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Niranjan N - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analyst at ATOS
MSP
Top 10
The threat score helps us prioritize remediation and cross-reference with other products
Pros and Cons
  • "CrowdStrike displays a threat score when it detects an infection. This is helpful because not all detections are the same. It will classify them as ransomware, malware, phishing, etc. This feature helps us prioritize and cross-check with other EDR tools."
  • "CrowdStrike Falcon sometimes wrongly flags things as malicious. Let's say a user is active on Chrome only. Sometimes, our cross-segmenting will fetch from the backend data and show that it is malicious because of memory or CPU utilization."

What is our primary use case?

We provide a service for our clients with CrowdStrike Falcon. Alerts come into the CrowdStrike Falcon dashboard, and we investigate them based on the process tree and commands running. We check everything for any infections in the host or internal connections. If a threat is confirmed, we place it into the containment section inside Falcon. 

How has it helped my organization?

CrowdStrike improves our detection capabilities. We use multiple tools like Symantec and this one. CrowdStrike reports on the processes and services, allowing us to investigate forensically. We can conduct a deep analysis and identify the threat at the memory level. We can do more investigation of the process to see where it started and where it is going. We can see the commands running on the backend, CPU utilization, and memory consumption. All of that information is helpful. 

What is most valuable?

CrowdStrike displays a threat score when it detects an infection. This is helpful because not all detections are the same. It will classify them as ransomware, malware, phishing, etc. This feature helps us prioritize and cross-check with other EDR tools. 

It's integrated with multiple threat intelligence sources, such as the AbuseIPDB. That integration helps because we can easily cross-check between CrowdStrike and other solutions like an MDR or Azure AD. Hybrid analysis is integrated with CrowdStrike in our environment. There's also sandbox analysis. It's more informative. We perform a routine activity in our test environment where we simulate the process and file.

What needs improvement?

CrowdStrike Falcon sometimes wrongly flags things as malicious. Let's say a user is active on Chrome only. Sometimes, our cross-segmenting will fetch from the backend data and show that it is malicious because of memory or CPU utilization.

Buyer's Guide
CrowdStrike Falcon
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about CrowdStrike Falcon. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Falcon for more than two years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

CrowdStrike Falcon is a stable solution.  

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

CrowdStrike is scalable. We can query large amounts of data, and the solution responds well, whereas Splunk takes a longer time to perform a search operation.

How are customer service and support?

I rate CrowdStrike support 10 out of 10. They respond quickly and don't take much time to resolve all our issues.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Symantec and Rapid7.

How was the initial setup?

Falcon was already deployed when I started working. It requires some maintenance. We need to make some adjustments for some use cases, or we might need to implement upgrades that require downtime. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

CrowdStrike Falcon is expensive because it's based on the number of services. 

What other advice do I have?

I rate CrowdStrike Falcon 10 out of 10. It has delivered some good results. 

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.
PeerSpot user
Director, IT & Systems Security at Tilson
Real User
Good visibility helps us make educated decisions, easy to scale, helpful threat-response support
Pros and Cons
  • "The Protect functionality on the laptops provides great visibility into what's occurring, and the cloud management of the platform is what we needed."
  • "The console is a little cluttered and at times, finding what you're looking for is not intuitive."

What is our primary use case?

We implemented CrowdStrike because we needed to identify a new solution to address a 100% remote workforce, both because of COVID, but in general, our workforce is very distributed around the country.

How has it helped my organization?

The primary way that CrowdStrike has improved the way our organization functions is visibility. When we do have an issue, the ability to see what was happening before, during, and after the issue on the target laptop or server is far better than what we were used to.

Having the updates happening automatically, with a third-party defining those updates and pushing those in, also providing us visibility into the current status of all of our endpoints, is critical.

We use Falcon's endpoint and cloud workload protection, which is deployed on our Azure cloud servers. It is definitely one of the top options available to any organization. We had reviewed 10 different applications in the EDR space and Falcon was one of the top three that we had identified.

In terms of preventing breaches, so far, it's doing great. Definitely, in our testing that we do every month, it is identifying issues that arise with more certainty. Simply, the team has more confidence in what they're utilizing as a tool and it has freed them up to work on things that are a more efficient use of their time.

What is most valuable?

The Protect functionality on the laptops provides great visibility into what's occurring, and the cloud management of the platform is what we needed.

It is important to us that this cloud-native solution provides us with flexibility and always-on protection because we have a 100% distributed workforce, in place even before COVID. To manage 600 remotely-deployed laptops requires a cloud-managed solution.

