We performed a comparison between Darktrace and SentinelOne based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on our users’ reviews, we would conclude that SentinelOne is a stronger, more secure solution than Darktrace. Reviewers say that SentinelOne offers a deeper and more thorough level of security. Additionally, SentinelOne provides equal protection across Windows, Linux, and macOS. It can also support legacy infrastructure as well as newer environments. The single-pane feature helps protect numerous endpoints with a very lean team, saving time and money.
"Safe attachments, safe links, policies, and the ability to protect from zero-day threats are the most valuable features."
"The product is not resource-intensive."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications."
"Threat Explorer is one of the features that I very much like because it is a real-time report that allows you to identify, analyze, and trace security attacks."
"Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"The active threat dashboard is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"In terms of features, the data or information they collect and unsupervised machine learning are very valuable. Its unsupervised machine learning has reduced our team's effort. Both Darktrace and Vectra work on unsupervised machine learning that learns the behavior or develops a profile on its own, which allows our security team to do some other tasks rather than spending time on Darktrace or Vectra. Because of unsupervised machine learning, its detection capability is quite good. Along with that, if we utilize the integration feature properly, the automated incident response capability of Darktrace is quite useful."
"The ability to detect activity on the network is very useful to us. Even if it's not necessarily an illegal activity, if it is abnormal activity, it is able to detect it and notify us."
"The solution is outstanding from a monitoring perspective."
"I find the complete portfolio to be excellent."
"The solution is stable. We've never had any problems with it."
"The ability to see what we have not seen before is most valuable. It is very interesting to find out the most vulnerable devices in our network."
"t was pretty as far as the granularity of what you were getting out of it."
"I have been a Mac guy for twenty years, and the feature parity and the capabilities of a Macintosh agent are unparalleled in the industry. It is the first anti-malware and antivirus that does not make you feel that you bought the wrong processor. It is really good and lightweight."
"The most valuable feature is the quick response to attacks."
"The Storyline feature has significantly affected our incident response time. Originally, what would take us hours, now it takes us several minutes."
"The deep visibility is really important for us. With it, we can really look deep into some of the incidents."
"Being able to keep track of the endpoints and the data that is available from the endpoints is valuable. We can see the patch levels, whether Windows endpoints are active or inactive, and who is the last user that was logged on. We get a lot of granular information that is valuable even what we are not talking from a security standpoint."
"It is a robust solution. It provides great visibility."
"The solution is both stable and scalable."
"I like the centralized management with the web dashboard."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"In one of the reports I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help."
"Configuration requires going to a lot of places rather than just accessing one tab."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"The product must provide better malware detection."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"It takes time to go through the interface and pick up things. If it were a more straightforward interface, then it would free up time."
"The price point for the product was too high for what our possible use case could be."
"Darktrace does not have any capabilities to configure."
"Needs to improve its collaboration with local partners."
"I would like for the product to work on the endpoints as well. I would like to see enhanced visibility into the endpoints and network but this solution only sits on the network itself."
"Darktrace could expand into EDR (endpoint detection and response) and combine it with its network detection."
"Darktrace could improve its features, such as monitoring and detecting ransomware."
"The solution can improve the reporting."
"One area of SentinelOne that definitely has room for improvement is the reporting. The canned reports are clunky and we haven't been able to pull a lot of good information directly from them."
"I'd like to see more documentation."
"The SentinelOne portal is not user-friendly, which is one of its drawbacks."
"The most difficult part of using Singularity Complete is logging in, as they often update the management console."
"The stability of SentinelOne should be improved."
"The ability to have more direct purchasing for smaller groups and smaller businesses would be great."
"There is not much flexibility in terms of policy fine-tuning. We can turn it off or turn it on, but, there's nothing much else to do. Everything is predefined. It's good in a way, but you don't get much flexibility if you want to do something particular."
"I would like to see the reports from SentinelOne more customizable, as there are very few options."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
More SentinelOne Singularity Complete Pricing and Cost Advice →
Darktrace is ranked 13th in Email Security with 65 reviews while SentinelOne Singularity Complete is ranked 2nd in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) with 176 reviews. Darktrace is rated 8.2, while SentinelOne Singularity Complete is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of Darktrace writes "Great autonomous support, offers an easy setup, and has responsive support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SentinelOne Singularity Complete writes "Provides peace of mind and is good at ingesting data and correlating". Darktrace is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Vectra AI, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Secure Network Analytics and ExtraHop Reveal(x), whereas SentinelOne Singularity Complete is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, ThreatLocker Protect, Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) and Bitdefender GravityZone EDR.
