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 product integrates security into one tool instead of having third-party security tools."
"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."
"I like how Microsoft XDR and the other Microsoft products are integrated into a single unified security stack covering identity access management, endpoint protection, email, cloud applications, etc."
"We can automate routine tasks and write scripts to carry out difficult tasks, which makes things easier for us."
"The integration with other Microsoft solutions is the most 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."
"All of the security components are valuable including, antiphishing, antispam, and stage three antivirus."
"The product is very easy to use."
"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."
"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 automation and orchestration tools are the most valuable features."
"Using SecureX, a tool provided by Cisco, we can easily integrate it with many of our other Cisco products such as Cisco ISE and many networking devices."
"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."
"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."
"SecureX enables us to have all the threat intelligence and threat event data in one place."
"Since they've done their most recent update, the ease to isolate endpoints is valuable. If we find one where there is a virus on it, we can easily isolate it. We don't even have to contact the user. We don't have to manually take them off the network. We can easily isolate them."
"Traps has drastically reduced our endpoint attack surface via advanced detection capabilities, sandboxing of never before seen programs, and by drastically limiting where executables can launch in the first place."
"The dashboard is customizable."
"The stability of this product is very good."
"One of the main benefits of the solution is its intelligence to correlate the events into an incident."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to rapidly detect certain hardware files."
"The solution doesn't need a high level of technical training."
"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."
"There could be a way to proactively monitor unusual activity ."
"The only problem I find is that the use cases are built-in. There is no template available that you can modify according to your organization's standards. What they give is very generic, the market standard, but that might not be applicable to every organization."
"Advanced attacks could use an improvement."
"I'd like to see a wider solution that includes not only desktop devices but also other devices, such as servers, storage cabinets, switching equipment, et cetera."
"We should be able to use the product on devices like Apple, Linux, etc."
"The Defender agent itself is more compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11. Other than these two lines, there are so many compatibility issues. Security is not only about Microsoft. The core technical aspects of it are quite good, but it would be good if they can better support non-Microsoft solutions in terms of putting the agents directly into VMware and other virtualization solutions. There should be more emphasis on RHEL and other operating systems that we use, other than Windows, in the server category."
"There are other SIEM solutions that are easier to use, mainly based on the creation of rules, use cases, and groups."
"what's missing right now is the multi-tenant capability."
"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."
"I'm not sure that I would call it a bug, but sometimes the solution is a little slow."
"One of the improvements the product needs is more integration with collaboration platforms."
"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."
"I would like it to integrate with another solution, e.g., DNA. I would like it to connect to that solution, but not the security aspect."
"The automation and orchestration could be simpler. It could be that all the other parts are that easy to use so that these stick out as a negative, but that's the trickiest part for us. The workflows within the orchestration are just a bit more difficult."
"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."
"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."
"In terms of areas of improvement, we have not completed our review of the product. We're also looking at other products. So, it's a little bit hard to tell what could be different because we have not completed the review of this product, but based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"Being able to filter the events to see those that are related to the actual alert would save time spent by the engineer."
"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."
"It's not an ideal choice for smaller businesses, as you need a minimum of 200 endpoints to even use the solution at all."
"Every 30 or 40 days, there's a new version and we need to go and make sure our customer's laptops are upgraded."
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Cisco SecureX is ranked 11th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 12 reviews while Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 3rd in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 80 reviews. Cisco SecureX is rated 9.2, 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 "It provides a whole new level of visibility and integrates with most other vendors". Cisco SecureX is most compared with Trend Vision One, Splunk SOAR, Cisco Secure Network Analytics, Fortinet FortiSOAR and Microsoft Defender for Cloud, whereas Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, Symantec Endpoint Security and Trend Micro Apex One. See our Cisco SecureX vs. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks report.
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