Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs CrowdStrike Falcon comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Microsoft Logo
6,000 views|4,488 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
Palo Alto Networks Logo
29,736 views|16,699 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
CrowdStrike Logo
40,231 views|28,871 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 21, 2022

We performed a comparison between Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike Falcon based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: The majority of Cortex XDR reviewers say the initial setup is straightforward, but a handful of Cortex XDR users say the setup is complex. All CrowdStrike Falcon users write that the initial setup is straightforward.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their high level of protection, stability, and scalability. Cortex XDR users report being satisfied with its user interface but would like to see more integration with other platforms. CrowdStrike Falcon users report being very satisfied with its performance and reliability. A few CrowdStrike Falcon users would like to see better reporting abilities and improvements to the dashboard’s user interface.
  • Pricing: Cortex XDR users write that the solution is expensive. Most CrowdStrike Falcon users feel that the price of the product is fair.
  • ROI: While Cortex XDR reviewers do not mention ROI, CrowdStrike Falcon users report a significant ROI.
  • Service and Support: Users of both solutions are happy with the level of support they receive.

Comparison Results: Both products receive high marks from reviewers. However, CrowdStrike Falcon comes out on top in this comparison due to its robust performance, ease of deployment, reasonable cost, and impressive ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Report (Updated: May 2024).
771,212 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The EDR features are valuable. By getting the EDR features, we have more control over the device. We have information about events in real-time and more protection against zero-day threats and zero-day vulnerabilities. We can monitor every event or action that a device is going through. We can get an idea if it is something malicious or if we have to take any actions.""Many people don't realize that Microsoft Azure, Exchange Online, and the security and compliance portal all sync together. For instance, within the Azure portal you can set security restrictions and policies to help secure your tenants... The good part of it is that these products have already been integrated. When you sign on as an admin you have global admin rights and that gives you access to all these features.""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.""It's a great threat intelligence source for us, providing alerts for things it detects on the network and on the machines. We've used it often when there is a potential incident to see what was done on a computer. That works quite nicely because you can see everything that the user has done...""Email protection is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender XDR.""The summarization of emails is a valuable feature.""It's a very scalable tool that can be used in a very small environment or in a very large environment. Everything can be managed from a simple dashboard and can be scaled up or down depending on the customer's environment.""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."

More Microsoft Defender XDR Pros →

"The user interface of the solution is sophisticated and straightforward.""If there are multiple alerts, the app will automatically create and rate an event instead of going through each one.""I've found the solution to be highly scalable for enterprises.""We can visualize and control the activities in the environment from anywhere.""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.""Monitoring is most valuable.""The dashboard is customizable."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Pros →

"The most valuable features of CrowdStrike Falcon are the AI in detecting and real-time detections.""Its integration capability is valuable. It integrates easily with any OS.""I have found the connection to search the hosts for detections very useful in CrowdStrike Falcon.""Enables us to understand what processes are running on the system, what registry keys have been enabled.""The solution can scale easily.""CrowdStrike Falcon offers a comprehensive dashboard that is highly effective in protecting against and blocking external infiltration attempts.""CrowdStrike displays a threat score when it detects an infection. This is helpful because not all detections are the same. It will classify them as ransomware, malware, phishing, etc. This feature helps us prioritize and cross-check with other EDR tools.""The most valuable features of Crowdstrike Falcon XDR are Spotlight and Discovery, they are helpful. Additionally, the console is user-friendly, with fewer false positives than other solutions."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Pros →

Cons
"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.""We should be able to use the product on devices like Apple, Linux, etc.""It would be highly beneficial if CoPilot could identify anomalies within the network and notify the IT team.""The console is missing some features that would be helpful for a managed services provider, like device and user management.""The advanced threat-hunting capabilities are phenomenal, and the security copilot enhances that, but some data elements could be better or have more context inside of the advanced tables themselves. The schemas feel a little limited to what they're building into the product. It's probably just a maturity thing. I imagine we'll see the features I want in the next year.""Intrusion detection and prevention would be great to have with 365 Defender.""The interface could be improved. For example, if you want to do a phishing simulation for your employees, it can take a while to figure out what to do. The interface is a bit messy and could be updated. It isn't too bad, but doing some things can be a long process.""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."

