We use Cortex XDR as part of our security solution.
Project Manager at Incedo Inc.
A stable part of our security solution that correlates logs from relevant sources
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable for us is the correlation feature."
- "There are some third-party solutions that are difficult to integrate with, which is something that can be improved."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
its a very good solution and single solution for entire infrastructure, give us good co-relation of incident. Single solution for Network, Endpoint, Servers.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable for us is the correlation feature. You are able to correlate data that is coming from the firewall, network, server, and endpoints. This is one of our main requirements and makes for a good product.
It works with the data lake in an agent-based or agentless manner.
It is easy to integrate most with network devices, including firewalls, and Active Directory. We use firewalls from different vendors including Palo Alto and Check Point, and it supports them.
What needs improvement?
There are some third-party solutions that are difficult to integrate with, which is something that can be improved.
Buyer's Guide
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks
January 2025
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have not experienced any issues with respect to stability at this point.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability has not been a problem.
How are customer service and support?
We have been in contact with technical support and are satisfied with them.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
How was the initial setup?
its a Straightforward
What about the implementation team?
We have an in-house team for deployment and maintenance.
What was our ROI?
It replace multiple solution and due to this it will reduce the Administrative effort.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I have run a PoC with both CrowdStrike and Cortex XDR, and from my observation, I felt that Cortex was much better at meeting our requirements. It is also easier to use.
CrowdStrike was difficult when it came to integrating with other products and it does not work on mobile devices.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for anybody who is considering Cortex XDR is that it is a complete solution, and has very good features. From my experience, it is one of the better ones in the market. That said, no product is 100%.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Technical Associate at HTH Global Network
Great threat detection capabilities and good internal threat intelligence
Pros and Cons
- "Has great threat detection capabilities."
- "The encryption is not up to the mark."
What is our primary use case?
This solution is a next-generation antivirus with more advanced capability and security. We have a partnership with Palo Alto.
What is most valuable?
Cortex XDR is very easy to deploy and has great threat detection capabilities and good internal threat intelligence.
It uses advanced AI analytics, behavior analytics, and custom-made detection to detect advanced threats before they occur.
If a customer says it's expensive- let's say I will say no it is not. Other values are added then it is more reasonable having strong features.
With a click, I can access the system and isolate it from other networks, and then go into a further forensic investigation of the current threat without compromising anything else.
Its stitches with external logs are perfect and enhanced.
What needs improvement?
1. Disk Encryption capability.
2. User group-wise admin role. They have module-wise roles but a user group-wise role is not available.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been supplying this solution to customers for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have found this solution as NG AV is most stable compare with other solution
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability is perfect.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very easy.
What about the implementation team?
We implemented the solution with a vendor team, HTH Global Network. Their expertise is an eight out of ten.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend this solution, it works well and I rate it a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
Buyer's Guide
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sr. Network Engineer at a construction company with 10,001+ employees
Low system resource usage, reliable, and flexible
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning."
- "Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by offering remote management. It would be useful to look at the client's issue to fix it."
What is our primary use case?
We are using Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks for all of our remote users because they are not connected to our on-premise data center.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning.
What needs improvement?
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by offering remote management. It would be useful to look at the client's issue to fix it.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks for approximately two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is scalable. add license and add many clients.
We have approximately 300 users using this solution in my company.
How are customer service and support?
I have not had an issue to need the support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have previously used antivirus solutions. We decided to use Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks because of its flexibility.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is straightforward because it is in the cloud. The whole deployment took approximately one day.
I rate the setup of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks a four out of five.
What about the implementation team?
We used the vendor to do the implementation of the solution.
What other advice do I have?
After the deployment of this solution, there is no need for maintenance.
I recommend this solution to others because it is easy to manage, reliable, and overall good to use.
I rate Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
CISO at International Bank of Azerbaijan
Provides great security with its machine-learning technology and behavior-based analytics features
Pros and Cons
- "Palo Alto is constantly adding new features."
- "The solution lacks real-time, on-demand antivirus."
What is our primary use case?
This solution has replaced our traditional antivirus solutions; it protects our environment and safeguards our endpoints from any malware or exploitation. We are based in Azerbaijan, I'm the CISO of the company and we are customers of Palo Alto.
How has it helped my organization?
