We performed a comparison between Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Cisco SecureX based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cortex XDR presents an intuitive interface, advanced identification of risks, expandability, and compatibility with various other solutions. Cisco SecureX earns high marks for its automated utilities, comprehensive visibility, and seamless integration with external resources. Meanwhile, Cortex XDR could use enhancements in hard disk encryption, security integration, and customer education. Users say Cisco SecureX needs better documentation and integration with on-premises systems. It would also benefit by expanding its compatibility with third-party solutions.
Service and Support: Some customers were impressed with Palo Alto’s support, while others reported mixed experiences. Some users describe Cisco support as dependable and efficient, while others noted a decline in quality due to personnel changes.
Ease of Deployment: Some users thought Cortex XDR’s deployment was fast and straightforward, while others consider it to be a complex and time-consuming task that requires thorough planning. Setting up Cisco SecureX is generally considered to be straightforward in cloud environments, but it requires more effort to integrate the solution with on-premise products.
Pricing: Some reviewers said Cortex XDR is expensive, but others said it was reasonable for the robust feature set Cortex offers. A few users said Cisco SecureX’s price could be lower, given that it is included for free with certain Cisco products.
ROI: Cortex XDR creates value by ensuring system and data security rather than a financial return on investment. Cisco SecureX provides a positive ROI by speeding up detection and resolution. It also decreases workloads through automation and proactive information gathering.
Comparison Results: Our users prefer Cortex XDR over Cisco SecureX. Cortex XDR stands out for its comprehensive platform and valuable features. Users praised its ease of use, threat identification capabilities, and minimal hardware resource consumption.
"The portal is quite user-friendly. There is integration with Office, Intune, and other products from the same portal. From there, we can see which policies are installed on a particular machine. We also can manage devices, groups, and tagging."
"The most valuable features are spam filtering, attachment filtering, and antivirus protection."
"The advantage of Microsoft Defender XDR has over other XDRs in the market is that it's easy to use. You can quickly differentiate between alerts, incidents, devices, software, etc. It's easier to investigate an incident, and you have so many options. You can automate investigations and use playbooks. There's also the live response session, which is something you can't find in any other XDR."
"I like the easy integration and advanced possibilities. We can implement it at customer sites in a few clicks, but we can also dive deep and drill down to extended features. There's a very good starting point to get into this product and all the features from Defender."
"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."
"The most valuable feature depends on the scenario. For compliance, I like Microsoft Purview Information Protection and Data Loss Prevention. Sentinel is the most helpful feature for security. 365 Defender helps us prioritize threats across an enterprise. It's a crucial feature for the managed services team."
"Defender XDR has a feature called the timeline that lets you track all activities. It helps a lot with investigations."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft 365 Defender are the combination of all the capabilities and centralized management."
"One of the most valuable features is the simplicity of deploying SecureX. It's very easy to do that and then you gain very detailed visibility into everything that's going on in your network and, obviously, at the device level. There's just a wealth of information that you can pull from all of these products that are part of SecureX. You know exactly if you have an issue or not."
"The most beneficial feature of Cisco SecureX for cybersecurity efforts is its integration with other Cisco solutions and the environment. This sets it apart, as its APIs and overall integration capabilities are very strong. Additionally, its detection capabilities are commendable."
"Our customers find the product's third-party integrations valuable. Our customers are also impressed with the tool's capability to pick up third-party threat feeds and use that as part of the decision-making process."
"It has evolved a lot, just that monitoring piece to the current Orchestrator piece. The additional analytics are there. They now have something called Insight, which can basically take data from Microsoft Azure AD and Intune to give us information about our endpoints. This is detailed information about the endpoints, from Secure Endpoint and all these different products. So, it is just constantly evolving. Every time that it evolves, we have more information with more visibility. There are more features that we have that just make everything so much easier, and it is in one place. I don't have to keep going back and forth. I don't have to go to Secure Endpoint and ISE to get the data. I don't have to go to Intune on Microsoft to get the information. It is all in one place."
"I like that I don't have to jump around to five different products and log into five different places to view the data that it returns."
