CrowdStrike Falcon Reviews

We implemented CrowdStrike because we needed to identify a new solution to address a 100% remote workforce, both because of COVID, but in general, our workforce is very distributed around the country.

The primary way that CrowdStrike has improved the way our organization functions is visibility. When we do have an issue, the ability to see what was happening before, during, and after the issue on the target laptop or server is far better than what we were used to.

Having the updates happening automatically, with a third-party defining those updates and pushing those in, also providing us visibility into the current status of all of our endpoints, is critical.

We use Falcon's endpoint and cloud workload protection, which is deployed on our Azure cloud servers. It is definitely one of the top options available to any organization. We had reviewed 10 different applications in the EDR space and Falcon was one of the top three that we had identified.

In terms of preventing breaches, so far, it's doing great. Definitely, in our testing that we do every month, it is identifying issues that arise with more certainty. Simply, the team has more confidence in what they're utilizing as a tool and it has freed them up to work on things that are a more efficient use of their time.

The Protect functionality on the laptops provides great visibility into what's occurring, and the cloud management of the platform is what we needed.

It is important to us that this cloud-native solution provides us with flexibility and always-on protection because we have a 100% distributed workforce, in place even before COVID. To manage 600 remotely-deployed laptops requires a cloud-managed solution.

The console is a little cluttered and at times, finding what you're looking for is not intuitive. Once you find it, it's great, but it's not always very intuitive as to how to find exactly what you're looking for sometimes.

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for six months.

We have had no issues at all with stability, and no conflicts on any of our endpoints or servers.

It seems to be limitless from a scalability standpoint. Definitely, there would be no impact on our end, and we haven't noticed or run into any issues as we scaled from our initial 10 systems to 600. There was no difference in speed or reporting, et cetera.

So, scalability does not seem to be an issue.

Technical support is an area for improvement. If you have an actual issue, such as an identified threat, then they are very good. However, if you're struggling to figure out what might have occurred, we're still trying to figure out how to get our best support from CrowdStrike in those situations.

Prior to Falcon, we were using Webroot.

The primary improvement that we have seen is visibility. We had no visibility into what happened before, during, and after a situation with Webroot, but with CrowdStrike, we have that visibility, which allows our team to make educated decisions. In terms of detection and prevention, I believe it's all experiential so far. Falcon has been very good at both detection and remediation for any issue that has come up.

The sensor setup and deployment were extremely easy. We were able to deploy a hundred percent of our endpoints within 60 days. We found it to be very smooth.

It was a very simple deployment strategy to get the agent out to the end-users. It was so smooth that we didn't even have to notify the end-users that it was being done. It just happened automatically. 

There was no conflict between CrowdStrike and our existing EDR that we were going to get rid of. After the installation, we were able to have the old EDR totally removed within 30 days.

We had two people for deployment and we have one for maintenance. Their roles are in information security.

We have seen ROI in that our team is freed up to work on things that are more important.

We took advantage of Falcon's free trial before purchasing it, and it was very easy to get it. We were on the phone with a representative discussing our next steps and they offered the free trial, and we were set up and functional with it the next morning. Having a free trial period is something that is expected. If anybody wants our business in this space then it's necessary because we aren't going to purchase something without trying it first.

The pricing is not bad. It's on the higher end of the market, but you get what you pay for. It's a little on the confusing side because the name of the item they're selling doesn't match what you see when you log into the product.

If you buy "Protect" and you log into the product, you don't see "Protect". You see something else, like "Identify" or whatever. So, they need to do a better job of aligning product names from the sale to within the product.

There are add-on fees for different packages that you can buy, and we are looking at adding on some feature functionality as we go forward.

We evaluated 10 different solutions in the EDR space. The top three included CrowdStrike Falcon, Carbon Black, and Microsoft's ATP.

CrowdStrike was a little better, cost-wise, than the other two. Also, I felt that the console for managing the platform was easier for my team.

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing this product is that every organization is slightly different in its needs, and CrowdStrike may or may not be the right solution. Once you can do a trial and a bake-off of multiple options, you'll find if CrowdStrike is the right solution or not.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use it for our endpoint detection and response on our devices for both endpoints and servers. It has replaced our traditional antivirus. We are strictly using it now to do all our antivirus duties.

