What is our primary use case?
As a senior IT security director, I oversee the governance and guidance of security deployments, including the development and implementation of use cases. My primary guiding principle, which is shared by my team, is to prioritize visibility. This translates into our use of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security to gain comprehensive visibility across our hybrid infrastructure including cloud, on-premises, and end-user workstations. Ultimately, visibility is the main driver of our security strategy.
How has it helped my organization?
Singularity Cloud Security significantly reduced our organization's threat detection time by providing immediate data visibility. This allows our team to analyze telemetry in real-time, query it, and identify anomalies or potential threats using the Singularity platform. We can create rules that automatically trigger alerts based on this real-time data, enabling immediate response. This instant threat detection and response capability is a major improvement over our previous reliance on multiple tools with delayed data flows. Singularity Cloud Security eliminates those delays, saving valuable time in incident response scenarios.
MTTR and MTTD are critical metrics for incident response processes. They measure the time it takes to fully address an incident, from initial detection to complete remediation. Minimizing these times is crucial to limit damage, as attackers can quickly exploit vulnerabilities and compromise additional systems. Rapid detection and response are essential to disrupt attackers and prevent further progression within the attack chain.
Singularity Cloud helps reduce false positives by allowing engineers direct access to data. This access enables querying, validation, and the creation of correlation searches for improved data analysis. Instead of a black box approach, Singularity provides full visibility into the code and syntax used, increasing confidence in the results. Ultimately, Singularity offers greater control over correlation searches, detection rules, and response scenarios due to the enhanced engagement and control it provides.
Singularity's ability to create custom correlation searches significantly reduces noise by avoiding reliance on generic, pre-built searches that often lead to false positives in diverse organizational environments. This targeted approach results in a high positive rate and efficacy, allowing for focused detection and response. By designing and running custom searches, Singularity minimizes the need to sift through irrelevant alerts, unlike systems using default rules that inundate analysts with noise. This translates to a very low noise-to-efficacy ratio, enabling efficient and accurate incident response.
Singularity Cloud offers valuable data and capabilities extending beyond security, benefiting various business units. For example, it helped troubleshoot a newly introduced service with limited telemetry. My team created custom correlation searches to track specific event types, confirming the software's functionality. This success garnered positive feedback throughout the company, reaching even the CIO and CSR, as it enabled the business to showcase the software's effectiveness in a way that was previously impossible.
SentinelOne improves our regulatory compliance by fulfilling the endpoint detection and response requirements of various frameworks. Many federal regulations require businesses to meet specific security standards, including those related to endpoint, identity, and cloud security. SentinelOne enables us to meet these requirements and assure potential partners that we have a robust security posture. This strengthens our partnerships and streamlines procurement processes, demonstrating how SentinelOne contributes to our compliance efforts.
SentinelOne's evidence-based reporting, particularly the CNS reports, fosters trust due to the transparency of the data source and the ability to understand the underlying mechanisms. Knowing the search criteria, data types, and information gathering process, especially when customized for detection engineering, creates confidence in the product and the relationship with SentinelOne. This transparency and customization allow users to delve into the mechanics of the reporting, understand its functionality, and ultimately trust the evidence provided.
AI is a crucial consideration for security strategies. While some view AI as a potential replacement for human analysts, others see it as a powerful tool to enhance their capabilities. The latter approach emphasizes AI's ability to accelerate incident response, improve threat detection, and provide valuable insights to analysts. This perspective suggests that AI should be used to augment human expertise, enabling analysts to make faster and more informed decisions, particularly in prioritizing threats and developing a sixth sense for identifying malicious activity. By integrating AI as an enabler, organizations can empower their security teams to become more efficient and effective, ultimately strengthening their overall security posture.
What is most valuable?
Singularity Cloud's ability to create custom correlation searches and reduce noise is highly valuable. It allows us to focus on specific detections with high efficacy, avoiding the noise typical with default rules, thus enhancing our incident response efficiency. Additionally, the engineer engagement enables us to have full visibility into the code and design effective correlation searches and detection rules.