What needs improvement?

The console is a little cluttered and at times, finding what you're looking for is not intuitive. Once you find it, it's great, but it's not always very intuitive as to how to find exactly what you're looking for sometimes.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We have had no issues at all with stability, and no conflicts on any of our endpoints or servers.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It seems to be limitless from a scalability standpoint. Definitely, there would be no impact on our end, and we haven't noticed or run into any issues as we scaled from our initial 10 systems to 600. There was no difference in speed or reporting, et cetera.

So, scalability does not seem to be an issue.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is an area for improvement. If you have an actual issue, such as an identified threat, then they are very good. However, if you're struggling to figure out what might have occurred, we're still trying to figure out how to get our best support from CrowdStrike in those situations.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Prior to Falcon, we were using Webroot.

The primary improvement that we have seen is visibility. We had no visibility into what happened before, during, and after a situation with Webroot, but with CrowdStrike, we have that visibility, which allows our team to make educated decisions. In terms of detection and prevention, I believe it's all experiential so far. Falcon has been very good at both detection and remediation for any issue that has come up.

How was the initial setup?

The sensor setup and deployment were extremely easy. We were able to deploy a hundred percent of our endpoints within 60 days. We found it to be very smooth.

It was a very simple deployment strategy to get the agent out to the end-users. It was so smooth that we didn't even have to notify the end-users that it was being done. It just happened automatically. 

There was no conflict between CrowdStrike and our existing EDR that we were going to get rid of. After the installation, we were able to have the old EDR totally removed within 30 days.

What about the implementation team?

We had two people for deployment and we have one for maintenance. Their roles are in information security.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI in that our team is freed up to work on things that are more important.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We took advantage of Falcon's free trial before purchasing it, and it was very easy to get it. We were on the phone with a representative discussing our next steps and they offered the free trial, and we were set up and functional with it the next morning. Having a free trial period is something that is expected. If anybody wants our business in this space then it's necessary because we aren't going to purchase something without trying it first.

The pricing is not bad. It's on the higher end of the market, but you get what you pay for. It's a little on the confusing side because the name of the item they're selling doesn't match what you see when you log into the product.

If you buy "Protect" and you log into the product, you don't see "Protect". You see something else, like "Identify" or whatever. So, they need to do a better job of aligning product names from the sale to within the product.

There are add-on fees for different packages that you can buy, and we are looking at adding on some feature functionality as we go forward.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated 10 different solutions in the EDR space. The top three included CrowdStrike Falcon, Carbon Black, and Microsoft's ATP.

CrowdStrike was a little better, cost-wise, than the other two. Also, I felt that the console for managing the platform was easier for my team.

What other advice do I have?

My advice for anybody who is looking into implementing this product is that every organization is slightly different in its needs, and CrowdStrike may or may not be the right solution. Once you can do a trial and a bake-off of multiple options, you'll find if CrowdStrike is the right solution or not.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
CrowdStrike Falcon
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about CrowdStrike Falcon. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1524120 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director - IT Security Operations at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Allows us to stay in business by keeping our systems up
Pros and Cons
  • "CrowdStrike Falcon has done an excellent job at detecting breaches. It has allowed us to stay in business and keep our systems up."
  • "CrowdStrike Suites and the way that it bundles things can be a bit challenging. It should be easier to integrate with the other stuff that they sell or be included with what they sell. We have one piece, then they are talking about another piece on vulnerability management all of the sudden, and we don't own that piece. We can see it in the console, but nothing shows up. It simply appears within the tool as an option, but we can't use it without purchasing it."

What is our primary use case?

It blocks all the stuff bad actors are trying to do to our users.

All our end user systems and servers are on-prem and cloud workstations desktops everywhere.

We are using the latest version minus one release (N-1).

How has it helped my organization?

It provided us visibility into our endpoints that we did not have before. The telemetry and data that it collects allows us to respond to possible incidents much faster, containing the host as well as jump on the host for remediation.

CrowdStrike Falcon has done an excellent job at detecting breaches. It has allowed us to stay in business and kept our systems up.

What is most valuable?

CrowdStrike endpoint detection and response (EDR) is excellent. It blocks the bad stuff without user interaction, allowing us to stay in business. For example, one of our service providers has been down for five days now with ransomware. Also, four of our partners have been down over the past two months with cyberattacks, and we can't do business with our partners.

What needs improvement?

