Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are both strong endpoint security solutions with different strengths. Cortex XDR offers advanced threat detection and investigation capabilities with a focus on extended detection and response (XDR). Microsoft Defender for Endpoint emphasizes robust security measures and leverages tight integration with other Microsoft products for a comprehensive security posture.
The summary above is based on 214 interviews we conducted recently with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft Defender users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The setup is pretty simple."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the ability to customize it and to reduce its size. It lets you run in a very small window in terms of memory and resources on legacy cash registers."
"The product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls."
"he solution is an anti-malware product that integrates well with other vendor products such as firewalls, SIEM, etc. It captures threat intelligence and gives you better visibility. The product also has sandboxing features."
"The console is easy to read. I also like the scanning part and the ability to move assets from one to the other."
"Forensics is a valuable feature of Fortinet FortiEDR."
"The ease of deployment and configuration is valuable. It's very easy compared to other vendors like Sophos. Sophos' configuration is complex. Fortinet is a lot easier to understand. You don't need a lot of admin knowledge to do the configuration."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"The one feature of Palo Alto Networks Traps that our organization finds most valuable is the App ID service."
"The protection offered by this product is good, as is the endpoint reporting."
"One of the main benefits of the solution is its intelligence to correlate the events into an incident."
"Cortex covers everything I need. It's a perfect solution. Cortex provides a different level of visibility because it's an extended EDR, allowing you to grab logs from the network and firewalls. Palo Alto invented the concept of the extended EDR or XDR."
"It'll not slow down your system when compared to others."
"The ability to kind of stitch everything together and see the actual complete picture is very useful. I guess you'd call it a playbook. Some people call it the forensics analysis of what was happening on particular endpoints when they detected some malicious behavior, and what transpired before that to cause that. It is also very user friendly. The way they have done everything and integrated all the solutions that they've purchased over the years to make it a very seamless, effective product is very good. One thing about Palo Alto is that they take the products or services that they purchase and make them seamless for the end user as compared to some companies that purchase other companies and then just kind of have their products off to the side or keep different interfaces. Palo Alto doesn't do that."
"It has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."
"The scalability is good."
"Defender is integrated into the operating system. It's integrated with everything. You don't have to spend time analyzing what you have to do to be sure that the integration is okay between the security tool and all the other apps. This, from my point of view, is the main advantage."
"It's free. There is no additional cost. It's part of Windows."
"I've started to test it from the security point of view. There are plenty of features that are interesting, but at this time, the XDR functionality is most valuable. It is endpoint security on steroids."
"The most valuable features are that it is flexible, and it is integrated with Microsoft products."
"Automatic scanning and cleaning of viruses is the best and most valuable feature helping this tool to thrive. If any viruses are found, they are cleaned automatically."
"The most valuable feature is that we can use the solution right out of the box without too much configuration."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's WCS function, a content filtering solution, has proven to be the most useful, stable, and reliable option for our current needs."
"The security should be strong for the cloud. Some applications are on-prem and some are on the cloud. Fortinet should also have strong security for the cloud. There should be more security for the cloud."
"There's room for improvement in the quick response time and technical support for integration issues, especially when dealing with multiple vendors."
"The SIEM could be improved."
"The solution should address emerging threats like SQL injection."
"Making the portal mobile friendly would be helpful when I am out of office."
"ZTNA can improve latency."
"Once, we had an event that was locked and blocked, but information about it came to us two or three days later."
"To improve Fortinet, we need to see more features and technology areas at the endpoint level introduced."
"The price could be a little lower."
"Cortex XDR could be improved with more GUI features."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by offering remote management. It would be useful to look at the client's issue to fix it."
"It automatically detects security issues. It should be able to protect our network devices while operating autonomously."
"The solution can never really be an on-premises solution based simply on the way it is set up. It needs metadata to run and improve. Having an on-premises solution would cut it off from making improvements."
"When it comes to core analysis, and security analysis, Cortex needs to provide more information."
"Cortex XDR is trickier to configure than other Palo Alto products. This is one area where we are not so satisfied."
"I would like to see better protection, specifically to protect email applications."
"There's a lot of manual effort involved to configure what we need."
"The integration and effectiveness of email security could be better. It's already built-in to the solution and checks emails, scans the links they contain etc."
"The solution could always be more secure."
"There are likely some technical improvements or features that could be added, however, I cannot say, off the top of my head, what they would be."
"There are some areas in the proactive threats that are just overwhelming the SOC, so we've had to turn those off until we can figure out how to filter out the false positives."
"The product itself does not necessarily need improvement, but the support and implementation of the product are the disaster cases."
"The central console needs improvement. Both McAfee and Symantec antivirus have dashboards. These integrate with a server and work on my antivirus or some other product. However, with Microsoft Defender, you use Microsoft Group Policy Object. Defender does not provide a central console. Therefore, if you implement Defender, then maybe use another tool for the central view."
"The scanning is slow when it is working with incoming emails."
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Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 80 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. 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 Microsoft Defender for Endpoint writes "Eliminates the need to look at multiple dashboards by automatically providing one XDR dashboard to show the security score of each subscription". Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, Symantec Endpoint Security, Trellix Endpoint Security and Check Point Harmony Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, CrowdStrike Falcon and Microsoft Intune. See our Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
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I have not used Microsoft Defender and only used Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. My experience with Cortex is not good as you need to whitelist each and every exe file of each adn every computer. My recommendation for you is to go for Cynet360 MDR which is far better than Cortex in terms of auto detection and remediation. You will get genuine alert.
Choosing Microsoft Defender makes the most sense if you already have a Microsoft ecosystem. But in reality, you need an endpoint security solution that is proactive and comes with built-in artificial intelligence capabilities.
I value in-depth visibility across the endpoints, so I prefer CrowdStrike Falcon EDR. It’s the best solution for simplified endpoint detection and response. CrowdStrike EDR comes with advanced features and easily integrates with popular third-party solutions like Splunk and Palo Alto Networks. An easy-to-use and navigate interface reduces the learning curve. Personally, I think CrowdStrike Falcon is easier to use than Microsoft Defender.
MSSPs like ACE Managed Security Services provide Managed CrowdStrike EDR. If you’re looking for hassle-free deployment and a fully-managed solution, you should look into ACE.
Unless you are using Palo Alto elsewhere in your architecture, I would go with Microsoft if that were the only choice.
However, if you are using another network security issue such as Fortinet or Sophos, I would also look to their endpoint solutions. They both have EDR and XDR capabilities and the endpoint solutions facilitate synchronization between the endpoint and the network control.
Microsoft has done lots of work in the endpoint space and the Zero Trust world over the past several months. Defender integrates tightly with the Microsoft Cloud and there is much synchronization that occurs between the physical endpoint and the cloud infrastructure. This means that regardless where the endpoint is physically located it stays connected and controlled by the policies set in the Microsoft cloud. Very much like the Group Policy Options we became accustomed to with the on premises domain controller.
I know that's a scratch on the surface and there are many other considerations, but you need to seek the solutions that promise management simplicity and the ability to control and protect the endpoints wherever they may be located.
I would go for the one with the best independent threat intelligence, a platform that allows you to change, add, move IT and Security infrastructure without impacting your security platform. I would also place a close attention to storage costs, service levels and the number of resources providing human intelligence on top of machine intelligence for investigation and incident response, all in one platform. But I am biased ;-)