Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention vs Vectra AI comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Vectra AI and Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention are leaders in cybersecurity solutions. Palo Alto Networks seems to have an advantage with its comprehensive integration capabilities and user appreciation for its protective features.

Features: Vectra AI uses AI and machine learning to reduce alerts and correlate threats with hosts, providing deep security insights with network metadata capture. It assists in risk score aggregation, helping SOC analysts prioritize threats. Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention offers integration with other Palo Alto tools, enhancing malware detection, traffic inspection, and application behavior checking with signature-based prevention.

Room for Improvement: Vectra AI experiences integration challenges with third-party systems, such as SIEM, and requires better management of false positives and threat context. Palo Alto Networks can improve its IPS capabilities and simplify its complex licensing models, as well as expanding email protection features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Vectra AI offers flexible deployment across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments, receiving praise for its responsive technical support, albeit with reliance on specific key personnel. Palo Alto Networks provides similar deployment options and is recognized for its robust customer service, characterized by quick responses and problem-solving.

Pricing and ROI: Vectra AI, while costly, provides value by reducing threat response times, offering ROI as efficient security operations. Its pricing can be prohibitive for some. Palo Alto is also expensive, but its extensive capabilities and scalability cater well to larger enterprises, with ROI seen in preempting attacks and optimizing security measures.

To learn more, read our detailed Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention vs. Vectra AI Report (Updated: April 2025).

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention vs. Vectra AI

April 2025

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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

Palo Alto Networks Advanced...

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Vectra AI

Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (15th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (10th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is 7.4%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 11.3%, up from 10.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)

Featured Reviews

Carlos Bracamonte

Senior Network Support Engineer at Amadeus

Robust, reliable, simple to install and good technical support

We are attempting to improve the use of URL filtering beyond threat protection. I'm not sure what the remaining threat protection features are off the top of my head. But beyond that, we use URL filtering. We have three approved cases for using external dynamic lists that are stored in a bucket repository. Then, for each URL site that needs to be whitelisted, we add it to the external dynamic list in order to gain access to this email. I would like Wildfire to be implemented. We use the equivalent in Cisco is the integration policies. We have the Wildfire but we are not currently implementing it. We don't have the license to use it, but we are not currently implementing it until we present the use cases that the company gives some value to and they approve the use of it.

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Mohammad Alkurdi

Owner at Fortibits

Innovative detection features enhance monitoring

The advantages of the integration are not entirely out-of-the-box. You have to do it manually. When I'm doing tier response, an out-of-the-box solution is not available. You need to have a Linux server, and from the Linux server, you must perform AI tasks, and there is a lot to be handled in the back end. This is a major consideration about them. The recall feature, if it can be placed in some areas instead of the cloud, and charged for, would be better. Recall the storage where you watch all the traffic, and you can recall it and try to analyze it in the back end. It’s cloud-based. If they offer it on-prem, it would be better. I think they have a solution, but I have never tested it, to be honest with you.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For those who want a next-gen firewall that's easy to configure and easy to operate, I think you should go for Palo Alto."

"The most valuable feature is its use of machine learning to detect potentially unknown threats."

"The initial setup was straightforward. It's quite easy. Deployment took one to two weeks."

"Edge protection is a valuable feature."

"The sandboxing tools offer great prevention for cloud feeds."

"We are currently using the URL filtering feature, which is the most popular."

"It is a stable product."

"You can scale the product."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention pros

"The most valuable feature for Cognito Detect, the main solution, is that external IDS's create a lot of alerts. When I say a lot of alerts I really mean a lot of alerts. Vectra, on the other hand, contextualizes everything, reducing the number of alerts and pinpointing only the things of interest. This is a key feature for me. Because of this, a non-trained analyst can use it almost right away."

"One of the key advantages for us is we define a 24/7 service around it. We use far more of Vectra alerts than we do with our SIEM product because we understand that when we get an alert from Vectra we actually need to do something about it."

"I like the way that Vectra AI focuses on the internal network. Nowadays, most of the attackers are already inside, and they can be inside for many years before they start attacking. With normal monitoring, it's quite difficult to find them."