CrowdStrike Suites and the way that it bundles things can be a bit challenging. It should be easier to integrate with the other stuff that they sell or be included with what they sell. We have one piece, then they are talking about another piece on vulnerability management all of the sudden, and we don't own that piece. We can see it in the console, but nothing shows up. It simply appears within the tool as an option, but we can't use it without purchasing it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for a little over three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is very stable. There have been no issues.

We have automated all our CrowdStrike Falcon updates.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is very scalable. There have been no issues at all.

How are customer service and technical support?

CrowdStrike's technical support is excellent:

  • Quick to respond
  • Quick to help
  • Very responsive
  • They have always been able to solve the issue.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I was a McAfee customer for 20 years before switching. It was like night and day, where McAfee is old technology, and CrowdStrike Falcon is new technology. On a scale of one to 10, McAfee is at one and CrowdStrike Falcon is at 10. There is a really big difference.

We came from an on-premises solution. With more people working remotely, that became an issue. The fact that this is a cloud-native solution provides us with flexibility and always-on protection.

How was the initial setup?

It was very easy to deploy the solution’s single sensor. We used our deployment tools to push it out. Because it is a single agent, it is very lightweight, easy to install, and updates itself. We came from a competitor who had multiple agents, upgrades, and DAT files, where you could have very few of these with 100 percent working. However, since there were six different modules, they all had to be kept updated, which was a nightmare. 

This solution was a simple, easy push. Once it is on there, it updates automatically and we don't have any issues.

For deployment, we use a tool called Quest KACE. We also use SCCM.

We did about 10,000 hosts in around two months. We have had growth through acquisition. Now, we have 12,000 hosts.

What about the implementation team?

We did it ourselves.

For the deployment, there was one FTE (a Level 2 PC technician) for eight weeks. For maintenance, it is pretty much set and forget it. There is very minimal maintenance and zero dedicated staff.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We bought a very small number of licenses, then ran it for a year. We bought a 100 licenses for a year, so we didn't actually do a proof of concept. We just bought them. Then, the next year, we bought 10,000 licenses.

We received a quote three years ago, and it was almost seven figures. CrowdStrike got money from investors to displace competitors, like Symantec and McAfee. Then, our quote was very low, which is why we were able to do this. The first year, the quote was almost a million dollars. The second year, it was a little over $100,000.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We also evaluated Cylance and Carbon Black. We went with CrowdStrike Falcon because of the single agent and price. The other solutions required multiple agents, and I did not like that at all.

Compared to the other solutions that we evaluated, CrowdStrike Falcon has a similar ease of use.

What other advice do I have?

We are a very happy CrowdStrike Falcon customer. I highly recommended it. It works.

I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Enterprise Cybersecurity Architect at Swagelok Company
Real User
With the real-time response piece, I can connect to an endpoint as long as it's on the Internet
Pros and Cons
  • "Probably the most valuable thing to me is the real-time response piece. The fact that I can connect to an endpoint as long as it is on the Internet, no matter where it is globally. I can remove files from the endpoint, drop files on the endpoint, stop processes, reboot it, run custom scripts, and deploy software. Pretty much no other tool can do all that."
  • "A year and a half ago or more, if you put in a support request by email, then it wasn't timely addressed. It could be a day to three days before you received a response, which was a bit frustrating. There was a lot of customer feedback around this issue, which has been greatly refined."

What is our primary use case?

The product is inherently cloud-based.

How has it helped my organization?

Knock on wood. Between our management of the platform and having subscribed to Falcon Overwatch, the managed threat hunting service, I haven't had a concern in six years. I have yet to deploy this product in an environment that has later incurred a breach. I have the utmost confidence that would be very unlikely to occur.

What is most valuable?

Every time that I have deployed it, it was more about Falcon Insight and its EDR protection. Then, the team in the company would be so pleased with the results that there was minimal resistance adding additional stack elements. Prior to their announcement of several new modules last Fall, we had acquired the entire stack. 

Each element of the stack continues to further develop their capability and empowerment of team members. For example, CrowdStrike Falcon Spotlight was an interesting tool to assess vulnerability management, but the capability of that module alone has just continued to develop in a very favorable direction. Also, the discover tool is extremely valuable. 

Probably the most valuable thing to me is the real-time response piece. The fact that I can connect to an endpoint as long as it is on the Internet, no matter where it is globally. I can remove files from the endpoint, drop files on the endpoint, stop processes, reboot it, run custom scripts, and deploy software. Pretty much no other tool can do all that.

As a cloud-native solution, it provides us with flexibility and always-on protection, which is critically important.

