Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB vs Vectra AI comparison

Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB is an advanced URL filtering solution that provides a way to control web access, as well as how users interact with online content. With this solution, your organization can prevent credential phishing theft by assuming strict control over which sites users can enter their corporate credentials into. Palo Alto Networks Advanced URL Filtering with PAN-DB provides web protection by using URL database capabilities to help you automatically detect and prevent new malicious and targeted web-based threats instantly.

Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB Features

Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Inline protection: Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB provides inline protection from new malicious web pages by using machine learning to detect and block new threats in milliseconds.

• Anti-evasion: Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB analyzes live web content, disrupting attackers and identifying the true nature of malicious sites hiding behind evasive techniques.

• Phishing protection: By using Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, you can spot phishing pages instantly and accurately before they destroy your network.

• URL database: Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB has a URL database that maintains hundreds of millions of known malicious and benign URLs categorized through a combination of static, dynamic, machine learning, and human analysis.

• Criteria matching: With this feature, you can designate multiple policy action types based on URL categories or criteria.

Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

• Eliminates security silos: Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB gets rid of security silos so you can attain proper security posture and keep users safe.

• Cloud native: Because Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB is cloud native, it enables you to easily expand and scale capabilities when necessary.

• Minimizes operational expenditure: By reducing the need for standalone solutions, Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB helps your organization decrease operational expenditures.

• Safeguards against phishing: Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB enables you to stop credential phishing attempts by offering layers of prevention to protect your organization from known and brand-new phishing sites.

• Consistent security policies and capabilities: With Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB, you can deploy advanced URL filtering with hardware appliances, on virtual environments, or in the cloud with the same set of policies and security consistently applied.

• Increased detection: Detect evasive and targeted attacks by detecting real web traffic and not web crawler data.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB solution.

Consultant Michael V. says, “What I really like about PAN and what makes it a worthwhile solution is that rather than having an administrator constantly updating a list of prohibited URLs, you can do it by categories. Every one of these URLs gets meta-tagged as hate speech or antisemitic or pornography, or whatever it is, and when you set up the filter everything that's prohibited by HR policy is there. I don't have to maintain anything, it catches everything.”

PeerSpot user Darshil S., Consultant at a tech services company, mentions, “The multiple categorizations of URLs are quite helpful. For example, if a URL is a social media website, such as facebook.com, it can be classified at a certain risk level - from high to low.”

Karthikeyan S., Sr. Cloud Data Architect at Sun Cloud LLC, explains, "Palo Alto Networks URL Filtering with PAN-DB is easy to use, easy to operate, and easy to edit."

Vectra threat detection and response is a complete cybersecurity platform that collects, detects, and prioritizes security alerts. The Cognito platform for Network Detection and Response (NDR) detects and responds to attacks inside cloud, data center, Internet of Things, and enterprise networks. The platform also provides automated response capabilities for low-level threats and escalates more severe anomalies to security personnel.

Cognito captures data for multiple relevant sources and enriches it with context and security insights. It starts by deploying sensors across different networks in datacenters, IoT, or enterprise networks. The algorithm extracts relevant metadata from network and cloud traffic. The information can also be non-security information that can help investigation. 

The data is enriched with security context to support critical use cases, such as threat detection, investigation, hunting and compliance. The platform is machine learning-based, which enables it to adapt to any new and current threat scenario. It detects, clusters, prioritizes, and anticipates attacks by using identity and host-level enforcement. 

With the Vectra platform, a person can investigate 50 threats in just two hours. By prioritizing alerts and leveraging threat intelligence, it provides faster results.Vectra solves today’s security challenges for network detection and response. 

One of Vectra’s best features is the emphasis they put in pairing research and data science for security insights. It offers behavior codification with unsupervised, supervised, and deep learning models. 

The pricing is according to a subscription model with a free trial available.Vectra is available for Office 365, Azure AD and AWS Brain.

Features of Vectra AI

• AI-based threat detection and response. 
• Detects attacks in real time with behavior-based threat detection. 
• Consolidates and correlates thousands of events, detecting threats. 
• Enriches threat investigation with a chain of evidence and data science security insights. 
• Machine learning techniques, including deep learning and neural networks. 
• Gives visibility into cyberattackers and analyzes all network traffic. 
• Continuous updates with new threat detection algorithms. 
• Provides encryption at rest and in transit. For the AWS version, it offers AES-256 encryption via AWS Key Management Service. 
• Guaranteed availability according to the SLA of the service selected. 
• Does not connect to public sector networks. 

Benefits of Vectra AI

• Behavioral models use AI to find unknown attackers. 
• Context increases the accuracy of threat hunting. 
• Allows for proactive action by prioritizing the most relevant information. 
• Provides a clear picture and extensive context for investigations. 
• Aids decision-making in the incident response process. 
• Helps working with large datasets by capturing metadata at scale. 
• Automates time-consuming analysis. 
• Reduces the security analysts’ workloads on threat investigations. 

Other advantages of Vectra services include that they can be deployed in the public, private, or hybrid cloud. Support is available via email or online ticketing with an average of 4 hours of response. Phone support is available 24/7. 

Vectra provides full on-site and online training and documentation. Regarding the user interface, it supports several types of web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. However, it is not available for mobile devices.

Reviews from Real Users

Here’s what PeerSpot users of Vectra AI have to say about it:

"One of the core features is that Vectra AI triages threats and correlates them with compromised host devices. From a visibility perspective, we can better track the threat across the network. Instead of us potentially finding one device that has been impacted without Vectra AI, it will give us the visibility of everywhere that threat went. Therefore, visibility has increased for us." - Dave W., Operations Manager at a healthcare company

"It does a reliable job of parsing out the logs of all the network traffic so that we can ingest them into our SIEM and utilize them for threat hunting and case investigations. It is pretty robust and reliable. The administration time that we spend maintaining it or troubleshooting it is very low.” - T.S., Senior Security Engineer at a manufacturing company