More Microsoft Defender XDR Cons →

"I would like to see some additional features related to email protection included.""The solution should force customers to integrate with network traffic to see the full benefits of XDR.""When it comes to core analysis, and security analysis, Cortex needs to provide more information.""I don't like that they have different types of licenses. For example, if users select a license, they think they will have all the platforms they need to improve their network or security. But after some time, Palo Alto Networks changed their licensing, and some of the features that, for example, were free at the beginning now have a cost. I think the integration can be improved. For example, a lot of tools are just integrated through APIs.""The GUI could be improved.""There are a large number of false positives.""The solution lacks real-time, on-demand antivirus.""There's an overall lack of features."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Cons →

"CrowdStrike needs to quit making up stuff about its features and functionality to bash its competition.""There are some areas where some customers would prefer a different service.""An improvement would be to extend support to legacy and unsupported servers.""The pricing structure should allow for some flexibility.""I would like to see equal support across all versions. Aside from that, I would say most of the features are there.""In the future release of CrowdStrike Falcon, they should add a sandbox feature.""CrowdStrike Falcon could improve by having an easier way to search and use the interface for extracting queries from the data. The interface could improve.""I have worked with their technical support on several problems that were never fully resolved."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The solutions price is fair for what they offer."
  • "The price could be better. Normally, the costs depend on the country you're located in for the license. When we were in the initial stage, we went with the E5 license they call premium standard. It cost us around $5.20 per month for four users."
  • "The price of the solution is high compared to others and we have lost some customers because of it."
  • "Microsoft is not competitive with the pricing of the solution. The competitors are able to offer lower discounts. The price of the solution is higher."
  • "We have a lot of problems in Latin America regarding the price of Microsoft 365 Defender, because the relationship between dollars and the money of the different countries, it's is a lot. Many customers that have small businesses say that they would like the solution but it is too expensive. However, large companies do not find the cost an issue."
  • "The most valuable licensing option is expensive, so pricing could be improved. Licensing options for this solution also need to be consolidated, because they frequently change."
  • "Microsoft should provide lower-level licensing options. They should do it in such a way that even an individual could purchase a license, and it should be entirely flexible."
  • "They have moved from a licensing model to pay-per-use... The question is: What happens if, for any reason, there's not enough budget to accept this model? That could be a great problem."
  • More Microsoft Defender XDR Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I feel it is fairly priced."
  • "The pricing seems fair, and I do like the licensing model. You use wherever they are, and it is elastic."
  • "We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
  • "It is "expensive" and flexible."
  • "Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
  • "I did PoCs on products called Cylance and CrowdStrike. Although, I consider these products and they were also good, when it come to cost and budgetary factors, Traps has been proven to be better than the other two products. It is quite cost-effective and delivers all the entire solution which we require."
  • "It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
  • "The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
  • More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The pricing will depend upon your volume of usage."
  • "I would like them to further reduce the price, because it is quite pricey at the moment."
  • "Purchasing the product through the AWS Marketplace is just a click away. Since we were using the on-premise version of the product, we continued on the cloud by purchasing it through the AWS Marketplace."
  • "I do not have experience with the cost or licensing of the product."
  • "The other administrator and I can log in to check the exact details of what happened, what was running, and what caused the detection. We know exactly what was happening on the end users PC and we can tell if it's something that we actually need or something that's malicious."
  • "We are at about $60,000 per year."
  • "This solution has a very competitive price."
  • "Our company pays approximately US$ 65,000 annually for 900 machines."
  • More CrowdStrike Falcon Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) solutions are best for your needs.
    771,212 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The integration, visibility, vulnerability management, and device identification are valuable.
    Top Answer:There is the cost of the license, and there is the cost of implementation services. Only by enabling a license for your… more »
    Top Answer:The web filtering solution needs to be improved because currently, it is very simple. It is very important. Integrations… more »
    Top Answer:Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks.… more »
    Top Answer:Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions that… more »
    Top Answer:Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface… more »
    Top Answer:Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing… more »
    Top Answer:The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push… more »
    Top Answer:I like that Crowdstrike allows me to easily correlate data between my firewalls. What’s most useful for my needs is the… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
    Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
    CrowdStrike Falcon, CrowdStrike Falcon XDR
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Defender XDR is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect against threats in the Microsoft 365 environment. 