What needs improvement?

There is nothing existing today that I would change very much about the solution. Because of the capability of the data that they are ingesting, they have the ability to create tools leveraging that data to enhance the capability of the platform. The possibilities are endless.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for about five and a half years

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are no questions about stability. I continue to see, especially in the last six months, that CrowdStrike is making very purposeful acquisitions to tactically and strategically build upon the platform. Many companies acquire smaller companies to get a fraction of a piece of technology that tends to be an add-on or something that may compliment the core product, but CrowdStrike is making more strategic moves to acquire technology that they can directly integrate into the existing platform to make it even better and more effective.

Updates can be handled one of a number of ways. This is something that has evolved quite a bit since I initially deployed it. Initially, you simply had the option of manually upgrading sensor versions or leaving them to automatically update as soon as a new update was released. Very infrequently, there have been issues with sensor builds. Early last year, they rolled out the ability to automate the sensor revision updates, but do it in a tiered fashion. So, there was an N-1 and an N-2. So, when they release a new version, I step back my releases and deployment of the updates by one version backwards. Then, I have a few early adopters who get the latest sensor build as soon as it is deployed. Provided there are no problems, when the next release happens, the N-1 version will automatically upstep my entire environment without having to put hands on it.

This product does not require any maintenance post-deployment.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are protecting 5,500 endpoints with this solution. We do have plans to increase usage. Our environment is rather complex in that we have 6,000 core corporate associates and roughly 5,500 endpoints. Then, we have a distributor network globally comprised of about 220 wholly owned subsidiaries who are essentially their own companies, but they are only licensed to resell our products. They kind of have a mix of endpoint protection because it is largely up to them, within their entity, as what they choose to use. We are looking to further wrap our arms around them from a security perspective. We have looked at acquiring CrowdStrike's complete platform, which would be fully managed to deploy to that distributor network, which is about the same size as our corporate environment. So, it would be roughly another 6,000 users. It is a very large, globally-reaching endeavor, and working through the politics and legal aspects of how we will make that come to fruition may take some time. However, that is the plan.

How are customer service and technical support?

I would give the technical support 10 out of 10 for the past year. They have improved a lot of things in response to customer feedback. A year and a half ago or more, if you put in a support request by email, then it wasn't timely addressed. It could be a day to three days before you received a response, which was a bit frustrating. There was a lot of customer feedback around this issue, which has been greatly refined. Now, if I put in a support ticket, I would expect it would probably be answered within a couple hours.

I have a lot of ideas in my head about where things could go with the solution. The company is very receptive to those thoughts as well as the opinions of all its customers

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Our previous endpoint protection platform was very cumbersome to manage. It did not reliably apply protection and had many issues. My current organization is the fourth time that I have deployed CrowdStrike Falcon in an environment. The first time that we deployed it, we were using an inherently cloud-native protection platform, but it was unreliable. 

Swagelok was using McAfee ePO, which inherently is an on-premise solution. It is also very unreliable and cumbersome to manage. It was just missing detections, being inherently signature-based. So, it was only hitting on known signature-based malware. We lacked the EDR aspect of endpoint protection, e.g., behavioral-based analytics and preventing malicious behavior before it begins, which drastically stifles the remediation effort. McAfee's principle was always, "If you get said detection, then you need to run other tools to scan, remediate, and clean up the endpoint." Hands need to be on the endpoint taking it physically offline and off the network. Everything is drastically simplified with CrowdStrike Falcon. I can cloud sandbox the endpoint, remediate it, and interact with it at the command line level remotely, regardless of where it is, as long as it has an Internet connection. It is just amazing. 

As far as Swagelok goes, McAfee yielded a lot of false positives. The management was so cumbersome that there were only a handful of people able to resolve problems with endpoints or false detections. If you weren't connected to the inside core network, you couldn't reach the server in order to mitigate the problem. Because of the cloud-native aspect to CrowdStrike Falcon, I can pull up the console in my car on a mobile phone and mitigate an issue for someone whenever and wherever I need to do it, regardless of how I am connected, what device I am on, etc. So, the response time has drastically decreased (by five to 10 times) for remediating a critical vulnerability, a piece of malware, or undoing a false positive. This has been noticed across the company at large.

How was the initial setup?

In all four instances where I deployed the single sensor in organizations of various sizes, it was very simple. Swagelok was probably the easiest deployment, since it is an organization large enough to have a deployment tool, like Microsoft SCCM. Once the package was built to deploy to endpoints, we push the "Go" button. Then, it was a matter of hours and our entire environment was protected. The deployment took less than a week.

