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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
6.5
Cortex XSIAM enhances ROI by automating over 50% of tasks, reducing SOC staffing needs, and providing significant value.
Sentiment score
7.3
Users find Microsoft Sentinel offers positive ROI through improved visibility, automation, and efficiency, despite initial costs and quantification challenges.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Cortex XSIAM's customer service is mixed, with some users praising effectiveness and others experiencing delays and escalation needs.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Sentinel support is mixed; premium plans and better Microsoft relationships yield favorable experiences despite some challenges.
Their solutions' integration simplifies resolving issues compared to those caused by third-party products.
Working with a Sentinel engineer helped us tune settings effectively.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cortex XSIAM is highly scalable in the cloud, supporting enterprises efficiently and earning high user ratings for scalability.
Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Sentinel's cloud architecture ensures scalable, flexible data handling with minimal management, supporting large user bases and easy integration.
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
9.1
Cortex XSIAM is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime, swift issue resolution, and easy installation.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Sentinel is highly stable and reliable, with users praising its performance and noting rare, minor configuration issues.
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.
Sentinel's stability is great.
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XSIAM needs better integration, performance, developer-friendliness, and AI-enhanced security solutions despite satisfactory current features.
Microsoft Sentinel users seek improved third-party integration, user-friendly features, enhanced threat intelligence, and streamlined data management to reduce costs.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Cortex XSIAM pricing is competitive, considered reasonable yet costly with add-ons, offering value but varies on affordability.
Microsoft Sentinel offers cost-effective, consumption-based pricing, benefiting from Azure integration with careful data management to control expenses.
The first impression is that XSIAM would be more expensive than others we tried.
We already had the necessary licensing for Sentinel, so we didn't need to spend extra money.
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XSIAM provides advanced threat detection, integration, and user-friendly features, enhancing security management for Palo Alto users.
Microsoft Sentinel offers seamless integration, AI-driven threat detection, and automation, providing comprehensive security and ease of setup for organizations.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XSIAM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
15th
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (6th)
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
89
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cortex XSIAM is 2.3%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 8.6%, down from 10.2% 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
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
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 first impression is that XSIAM would be more expensive than others we tried.
What needs improvement with Cortex XSIAM?
Cortex could improve the detection and online resolution of security vulnerabilities. We hope that the artificial intelligence in Cortex will assist in optimizing responses to vulnerabilities.
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: November 2024.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.