Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Mandiant Advantage comparison

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6,230 views|4,702 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
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12,044 views|6,654 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
Mandiant Logo
980 views|626 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Mandiant Advantage based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Mandiant Advantage Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,679 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 most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that Microsoft Defender XDR is easy to integrate with other Microsoft platforms or products.""A crucial aspect for our team is the inclusion of identity and access management tools from the vendor.""Microsoft Defender's most critical component is its CASB solution. It has many built-in policies that can improve your organization's cloud security posture. It's effective regardless of where your users are, which is critical because most users are working from home. It's cloud-based, so nothing is on-premise.""The unified view of the threat landscape on a central dashboard is the most valuable feature.""The most valuable features are spam filtering, attachment filtering, and antivirus protection.""Microsoft 365 Defender is simple to upgrade.""All of the security components are valuable including, antiphishing, antispam, and stage three antivirus.""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."

More Microsoft Defender XDR Pros →

"They did what they said. This solution could apply to any scenario.""One of the things that I enjoy the most is using policy extensions. It's like having host firewalls to control USB connections. I think it's a wonderful tool to restrict use when connecting to our computers. Another important tool is Home Insights. That is an add-on to the Cortex solution. I like that because we can see all the vulnerabilities in the environment and control what assets are connected to our network.""The integrations are out-of-the-box, as are the playbooks.""The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is its machine-learning capabilities. Additionally, there is full integration with other solutions.""Its interface and pricing are most valuable. It is better than other vendors in terms of security.""I like the centralized console and the predictive analysis it does of malware. It is very stable and also scalable.""Cortex XDR lets us manage several clients from the same console, and its endpoint defense is more advanced than traditional antivirus.""Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is easy to use and does not consume a lot of hardware resources."

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"The advantage of the solution is being able to go look up threat actors and get a lot of detailed information about different attacks and different tactics and general information about threats.""It is so valuable to have someone performing these functions outside of our business hours when we don't have staff in the building. We've seen a lot of solid metrics on the amount of malware that it's detecting and resolving. We're pleased with it so far.""The feature I have found most valuable is directory monitoring. We experienced an instance of threat actors trying to ensure a complex and massive attack against our customer's infrastructure on the forum. That is, they were animating people on a formum. The solution alerted us to this two days ahead of the attack, which gave us plenty of time to prepare for it."

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Cons
"Customers say they want absolutely seamless integration between other Microsoft solutions and Defender XDR, including the ability to change device settings within the Defender portal. They need to contact the IT team responsible for the device management tools to change some settings. They would prefer that those changes be initiated directly from the Defender portal or applied from Intune without involving the IT operations team.""The management features could be improved, particularly in terms of better integration with Intune, Microsoft's cloud-based management solution.""Because of the training model, Defender XDR's automatic response sometimes blocks legitimate users and activities. Also, the UI sometimes responds slowly.""I personally have not seen much evidence of how Defender can enhance the story of zero trust for enterprises.""365 Defender has multiple subsets, including Defender for Cloud Apps. When integrating Defender for Cloud Apps with apps on third-party cloud platforms like AWS or GCP, there are limitations on our ability to control user activities. If Microsoft added more control over third-party products, that would be a game-changer and help us quite a lot.""The abundance of sub-dashboards and sub-areas within the main dashboard can be confusing, even if it all technically makes sense.""I would like more of the features in Defender for 365 to be included in the smaller licenses. Even if I buy a small license and don't need everything, security shouldn't be a question. Security is one of the main aspects of all projects from our side, so it would be nice to have more features in the smaller licenses.""The web filtering solution needs to be improved because currently, it is very simple."

More Microsoft Defender XDR Cons →

"There's an overall lack of features.""The GUI could be improved.""Impact on system performance is horrible, adding a lot of delays for users.""It's very time-consuming to log support issues and the people that answer the tickets aren't very knowledgeable.""Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console.""Cortex XDR is trickier to configure than other Palo Alto products. This is one area where we are not so satisfied.""The setup is quite easy. We had appropriate support from the manager. One thing that was missing was the integration part.""It would be good to have a better way to search for a file within the UI."