    It offers robust security measures, comprehensive threat detection capabilities, and an efficient incident response system. With seamless integration with other Microsoft products and a user-friendly interface, it simplifies security management tasks. 

    Users have found it effective in detecting and preventing various types of attacks, such as phishing attempts, malware infections, and data breaches.

    Watch the Microsoft demo video here: Microsoft Defender XDR demo video.

    Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the first threat detection and response software to combine both visibility across all types of data as well as autonomous machine learning analytics. Threat detection very often requires analysts to divide their attention among many different data streams. This platform unifies a vast variety of data flows, which allows analysts to assess threats from a single location. Users can now maintain a level of visibility that other threat detection programs simply cannot offer. This level of transparency lends itself to both quick identification of problems that arise and the equally quick development of a potential solution.

    Cortex XDR’s machine learning works on many different levels to detect and prevent threats. It is constantly scanning for threats and vulnerabilities. The solution can scan up to 5.4 billion IP addresses in three-quarters of an hour. This allows it to spot weak points in the system and notify administrators long before hackers can take advantage of vulnerabilities. Once the Artificial Intelligence (AI) discovers an issue or an area where an issue could potentially take place the system creates a log of the information and subsequently sends an alert to system administrators. The AI takes the information that it has gathered and uses it to assign threat levels to the issues that it detects. Following this, a human analyst will be assigned to manually assess the issue and deal with it accordingly. You can set it to automatically respond to the threat by isolating the issue while analysts investigate it.

    Benefits of Cortex XDR

    Some of Cortex XDR’s benefits include:

    • The use of advanced AI analytics, behavior analytics, and custom-made detection to detect advanced threats before they occur.
    • The ability to group similar threat alerts, reducing incoming alerts by as much as 98%. This allows analysts to avoid being overwhelmed by the volume of incoming alerts.
    • The ability to investigate threats as much as 8 times faster than would be possible with other software. The machine learning, when coupled with the unified data stream that Cortex XDR collects, significantly increases the ability to more quickly discover the root cause of a threat.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks software stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to isolate threats while enabling them to be studied and the way that the software combines all of the data that it gathers into a single, more complete picture than other solutions offer.

    PeerSpot users note the effectiveness of these features. A network designer at a computer software company wrote, “The solution has a very helpful isolation feature. If any system gets compromised, with one click I can access the system and isolate it from other networks, and then go into further forensic investigation of the current threat without compromising anything else.”

    Jeff W., Vice President/CTO at Sinnott Wolach Technology Group, noted, “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.”



    CrowdStrike Falcon offers advanced threat detection, real-time visibility, easy interface, and responsive customer support. It enhances workflow and efficiency, promotes collaboration, streamlines processes, and boosts productivity. With features like incident response options, customizable alerts, and proactive threat hunting, it helps protect organizations from malware and ransomware attacks.

    Sample Customers
    Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
    CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
    Information Not Available
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company18%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Government10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Security Firm9%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise57%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise56%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise46%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise56%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. CrowdStrike Falcon
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. CrowdStrike Falcon and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    771,212 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 80 reviews while CrowdStrike Falcon is ranked 3rd in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 107 reviews. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4, while CrowdStrike Falcon is rated 8.8. 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 CrowdStrike Falcon writes "Easy to set up with good behavior-based analysis but needs a single-click recovery option". Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Darktrace, Symantec Endpoint Security, Trellix Endpoint Security and Trend Vision One Endpoint Security, whereas CrowdStrike Falcon is most compared with Darktrace, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Trend Micro Deep Security, Trend Vision One and Symantec Endpoint Security. See our Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. CrowdStrike Falcon report.

    See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors, best Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vendors, and best Ransomware Protection vendors.

    We monitor all Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.