We are primarily a Windows environment, 95 percent Windows. Then, we have a little bit of Linux and Macs in there as well.

They have been able to help us. We have used other functions, such as Discover, to identify software that is running in our environment. This is not necessarily bad software, but it gives us an idea of what is out there to start building a standard configuration, which helps us build policies for what we do want in our environment and what we don't. That has been very valuable as well. It is kind of an offset of what they actually do; their main bread and butter, if you will. They have been very helpful with other tasks, such as that and in finding themes. 

We are pretty confident in CrowdStrike. Knock on wood, we haven't had any breaches that we know about. When you do see a large breach in the news, it seems like CrowdStrike is always mentioned. They are either helping investigate or leading the incident response (IR) process for them. While I can't really say it has specifically stopped a data breach for us, we are confident that if something happened then CrowdStrike would catch it.

We primarily use the Falcon feature. It is very dependable for us. We have done multiple tests against it and thrown everything we could at it. It does seem to pick up quite a bit, if not everything, that we have tested with it. So, we rely heavily on it. Right out-of-the-box, the main Falcon component is the biggest feature that we utilize and rely on.

We are a heavy laptop environment. So, it was nice to know that our users would be protected and we would know what was going on, on the endpoint, regardless of how they were connected. That has been very valuable. This is one of the reasons why we chose to go with this solution.

The fact that this is a cloud-native solution means that we don’t need to worry about updates. They take care of all the back-end and architecture. The only updates that we need to worry about are the sensors themselves. If you set them to auto update, like we do, then you don't even have to worry about that. It definitely frees us up to do more important things. If it wasn't for them doing this, we would need at least a part-time FTE, if not a full-time, to operate and manage CrowdStrike keeping it up-to-date as well as the hygiene. We had half of an FTE assigned to our antivirus prior to CrowdStrike. Now, that is just included in our dailies. It lessens that burden so much that we don't even need a slotted requirement for that. Overall, this solution saves us at least a good 10 hours a week that we would have been using before.

Their threat dashboards are very helpful. For instance, with this zero-day that just came out from Microsoft, they already have a dashboard where you can see the assets in your environment affected or at risk. That is just an added value. 

It would be nice if they did have some sort of Active Directory tie-in, whether that be Azure or on-prem. Sometimes, it is difficult for us to determine if we are missing any endpoints or servers in CrowdStrike. We honestly don't have a great inventory, but it would be nice if CrowdStrike had a way to say this is everything in your environment, Active Directory-wise, and this is what doesn't have sensors. They try to do that now with a function that they have built-in, but I have been unsuccessful in having it help us identify what needs a sensor. So, better visibility of what doesn't have a sensor in our environment would be helpful.

We have been using it for four years.

Stability has been really good. We have not seen the issues that we had with traditional AV. Having it connected to the cloud has really helped with stability, being able to see what a computer is doing at all times, and being able to see the last check-in times, this has kind of helped with the sensors.

It is primarily just me for tweaking or management of the solution. I have backups, if needed, but it is such a light lift that I may spend an hour or two a week in the console. It really is a great product that takes care of itself. Not a lot of tweaking has been needed so far, knock on wood. We haven't really had to make any exclusions like we used to with traditional AV. Everything is running with CrowdStrike's full protection, which is a huge bonus for us, since traditionally you are pretty blind. 

The solution is very scalable and easy to deploy as well as sync up agents with it.

The end users are the security team, which consists of about four of us. Then, we have a couple of leads from other technical teams. So, there are probably eight users who have access to CrowdStrike. Primarily, there are just three of us who are in there constantly.

The technical support has been pretty good. They are usually very responsive. We haven't had to escalate anything. When we have needed a more technical, deep dive, we have been able to get a dedicated engineer for our account to assist us. So, there has never been a time where we feel like we can't get the help that we need.

We were previously using McAfee.

CrowdStrike seems to detect quite a bit more than McAfee did. We like how it is kind of real-time, if you will. It is not so much signature-based. So, it has been able to stop things quicker than McAfee did. We have seen a huge increase in performance on our systems. Oftentimes, the daily scans would need to be run with signature-based AV or scans with servers, then that would cause great performance hits. It kind of limited us as well to where we could only scan certain windows. Now that we have CrowdStrike, we are kind of always-on and not limited to having to do those scans. So, that has been a big performance increase for us.

