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

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

"Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention is the market leader as far as security gateways and endpoint protection. Additionally, the threat database that is used is one of the best."

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

"The most valuable features are that it's user-friendly, has interesting features, URL filtering, and threat prevention."

"It is a stable product."

"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 application control and vulnerability protection are the most valuable features."

"Everything has been okay with the solution. We are using all of the features."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention pros

"The initial setup was pretty straightforward."

"There are many detection features available."

"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."

"We discovered a lot of things in our network and are correcting several misconfigurations. We are learning how some apps work together and how some things shouldn't happen. It's also easier for us to identify the source of a brute force, whereas before, we didn't even know we had a brute force."

"The packet-capturing feature is very useful."

"The most useful feature is the anomaly detection because it's not signature-based. It picks up the initial part of any attack, like the recon and those aspects of the kill chain, very well."

"One of the most valuable features of the platform is its ability to provide you with aggregated risk scores based on impact and certainty of threats being detected. This is both applied to individual and host detections. This is important because it enables us to use this platform to prioritize the most likely imminent threats. So, it reduces alert fatigue follow ups for security operation center analysts. It also provides us with an ability to prioritize limited resources."

"Most of their use cases, including deployment, are managed by the tool itself, requiring less manual input from our team."

More Vectra AI pros

Cons

"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."

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

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

"I think they can use some improvement on FID."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the only thing I don't like is the support."

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

"Mission learning techniques should continue to expand and detect unknown threats on the fly."

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

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention cons

"The solution's marketing is not good."

"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."

"An area for improvement in Vectra AI is reporting because it currently needs some details. For example, when you download a report from Vectra AI, you won't see complete information about the alerts or triggers. Another area for improvement in the tool is that sometimes, an alert has high severity, yet it's marked as low severity. Vectra AI should have a mechanism to change the severity level from low to high or critical."

"The reporting from Cognito Detect is very limited and doesn't give you too many options. If I want to prepare a customized report on a particular host, even though I see the data, I have to manually prepare the report. The reporting features that are built into the tool are not very helpful."

"We would like to see more information with the syslogs. The syslogs that they send to our SIEM are a bit short compared to what you can see. It would be helpful if they send us more data that we can incorporate into our SIEM, then can correlate with other events."

"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."

"I would like to see a bit more strategic metrics instead of technical data. Information that I could show to my executive management team or board would be valuable."

"One area where there's room for improvement is the absence of a comprehensive TCP recording and replay feature."

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."

"The price of the solution is higher than others on the market. A price reduction would be beneficial if it does not impact their database quality."

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

"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."

"Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention could improve by having consistent pricing at system levels."

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

"Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention is quite competitive, offering extensive threat detection and prevention capabilities, though it is priced higher than some alternatives."

"From one to ten, with one being the most expensive, I would rate the pricing of Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention a one out of ten. It is my understanding that Palo Alto Networks Threat Prevention is the most expensive one."

More Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"It's relatively on the pricier side, but when compared to other solutions. It's not the most budget-friendly option, but it can be considered somewhat more cost-effective in comparison to other alternatives."

"My company pays for the Vectra AI licensing fee yearly. I know the figure because my company recently renewed the license, and it's okay, at least for the financial sector."

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

"From a licensing perspective, the Vectra detect platform is pretty doable. Also, the hardware prices are nothing that we're not used to. The stream part is a little overpriced compared to the detect part. The reason is that you need to stream data to detect events anyway, so the data is in there. The only thing that's not available is the UI to be able to look at the stream data, which is also on the appliances but is just not activated. That's mainly the thing that we want to improve on."

"Their licensing model is antiquated. I'm not a fan of their licensing model. We have to pay for licensing based on four different things. You have to pay based on the number of unique IPs, the number of logs that we send through Recall and Stream, and the size of our environment. They need to simplify their licensing down to just one thing. It should be based on the amount of data, the number of devices, or something else, but there should be just one thing for everything. That's what they need to base their licensing on. Cost-wise, they're not cheap. They were definitely the most expensive option, but you get what you pay for. They're not the cheapest option."

"Its cost is too much. It's an investment that we can afford. It's a lot, but it's worth it."

More Vectra AI pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

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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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