We've seen benefits because the solution includes a big data approach to cyber security. All information is collected from the network, the endpoints, and the logs and analyzed by applying a big-data approach that shows up anomalies.
What is most valuable?
I chose this solution because they constantly add new features and are very proactive about that. To my mind, signature-based antivirus is a thing of the past. These days it's machine-learning technology and behavior-based analytics features that make us more secure. XDR feels secure because of those features.
What needs improvement?
There are still a few gaps with this solution. For example, real-time, on-demand antivirus is not there. If you're looking for compliance XDR is somewhat lacking. There is also no recovery feature; if some endpoint is under attack there must be the possibility of recovering it or restoring it to a normal state. That is currently lacking in XDR.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using this solution for about two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The solution is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
This solution is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
We have premium Palo Alto support and they provide good service.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward.
What other advice do I have?
I think any XDR technology is best for protecting an environment from cyber attacks. The visibility it provides is crucial and XDR gives us that, we can see all effect vectors.
I rate this solution eight out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Information Technology Consultant at Trillennium (Pvt) Ltd
Excellent technical support, straightforward implementation, and cutting-edge technology
Pros and Cons
- "When the pandemic started, Palo Alto came up with many solutions, which helped with the quick shift from on-premises to the cloud."
- "In general, the price could be more competitive."
What is our primary use case?
We are not using it for our purposes because we are a Palo Alto partner. We propose it for our customers based on their requirements.
We are both a service provider and a reseller.
When the pandemic first began, the use cases were mostly for remote users. We deployed this for the majority of remote users.
What is most valuable?
When the pandemic started, Palo Alto came up with many solutions, which helped with the quick shift from on-premises to the cloud. We have a lot of advantages as a result.
It's a very simple implementation, and I have direct Palo Alto implementation available as well. So it's very simple. We haven't found any issues, so far the implementation is going well, I don't see any gaps.
What needs improvement?
In general, the price could be more competitive.
For how long have I used the solution?
In Palo Alto, we also work with all product lines, including Prisma and other product lines as required. Is a mix, it's a subproduct, we work with the mix of products.
We have been working with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks for two to three years.
We get updates from Palo Alto directly.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a stable product.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's a scalable solution, we have not had any challenges with the scalability of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks.
Our customers range from medium to large enterprise companies. The adoption rate in small businesses is much less, but the majority of our requirements come from mid-to enterprise-sized businesses.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is the best in class, in my opinion, because they have invested heavily in research and development. In terms of comparison and today's challenges, such as security and layers, Palo Alto complies with all of the challenges.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
In terms of Security, we are working with a few products and a few brands.
We use Palo Alto and we also work with Barracuda. These solutions are used on the web firewall and for email protection.
We work with the entire Barracuda product line, but specifically for email protection and web filtering.
Barracuda Essentials is included with O365 protections, we work with those solutions.
Palo Alto is part of a different vertical layer than Barracuda. It's distinct. They are very different.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup depends on the environment, but as a technology, I would say it's simple. It's not that difficult.
The length of time it takes for deployment is determined by the project and the surrounding environment. We can only determine the timeframe based on that, pinpointing a specific time period is difficult.
It does not require maintenance because regular updates and monitoring are required. So if there is anything, new patches and the like, it is done automatically, and there is no additional implementation unless there are any infrastructure changes.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
In comparison to other competing products, it is based on the customer's needs and the environment. However, when compared to other products, the price is slightly higher, but when considering technology and new innovation, that is the plus I would say when it comes to being XDR.
The price could be more competitive because it is not on the price wall when you go and question Palo Alto XDR. It is present, but when compared to other competitive products, I would say it is not less expensive; however, when all of the other added values are considered, the price is reasonable.
What other advice do I have?
So far, it has met all of our requirements, and it should be able to cater to a wide range of product lines.
We must first determine what their business requirements are, as well as what other technical layers we are considering, and then propose the appropriate sizing and solution.
We mostly promote Palo Alto, but it depends on the customer's needs, as well as their budget, infrastructure, and what their business requires, all of those factors come into play when recommending a solution.
When you compare it with other products, I would rate Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks a nine out of ten.