It is a lot easier to use CrowdStrike than McAfee, especially having the team at CrowdStrike handle the maintenance day-to-day, etc. With on-prem, you are responsible for everything. Whereas, with CrowdStrike, we can just worry about our IR response, basic deployment, and health checks. So, it is very convenient having them handle it in the cloud.

CrowdStrike was cutting edge technology at the time. EDR was still kind of new then versus the traditional AV. Not only because of licensing costs, but also because of performance, we felt that we needed something new.

It is easy to deploy the solution’s sensor to our endpoints. We have that as part of our build process. When new things are built, we have those as part of the build. If for some reason, something gets corrupted, then it is fairly simple to redeploy and we utilize SCCM for that. However, it is pretty run of the mill, i.e., easy. With the updates being taken care of by CrowdStrike, once it is deployed, then you are pretty much good to go.

Our initial deployment took about a week. That was only due to working out how to adjust CrowdStrike in our environment: weed out false positives, mimic anything that we needed to from our traditional AV over to CrowdStrike, and test previous exclusions that we had for our traditional AV, if we needed those anymore in CyberArk. It was very easy to deploy with SCCM, then it was more just tweaking. 

We did a test in our test environment and saw no negative impacts. Although not advised by CrowdStrike, we were able to run our traditional AV while we were deploying CrowdStrike. Once we knew CrowdStrike was on the machine working, then we were able to send out scripts to remove the old, traditional AV. Our strategy: We knew that it would not, at least in our environment, hurt us to have both on temporarily. So, our deployment strategy was very simple, knowing that we had an AV in place to back us up if something didn't go right with the CrowdStrike install.

I did the deployment. If there were exclusions or something that we needed to address, then I worked with the individual teams.

The 10 hours a week that we are freeing up from having to manage and monitor our AV solution has really allowed us to focus on other areas of the business. This has been a huge return on investment.

We did the free trial to kick the tires. Part of that head trial was having us load stuff and trying to get by it, and we weren't. That trial really helped sell us that it was a good product.

Getting the free trial was very easy. It has been years now, but it was as simple as just going to the website and requesting a free trial, then it was stood up maybe even that same day. It is hard to remember now, but it was very quick.

The pricing and licensing are fairly good. It is definitely not a cheap product, but I have felt that it is worth the money that we spent. So, we have discussed it in the past, and were like, "Yes, it is probably pricier than some other solutions, but we also feel they really are the leader. We are very comfortable with their level of expertise. So, it's kind of worth the price that we pay."

We do add their OverWatch protection, which is an extra bit of an add-on, but that gives us 24/7 SOC-type watching. So, we have added that on, which has been valuable as well. Outside of that, there have been no more additional costs.

We were looking for an EDR solution. At the time, CrowdStrike was the leader. We were very big into Gartner reviews, and we went off of Gartner. We just wanted the best that was out there.

Do it. It is a great product. I seriously think it is worth considering. We have been completely happy with the solution that we have been running on for years now and have never regretted our decision. I highly recommend it.

We plan on possibly looking into the added features that they offer to see if there is something there that can increase our incident response or add value to our business.

It is our primary EDR, so we are using it 100 percent for that and plan on using it for other avenues. We found Discover can help us with the inventory for applications. So, I am looking for other business opportunities there to help us, which will be our goal in the future.

It has given us some insight into how threat actors work. The biggest thing for us has been threat actor education. They give you intel which helps you identify what attackers you would more likely be targeted by. A lot of this comes with our OverWatch protection. Their threat intel has probably been the biggest thing for us.

Overall, I hate to give a perfect score, but it is probably a 10 out of 10. It is a really great product. 

We use CrowdStrike Falcon as our EDR solution, including antivirus.

As Symantec ended its endpoint protection, we were able to roll out CrowdStrike.

It is important to us that CrowdStrike is cloud-based because the way I understand it, that's their main engine for their next-gen EDR solution. The fact that it's cloud-native, flexible, and offers always-on protection is important because we want to have 24-hour monitoring of our environment. It is important to us that we don't have to worry about upgrades.

