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BigFix vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

BigFix
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (5th), Patch Management (2nd), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (4th)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (7th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of BigFix is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.2%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Bella Yakoby - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers third-party patching feature, good scalability, and enhance endpoint management capabilities
From the perspective of the team that's handling the environment, it's not so user-friendly compared to other solutions, the competitors. We hire new teams from time to time, and they are complaining, look, although BigFix is very robust and cross-platform, it's not so fun to work with. The user interface for the technical teams is not so advanced. It's not so intuitive compared to SCCM, compared to ManageEngine. And this is the fact that they have, with the teams, because they have the rejection. The look and feel of the system are old-fashioned. For new employees, it's less easy to find someone I don't need to educate on how to work with BigFix. Although it's easy, it's not as intuitive as the other solutions, and the functionality of the other solutions is less advanced. Let's summarize: The user interface has to be changed from the perspective of the teams that are managing the product. It's old school.
Mohammad Qaw - PeerSpot reviewer
Perfect correlation and XDR capabilities for network traffic plus endpoint security
The solution should force customers to integrate with network traffic to see the full benefits of XDR. If you are not integrating it or feeding in your network traffic, then you are just buying a normal antivirus which doesn't make any sense. You are paying double the price to use the antivirus feature or to say you have XDR, but in reality you are not using it. The solution should include an on-premises option because some customers want only on-premises. It would be hard, but good to do if possible. Open XDR would be beneficial in the future. Right now, the solution is Closed XDR so cannot communicate with the few new vendors in the Open XDR market.

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 and essential features of BigFix are all of them, they are needed when serving the purpose of the desktop operation framework. We cannot run operations without patching or without having an appropriate mechanism for deploying software, et cetera. The features all serve their purpose for our use case."
"Prior to BigFix we used Altiris, which was distributed. We had to manage multiple servers, and duplicate the tasks that we did on each server. BigFix tremendously reduced the amount of work that we had to do on each server in a centralized manner. We could minimize the work that we had to do, and we had a lot more control over the tasks and what machines they ran on."
"I’ve found patching to be the most valuable feature of the solution."
"BigFix is a great product. The flexibility of putting together your own relevance and retrieving custom data from any one of your agents is a valuable feature. It is one of my favorite features because if a boss asks me, "How many of these devices do we have?", I can put together a report in two seconds."
"I would advise someone considering this product to go for it. It's easy to use, cheaper than the value, and there is tons and tons of support from the BigFix community. With almost every challenge we have someone who has encountered it, and you will have a solution right away."
"It enables us to patch our systems quickly and within expectations and to increase our volume as needed. It has also helped us compress our patch sites. We used to do it monthly but now we do it weekly."
"The most valuable features of the solution are Windows patching and the hardware and software inventory."
"The architecture for patching and the 100% correct reporting makes BigFix stand apart from other solutions."
"Cortex XDR can integrate the firewalls and determine the tendencies of the attacks. It's a new generation antivirus, with protection endpoints and detection response. It is very easy to use and everybody can operate the solution."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It'll not slow down your system when compared to others."
"The product's most valuable features are massive user and feature intelligence exploit detection."
"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."
"One of the main benefits of the solution is its intelligence to correlate the events into an incident."
"I've found the solution to be highly scalable for enterprises."
"The most valuable features are incident creation, policy-based protection, IP whitelisting, and device encryption. These are beneficial for endpoint and server security."
 

Cons

"One aspect that could be improved is the speed of the console. Sometimes it can be slow, which is something that needs to be addressed."
"I would eventually like to see a SaaS offering, a cloud-hosted BigFix instance where we only have to put a relay in our environment."
"The console interface is not friendly, and requires training before using it in production."
"I want to see a solution for being able to deploy automated software to a Mac running OS X 10.13, something that's going to deal with kernel exceptions and answering prompts for user permissions for data folders and whatnot. They need to really streamline and automate the Mac software deployment."
"I'd like to see better API integration with BigFix. We have some tremendous API capability inside of CyFIR and the ability to take textual search results, for example, and bring that back into the BigFix dashboard. This would be of extreme interest to us and our customers."
"It could use better integration with Hypervisor products like VMware."
"We would like to see a different license plan, e.g. to include features from lifecycle with Patch Management, as an example."
"License management isn't quite as easy as it should be to deal with the licensing. You need to take the server down to import the new licenses which I find to be annoying."
"The solution should force customers to integrate with network traffic to see the full benefits of XDR."
"It is not very strong in terms of endpoint management. It should have additional features like DLP, encryption, or advanced device control. Currently, Cortex is good in terms of the security of the endpoints, but it is not as good as other vendors in terms of the management of the endpoint."
"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."
"The product's pricing could be better."
"Currently, we are monitoring all USB drives and ports but we would like to improve our device control capabilities."
"When it comes to malware files, it should be a little quick because, at times, it would give a wrong result in the sense of what it might be on malware, even if it still might be a normal one."
"In an upcoming release, the solution could improve by proving hard disk encryption. If it could support this it would be a complete solution."
"It would be good to have a better way to search for a file within the UI."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's price continues to go up. The cost per endpoint can vary, ranging from approximately 30 to 80 dollars per year. Compared to other products, pricing is in the middle. You need to buy an additional database license, but most users already have it."
"We have a subscription-based contract with BigFix."
"I would stay with the Managed Virtual Server license model, which is a 1-to-1 license per OS whether it is virtual or physical."
"You get what we call the Platform Edition, which you get for free. The patch service is maybe $0.50 per workstation per month. Then there's the basic server cost, which is about $1.50 per server per month. You also get into Lifecycle which does power management, OSD remote control, and those types of things, and that might be about 10 times the price - which works out to about $13 per server and, maybe $5 per workstation per month."
"The cost is slightly high."
"It might be about $23 a client."
"The price is reasonable, but our customers find it expensive."
"The price is very fair."
"I am using the Community edition."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"The pricing is a little high. It is per user per year."
"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
50%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about BigFix?
The most valuable features of the solution are Windows patching and the hardware and software inventory.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BigFix?
The pricing is competitive, but not the most competitive.
What needs improvement with BigFix?
BigFix could improve its asset management capabilities to discover assets, including hardware. More improvements could be made in asset management.
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Also Known As

Tivoli Endpoint Manager
Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

US Foods, Penn State, St Vincent's Health US Foods, Sabadell Bank, SunTrust, Australia Sydney, Stemac, Capgemini, WNS Global Services, Jebsen & Jessen, CenterBeam, Strauss, Christian Hospital Centre, Brit Insurance, Career Education Corporation
CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Find out what your peers are saying about BigFix vs. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.