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McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator vs Microsoft Sentinel comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) category, the mindshare of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 20.9%, up from 20.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)
 

Featured Reviews

DavidJones7 - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers automation alert features with easy integrations and impressive scalability
I would rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. There are a few technical challenges with the deployment, but it can easily solved by an experienced professional but not by a beginner user of the tool. The complete implementation and migration to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator will take around three months. If someone is using a software platform already with implemented use cases in their environment, it might be difficult to implement the same use cases when the customer is migrating to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator. The conditions and prior alert settings needs to be accurate when migrating to McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator, otherwise false positive alerts might get generated.
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

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Application control and traffic encryption are the most valuable features."
"The automation alert for the ticketing tool is one of the vital features"
"The solution's best part is that it is very easy to manage McAfee Agent."
"The general endpoint protection is valuable, and it is easy to manage."
"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator's performance is good."
"The security is a key feature and the console is very user friendly."
"You have to have some experience, however, it's pretty simple to understand."
"I really like the auditing component because it really looks at exactly what has happened on the network."
"Another area where it is helping us is in creating a single dashboard for our environment. We can collect all the logs into a log analytics workset and run queries on top of it. We get all the results in the dashboard. Even a layman can understand this stuff. The way Microsoft presents it is really incredible."
"We feel safe knowing that we have a solution that we can use to react in case of an emergency."
"Log aggregation and data connectors are the most valuable features."
"I've worked on most of the top SIEM solutions, and Sentinel has an edge in most areas. For example, it has built-in SOAR capabilities, allowing you to run playbooks automatically. Other vendors typically offer SOAR as a separate licensed solution or module, but you get it free with Sentinel. In-depth incident integration is available out of the box."
"The machine learning and artificial intelligence on offer are great."
"Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it."
"If you know how to do KQL (kusto query language) queries, which are how you query the log data inside Sentinel, the information is pretty rich. You can get down to a good level of detail regarding event information or notifications."
"It is able to connect to an ever-growing number of platforms and systems within the Microsoft ecosystem, such as Azure Active Directory and Microsoft 365 or Office 365, as well as to external services and systems that can be brought in and managed. We can manage on-premises infrastructure. We can manage not just the things that are running in Azure in the public cloud, but through Azure Arc and the hybrid capabilities, we can monitor on-premises servers and endpoints. We can monitor VMware infrastructure, for instance, running as part of a hybrid environment."
 

Cons

"The Virtual Patching feature needs to be improved."
"The solution could improve the EDR component in many areas, such as the zero-day and persistent threats. The implementation is also complex for this feature."
"McAfee should improve in terms of customer support and assigning a knowledgeable TAM to customers."
"Lacks a single plug-in for multiple uses."
"There should be more insights and completeness into the cyber kill chain, similar to CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. It just seems a little outdated in being 100% signature-based without all of the insights and protections that come with CrowdStrike and SentinelOne. Overall, they've got some catching up to do if they plan to compete in the comprehensive EDR space."
"Features such as full drive encryption are lacking in the cloud version."
"The rollout to cover the online resources, such as SharePoint, One Drive, and Office 365 doesn't seem to have a very clear path."
"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator support has been helpful. However, sometimes when I raise the case they take a while to answer. For example, the last time I used them it took them two weeks to reply back by email. No one has contacted me back since. They should improve their service."
"They should integrate it with many other software-as-a-service providers and make connectors available so that you don't have to do any sort of log normalization."
"Everyone has their favorites. There is always room for improvement, and everybody will say, "I wish you could do this for me or that for me." It is a personal thing based on how you use the tool. I do not necessarily have those thoughts, and they are probably not really valuable because they are unique to the context of the user, but broadly, where it can continue to improve is by adding more connectors to more systems."
"One key area that can be improved is by building a strong integration with our XDR platform."
"The product can be improved by reducing the cost to use AI machine learning."
"Sometimes, it is hard for us to estimate the costs of Microsoft Sentinel."
"Azure Sentinel will be directly competing with tools such as Splunk or Qradar. These are very established kinds of a product that have been around for the last seven, eight years or more."
"They could use some kind of workbook. There is some limitation doing the editing and creating the workbook."
"The only thing is sometimes you can have a false positive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is priced in the mid-range."
"There is a license required to use this solution. If we use the additional components, such as DLP encryption, there is an additional cost. However, it is similar to a separate product altogether. If you want to use that or not, it is optional, but when you use it, it will cost you additional pricing."
"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is a cheaply priced product, meaning it is not expensive since McAfee provides a free version of ePO, which includes phone support as well."
"For large enterprise companies, the price should be alright, but for small businesses, the uptake might be slow because, for these clients, the price doesn't look very attractive."
"$The price of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is expensive, it is approximately $6,000 to $9,000 per license annually."
"It is attractively priced. It is a fraction of what we're going to pay for CrowdStrike or SentinelOne, but it only has a fraction of the capabilities as well."
"It's an expensive solution"
"McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is not an expensive solution."
"From a cost perspective, there are some additional charges in addition to the licensing."
"I am not involved on the financial side, but from an enterprise-wide use perspective, I think the price is good enough."
"The solution is expensive and there is a daily usage fee."
"Microsoft can enhance the licensing side. I feel there is confusion sometimes... They should have a single license in which we have the opportunity to use the EDR or CASB solution."
"Currently, given our use case, the cost of Sentinel is justified, but it is expensive."
"The pricing is fair... With a traditional SIEM, you pay a lump sum for licenses. But with Sentinel, it's pay-as-you-go according to the amount of data you inject."
"Sentinel is a bit expensive. If you can figure a way of configuring it to meet your needs, then you can find a way around the cost."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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

Which is better - Mcafee's MVision ePO or ePolicy Orchestrator?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Mcafee's MVision ePO or ePolicy Orchestrator network security software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Mcafee's ePolicy O...
What do you like most about McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator?
I like the solution's feasibility. McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator is also better and easier to use than other ePOs.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator?
I do not have exact pricing details, however, I would rate the price at a four out of ten overall. There may be some extra costs for support if you get it from a partner.
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

McAfee ePO, ePolicy Orchestrator, Intel Security ePolicy Orchestrator, McAfee MVISION ePO
Azure Sentinel
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Brelje & Race, Cognizant, Sutherland Global Services, Eagle Rock Energy, Arab National Bank, Bank Central Asia, Kleberg Bank, Leading Mexican Bank, SF Police Credit Union, Macquarie Telecom, Seagate Technology, Blackburn & Darwen Council, California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, IRCEP, Major U.S. State Government, State of Alaska, State of Colorado, Cemex, Deutsche Edelstahlwerke
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 McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.