What about the implementation team?

Three people were involved in deploying the solution:

  1. Being the experienced administrator, I pretty much did all the configuration: creating the correct groups, prevention policies, etc. 
  2. We have an administrator of the deployment tool. I worked very closely with the package of the sensors and he executed the deployment.
  3. We have another gentleman who oversees our lab environment and was very invested initially in trialing the product against all our existing applications to ensure there weren't any incompatibilities in the early deployment.

What was our ROI?

We have absolutely seen ROI, e.g., the reduction in man-hours for resolving incidents. The speed of the platform has drastically reduced time consumed, affording more time for an operator to act when resolving problems.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is an expensive product, but I think it is well worth the investment.

The CrowdStrike Falcon Pro solution alleviates the need to quote out the product. You initiate the use of the free trial, then opting the purchase. You can manage it all on your own without engaging a sales representative. I definitely have done this in a small business environment. 

In all other instances, it was more of a formal business relationship. There was a sales representative involved who queued up the trial environment. If you initiate a trial yourself, you are basically given 14 days to trial it. Whereas, engaging a sales representative allows them to moderate the length of time that you can do the trial. Because we are a larger enterprise with a lot of politics around completing purchases and legal reviews, we have a sourcing department who vets out vendors. The process is very long and cumbersome. We had initiated a trial, in this instance, which ran for several months before we acquired it.

The fact that I have access to the products free for several weeks or months was not really a factor. What was more impressive in the trial was the way CrowdStrike approached it. When you initiate a trial, they give you a CloudFlare instance of a victim machine and an adversary machine. They then allow you the capability to deploy the sensor or pull it back from the victim machine. You can unload whatever you care to against the victim machine for testing to see how well the product works on your own. Unlike many other products in a similar space, when you evaluate the product, it gives you the feeling that you are completely in control. Also, there is a sales engineer who moderates the demonstration of the product.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The first time that I deployed CrowdStrike Falcon, I evaluated probably a dozen other products. I was very close to signing a deal with Carbon Black, simply because I hadn't yet heard of CrowdStrike Falcon. Since deploying it the first time, I would never really consider anything else. I do look at other platforms from time to time to see how they have evolved and changed, but it would be very difficult to convince me to use something else. The winning factor for CrowdStrike Falcon is just the inherent capability of the platform. In my observation, there really isn't another company who can do as much as they can.

What other advice do I have?

Take advantage of the opportunity by CrowdStrike to network with other customers in a similar company size and industry to see how well the product could benefit you as a potential customer before committing.

We have a very minimalistic cloud infrastructure footprint or container footprint at this point in time. That is likely to take off in full swing in the next year or so. We have many legacy applications running on legacy operating systems, which I am working very aggressively to get out of our environment. When that starts to take flight, we will definitely have more of a need for a cloud container as well as cloud infrastructure visibility and protection, which we do not have a lot of at this point in time.

I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: I'm a real user as well as a member of CrowdStrike's customer and technical advisory boards
PeerSpot user
reviewer1540044 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Security Officer at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Real User
Protects employees wherever they are and offers visibility into what machines need patching, but the deployment process needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The OverWatch is the most valuable feature to me. It's a 24x7 monitoring service, and when they see anything suspicious in my environment, they will investigate."
  • "If we have a dashboard capability to uninstall agents, I think that would be great."

What is our primary use case?

We have several use cases including threat management, EDR, AV, and a SOC with 24x7 monitoring.

How has it helped my organization?

The fact that CrowdStrike is a cloud-native solution is very important. We don't have to deal with any upgrades on the appliances or console. The only thing we have to deal with is the upgrade of the agents. The SaaS model works very well for smaller companies like us.

The flexibility and always-on protection that is provided by a cloud-based solution are important to us. The cloud is everywhere. So, with the agent on the laptop, wherever the user may go, including home, office, or traveling, it's protected 24x7, all the time. That's what we require and this is what we got.

We haven't had cases where we have quarantined any material stuff yet, because we are relatively small and we don't see a lot of malware in our environment. In this regard, it has been relatively quiet.

In terms of its ability to prevent breaches, if you look at the cyber kill chain, the sooner you detect malicious activity, the better you are in responding as opposed to waiting for a data breach. I think CrowdStrike is capable of identifying malicious activity throughout the whole cyber kill chain. Step one is establishing when they have a foothold in the environment, and then detect whether they are moving laterally. The sooner they are discovered, the better we are at stopping data breaches.

