We performed a comparison between Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Sophos Intercept X based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Overall, users of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks give the product higher ratings because its deployment is easier, it has a great set of features, it is affordable, and the technical support is helpful.
"The timeline feature is excellent. I also like the phishing simulation. We have phishing campaigns to educate employees and warn them about these threats."
"The most valuable features are spam filtering, attachment filtering, and antivirus protection."
"We can use Defender to block and monitor for security purposes without needing multiple other products to do different tasks."
"It has been great for us. Previously, we didn't have a solution to protect us, especially from malware, whereas now, we are getting protection up front, especially from the malware attacks coming through emails or endpoints."
"Microsoft XDR's system of analysis and investigation is super convenient for our customers. It integrates with other Microsoft solutions like Defender for 365 to protect email traffic from malicious external web links and phishing."
"Microsoft 365 Defender is simple to upgrade."
"Advanced hunting is good. I like that. We can drill down to lots of details."
"It has great stability."
"The multi-layered approach to the product gives you confidence that it will stop exploits, ransomware, worms, or viruses from compromising endpoints, essentially providing peace of mind."
"The information the dashboard provides is very clear."
"Provides behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
"I've found the solution to be highly scalable for enterprises."
"The interface is easy to use and it is more up to date than our previous solution."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to rapidly detect certain hardware files."
"The initial setup is easy."
"We have a complete overview of all our PCs and it's very easy to handle and to use the interface. It has a lot of benefits for us."
"I find the security heartbeat feature with synchronized security very useful. It's a very nice feature that allows you to basically switch off an endpoint. When an endpoint has got a virus or something like that, or it's infected or compromised, you can isolate it from the network, but only if you've got an XG Firewall as well. It also provides ease of use. It is the only antivirus that can recognize 25 out of the 36 ransomware and virus techniques that have been often used in terms of the behavior base using heuristics. It's beautiful, utterly amazing. No other antivirus can do that."
"The most valuable feature of Sophos Intercept X is a web filtering and URL sanity checks. Overall the solution is well balanced with all its features."
"It is one of the best in terms of technicality."
"The solution has very good usability."
"The most valuable feature is the CryptoGuard in Sophos. In a case of a ransomware attack, this feature comes into action to protect us."
"Sophos Intercept X has a host of valuable features, including its anti-malware feature, which we considered key."
"We find all features valuable. It has zero-day protection, which is the most valuable feature of Intercept X. We have Intercept X with EDR. EDR is a very important feature. It gives an idea about the source of a particular attack. An administrator gets to know everything, which helps in understanding the things that need to be done or protected in the organization. Based on this information, an administrator can decide what needs to open or allowed in the network. Without EDR, Intercept X is like an antivirus, and the administrator won't get to know the things going on at the organizational level. I recommend purchasing an EDR solution for every organization."
"Everything in Intercept X Endpoints is much centralised which makes it easy for our team to work with. The functions are in a single portal."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is not a full-fledged EDR or XDR."
"There should be better information for experts on features in the solution. What I see when reading about features in Microsoft 365 Defender is that it is always general information. If Microsoft could go deeper into details for the experts about how to use the tools, usage of it would be more familiar and it would be easier to use."
"The management features could be improved, particularly in terms of better integration with Intune, Microsoft's cloud-based management solution."
"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."
"Stability could be improved by avoiding frequent changes to the interface."
"The support could be more knowledgable to improve their offering."
"The onboarding and offboarding need improvement. I work with other vendors as well, and they have an option to add a device or remove a device from the portal, whereas with Microsoft 365 Defender, we need to do that manually. However, once you do that, everything can be controlled through the portal, but getting the device onboarded and offboarded is currently manual. If we have an option to simply remove a device from the portal or get a device added from the portal, it would be more convenient. The rest of the features are similar. This is the only area where I found it different from others. I would also like to be able to simply filter with a few of the queries that are already there."
"The patching capability should be there. Patching is something that you cannot do even though you see the vulnerabilities present in your environment. For patching, you have to depend on another solution."
"It would be better if they could educate the customers more. Some sort of seminars and roadshows will help educate the customers and show what the product can do. The price could be better. It would also help if they had a team for deployment and support."
"There are some false positives. What our guys would have liked is that it would have been easier to manipulate as soon as they found a false positive that they knew was a false positive. How to do so was not obvious. Some people complained about it. The interface, the ESM, is not user-friendly."
"Data privacy is a matter of concern. You have to be careful with data privacy, it can be sensitive and Cortex can have most of your access."
"In terms of areas of improvement, we have not completed our review of the product. We're also looking at other products. So, it's a little bit hard to tell what could be different because we have not completed the review of this product, but based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"The price could be a little lower."
"It is not very strong in terms of endpoint management. It should have additional features like DLP, encryption, or advanced device control. Currently, Cortex is good in terms of the security of the endpoints, but it is not as good as other vendors in terms of the management of the endpoint."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console."
"Limited remote connection."
"They need to focus on their SLA or technical support. They also need to focus on their UI. They should also improve their content filtering tool and update it so that correct categories are there. Sometimes, when I want to block an online gaming website, it is not shown under the correct category. It is shown under another category. They need to review their content filtering tool on a bi-weekly or monthly basis and update the sites and categories. This will be really helpful for them."
"We would like more application control in order to be able to schedule times and access."
"We would like to deploy across a variety of machines simultaneously through the network."
"I would like to see better support for virtual and desktop infrastructures."
"Through Sophos Central I would like to see the ability to zero in and produce a report about the challenges being faced by a particular machine and user, to know if a virus is appearing only on that specific machine or also on others."
"From the management side, we receive detailed information. Sophos has many features, such as Threat Hunting but that comes with the XDR version of the solution. There's Sophos Intercept X and then there's Sophos Intercept X with XDR technology. We bought the XDR and then now the MTR, Managed Threat Response version available too. They have different packages for clients which gives them different options to pick from. If Sophos could combine more features into one package it would be beneficial."
"The Data Loss Prevention module can be better. It should also have threat hunting capabilities."
"This solution is not in the high ratings on many of the top review sites. This solution has to be near the top for me to continue using it."
More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 80 reviews while Intercept X Endpoint is ranked 7th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 101 reviews. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4, while Intercept X Endpoint is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks writes "Perfect correlation and XDR capabilities for network traffic plus endpoint security". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Intercept X Endpoint writes "A standard offering with good threat analysis but reduces machine performance". Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, Symantec Endpoint Security and Trellix Endpoint Security, whereas Intercept X Endpoint is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, SentinelOne Singularity Complete and Seqrite Endpoint Security. See our Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Intercept X Endpoint report.
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