene Platform is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
Microsoft Defender XDR2.6%
SanerNow CyberHygiene Platform0.6%
Other93.4%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

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.
reviewer2812758 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infosec at a government with 10,001+ employees
Integrated defenses have unified threat hunting, phishing simulations, and identity investigations
I appreciate Microsoft Defender XDR's MDE, Microsoft Defender tool, which has Attack Simulator. Instead of doing a phishing campaign and getting a separate tool, Microsoft Defender XDR does it all. These features of Microsoft Defender XDR have helped us conduct a phishing campaign quarterly, which has been beneficial. I also appreciate the fact that it has Defender for Office integrated, Defender for Identity, and everything integrated together. I would describe the process of using Microsoft Defender XDR to prioritize incidents in my security operations as quite decent. I appreciate the automatic alerting system where any incidents or alerts we receive come directly to our email. From there, we can open the email, go directly to Microsoft Defender XDR, and start our investigations and remediations. I perceive the integration of security and identity access management in Microsoft Defender XDR as affecting my identity protection strategies very well because it is well integrated with Purview, integrated well with Entra ID, and integrated well with Exchange. I especially appreciate MDO, the Office product. If anything happens and I want to conduct an investigation, it takes me directly to Exchange, where I can also investigate any emails or phishing incidents. Instead of going to different portals, everything can be done from Microsoft Defender XDR. If necessary for further investigation, Microsoft Defender XDR then directs me to that environment. I would assess the integration of AI in guiding security actions within Microsoft Defender XDR as quite positive. Recently, Security Copilot went big, and it is beneficial that I can use that, especially to write KQL. I can do threat hunting features and intelligence all within using Microsoft's Security Copilot. It also has a nice AI feature for threat hunting. I know that all the Defender logs go to Sentinel, and I can pull it up from Microsoft Defender XDR or from Sentinel. The fact that I can actually do all that within Microsoft Defender XDR is a nice feature. In the top module, I can do threat lookups, and I can actually type KQLs in Microsoft Defender XDR and look up incidents. Predictive shielding has had a nice impact on my proactive security measures. It is beneficial that it has, similar to Entra ID, a secure score. For me to improve the product, the secure score helps me out. If I rate it from highest to lowest, I can see what things I can improve. Secure score helps me see what areas I can improve in Microsoft Defender XDR to increase my score and bring it to 80 or more. Knowing Microsoft Defender XDR from using it since 2019, before COVID days, I know that they have improved significantly. It is much more user-friendly and has a very nice vulnerability feature that I find handy and useful. The fact that this feature integrates into Intune is also very decent.
JU
Information Technology Supervisor at DMCI Homes, Inc.
Can automate updates and manage software licenses more effectively
Our team uses the SanerNow CyberHygiene Platform for threat detection, focusing on features like vulnerabilities and asset exposure. The asset exposure feature is packaged with software licenses and machines. We get the latest updates and patches for Windows workstations and applications for remediation. We can automate these updates, which greatly improves our previous manual and scripting-based tools. Before, we struggled with setting policies and making changes to workstations. Now, we can automate updates and manage software licenses more effectively. We monitor who's using various licenses like Office, CAD, Visio, and Lumion.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support is the best in class, in my opinion, because they have invested heavily in research and development."
"The policy configuration is great, the granularity of policies that are available is very helpful, it is straightforward to set up, and it has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"The initial setup isn't too bad."
"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."
"After installing this solution, it identified, blocked, and provided the complete attack chain, which was very helpful."
"Cortex XDR is a simple platform that's easy for administrators and users. You have a lot of flexibility to change or customize the features."
"From the Palo Alto side, whatever they buy, they integrate that really well into their integration suite, and that makes a massive difference."
"The solution allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."
"Many people don't realize that Microsoft Azure, Exchange Online, and the security and compliance portal all sync together. For instance, within the Azure portal you can set security restrictions and policies to help secure your tenants... The good part of it is that these products have already been integrated. When you sign on as an admin you have global admin rights and that gives you access to all these features."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is a complete package of different Defender solutions, including Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, Defender for Cloud, and Sentinel SIEM, among others."
"What I found most valuable in Microsoft 365 Defender is that it's able to scan emails and protect users from dangerous links or attachments."
"It's a very scalable tool that can be used in a very small environment or in a very large environment. Everything can be managed from a simple dashboard and can be scaled up or down depending on the customer's environment."
"The summarization of emails is a valuable feature."
"Email protection is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender XDR."
"Microsoft Defender's most critical component is its CASB solution. It has many built-in policies that can improve your organization's cloud security posture. It's effective regardless of where your users are, which is critical because most users are working from home. It's cloud-based, so nothing is on-premise."
"The email protection feature is the most valuable because our risks primarily lie there, and it seems to be the most popular target."
"Our team uses the SanerNow CyberHygiene Platform for threat detection, focusing on features like vulnerabilities and asset exposure. The asset exposure feature is packaged with software licenses and machines. We get the latest updates and patches for Windows workstations and applications for remediation. We can automate these updates, which greatly improves our previous manual and scripting-based tools."
"Although it is, in fact, a complete vulnerability management solution, the most valuable feature is the patch management functionality. Most of our customers give preference to this tool over other tools when it comes to patch management."
 

