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.
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"It also gives me good visibility because, with Defender, I'm using a Microsoft product to defend Microsoft products. The integration was really seamless and I have wide visibility because it picks up almost everything. Literally, I can see almost every activity that happens, from the e-mail to the workstation itself."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"The technical support is good and quick to resolve issues."
"I have found the most valuable features to be artificial intelligence for cybersecurity, advanced machine learning capabilities, enterprise Immune System, Antigena Network, and Antigena Email. The way the solution detects the threat over the network before it spreads is very good. It notifies you of what the threat is exactly doing and gives you all the details about the execution of that application that had created the threat over your network."
"I find the complete portfolio to be excellent."
"The most valuable feature is that it gives us visibility of rogue traffic that is on the network."
"Provides great network protection."
"It has helped the organization to detect any malware affecting the machines...The network monitoring and the email monitoring features are very valuable for us."
"The most valuable feature of Darktrace and the most valuable feature is the artificial intelligence module because that is the tool that determines automatically if there is any risk or not in the network."
"AI analytics are built directly into the product."
"One thing I appreciate is Antigena Email, which is for email protection."
"It delivers the type of security which we were hoping for, since we have a lot of different endpoint users utilizing different types of software. We have people who only use Office software, like email, Word, and PDFs. Then, we have people who use some applications that other people wrote. We also write applications in-house using people who develop software. Therefore, we have some machines using very high-end developer software for mechanical development, electronic development, and software development. Those users are used to managing their PC on their own. The centralize platform allows us to differentiate between those three groups of people. We have overall control and can oversee the security levels at all the endpoints. They have not yet been blocked in any way when performing the functions"
"Scalable endpoint protection solution that takes seconds to set up per device. It has a rollback feature and offers good technical support."
"The most useful feature of all is deep visibility."
"The tool's most valuable feature is Vigilance Respond Pro monitoring. You don't have to have a dedicated SOC and worry about staffing."
"Offers good protection against ransomware."
"The solution has helped reduce our alerts."
"Malware detection is valuable."
"The most valuable aspect, in any scenario, was the rollback feature."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."
"We are always looking for others tools to increase automation on tasks. There can be better integration with other solutions, such as PowerPoint and email."
"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features."
"The product must provide better malware detection."
"A reporting portal could be a great addition to help customize reports."
"Darktrace is a closed technology, meaning we know very little about how it works, including the architecture, which is significant. As a result, when we implement the system and find we're getting many false positives, we have minimal insight into why it's happening and what we can do to fix it. We don't know how the solution is configured, the criteria for threats to be determined, or the product's inner workings. We understand that they have to ensure privacy and their copyright, but we want to see some documentation or public research into the security Darktrace provides."
"Darktrace needs to automate the reports of false positives, botnets and everything."
"The main portal needs improvement as it is difficult to use."
"It should be easier to access the Darktrace portal and its documentation. Only the customer can access their portal and support. It could be cheaper."
"I did not use the AI features because they should make it more user-friendly which would be a benefit. Additionally, the solution could integrate with more SIEM or SOAR tools."
"Although we haven't detected any network threats since implementing Darktrace, we are unsure of its efficacy. It would be beneficial if the solution could offer additional details to the user regarding any potential or prevented threats. Additionally, there could be better search tools and integration."
"Darktrace could improve by being more user-friendly."
"Generally, the stability is good, but I would like to see better stability from the solution. The stability issue is partially a con of a behavioral-based product, but being behavioral-based, it also has a lot of pros."
"The learning curve was a little steep."
"I would like to have firewall functionality within SentinelOne Singularity Complete."
"The role-based access is in dire need of improvement. We actually discussed this on a roadmap call and were informed that it was coming, but then it was delayed. It limits the roles that you can have in the platform, and we require several custom roles. We work with a lot of third-parties whom we rely on for some of our IT services. Part of those are an external SOC function where they are over-provisioned in the solution because there isn't anything relevant for the level of work that they do."
"The reporting needs improvement and I would like to see a more granular level of administrative privileges."
"The solution can improve by adding more granular firewall capabilities."
"It would be nice if the console stored data daily, so that you could look at a timeline of events on a machine over a period of time, and currently this is not possible."
"I would like to see category-based web filtering."
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.