This product has worked flawlessly to prevent breaches, and then it has allowed us to prevent any downtime.

It has minimized our footprint because having the ability to implement the prevention policies has allowed us to focus on other projects. The prevention policies are working for us.

The most valuable feature is the activity dashboard because it gives you a holistic view of your environment from a security standpoint.

We would like to be able to perform on-demand scanning, rather than relying on the scheduler. Right now, CrowdStrike does not have an on-demand scanner. They have the always-on, but we have found instances where artifacts are being blocked from running, but they're not being removed. With an on-demand scanner, we would have the ability to remove those artifacts from an end user's machine.

I would like to see the multi-site environment functionality added in the next release. Currently, we are working under a single-site environment, and on the roadmap, they mentioned having the ability to have a multi-site environment.

We have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for approximately eight months.

Stability-wise, they are very advanced in the next-gen antivirus game. CrowdStrike Falcon is always available.

We have approximately 5,000 machines that are being managed. As time moves on, this number will grow, but we don't expect it to get larger in the near future.

I would rate the technical support that we received during the deployment, as well as post-deployment, very well. They were very knowledgeable and gave us all of the tools we needed to have a successful deployment.

Prior to Falcon, we were using Symantec antivirus. It was out of date, which is why we replaced it.

It is very easy to deploy the solution's sensor to our endpoints. We use an automated process. 

Our deployment took between two and three months, with paperwork, communication, and roll-out timeframes. Our implementation strategy included using IBM's BigFix application to push to Windows machines, and then we used a solution for the Mac to push it out remotely as well.

Our IT Services team deployed this solution, and they leveraged consultants from CrowdStirke to get the proper packages for the process.

I'm sure that there is administration and upgrades to do, as sensors need to be updated or policies need to be adjusted. We have a group of approximately five people who are security engineers, IT Services, and directors who use it.

With respect to pricing, my suggestion to others is to evaluate the environment and purchase what you need.

We looked at different options, such as Carbon Black, as we were replacing Symantec as our EDR solution, and CrowdStrike was the top winner. CrowdStrike is always on, 24 hours. Analysis, with the prevention and the detection policies, as well as the USB policies, are all very beneficial. The one thing that CrowdStrike did not have is the on-demand scanner.

My advice for anybody who is interested in implementing CrowdStrike Falcon is to review and evaluate your environment and compare their EDR solutions.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We use the EDR feature.

This is unlike any other EDR solution that I am familiar with. It provides very good protection and the ability to crosscheck environments. It's really helpful in investigating any alerts and is easy to use. You can use some of the Splunk language to search. 

We've tried some integrations with solutions, closing off false positives and things like that. Falcon could include more features in that area. In addition, some features are modularized and we're unable to buy them as we're in the healthcare field and limited in the amount we can invest. 

I've been using this product for close to 18 months. 

We haven't had any stability issues. 

The solution is very scalable but we had issues with some groups, that manage their own devices and wanted to have access to self-manage them. We weren't able to do that, unfortunately.

My team has interacted with tech support and I believe the issues were resolved in a timely manner.

Positive

We previously used other solutions such as Setinel One.

The initial setup was very straightforward and smooth.

Falcon is more expensive than every other solution on the market. That said, they do have a better product than anyone else.

Some of the default settings are set to 'easy' which isn't sufficient. We had some conversations around this and the recommendation was to change some of these settings to more aggressive ones on the policy side. I know some organizations have had issues automatically updating CrowdStrike to the latest version. I recommend going through the change process but saving it at minus one for a while to avoid all the negative downtimes where you might need to roll back to the previous update.

When we switched to CrowdStrike, we didn't expect it to find anything that was already on the computer because the primary reason we swapped was because of EDR. But it did find things that were dormant as well as other things.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

Our company's line of business includes financial transactions with an insurance policy that requires EDR protection. Compliance is part of our policy and agreement with customers. 

We currently have 1,100 users of the solution. 

The solution is silent and sits on your system as one single agent.

Only one or two MB of memory are consumed which is much less than other products. 

The solution is AI-driven so it self-activates to find issues and provide alerts or notifications rather than running all the time.