"The fact that we get the visualization of what's happening on our network, which is a way of improving our security in-depth is most valuable."

"We particularly like the user experience around the dashboard, which we find to be much more straightforward than the dashboard of some of the competitive products... Vectra is a really easy system to understand and use to prioritize where we need to focus our security resources."

"Vectra is very compatible with various cloud providers, such as Amazon and Azure AD. This is helpful as customers often migrate their network infrastructure to the cloud."

"The administrative privilege detection feature is the most valuable feature. The admin accounts are often highly accessible to the high-risk component of the environment. If those accounts are compromised or are being used in a suspicious manner, that's high-fidelity events for us to look into."

"The dashboard gives me a scoring system that allows me to prioritize things that I should look at. I may not necessarily care so much about one event, whereas if I have a single botnet detection or a brute force attack, I really want to get on top of those."

More Vectra AI pros

Cons

"Generally, to deploy it will take some downtime, about a day."

"The solution needs to improve its local technical support services. There is no premium support offered in our market."

"The pricing has improved with the newer generation of their Firewalls, but the price could always be lower. In comparison with other solutions, I believe they're quite competitive."

"Palo Alto's maintenance needs to be improved."

"The initial setup is complex."

"Right now we are focusing on email. If Palo Alto can increase the features related to email filtering and the new malware, it would help us protect our systems."

"The solution could benefit from improved AI analytics to predict potential attacks before they occur, similar to NDR systems."

"It's not so easy to set up a test environment, because it's not so easy to get the test license. The vendor only gives you 90 days for a test license; it's a tough license to get."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention cons

"Neither Vectra nor Darktrace have a function like a status health check on my log sources and traffic sources."

"There could be an option where Vectra manages the solution remotely, and when there is an attack, there could be a notification center to give us information about the attack."

"A blind spot that I have is around the ease with which you can automate threat intervention."

"The UI/UX and detection could be improved. More detections of specific security events could be useful. We've had a few incidents that were not detected by Vectra. The teams are working on it right now, but more detection is always better."

"The false positives and the tuning side of it is something that could use improvement. But that could be from our side."

"We have had a few issues with the integration of Vectra AI with EDR. Some filters have not been working. We've also had issues with the brain not being powerful enough."

"If you hit a certain number of rules, triage filters, or groups, the UX responds more slowly. However, we have a complex network and a lot of rules. So, our setup might not be a typical implementation example. We even had UX engineers onsite, and they looked at issues, improvements, and user feedback. Since then, it has gotten a lot better, they even built in features that we specifically requested for our company."

"In comparison with a lot of systems I used in the past, the false positives are really a burden because they are taking a lot of time at this moment."

More Vectra AI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost involves the price of the hardware, which is expensive. However, most of the Palo Alto solutions are expensive."

"If you want to have all of the good features then you have to pay extra for licensing."

"The pricing and the licensing are pretty competitive at this stage. As a reseller, I would like to see the price come down a little bit so I can compete better against other firewalls because we do that all the time."

"It is an expensive solution and I would like to see a drop in price."

"It's not too expensive."

"The product’s pricing is expensive for small companies."

"There is an initial, expensive investment but the return is good."

"The pricing has improved with the newer generation of their Firewalls, but the price could always be lower."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention pricing and cost advice

"We are running at about 90,000 pounds per year. The solution is a licensed cost. The hardware that they gave us was pretty much next to nothing. It is the license that we're paying for."

"At the time of purchase, we found the pricing acceptable. We had an urgency to get something in place because we had a minor breach that occurred at the tail end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017. This indicated we had a lack of ability to detect things on the network. Hence, why we moved quickly to get into the tool in place. We found things like Bitcoin mining and botnets which we closed quickly. In that regard, it was worth the money."

"It is an expensive solution, but it's not the most expensive we've seen. We also know how much we're going to pay, unlike with some other providers where all of a sudden our license explodes."

"There are additional features that can be purchased in addition to the standard licensing fee, such as Cognito Recall and Stream."