It's close to being rated a ten out of ten because of their level of support, and the other is the solution and the most recent technology.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
Assistant Superintendent with 51-200 employees
Straightforward to set up and the support is highly-rated
Pros and Cons
- "The interface is easy to use and it is more up to date than our previous solution."
- "Although I would say this product is highly-rated, it could probably do more because nothing does everything that you want."
What is our primary use case?
This product is part of a package that makes up our security solution.
What is most valuable?
The interface is easy to use and it is more up to date than our previous solution.
What needs improvement?
Although I would say this product is highly-rated, it could probably do more because nothing does everything that you want.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this product for about four months.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We think that this product will help us grow. We think that it meets our needs currently, and we can grow with it over time. There 12 people in the IT department who currently manage it.
How are customer service and technical support?
The support is excellent. We had a couple of issues that we had to call for and I would say that they are highly rated.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Our older solution was from Fortinet. It was out of date and more difficult to use. The IT staff say that the Palo Alto product is better.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward.
What about the implementation team?
We worked with a reseller. They came in, we told them what we wanted to do and they set it up to our spec. The person who came in and helped support us was highly skilled and it worked seamlessly.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We evaluated Palo Alto and Trend Micro, and we opted for the Palo Alto Cortex XDR.
What other advice do I have?
I don't use this product on a daily basis but we like what we have so far and I would definitely recommend it to other users.
My advice is to make sure that you have a good implementor and that the reseller you're purchasing from gives you a highly-qualified engineer.
Overall, we are happy with this product but that said, nothing does everything that you want.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Cybersecurity Incident Response Analyst at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Very powerful tool; provides behavior-based detection tailored to your environment
Pros and Cons
- "Provides behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
- "There are a large number of false positives."
What is our primary use case?
As with any advanced malware protection tool, it's really about the results and getting the security you need. We are end users and I'm a cybersecurity incident response analyst.
What is most valuable?
I like that the product has behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection. When it comes to zero day attacks and targeted attacks, signature detection is not able to detect problems. Behavior-based detection is able to detect attacks tailored specifically for your environment, or malware that doesn't yet have a known malicious signature. It's the nature of how the data is processed that makes the tool really powerful.
What needs improvement?
The downside to the solution is that there are a large number of false positives. There are a whole lot of different things for business automated actions, and it's hard to sort through all that. Without some assistance and suppression of false positives from Palo Alto or some event triaging that you might have enabled on your SIEM, you'll continue to get the high number of false positives. It's related more to the lack of capability to easily identify and suppress false positives before they're presented to you. There needs to be a function for suppressing false positives for types of machines and not necessarily for the actual groups.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used this solution for close to six months while we were evaluating it.
How are customer service and technical support?
Since Palo Alto was giving us the proof of concept, we had direct access to them.
How was the initial setup?
It takes quite a few people to set it up. I would say the biggest difference between Palo Alto XDR and something like Cisco AMP outside of the actual detection is going to be the ease of implementation. Cisco AMP only requires one person to go through all the groups and configure policies. With XDR you define groups based on types of machines and commonalities in the machines. It's not like you just send a connector to machines and they're part of that group in that policy. It means there is a whole lot more to configure on XDR.
What other advice do I have?
The same things apply to anyone looking to implement any form of anti-malware agent. You really want to take the time to make sure your environment is organized and configured the way that you want it to be, because once you start getting empty policies and machines in run groups, you run into a pretty big mess. Another thing would be documentation. If you're adding suppressions or custom detections or your AOCs, keep a document which logs all the changes, because people come and go, and handing down an anti-malware tool to somebody that doesn't know how or why it was configured a certain way, could make things difficult.
It would be a tremendous amount of work for us to implement Networks in a company our size. We have a whole bunch of projects going on right now that are pretty important and since we already have that advanced malware protection tool and AMP, which we think is good, we don't necessarily think Networks is as powerful at detection. On other projects, if we were going to go ahead and turn around and move forward with Palo Alto, it would mean taking a step backwards and reimplementing an anti-malware agent that we already have. That said, my impression is that it's a really good tool and you can get a lot out of it.
I rate this solution a nine out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Network Manager of Cyber Defence at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Runs in the background and sends things directly to the cloud for sandboxing
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable features are the fact that it was running in the background and it would intercept any weird stuff, and the fact that it would send things directly to the cloud for sandboxing. It's quite practical."
