We performed a comparison between Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and SentinelOne based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Both products receive high marks from reviewers. However, SentinelOne comes out on top in this comparison due to its impressive security and EDR features, attractive price, and impressive ROI.
"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."
"The Endpoint Manager is incredible; it has a very straightforward interface and is exceedingly easy to use. Pulling out and deploying different tags or resources is a simple task across various departments with different levels of security. The notifications are also simple and satisfying; it's great to see the bubble informing us which devices are compliant and which are waiting to update."
"The comprehensiveness of Microsoft's threat detection is good."
"We can automate routine tasks and write scripts to carry out difficult tasks, which makes things easier for us."
"Setting up Microsoft 365 Defender is easy. It's a user-friendly solution that provides threat protection. It has good stability and scalability."
"Within advanced threat hunting, the tables that have already been defined by Microsoft are helpful. In the advanced threat hunting tab, there were different tables, and one of the tables was related to device info, device alert, and device events. That was very helpful. Another feature that I liked but didn't have access to was deep analysis."
"The most valuable feature is the network security."
"The visibility into threats that 365 Defender provides is really good. You get a full review of your security system and what can be improved. In the Microsoft 365 Defender portal the first page gives you a really big summary of which security policies you are following and what can be improved."
"The protection offered by this product is good, as is the endpoint reporting."
"The integrations are out-of-the-box, as are the playbooks."
"It's a nice product that's stable and scalable."
"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. The way they have done everything and integrated all the solutions that they've purchased over the years to make it a very seamless, effective product is very good. One thing about Palo Alto is that they take the products or services that they purchase and make them seamless for the end user as compared to some companies that purchase other companies and then just kind of have their products off to the side or keep different interfaces. Palo Alto doesn't do that."
"It is easy to use."
"Best solution for avoiding security breaches, malware attacks, and other kinds of security issues."
"One thing that I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, it is detecting all the suspicious or malicious binaries, and it has integration with Palo Alto Firewall."
"Its interface and pricing are most valuable. It is better than other vendors in terms of security."
"The product can scale as needed."
"Another valuable feature is that if a machine is infected, one that may infect other computers within the network, we have the capability of segregating that machine in the network so that it remains connected to the internet but is cut off from the other machines in the network. That helps prevent spreading of the infection. That's a very unique feature, one I have not seen in the last 10 to 15 years from any other antivirus program. That's amazing."
"The solution is easy to set up."
"SentinelOne Singularity has hundreds of features. The most valuable feature of the solution is the ease of use and threat control."
"The solution offers very rich details surrounding threats or attacks."
"We are able to write some custom rules on SentinelOne."
"SentinelOne is preferred because of its great features and nominal cost."
"It is easy to collect and retain logs with SentinelOne."
"When discussing the secure score, which includes overviews and recommended actions, some of these recommended actions are not applicable to us, particularly those related to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which we do not use in any of our environments."
"I personally have not seen much evidence of how Defender can enhance the story of zero trust for enterprises."
"When we do investigations, it would be better if Microsoft could populate the host dashboard more. When we open any host for investigation, we want the entire timeline of what is happening on the host, including all the users logging in, their hardware, Windows version, etc."
"A simple dashboard without having to use MS Sentinel would be a welcome improvement."
"There is definitely scope for improvement in the automation area. Because the solution is a SaaS platform, we don't have the overall ability to automate stuff.... There is no direct way to go ahead because it's a SaaS platform."
"Offboarding latency should be reduced. Even after a device has been successfully offboarded using a particular offboarding script, it still shows up as onboarded."
"It would be highly beneficial if CoPilot could identify anomalies within the network and notify the IT team."
"The management and automation of the cloud apps have room for improvement."
"It is a complex solution to implement."
"The solution can never really be an on-premises solution based simply on the way it is set up. It needs metadata to run and improve. Having an on-premises solution would cut it off from making improvements."
"The dashboard is the area that needs to improve so that we can have the ability to drill down without having to go elsewhere to verify results."
"It would be good to have a better way to search for a file within the UI."
"Currently, we are monitoring all USB drives and ports but we would like to improve our device control capabilities."
"It'll help if customization was easier."
"The price could be a little lower."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"The MDM functionality and maturity still need improvement."
"It would be good to see some small tools to test files or hashes that are a potential threat, I know there are already products offering this."
"The UI appears to be flat, and I wish to have the ability to customize it with features and buttons that are tailored to our needs."
"Their documentation could afford to be a little bit better communicated. A lot of times we have to look at things in the knowledge base, and much of that could be communicated better, but that would probably be the only thing that needs to be improved."
"They can improve the administrative interface. They can make it more user-friendly."
"It can be a little daunting at first. With the deep visibility feature, if I had more insights into how to troubleshoot things better, that would be helpful. Their documentation could be a lot better. It could be more in-depth."
"In automation, if we could schedule when we run the task and on which systems we want to run the task, it would improve automation."
"We are not utilizing all the features available with SentinelOne Singularity Complete, including the built-in XDR and Ranger, due to the substantial associated costs."
More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
More SentinelOne Singularity Complete Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 80 reviews while SentinelOne Singularity Complete is ranked 2nd in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 176 reviews. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4, while SentinelOne Singularity Complete is rated 8.8. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SentinelOne Singularity Complete writes "Provides peace of mind and is good at ingesting data and correlating". Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, Symantec Endpoint Security and Wazuh, whereas SentinelOne Singularity Complete is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, ThreatLocker Protect and Symantec Endpoint Security. See our Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. SentinelOne Singularity Complete report.
See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors, best Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vendors, and best Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) 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.
I haven't used Cortex. My worry with it and every other solution is how well does it perform when disconnected from the cloud/ the internet?
S1 - I have been using it for a couple of years now without an issue. I had been using Cylance prior. I've been very happy with the S1 solution. Works with or without the Internet.
Depends on the size, scope and needs of your environment.
XDR is an ok monitoring/alerting tool, especially if you have a Palo Alto firewall already and everything can integrate well together. However, S1 is a superior tool IMHO and can catch and fix things automatically if you so choose (magic quadrant agrees).
Cost-wise XDR is probably cheaper but I don't know specifics on-prem vs cloud. S1 is a cloud tool but is extremely fast and responsive compared to some other tools we POC'd and can support legacy devices w2k8 and below or Linux or VDI without having to special of workarounds. So again, it depends on your needs, environment and cost.
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne
SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. The ability to reverse damage caused by ransomware with minimal interruptions to the environment is note-worthy. Sentinel One works inconspicuously in the background, continually providing protection. It has an automated active EDR that will not only find issues but can fix them. I don’t know that any other solution does that.
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto has a nice console and is easy to use. One of my favorite things about it is that it will automatically connect and log various kinds of suspicious behavior - you don’t need to do it manually. Cortex XDR is very secure but it is missing some basic features. It doesn’t offer an on-prem solution and it doesn’t integrate so well with some third-party solutions.
SentinelOne can be challenging to set up and there seem to be some applications that do not function properly when SentinelOne is installed. I would like to be able to make the reporting more specific to my needs. It would be a more attractive option if the cost was lower.
Conclusions
The find-and-fix option that SentinalOne provides was a huge win for us. We feel it provides a deeper and more thorough level of security.