CrowdStrike has definitely reduced our risk of data breaches. It reduces the risk of ransomware and it gives us comfort that someone is watching our back.

We had some end-of-life workstations that were running Windows 7 and for some reason, related to PCI compliance, CrowdStrike rejected them. This helped us in terms of maintaining our PCI compliance.

What is most valuable?

The OverWatch is the most valuable feature to me. It's a 24x7 monitoring service, and when they see anything suspicious in my environment, they will investigate. Essentially, they're an extension of my team and I like that. We're a small company and we only have a base of approximately 260 employees. As such, we cannot afford to hire skilled security people. So this makes sense for a smaller company like us.

There is a helpful feature to look into the vulnerability of the endpoint, which allows us to see which PCs have been patched and which ones have not. That helps my team to focus on those PCs that require their attention.

What needs improvement?

The deployment process is an area that needs to be improved. For some reason, CrowdStrike does not provide any help in terms of how to deploy the agent in a more efficient manner. They just don't provide the support there, which leaves their customers to figure out how to push agents out, either through GPO or through BigFix or through SCCM, and there was no support on that side. Not being able to complete the deployment in an efficient manner is one of the huge weaknesses.

It would be good if they had a feature to remove agents. We're in a transaction processing environment and if CrowdStrike is affecting a transaction processing server, we need to uninstall that agent pretty fast. Right now, the uninstall has to be done manually, which is not great. If we have a dashboard capability to uninstall agents, I think that would be great.

The dashboard seems a little bit too clunky in the sense that it's spread out in so many ways that if you don't log in on a daily basis, you're going to forget where things are. They can do a better job in organizing the dashboard.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for approximately five months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I haven't had any issues for five months since we've installed it, which is good to know. No users have complained about any CPU spikes or false positives, which we like.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

If you have a way to deploy agents in a rapid manner, I think the scalability is there. As we buy and acquire companies, we have to roll out agents to those places. Right now, it's still very manually intensive and it slows down the process a lot. So, I think the scalability can be improved with a rapid deployment feature.

Our strategy right now is just to install CrowdStrike for PCs and laptops. Once we get comfortable with the technology, we can start testing the servers. It's just that we haven't finished the deployment to PCs and workstations yet.

We have approximately 260 endpoints and we're probably about 20% complete in terms of deployment.

How are customer service and technical support?

We've raised support tickets such as the request for rapid deployment capabilities. However, we only received responses to the effect that they do not support anything like it. In that regard, the support has not been great.

That said, we don't use the support site a lot because we haven't had any issues with CrowdStrike. So, I can't say much about that.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Prior to CrowdStrike, we used Carbon Black Threat Hunter.

There is a huge difference between the two products. CrowdStrike is quiet. I think that Carbon Black Threat Hunter just locks everything that has to do with the endpoint. You generate a lot of noise, but it means nothing. Whereas CrowdStrike is more about real threats and we haven't seen much from it.

On the other hand, with Carbon Black Threat Hunter, we were able to deploy pretty fast and we could uninstall agents pretty quickly from the dashboard.

I had originally heard about CrowdStrike Falcon from my peers. A lot of CSOs that I have roundtable discussions with speak highly about it.

How was the initial setup?

The sensor deployment is a manual process right now, where we have to log into every workstation, every server, and install it manually. It's very time-consuming.

It's an ongoing process across our organization.

What about the implementation team?

One of our security engineers is in charge of deployment. However, we don't have someone on it full time. He works on this when he has time available, so we probably only have one-third of a person working on it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We completed a PoC using the trial version, and it was pretty easy to do. It took us less than an hour to deploy. It was just a matter of downloading a trial agent and setting it up.

Having the trial version was important because the easier the PoC is, the better the chances are of us buying the tool.

At approximately 40% more, Falcon is probably too expensive compared to Cisco AMP and Cylance, although that is because of the OverWatch feature. If you took out the OverWatch feature then they should be about the same. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other products including Cisco AMP and Cylance. Neither of these products has the Overwatch feature that CrowdStrike has. The reason why we chose CrowdStrike was that we need to have 24x7 monitoring of our endpoints. That's the main difference.

In terms of ease of use, CrowdStrike is not so great. Cisco AMP has a better, cleaner dashboard and they're more mature in the way that you navigate. It's as though they have spent time getting customers to click on features and then figured out which is the quickest way to get to what you want, whereas CrowdStrike is not there in that sense.