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"Mandiant's on-prem client is too processor-intensive, so it's putting a strain on the local device's CPU. When a scan is running on the device, the other processing tasks slow to a crawl. We're still trying to figure out the correct settings for the client.""They could have better support. Now that they've merged, they are moving towards a portal system, which isn't very helpful.""I think that the data query that is used for data cloud language should be improved. It's really hard to query actual data from the platform."

More Mandiant Advantage 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 →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and… more »
    Top Answer:Microsoft Defender XDR is expensive, especially for the full suite functionality. However, when compared to buying… more »
    Top Answer:Improving scalability, especially for very large tenants, could be beneficial for Microsoft Defender XDR. Additionally… 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:The feature I have found most valuable is directory monitoring. We experienced an instance of threat actors trying to… more »
    Top Answer:I think that the data query that is used for data cloud language should be improved. It's really hard to query actual… more »
    Top Answer:Our primary use case was monitoring the threat actors that our clients were concerned about. We also used Mandiant… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
    Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
    Mandiant Threat Intelligence
    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.”



    Mandiant Advantage is a multi-vendor XDR platform that provides security teams of all sizes with frontline intelligence. Mandiant Advantage aims to speed up operational as well as strategic security and risk decision making. Mandiant Advantage provides security teams with an early knowledge advantage through the Mandiant Intel Grid, which provides platform modules with current and relevant threat data and analysis capabilities. Organizations are better protected from cyber attacks and more confident in their readiness when they have access to continuous security validation, detection, and response.

    Mandiant Advantage Features

    Mandiant Advantage has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Threat intelligence: Front-line intelligence that enables a defender to be aware of the strategies and tactics that opponents are employing at this moment. Organizations will be able to contextualize, prioritize, and implement the most pertinent new intelligence by fusing ASM and threat intelligence.
    • Security validation: This allows security teams to optimize, rationalize, and prioritize their security activities from a budget and manpower viewpoint. It measures the effectiveness of security controls applied within an organization. Controls can be evaluated against the most recent TTPs actively used by threat actors by incorporating information into the security validation procedure. Organizations can determine whether their security policies are successfully thwarting or detecting attacks against their external attack surface by integrating ASM and security validation.
    • Automated Defense: In order to fuel SOC event/alert correlation and triage, Automated Defense combines knowledge and intelligence with machine learning. This is similar to integrating a machine-based Mandiant analyst into your security program. By merging ASM and Automated Defense, more context is given to Automated Defense, enhancing the relevance and usefulness of alarms.
    • Attack surface management: ASM offers a continuous, scalable method for locating hundreds of different asset and exposure types within on-premises, cloud, and SaaS application environments. In addition to assets being found, technologies in use are also identified, and vulnerabilities are confirmed rather than just speculated. Cyber defenders are able to effectively and efficiently limit their external exposures by integrating the full Mandiant Advantage suite into ASM, which prioritizes and validates the information regarding the attack surface.

    Mandiant Advantage Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Mandiant Advantage. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Boost your current security investments: No matter what security policies you have implemented, you may improve your security capabilities by automating Mandiant's expertise as a virtual extension of your team.
    • Improve your visibility and priority: View the threats Mandiant is continuously monitoring across your attack surface and internal controls in order to prioritize and drive focus.
    • Flexible deployment: Depending on your needs, Mandiant Advantage can be supplied as technology, along with support, or as a fully managed contract.
    • Scale efficiently: Without the need for time-consuming and expensive human labor, a SaaS-based strategy deploys in hours, scales with your environment, and provides constant expert analysis.
    Sample Customers
    Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
    CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
    Stater Bros. Markets, Rush Copley, Blackboat, CapWealth
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company16%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government9%
    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%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business40%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise36%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise56%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise56%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise67%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Mandiant Advantage
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Mandiant Advantage and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 80 reviews while Mandiant Advantage is ranked 20th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 3 reviews. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4, while Mandiant Advantage is rated 8.6. 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 Mandiant Advantage writes "It gives us peace of mind that issues can be addressed when our core IT team isn't working". Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, Symantec Endpoint Security and Fortinet FortiEDR, whereas Mandiant Advantage is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Cortex Xpanse, Cymulate, Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management and ThreatConnect Threat Intelligence Platform (TIP). See our Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Mandiant Advantage report.

    See our list of best Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vendors.

    We monitor all Extended Detection and Response (XDR) 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.