"Vectra is a bit on the higher side in terms of price, but they have always been transparent. The reason that they are this good is that they invest, so they need to charge accordingly."

"We have a desire to increase our use. However, it all comes down to budget. It's a very expensive tool that is very difficult to prove business support for. We would like to have two separate networks. We have our corporate network and PCI network, which is segregated due to payment processing. We don't have it for deployed in the PCI network. It would be good to have it fully deployed there to provide us with additional monitoring and control, but the cost associated with their licensing model makes it prohibitively expensive to deploy."

"Cost is a big factor, as always. However, I think we have a very good price–performance ratio."

"Vectra's pricing is too high. All schools will not be able to afford it. Vectra will only end up targeting higher education and higher value independence purely because of the price. A lot of schools would love to have a product like Vectra AI, but they simply can't because they struggle to even pay the high E5 licensing from Microsoft. When you're up against that, Vectra AI is never going to be within the sector's price range."

More Vectra AI pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?

Arbor would be the best bid, apart from Arbor, Palo Alto and Fortinet have good solutions. As this is an ISP, I would prefer Arbor.

What do you like most about Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention?

It is a stable product.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention?

The pricing is competitive, and with current campaigns and discounts, it provides an excellent device for a reasonable price.

What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?

The two platforms take a fundamentally different approach to NDR. Corelight is limited to use cases that require the eventual forwarding of events and parsed data logs to a security team’s SIEM or ...

What do you like most about Vectra AI?

The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?

It is very acceptable when you compare it with Darktrace, for example.

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Comparisons

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Check Point IPS vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

Compared 12% of the time

Darktrace vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

Compared 10% of the time

Arista NDR vs Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

Compared 4% of the time

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention Competitors

Darktrace vs Vectra AI

Compared 31% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) vs Vectra AI

Compared 11% of the time

Corelight vs Vectra AI

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Vectra AI

Compared 6% of the time

Flowmon vs Vectra AI

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention

April 2025

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention report

Download Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention product report

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March 2025

Also Known As

No data available

Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR

Overview

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is a cloud-based security service that combines cutting-edge technologies, including machine learning, artificial intelligence, and expert human monitoring, to effectively thwart advanced threats like malware, zero-day attacks, and command-and-control threats. It offers inline protection, scrutinizing all network traffic irrespective of port, protocol, or encryption. An integral component of Palo Alto Networks' security platform, it enjoys widespread adoption across diverse organizations. With its robust security capabilities, it's an ideal choice for entities of all sizes, particularly those in high-risk sectors such as finance, healthcare, and government agencies, seeking to safeguard their networks from a broad spectrum of advanced threats.

Palo Alto Networks

Vectra AI is used for detecting network anomalies and potential malicious activities, providing visibility into network traffic and enhancing threat detection across environments.

Organizations deploy Vectra AI mainly on-premises with additional cloud components. It helps with compliance, incident response, security monitoring, detecting insider threats, and correlating network events. Vectra AI captures and enriches network metadata, provides detailed dashboards, reduces false positives, and supports cross-environment behavioral analysis to enhance threat detection and prioritization. While valued for its high accuracy and alert aggregation, it has room for improvement in UI/UX, packet management, and integration with SIEMs and other tools. It is noted for expensive pricing and limited proactive threat response features.

What are Vectra AI's most valuable features?

High accuracy in identifying threat locations
Aggregation of alerts into single incidents
24/7 threat detection
Visibility into the entire attack lifecycle
Risk score aggregation
Effective triaging of alerts
Integration with other tools

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Enhanced threat detection and prioritization
Comprehensive network visibility
Reduction in false positives
Better incident response capabilities
Improved compliance monitoring

In specific industries, Vectra AI is deployed to monitor complex networks and alleviate challenges in threat detection. It is particularly effective in sectors requiring stringent compliance and security measures, offering insights and capabilities crucial for protecting sensitive data and maintaining operational integrity.

Sample Customers

University of Arkansas, JBG SMITH, SkiStar AB, TRI-AD, Temple University, Telkom Indonesia

Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association