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Cortex XSIAM vs Microsoft Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.4
Automation increased ROI by over $500,000, reduced analyst needs, and improved incident handling, though some are still evaluating.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Sentinel enhances security and efficiency, offering cost savings and quick returns through automation and advanced analytics.
Microsoft Azure was not fitting for short-term cost savings but promised a better ROI over three to five years for medium to large companies.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.9
Cortex XSIAM support varies widely, with mixed reviews; premium support receives better feedback due to experienced staff.
Sentiment score
6.7
Users mostly praise Microsoft's responsive Sentinel support but note delays and access issues for advanced technical assistance.
It is ineffective in terms of responding to basic queries and addressing future requirements.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
When my team needs to escalate issues to Microsoft, especially for Microsoft Sentinel, the response is fast through their French entity.
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Cortex XSIAM is mostly seen as highly scalable, adaptable, and integrates seamlessly across various enterprises and IT departments.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Sentinel provides scalable, flexible security solutions with cloud-based efficiency, praised for cost-effective data integration and workload management.
Without proper integration, scaling up with more servers is meaningless.
Office 365 and Exchange are running on it, covering about 35,000 users efficiently.
As our organization uses Microsoft Azure and Defender, everything grows together, and we can integrate various features seamlessly.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Cortex XSIAM is highly stable and reliable, often scoring 10/10, with rapid resolution of occasional update-related issues.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Sentinel offers reliable performance with minimal downtime, efficiently managed maintenance, and occasional issues during extensive customization.
The product was easy to install and set up and worked right.
So far, we have not experienced any issues, and it has been stable from the beginning.
In the past two years, our team hasn't encountered any issues with the stability of Microsoft Sentinel from an operations perspective.
Sentinel's stability is great.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XSIAM should enhance context, integration, flexibility, and support while streamlining its pricing and improving incident response automation.
Microsoft Sentinel needs better user-friendliness, integration, documentation, and cost-efficiency to enhance usability, scalability, and adoption.
In terms of incident response automation, it is quite poor due to the lack of integration with all security tools, making manual intervention necessary.
Improvements could be made to the dashboard and GUI, making it easier to deploy.
Cortex could improve the detection and online resolution of security vulnerabilities.
We have some tools, such as our off-site Meraki firewalls, that have not fully integrated with Sentinel.
Currently, we are happy to have a way in the middle with not so much cost, but it would be nice to have the ability to enhance the automation of workflows based on learned incidents.
We choose other solutions for basic monitoring due to better cost opportunities.
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Cortex XSIAM costly, but competitive pricing; extra features and licensing complexity increase expenses.
Microsoft Sentinel's pay-as-you-go model suits enterprises on Microsoft but raises cost concerns for others, especially with data ingestion.
The first impression is that XSIAM would be more expensive than others we tried.
Cortex XSIAM is pretty expensive, and the licensing process is not very comfortable.
The product is very expensive.
Microsoft Sentinel offers more capabilities than Bastion, with a more intuitive experience.
We already had the necessary licensing for Sentinel, so we didn't need to spend extra money.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XSIAM offers strong security orchestration, AI threat mitigation, and competitive pricing, with seamless third-party integration and user-friendly setup.
Microsoft Sentinel excels with SOAR playbooks, AI automation, and integration, enhancing threat detection and response in a unified interface.
The flexibility for creating manual workflows stands out.
Its signature-less subscriptions and robust detection power stand out in improving threat detection.
One of the valued aspects of the product is its use of artificial intelligence to detect security vulnerabilities.
Custom workbooks are valuable. It is one of the crucial points in dealing with potential security threats in an automated way without requiring too much manpower.
The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection, response, and the knowledge base for investigation.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XSIAM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
18th
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (7th)
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
3rd
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cortex XSIAM is 2.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 7.5%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Forrest Stevens - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust security operation that ensures achieving automation, stability, and scalability
There is room for improvement in some areas, and I would highlight three key aspects. Firstly, the Attack Surface Management (ASM) module could benefit from more contextual depth. Currently, it tends to provide a broad overview without enriched context, and there's room for enhancement in this regard. Secondly, further integration capabilities with various other software products that can seamlessly tie into Cortex XSIAM would be advantageous. This would enhance its versatility and interoperability within a broader ecosystem. Regarding performance, there's potential for optimization. When multiple tabs are open in Cortex XSIAM, it can experience slowdowns, leading to longer load times for web pages. It's worth noting that this isn't a severe issue, and it doesn't entail waiting for extended periods, but there is room for improvement in terms of performance optimization.
KrishnanKartik - PeerSpot reviewer
Every rule enriched at triggering stage, easing the job of SOC analyst
It's a Big Data security analytics platform. Among the unique features is the fact that it has built-in UEBA and analytical capabilities. It allows you to use the out-of-the-box machine learning and AI capabilities, but it also allows you to bring your own AI/ML, by bringing in your own IPs and allowing the platform to accept them and run that on top of it. In addition, the SOAR component is a pay-per-use model. Compared to any other product, where customization is not available, you can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today. Other vendors charge heavily for the SOAR, but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer. The SOAR engine also uniquely helps us to automate most of the incidents with automated enrichment and that cuts out the L1 analyst work. And combining M365 with Sentinel, if you want to call it integration, takes just a few clicks: "next, next finish." If it is all M365-native, it is a maximum of three or four steps and you'll be able to ingest all the logs into Sentinel. That is true even with AWS or GCP because most of the connectors are already available out-of-the-box. You just click, put in your subscription details, include your IAM, and you are finished. Within five to six steps, you can integrate AWS workloads and the logs can be ingested into Sentinel. When it comes to a third party specifically, such as log sources in a data center or on-premises, we need a log collector so that the logs can be forwarded to the Sentinel platform. And when it comes to servers or something where there is an agent for Windows or Linux, the agent can collect the logs and ship them to the Sentinel platform. I don't see any difficulties in integrating any of the log sources, even to the extent of collecting IoT log sources. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has multiple components such as Defender for Servers, Defender for PaaS, and Defender for databases. For customers in Azure, there are a lot of use cases specific to protecting workloads and PaaS and SaaS in Azure and beyond Azure, if a customer also has on-premises locations. There is EDR for Windows and Linux servers, and it even protects different kinds of containers. With Defender for Cloud, all these sources can be seamlessly integrated and you can then track the security incidents in Microsoft's XDR platform. That means you have one more workspace, under Azure, not Defender for Cloud, where you can see the security incidents. In addition, it can be integrated with Sentinel for EDR deep-dive analytics. It can also protect workloads in AWS. We have customers for whom we are protecting their AWS workloads. Even EKS, Elastic Kubernetes Service, on AWS can be integrated, as can the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). And with Defender for Cloud, security alert ingestion is free
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cortex XSIAM?
It is an effective solution in terms of performance and functionalities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cortex XSIAM?
The product is very expensive. Additional integration and support are not provided by Cortex and must be purchased from partners. This adds to the cost and delays projects due to resource dependency.
What needs improvement with Cortex XSIAM?
The standard integrations are very limited, and the integrations available are not listed in the marketplace. Obtaining validation for integrations from Palo Alto takes around eight months, which i...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cortex XSIAM vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.