We monitor all Email Security 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.
You should not compare SentinelOne to Darktrace - they solve completely different problems. These types of questions show the ongoing challenges in cybersecurity. As written below, SentinelOne is an Endpoint Detection and Response tool. It is to protect a laptop or workstation from an attack. EDR is a core requirement for cyber defense.
Darktrace is a network detection and response tool. NDR tools detect attacks occurring against the network. NDR is also a core requirement for cyber defense.
Regardless of the quality of either tool, you need to cover both your endpoint and your network. So if you decide one is better and choose it, you remain vulnerable to attack.
Cover your endpoint only, and I am going to hit you with an attack on your network. Cover your network only, and I will get you via an endpoint.
EDR tools - SentinelOne, Cybereason, CrowdStrike, Carbon Black to name a few.
NDR tools - Darktrace, Vectra, ExtraHop, Cyglass to name a few.
Comparisons of these tools by category would be more valuable.
An easy answer for me - pretty much exactly what @Janet Staver described.
DT was a good east-west network traffic tool that could tell you all about communications between systems (think NDR) but limited capacity, expensive boxes, that we outgrew.
S1 is an endpoint tool with deep inspection, a central console, and is cost-effective.
I have done a POC with Darktrace three different times at different orgs.
They are actually a borderline scam company. On each POC, I set up tests that even a free install of Suricata could detect. DT failed to detect anything in each case.
The other thing is that they call their alerts breaches. This is a BAD idea and they would not listen to reason on this. They will send out young, good-looking salespeople, but by the time you are done with your POC, they will be gone and replaced by someone else.
Their sales engineers are too young to have any experience with a security issue you may be dealing with. And I suspect after a few POCs they see that this does not work, at all, and leave! Stay away from Darktrace!
You can't compare these two solutions - they are different.
SentinelOne is an EDR similar to known EDRs (Sophos, Sandblast, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto XDR, etc.).
You need an agent to install to the endpoint to manage. You can integrate via API if you want to integrate to existing networks like Clearpass and micro-segmentation software like Guardicore.
Darktrace is an AI-based tool to analyze traffic for known cyber threats from the network level without any agent. Either mirror the port or redirect traffic from VLAN to the Darktrace sensor. The sensor notifies you if any devices are newly discovered to the network, or new users access the particular device. You can block that traffic or device to mobile devices or web UI. In addition, Darktrace also has a module to integrate to SaS like the Office365 email.
Both @Janet Staver and @ITSecuri7cfd are spot on.
As a security vendor, like ITSecuri7cfd points out, one tool is for the endpoint and one tool is for the network side.
If you looking for an EDR tool, you should look to compare solutions from Carbon Black, Crowdstrike, etc.
As for Darktrace, they are classified as an NDR tool. Within the NDR market, there are essentially 2 types of solutions; tools for smaller organizations that have limited resources and tools that are designed for organizations that have SOC teams that need better visibility and data.
If you want to learn more about NDR solutions in general we have written an ebook called "What to look for in an NDR platform": https://bricata.com/wp-content...
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is meant for smaller to medium-sized businesses. It is also a good option for organizations who have limited security resources but still need deep insights into threats and network intrusions. Darktrace also has an invaluable feature that produces weekly reports.
A unique feature Darktrace has to its name is its use of artificial intelligence for cybersecurity and machine learning capabilities. Darktrace is able to successfully detect threats over networks before it's even possible for them to spread. In addition, it notifies you with all the threat details. Although Darktrace is geared toward smaller-sized organizations, it does come with a hefty cost. The cost increases as the number of products that need to be monitored increases.
SentinelOne is a great product and effective for mitigating threats. It allows you to have granular control over your environments and your endpoints. SentinelOne has a central management console. It also provides insight into lateral movement threats, by gathering data from anything that happens to be related to the security of an endpoint. Another SentinelOne feature that’s fantastic is their one-click automation remediation, along with rollback for restoring an endpoint, which can often be very helpful.
SentinelOne is also known for its ability to decrease incident response time and has deep visibility that comes in handy quite often. However, the dashboard design isn’t wonderful. In contrast to Darktrace though, SentinelOne is efficient because minimal administrative support is required, and it offers a lot for a solution that is cost-effective.
Conclusion
While both SentinelOne and Darktrace boast many beneficial features, one outweighs the other when it comes to price. If Darktrace is within your budget, I would recommend it. But if not, SentinelOne is a great solution that makes a lot of sense.