Cylance is even better in terms of ease of use. They dumb it down to only a small number of menus and dashboards. There are probably only five dashboards that I look at on Cylance, whereas with CrowdStrike, I have to look at many.

What other advice do I have?

My advice for anybody who is considering CrowdStrike is definitely to start with a PoC, and then definitely to subscribe to OverWatch. I think that OverWatch is the main benefit to it.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from CrowdStrike is about the different threats that are out there. They have a nice dashboard with information about threats, and you can read it and learn from it.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Omkar Kesarkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager II at ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd
Real User
Top 10
Offers good AI features to users
Pros and Cons
  • "The product's deployment phase is easy."
  • "Some policies in the tool need to be fine-tuned. Customized IOCs need to be improved since they have certain shortcomings."

What is our primary use case?

I used the tool since my company wanted a product with next-generation antivirus and EDR, as it can help with the detection of malicious activities and behavior detection, and the MI and machine learning part in the tool also helps.

What needs improvement?

Only for the customized IOCs, there is a need to highlight certain aspects, and based on it, we get to block only the hash values but is not based on the file name, like .exe, or other extensions, so I can't block them, making it in an area where the solution needs to improve.

My company had raised a concern with CrowdStrike's support team when one of the antivirus applications that communicates with CrowdStrike started misbehaving. For both the aforementioned tools, the same support ticket had to be raised. If my company had to provide any suggestions regarding the whitelisting part, there was a delay of over a month when dealing with the product's support team. If the tool's support team suggests users follow certain steps, and if it is not followed or is not in progress, then after two or three days, the tool's support team needs to join a video call and provide a resolution to the users.

Some policies in the tool need to be fine-tuned. Customized IOCs need to be improved since they have certain shortcomings. With the customized IOCs, it can be made possible to block a file extension with a filename or file extension type of blocking. Providing users with the ability to customize policies would be a good improvement to the solution.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon Threat Intelligence for a year. I am a user of the tool.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

My company's cybersecurity and IT security team use the tool. In my company, there are 15,000 users. For servers, there are 1,500 users.

Right now, there is no need to increase the usage of the tool.

How are customer service and support?

The solution's technical support is not good. I rate the technical support a four to five out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have experience with Palo Alto.

The detection and other functionalities in CrowdStrike and Palo Alto are the same, but cost-wise, CrowdStrike is reasonable. Technically, I would prefer Palo Alto over CrowdStrike.

How was the initial setup?

The product's deployment phase is easy. I rate the setup phase of the tool as a ten on a scale where one is difficult and ten means it is an easy process.

The solution can be deployed in the cloud and on an on-premises model.

The solution can be initially deployed in a minute.

Considering the number of users, servers, cloud, and on-premises environment, it hardly takes 15 to 20 days. When there are laptop and desktop users who are online, and there is a need to install the agent, then there can be some issues, and with such minor things, ten days are more than enough for the installation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

CrowdStrike is a reasonably priced tool.

What other advice do I have?

In terms of the ability of the tool to deal with threats, I would say that the product does it by around 85 percent.

The real-time response of the tool is good, and I feel it is around 90 to 95 percent.

The tool's incident-handling capability is good.

Considering the influence of the product on our company over some time, I would say that the solution is cost-effective and offers good threat detection features. The tool's interface is also good.

The tool's AI features are good, but they are not useful for our company since the area of detection is not something in our bucket right now.

If you have a big budget, go with Palo Alto. If you have a low budget and want a tool that provides more accuracy during detection, then it is better to go with CrowdStrike.

I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Khushru_Mistry - PeerSpot reviewer
CTO at GM Modular
Real User
Top 10
The integration is flexible, helps identify required patches, and excels in external media control
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable aspects of CrowdStrike Falcon for me are its device observability, identification, and software and OS recognition."
  • "If CrowdStrike can further expand its support for XDR compatibility, that would give it an edge over all the other competing new products."

What is our primary use case?

CrowdStrike Falcon is our platform for IT security, encompassing endpoint security, cloud security, and EDR capabilities.

How has it helped my organization?

CrowdStrike protected us from a cyberattack. That's why I believe it's a very effective product. It's already prevented attacks on 2 occasions. It successfully quarantined suspicious files, essentially making our organization much safer.

We also leverage CrowdStrike Falcon Overwatch, a managed threat-hunting service offered by CrowdStrike. This service complements CrowdStrike's EDR functionality, which provides automated detection and response capabilities against external attacks. In our case, CrowdStrike successfully identified and automatically contained a cyberattack launched against our organization.