The portal is very user-friendly so it is not difficult to manage. 

The solution doesn't require system restarts. That is one disadvantage of Symantec or Kaspersky because they require restarts when you uninstall or reinstall. 

Technical support could be better than what is currently offered. 

I have been using the solution for three months. 

The solution is stable with no issues. 

We have only used the solution for three months so will continue to monitor stability for the next several months. 

I rate stability an eight out of ten. 

The solution is scalable. We do not yet have the requirement to take an in-depth look at scalability. 

I rate scalability an eight out of ten. 

Technical support could be better because there are ownership issues. 

For example, when you raise a support case there is not much communication between the account manager and support. The account manager is supposed to own the case but instead is disconnected from it. 

I rate support a six out of ten. 

Neutral

We previously used Symantec and Kaspersky. 

The setup is pretty easy to walk through without much trouble. 

I rate setup an eight out of ten. 

We utilized a third-party for implementation. They helped us with the admin console, training, and the pilot setup that we eventually took over. Our internal team included two security staff and four support staff.

We were moving from Symantec and Kaspersky. We targeted our servers first because Symantec is difficult to uninstall and there is an interim process for removal. Once completed, we installed the solution. 

It took about two months to complete implementation across all systems. 

We did our homework in advance for cost or other things to calculate ROI. The solution met our expectations so ROI is rated a seven out of ten. 

The pricing is competitive and includes all features and support.

I rate pricing an eight out of ten. 

We evaluated Microsoft Defender, Sophos, Symantec, and Trend Micro before choosing CrowdStrike Falcon. 

I recommend using the solution and rate it an eight out of ten. 

Our organization uses CrowdStrike Falcon for a variety of security tasks, including incident response, investigations, malware analysis, and threat hunting. This comprehensive platform excels at detecting malware across various technologies and endpoints within our environment.

CrowdStrike Falcon functions as a threat detection platform. It identifies malware based on pre-defined signatures and rules. Upon detection, it triggers a response and provides a dashboard for further analysis. This allows us to assess if the malware poses a risk to our organization or if it's a false positive. For confirmed threats, we can then delve deeper for a thorough investigation to uncover any underlying malicious intent.

Our primary goal is to prevent malware-related risks proactively. By leveraging CrowdStrike Falcon, a premium endpoint detection and response tool, we can safeguard our organization from malware exploitation attempts employed by hackers.

The primary advantage of CrowdStrike Falcon is twofold: reducing malware risk and providing advanced investigation capabilities. Traditional antivirus solutions struggle to keep pace with ever-evolving malware threats. CrowdStrike Falcon utilizes cutting-edge technology to proactively prevent these threats, minimizing the risk of infection. Falcon also features a threat intelligence platform that keeps us informed about the latest global malware threats and compromised tactics. This real-time awareness empowers us to proactively prevent threats before they impact our environment.

Recently CrowdStrike Falcon detected and mitigated malware that would have compromised several vulnerabilities in our environment.

Falcon's real-time response capability ensures we can quickly access any compromised host. This is a valuable advantage over other EDR tools.

The most valuable features of CrowdStrike Falcon include Falcon Fusion workflows and endpoint detection capabilities.

I've found that CrowdStrike's technical support could benefit from increased technical expertise. In my experience, their representatives haven't been able to resolve my issues as effectively as I would have liked.

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for 1.5 years.

I would rate the stability of CrowdStrike Falcon nine out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of CrowdStrike Falcon eight out of ten.

I've found the technical support staff to be less knowledgeable than I'd expect. Ideally, they should have expertise in all CrowdStrike modules, as we utilize a wide range of them.

Neutral

We previously used security solutions from Symantec, Trend Micro, Trellix, and Mandiant. However, CrowdStrike Falcon stood out as a more premium offering. Its advanced capabilities and comprehensive approach to security ultimately led us to switch providers after careful consideration of several factors.

The initial deployment was straightforward and took less than 15 days to complete.

There were between 30 to 40 people involved in the deployment. 

Our security engineering team implemented CrowdStrike Falcon entirely in-house. We also received some support from our internal desktop team and leveraged the expertise of an internal managed service provider team. No third-party vendors were involved in the deployment.