- "There are some false positives. What our guys would have liked is that it would have been easier to manipulate as soon as they found a false positive that they knew was a false positive. How to do so was not obvious. Some people complained about it. The interface, the ESM, is not user-friendly."
What is our primary use case?
We used it for malware detection and to detect weird DNS calls. Overall, it was for endpoint protection.
How has it helped my organization?
Many people here are surfing the web on Russian sites, Korean sites, Chinese sites, etc., and by definition, they download things that are not very nice. Whenever there was something fishy, most of the anti-virus solutions just wouldn't see it. We needed endpoint protection that would detect as soon as some code started doing funny things. Traps was very good at that.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable features are the fact that it was running in the background and it would intercept any weird stuff, and the fact that it would send things directly to the cloud for sandboxing. It's quite practical.
What needs improvement?
There are some false positives. What our guys would have liked is that it would have been easier to manipulate as soon as they found a false positive that they knew was a false positive. How to do so was not obvious. Some people complained about it. The interface, the ESM, was not user-friendly.
For how long have I used the solution?
Three to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability was quite good. We never had any issue with it at all.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We had no issue with scalability. We deployed to 220 machines in one go with no problem. We had 130 users. Some people were using many machines. The users were mostly analysts. Ten to 20 of the users were IT people and the rest were doing analysis work on satellites. It was being used extensively, 100 percent in our case. Even the serves had it running. Everybody had Traps installed.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support from the consultant was very good. I don't remember having to talk to Palo Alto directly. I had an issue, but I talked to the consultant and then he escalated it.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before Traps we had no endpoint protection.
How was the initial setup?
The setup was not very intuitive to start with, but after you've done it once, it's really straightforward.
The first time I set it up, for one machine, it took about 15 minutes until I understood what was going on, starting from the ESM and using the deployment tool. But as soon as you've done it once, and you understand the ergonomics behind it, it goes fast.
In terms of the implementation strategy, we started with a limited number of machines and the machines of people from IT, who we knew would surf to weird places. Then we deployed a small sample to the people who go to China and Russia and places like that. After a while, while, we decided to go all the way and we used the ESM to deploy it on every machine.
The process from the planning phase until it was fully implemented took about three or four months.
What about the implementation team?
For the first installation we had a consultant, a Palo Alto dealer, consultant, and solution provider here in Madrid - Open3S. They're very good. Our experience with them was very positive. They're really competent. They really know what they're talking about. We were very happy with them.
The deployment required one or two people. Some days two people came, but normally, with one guy, it was okay.
What was our ROI?
It was more like insurance. You hope you're never going to use it, but you have it. It gave us some confidence in what people were doing because we know people were going to weird places on the web. With Traps, we were quite confident that if something wrong happened it would be detected and intercepted and deleted before it was spread around.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We didn't evaluate any other options because we had Palo Alto as firewalls and we were quite satisfied with Palo Alto. So the consultant took the initiative to do a demo and we liked it. Due to the type of business we are in, it's very useful.
What other advice do I have?
Make sure you have a proper inventory of all the applications running. That's something we should have done to start with. We intended to do so but because we're using very strange applications to deal with satellite imagery, and it was giving us some issues. For somebody who's using the standard Microsoft Office, it's really straightforward. But if you have exotic applications, then make sure you test it before you deploy it. You will have issues.
To maintain it, the only thing you have to do is download the latest updates and install them. After that, the only maintenance you need is checking the logs every day to see what has been sent to the cloud for sandboxing and then move to the culprit machine to see what happened. It's difficult to say how many people are required for this. As soon as you get something exotic on the machine, this can take an hour, but that's not related to Traps. Traps is just telling you there's something exotic. After that, it's the time you spend doing all the malware and other analyses. As far as Traps is concerned as such, it doesn't require much maintenance. It's something you set and forget.
I would give Traps a nine out of ten. I think it's a very good application. It detected stuff that other things wouldn't detect. I'm very positive about it and was extremely satisfied with it. We had it for the reason I noted earlier. It has been replaced by something else, but I had a very good experience with it. Had we been in a Microsoft Office business - the normal applications - we never would have moved. But the people in charge of the system went to Microsoft Defender.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Updated: January 2025
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