"The forensics are amazing because when you have enrichment, and the solutions talk with each other, when you need it, you have the ability to know everything in the organization: when, why, whatever."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to manage all the applications and visibility. For example, if there is malware, spam, or another component that wants to attack the company in my servers, network, or applications, then SecureX will react to the problem."
"The ability to create firewalls online has been most valuable including the ability to create rules."
"If there are multiple alerts, the app will automatically create and rate an event instead of going through each one."
"The product has an intuitive dashboard."
"Its interface and pricing are most valuable. It is better than other vendors in terms of security."
"Cortex XDR's most valuable feature is its intelligence-based dashboards."
"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."
"Their XDR agent and their behavioral indicators of compromise (BIOC) are pretty nice. Their managed threat hunting is also pretty nice. They also have WildFire, which is a service for actively looking for malware. It's quite useful."
"Traps is quite a stable product. Once it was properly deployed and configured, you have nothing to be worried about."
"The product's most valuable features are massive user and feature intelligence exploit detection."
"The licensing is a nightmare and has room for improvement."
"The console is missing some features that would be helpful for a managed services provider, like device and user management."
"In the future, it would be beneficial for Microsoft to consider making the product more user-friendly or simplified for those who are interested in using it. Currently, it requires a high level of technical expertise, making it challenging for beginners or less experienced individuals."
"It would be helpful if the solution could scan faster when it comes to scanning attachments to emails."
"Microsoft tends to provide too many features, which makes the solution prone to bugs."
"The solution does not offer a unified response and standard data."
"Defender also lacks automated detection and response. You need to resolve issues manually. You can manage multiple Microsoft security products from a single portal, and all your security recommendations are in one place. It's easy to understand and manage. However, I wouldn't say Defender is a single pane of glass. You still need to switch between all of the available Microsoft tools. You can see all the alerts in one panel, but you can't automate remediation."
"The dashboard should be easier to use. There is also improvement needed in the reporting when it comes to exporting or scheduling reports."
"I'm not sure that I would call it a bug, but sometimes the solution is a little slow."
"Enhancing automation capabilities could further improve the product."
"The documentation can be improved and the on-prem integration. The set of applications that it was integrated with wasn't comprehensive."
"If they could make the Cisco Umbrella piece a little bit more advanced or easier to manage, that would help. We use it for filtering and when you compare it to a normal content filter, it lacks some functionality."
"One of the improvements the product needs is more integration with collaboration platforms."
"what's missing right now is the multi-tenant capability."
"For us, the biggest sticking point is that the product is not being designed for multi-tenancy use at present, from an MSP perspective."
"The playbooks provided with the product are great, although I would appreciate having more playbooks available. Threats are constantly evolving, so having access to updated playbooks is crucial."
"It tends to do 99.9% of things. The only thing I'd like is single sign-on authentication into their cloud platform so that my users can be properly authenticated against it."
"They have the worst support, as a company, that I have ever worked with, as they are difficult to get a hold of and keep on the phone. They don't know what they are talking about when you get them on the phone. They don't like to respond to messages when you send them to them. They like to "research problems" for weeks on end, then pass you off to somebody else."
"Managing the product should be easier."
"We have found that there are times Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks does not detect some of the viruses, we have to use another protection solution called Kaspersky."
"The solution needs better reports. I think they should let the customer go in and customize the reports."
"The playbooks could be improved to include more functionalities or actions."
"It automatically detects security issues. It should be able to protect our network devices while operating autonomously."
"Previously, the endpoint would leave the environment, not being on our VPN, essentially unable to interact with the server to upload files. It was unable to retrieve new file verdicts. It was using a thing called "local analysis" to determine if something was a malicious file or not. There was no dynamic analysis."
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Cisco SecureX is ranked 14th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 13 reviews while Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 80 reviews. Cisco SecureX is rated 9.0, while Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco SecureX writes "Gives our customers visibility and they don't have to go multiple management consoles anymore". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks writes "Perfect correlation and XDR capabilities for network traffic plus endpoint security". Cisco SecureX is most compared with Trend Vision One, Splunk SOAR, Cisco Secure Network Analytics, Fortinet FortiSOAR and Wazuh, whereas Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, Symantec Endpoint Security and Trellix Endpoint Security. See our Cisco SecureX vs. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks report.
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