What needs improvement?
While the future roadmap presented by SentinelOne appears promising, I hope the envisioned advancements are realistically achievable and that the gap between current offerings and long-term goals is not too significant. If SentinelOne can deliver on its vision, it will be truly impressive, and we will continue to support its efforts.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Singularity Cloud has been stable over the course of our usage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have not faced issues with scalability and find the solution flexible enough to accommodate our dynamic environments.
How are customer service and support?
SentinelOne has consistently provided excellent support. While there were some initial challenges when we first partnered with them four years ago, these were resolved over time with continued effort and communication. As with any relationship, investment leads to strong, positive outcomes, and we have maintained a great working relationship with SentinelOne ever since.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Prior to SentinelOne, we did not use an EDR vendor. Four years ago, ransomware became increasingly prevalent, transitioning from a niche topic in IT news to a major concern covered by prominent media outlets like CNN and the Wall Street Journal. This heightened awareness led to increased pressure from company leadership, demanding strategies to mitigate the risk of ransomware attacks. Consequently, we sought an EDR solution to bolster our security posture. SentinelOne was selected over two competitors due to its superior detection capabilities, customization options, and competitive pricing, all critical factors considering our budgetary constraints. In retrospect, I believe we made the correct decision.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward and well-supported by SentinelOne.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented the solution with the help of SentinelOne's support and engineering team.
What was our ROI?
By significantly reducing incident response time and false positives, the ROI has been evident in terms of optimizing our security operations and minimizing risks.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The licensing is easy to understand and implement, with some flexibility to accommodate dynamic environments. The combination of pricing and the ability to customize detection rules was a key factor in selecting SentinelOne.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated two other competitors before choosing SentinelOne based on detection capabilities, customization opportunities, and competitive pricing.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security nine out of ten.
Currently, our cloud workload protection system is deployed for visibility only, without blocking capabilities or enforced policies. While we are not yet utilizing its full protection potential, this proactive approach allows our development, IT, and quality teams to gradually transition to containerized workloads over the next few years. SentinelOne's cloud workload protection tools provide the necessary functionality to secure our environment as teams adopt modern serverless methodologies. Although full implementation is an ongoing effort, having these tools in place ensures we can confidently secure our evolving infrastructure.
We've thoroughly enjoyed our four-year partnership with SentinelOne. Their account management and readily available engineering support have been exemplary, setting a high standard for customer service. While escalations can sometimes experience delays, their responsiveness has been the best we've encountered. The entire organization, from account managers and engineers to the managed detection response service, operates cohesively.
Cloud security is challenging, especially in multi-cloud environments, but as we use a single cloud provider, we leverage native security tools for detection and visibility. While we initially considered cloud-native protection unnecessary, we realized the limitations of relying solely on our provider's knowledge and visibility. Their data is inherently limited by their own experience. SentinelOne, with its global customer base across various cloud providers, offers broader threat intelligence. Learning from attacks across all cloud platforms, like Amazon, Azure, and Google, is crucial for a comprehensive security posture. By partnering with SentinelOne, we gain access to this wider threat landscape and benefit from a learned security environment.
Our organization relies on Azure services. A key advantage of SentinelOne is its ability to serve customers across various data centers, including those hosted by Azure and Amazon.
I recommend colleagues and professionals in information security give SentinelOne a try, as they will quickly see the benefits, especially if not working with modern cloud-based solutions. SentinelOne's capabilities in visibility and detection make it a valuable addition to any security strategy.
SentinelOne's openness to customer feedback is impressive. I've served on other customer advisory boards, even for competitors, but SentinelOne stands out. They actively involve customers in shaping their products, including the user interface, detection rules, and Singularity AI Cloud components. This customer-centric approach fosters a mutually beneficial relationship where customer feedback directly enhances the security solutions. I encourage all SentinelOne customers to explore opportunities like beta testing, advisory boards, or UX feedback programs. The company's success translates to improved security for organizations like mine, and the close collaboration builds a strong, valuable partnership. Seeing our feedback implemented in their products is truly remarkable.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.