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Cortex XSIAM vs Microsoft Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XSIAM
Ranking in Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
14th
Ranking in AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
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
5th
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 December 2024, in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) category, the mindshare of Cortex XSIAM is 2.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 8.7%, down from 10.4% 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.
Nitin Arora - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives us one place to investigate and respond to threats, and automation eliminates manual work
They can work on the EDR side of things. It is already really superb, because of the kinds of features we get with the EDR solution. It's not a standard EDR and they have recently enhanced things. But the problem is with onboarding devices. I have different OS flavors, including a large number of Linux, Windows, macOS, and some on-prem machines as well. Every time we need to onboard these kinds of machines into the EDR, we need to do it with the help of Intune, to sync up the devices, and do the configuration. I'm looking for something on the EDR side that will reduce this kind of work. They can eliminate having to do manual configuration for the machines, and check the different types of configurations for each OS. In some cases, it does not support some OSs. If they could reduce this type of work, that would be really amazing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It operates on a single, extensive database which enables it to excel in detecting threats and anomalies across the network and endpoints, delivering a highly effective and comprehensive security solution."
"It does a better job of identifying anomalies that are more likely to be incidents of compromise without as many false positives or false negatives."
"The automation capabilities significantly improve response times by allowing us to respond to incidents from a single dashboard rather than navigating multiple dashboards."
"One of the valued aspects of the product is its use of artificial intelligence to detect security vulnerabilities."
"It is an effective solution in terms of performance and functionalities."
"The most valuable feature is the integration capability."
"One of the valued aspects of the product is its use of artificial intelligence to detect security vulnerabilities."
"Its ability to deliver a substantial amount of security intelligence greatly enhances and optimizes our security operations program."
"The scalability is great. You can put unlimited logs in, as long as you can pay for it. There are commitment tiers, up to six terabytes per day, which is nowhere close to what any one of our customers is running."
"Having your logs put all in one place with machine learning working on those logs is a good feature. I don't need to start thinking, "Where are my logs?" My logs are in a centralized repository, like Log Analytics, which is why you can't use Sentinel without Log Analytics. Having all those logs in one place is an advantage."
"Sentinel uses Azure Logic Apps for automation, which is really powerful. This allows us to easily automate responses to incidents."
"We didn't have anything similar. So, it really provides value from the incidents and automation point of view. The overview of the security fabric is most valuable."
"The ability of all these solutions to work together natively is essential. We have an Azure subscription, including Log Analytics. This feature automatically acts as one of the security baselines and detects recommendations because it also integrates with Defender. We can pull the sysadmin logs from Azure. It's all seamless and native."
"The automation rules and playbooks are the most useful that I've seen. A number of other places segregate the automation and playbook as separate tools, whereas Microsoft is a SIEM and SOAR tool in one."
"The AI and ML of Azure Sentinel are valuable. We can use machine learning models at the tenant level and within Office 365 and Microsoft stack. We don't need to depend upon any other connectors. It automatically provisions the native Microsoft products."
"The best functionality that you can get from Azure Sentinel is the SOAR capability. So, you can estimate any type of activity, such as when an alert was triggered or an incident was found."
 

Cons

"The solution’s pricing and technical support could be improved."
"Further integration capabilities with various other software products that can seamlessly tie into Cortex XSIAM would be advantageous."
"There is room for improvement in expanding integrations to include more cybersecurity solutions."
"The support could be a bit faster."
"Cortex could improve the detection and online resolution of security vulnerabilities."
"The first impression is that XSIAM would be more expensive than others we tried."
"The platform isn't very developer-friendly and it should provide more flexibility and ease."
"It could provide more integration with a large variety of products."
"Sentinel can be used in two ways. With other tools like QRadar, I don't need to run queries. Using Sentinel requires users to learn KQL to run technical queries and check things. If they don't know KQL, they can't fully utilize the solution."
"The KQL query does not function effectively with Windows 11 machines, and in the majority of machine-based investigations, KQL queries are essential for organizing the data during investigations."
"For certain vendors, some of the data that Microsoft Sentinel captures is redacted due to privacy reasons."
"The solution could be more user-friendly; some query languages are required to operate it."
"We'd like also a better ticketing system, which is older."
"There is room for improvement in entity behavior and the integration site."
"If Azure Sentinel had the ability to ingest Azure services from different tenants into another tenant that was hosting Azure Sentinel, and not lose any metadata, that would be a huge benefit to a lot of companies."
"While I appreciate the UI itself and the vast amount of information available on the platform, I'm finding the overall user experience to be frustrating due to frequent disconnections and the requirement to repeatedly re-authenticate."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Since Palo Alto is trying to get as many new customers as possible, they're offering very competitive pricing."
"The product cost could be considered value for money compared to other solutions in the market, though it is quite high."
"The solution comes at a significant cost."
"In terms of pricing, we found Cortex XSIAM to offer a very reasonable and competitive rate."
"The solution is expensive compared to its competitors."
"Microsoft Sentinel's pricing is relatively expensive and extremely confusing."
"Cost-wise, Sentinel is based on the volume of information being ingested, so it can be quite pricey. The ability to use strategies to control what data is being ingested is important."
"Sentinel is expensive relative to other products of the class, so it often isn't affordable for small-scale businesses. However, considering the solution has more extensive capabilities than others, the price is not so high. Pricing is based on GBs of ingested daily data, either by a pay-as-you-go or subscription model."
"Sentinel can be expensive. When you ingest data from sources that are outside of the cloud, you're paying a fair amount for that data ingestion. When you're ingesting data sources from within the cloud, depending on what your retention periods are, it's not that expensive."
"Sentinel is a pay-as-you-go solution. To use it, you need a Log Analytics workspace. This is where the logs are stored and the cost of Log Analytics is based on gigabytes... On top of that, there is the cost of Sentinel, which is about €2 per gigabyte. If a customer has an M365 E5 license, the logs that come from Microsoft Defender are free."
"Sentinel is fairly priced and pretty cost-effective."
"The pricing isn't very high. It depends on the number of logs you have. If you're expecting to ingest 50 to 60G in a day, but you're only ingesting 20 to 25G per day at first and you have a good team to analyze the logs, then you can segregate the ingestion at under 15G."
"Sentinel's price is comparable to pretty much everything out there. None of it is cheap, but we didn't think we could save money by going a different route. Sentinel was part of our Azure expenditures, so it was easier to add the expense instead of having a completely separate vendor."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
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.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.