CrowdStrike Falcon is more expensive than other EDR solutions with similar features.

I would rate CrowdStrike Falcon nine out of ten.

After deployment, there are some simple maintenance tasks to keep everything functioning well.

New users should learn about the different modules of CrowdStrike Falcon and their functionalities to work effectively with the tool.

CrowdStrike Falcon is our platform for IT security, encompassing endpoint security, cloud security, and EDR capabilities.

CrowdStrike protected us from a cyberattack. That's why I believe it's a very effective product. It's already prevented attacks on 2 occasions. It successfully quarantined suspicious files, essentially making our organization much safer.

We also leverage CrowdStrike Falcon Overwatch, a managed threat-hunting service offered by CrowdStrike. This service complements CrowdStrike's EDR functionality, which provides automated detection and response capabilities against external attacks. In our case, CrowdStrike successfully identified and automatically contained a cyberattack launched against our organization.

Our CrowdStrike Falcon integration with our SIEM is proving to be flexible.

The most valuable aspects of CrowdStrike Falcon for me are its device observability, identification, and software and OS recognition. It also excels in external media control, particularly USB access. The ability to disable USB access to flash drives significantly improves security.

Furthermore, Falcon helps identify patches needed for Windows, Mac, and other operating systems. This provides valuable reports and insights into our system vulnerabilities, allowing us to proactively address them.

If CrowdStrike can further expand its support for XDR compatibility, that would give it an edge over all the other competing new products.

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for 2 years.

I would rate the stability of CrowdStrike Falcon 8 out of 10.

We've deployed CrowdStrike Falcon across all 3,000 of our endpoints, and it has demonstrated excellent scalability. Therefore, scalability is not a concern for CrowdStrike in terms of performance or its ability to handle growth.

I would rate the scalability a 9 out of 10.

The deployment was straightforward, taking 2 months for 3,000 endpoints. We implemented it directly where needed. The process was simple and easy. We believe this approach offers advantages due to its lower complexity compared to other methods. Careful planning was essential, and with a clear plan for sensor installation, we were able to execute the deployment successfully.

While a third party handled the implementation, the OEM provided us with direct training on Falcon alongside CrowdStrike.

CrowdStrike Falcon has demonstrably provided a positive return on investment. We've already encountered two specific instances where, without CrowdStrike, the company would have faced millions in damages. In one case, we would have likely lost our entire SAP system.

The pricing of CrowdStrike Falcon is competitive.

After evaluating SentinelOne, we found CrowdStrike to be a superior solution. CrowdStrike offers advantages in dashboard compatibility and a feature called Overwatch, which gives it a competitive edge.

I would rate CrowdStrike Falcon 8 out of 10.

CrowdStrike Falcon is deployed in multiple branches across India.

No maintenance is required from our end.

I recommend CrowdStrike Falcon. It is not a solution we need to think twice about using.

We are using it primarily for NGAV, but we also use their EDR product and Falcon OverWatch.

Most of our internal stuff is still on-prem. We do use SaaS for vendor products, but our internal environment is still mostly on-prem.

I think everyone is trying to move away from on-prem solutions. Having the cloud-based management console makes it a lot easier to maintain. It takes a load off our hands as engineers and analysts. It helps with upgrades and patching, I don't have to worry about on-prem servers for maintenance, but also as another thing to defend against, so getting rid of that is definitely beneficial.

As a cloud-native solution, it provides us with flexibility and always-on protection. I don't have to worry about data center failures on my end. I don't have to worry about any issues in our server rooms affecting the protection of the environment as a whole. Having CrowdStrike take that responsibility is a load off our backs.

Falcon has been very successful in preventing breaches. In the beginning, there were a lot of false positives as Falcon learned our environment, but I would definitely give it a positive rating overall for protecting our environment.

The NGAV portion is the most valuable feature. The primary reason that we went with the product was their reputation. In practice, it has been a definite step up from where we were previously.

We are using Falcon Investigate, which is their EDR tool. The EDR has made it infinitely easier to investigate into more detail on end user workstations and servers. Any sort of detection where I can go back into the EDR tool and dig down deeper into the endpoint is great. This was a function that we did not have previously.