Cons

"The configuration could be simplified. I would like to see better protection, specifically to protect email applications."
"The complexity and confusion regarding product variants, such as XDR, Forexiant, and Forexon, must be addressed."
"Currently, if you use Palo Alto endpoint protection as the only solution it's very complicated to remove pre-existing threats."
"This is a very costly product."
"The technical support is not very good. I find the process difficult."
"It should support more mobile operating systems. That is one of the cons of their infrastructure right now."
"When it comes to malware files, it should be a little quick because, at times, it would give a wrong result in the sense of what it might be on malware, even if it still might be a normal one."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"The mobile app support for Android and iOS is difficult and needs improvement."
"The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow, to the point that I am considering not renewing my unified support contract."
"The automation response being slow is the main concern; when an incident occurs or if I run a remediation, it takes significant time to complete the remediation."
"I would like more of the features in Defender for 365 to be included in the smaller licenses. Even if I buy a small license and don't need everything, security shouldn't be a question."
"The data recovery and backup could be improved."
"The message trace feature for investigating mail flow issues should add more detailed information to the summary report... if they could extend the summary report a little bit, make it more descriptive, ordinary administrators could understand what happened and that the emails failed at this or that point. That way they would know the location to go to try to correct it and to prevent it from occurring again."
"For Microsoft Defender XDR, there is currently no ability to reset passwords for on-premises accounts, which is a key challenge."
"Intrusion detection and prevention would be great to have with 365 Defender."
"SanerNow CyberHygiene Platform needs to incorporate more documentation."
"SanerNow has good integration with the more well known ITSM tools, but at the same time there are many other ITSM (IT Service Management) tools available in the market, including local tools here in India, and I'm not sure how SanerNow plans to integrate with them all out of the box."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"It is "expensive" and flexible."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"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."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"The most valuable licensing option is expensive, so pricing could be improved. Licensing options for this solution also need to be consolidated, because they frequently change."
"The solution is too expensive."
"Microsoft should provide lower-level licensing options. They should do it in such a way that even an individual could purchase a license, and it should be entirely flexible."
"On average, we pay around 55 euros per user for the services and features we receive."
"365 Defender is billed per account. I don't know the exact price, but my supervisor told me that Microsoft Defender is cheaper than the alternatives. It's bundled, so you get all the features in one place."
"I would like to have more security features in the lower licenses because not every customer is able to buy E5 licenses. The bundling isn't always easy for our customers to understand. Compared to other tools, it's a good price."
"They have moved from a licensing model to pay-per-use... The question is: What happens if, for any reason, there's not enough budget to accept this model? That could be a great problem."
"Understanding the subscription model has been a bit challenging, as every feature or requirement comes with an additional cost."
"The pricing is reasonable - we paid about 2.5 million for 3,500 nodes."
"As with several other solutions such as Microsoft MECM and SCCM, the licensing for SanerNow involves per-device pricing for each kind of product or service on offer."
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894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise49
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise41
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,...
What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and p...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender XDR is that we are on an E5 license,...
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
From my perspective, Microsoft Defender XDR can be improved with better visibility in certain areas where I can trigg...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SanerNow?
The pricing is reasonable - we paid about 2.5 million for 3,500 nodes.
What needs improvement with SanerNow?
SanerNow CyberHygiene Platform needs to incorporate more documentation.
What is your primary use case for SanerNow?
We use the tool for patch, application, and vulnerability management.
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
SecPod SanerNow, SanerNow RP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Siemens, Aruba, SironLabs, POS Aviation, Kotak, Kaizen Automotive, Amagi, McNeilus Steel, Claremont, Glassbeam, Marlabs, Amazon Web Services
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. SanerNow CyberHygiene Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.