There are some aspects of the UI that could use some improvement, e.g., working in groups. I build a group, then I have to manually assign prevention policies, update policies, etc., but there is no function to copy that group. So, if I wanted to make a subgroup for troubleshooting or divide workstations into groups of laptops and desktops, then I have to manually build a brand new group. I can't just copy a build from one to another. Additionally, in order to do any work within a group, I have to first do the work on the respective prevention policy page or individual policy page, then remove the group if the group is assigned to a different prevention policy, remove the prevention policy, and then add the new one in. So, it can get a little hectic. It would be easier if I could add and remove things from the group page rather than having to go into the policy pages to do it.

I have been using it less than a year. We are relatively new customers.

My impressions of the stability are positive. I haven't had any problems since implementation with stability or availability.

Minimal maintenance is required on our side post-deployment, but it still does require maintenance. If I have to build out new groups or a troubleshooting group, e.g., tweaking policies if machines change subnets, then there is still maintenance required.

All post-implementation maintenance and administration is handled by a single security engineer.

We are a relatively small firm, but I have had no problems in my deployment plans. I could easily see this scaling upwards.

In total, we are protecting roughly 1500 endpoints.

They have been very on point and helpful. I have never had to ask them where they are. They are always following up with me trying to keep the tickets live, so that is great. I have been very impressed.

We replaced Symantec Endpoint Protection. On the one hand, we wanted a fully NGAV. Symantec was still using a hybrid model, a mix of signature-based and behavioral-based detections, so moving over into a full NGAV product was important to us. We wanted to stay up to date on the ever changing nature of malware, especially since we have been seeing more malware nowadays that can evade strictly detection-based systems. Also, Symantec support was very hard to track down or talk to. All in all, CrowdStrike has been more responsive to any questions or concerns, which is big when you are dealing with vendor solutions.

Fortunately, we have not experienced any major detections. However, testing-wise, CrowdStrike has been more effective overall.

Deployment was pretty easy. We scripted out a process in GPO, then we were able to deploy it fairly seamlessly.

We managed to deploy it to all our servers within a week or two. That was mostly due to getting clearance from server owners, not due to the CrowdStrike installation. Then, for the workstations, it was a bit longer just because of office locations and when people had their computers on. The CrowdStrike process was very smooth. It was really just the bureaucracy part that took a while.

We had to change management protocols. We put it out to dev servers and workstations in detect-only mode as we deployed CrowdStrike to endpoints that had a preexisting AV system still on them, in order to avoid any time where a system would not be protected by an antivirus system. So, we deployed CrowdStrike, then disabled the previous antivirus system and activated CrowdStrike's prevention policies, then uninstalled the previous antivirus system.

Four or five people were involved in the deployment: a security engineer, two workstation engineers, and various server owners.

It is protecting our environment, so it is worth the cost.

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.

The pricing was very fair for what we got.

Different components are additional price points. We got the components that were right for us, but other organizations may require more (or less) components to suit their needs.

CrowdStrike is an industry leader. When we were looking for a replacement technology for NGAV, their name was on the top of a Google search.

We did a PoC with CrowdStrike. We deployed the PoC only to a select group of test machines, so we were able to deploy rather quickly. The PoC helped immensely in the decision-making process.

We did evaluate Cylance and Carbon Black. All the products that we investigated looked good. In the end, we went with CrowdStrike because of: 

1. The reputation of the organization in the AV community.
2. Its out-of-the-box readiness. 
3. Ease of maintenance and administration.

Take the time you need in the beginning to fully build out all the groups and prevention policies that you will need. It may take a bit longer during the initial setup, but it is worth it in the long run because it makes maintenance down the line much easier than having to build new groups or prevention policies as they come up. Definitely take the time needed in the beginning. Then, later down the road all you have to do is check some boxes, as opposed to building out brand new groups and prevention policies, which can take awhile.

In the beginning, there will be a bunch of false positives as it learns your environment. However, those are very easily handled within the UI, creating IOA or machine learning exceptions. With our previous solution, we had a couple hundred exceptions, and with CrowdStrike, we have six or so.

CrowdStrike has fulfilled its function very well. We got it specifically to serve the purpose that it is serving.

It is a solid nine out of 10.