Our CrowdStrike Falcon integration with our SIEM is proving to be flexible.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable aspects of CrowdStrike Falcon for me are its device observability, identification, and software and OS recognition. It also excels in external media control, particularly USB access. The ability to disable USB access to flash drives significantly improves security.

Furthermore, Falcon helps identify patches needed for Windows, Mac, and other operating systems. This provides valuable reports and insights into our system vulnerabilities, allowing us to proactively address them.

What needs improvement?

If CrowdStrike can further expand its support for XDR compatibility, that would give it an edge over all the other competing new products.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for 2 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability of CrowdStrike Falcon 8 out of 10.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've deployed CrowdStrike Falcon across all 3,000 of our endpoints, and it has demonstrated excellent scalability. Therefore, scalability is not a concern for CrowdStrike in terms of performance or its ability to handle growth.

I would rate the scalability a 9 out of 10.

How was the initial setup?

The deployment was straightforward, taking 2 months for 3,000 endpoints. We implemented it directly where needed. The process was simple and easy. We believe this approach offers advantages due to its lower complexity compared to other methods. Careful planning was essential, and with a clear plan for sensor installation, we were able to execute the deployment successfully.

What about the implementation team?

While a third party handled the implementation, the OEM provided us with direct training on Falcon alongside CrowdStrike.

What was our ROI?

CrowdStrike Falcon has demonstrably provided a positive return on investment. We've already encountered two specific instances where, without CrowdStrike, the company would have faced millions in damages. In one case, we would have likely lost our entire SAP system.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The pricing of CrowdStrike Falcon is competitive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

After evaluating SentinelOne, we found CrowdStrike to be a superior solution. CrowdStrike offers advantages in dashboard compatibility and a feature called Overwatch, which gives it a competitive edge.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate CrowdStrike Falcon 8 out of 10.

CrowdStrike Falcon is deployed in multiple branches across India.

No maintenance is required from our end.

I recommend CrowdStrike Falcon. It is not a solution we need to think twice about using.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Marco-VIVALDELLI - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at MARVIV SRLS
Real User
Top 10
It works with all devices and operating systems easily to provide integrated security
Pros and Cons
  • "Falcon has the capacity to identify potential problems quickly. The administrator can deploy the agent, and the users cannot change it. This assures you that the agent remains on this device. Also, the agent can act preemptively to provide alerts about potential problems."
  • "I want more ability to customize how you summarize the data. The default views are fine, but it would be interesting to be able to customize them based on the kind of data you want to see immediately. This can help the administrator gain an immediate overview and reduce the investigation time."

What is our primary use case?

We use Falcon to investigate threats and reduce risks in our environment. It covers multiple departments within the same building and company. All units are attached to one controller, so we can manage them from one point. 

We can implement different kinds of policies on sensitive data for various departments. For example, I can limit how data can be changed if I'm dealing with financial data. It's the same for production or logistics. We can set rules for data sharing and access because some departments need to share data with customers.

How has it helped my organization?

CrowdStrike's AI-driven analytics have improved our security considerably. It's sharing information from across the infrastructure and applying machine learning to prevent issues. This is a powerful, proactive approach to cybersecurity. It takes action in time to prevent the problem, so we don't need to remedy it after the fact. Sometimes, by the time you take action, it's already too late. 

Before deploying Falcon, I would avoid taking action due to potential risks. With CrowdStrike, I don't worry about recovering data, so I can focus on preventing situations. In two years, I have never had that problem. When I look at the platform, I can see all the notifications and the actions taken. I can see how potential attacks can possibly reach the server and create a significant incident. Thus, I can directly measure the quality of the service.

Falcon is easy to integrate with our infrastructure because we can control the entire network through our fiber router and switch. CrowdStrike can interface with all devices easily and provide integrated security. Falcon gives you greater control without any problems.

The agent will recognize issues immediately, and we can follow up to create a plan for if this problem reappears or is still present on the infrastructure. Falcon enables instant remediation. It doesn't take two or three days. It's in real-time.

What is most valuable?

Falcon has the capacity to identify potential problems quickly. The administrator can deploy the agent, and the users cannot change it. This assures you that the agent remains on this device. Also, the agent can act preemptively to provide alerts about potential problems. 

When there's a problem, you can follow the rules. For example, you can put a file that might be infected into quarantine or lock the device, preventing it from propagating the threat to other devices or networks. The agents are collecting information and feeding that back into the CrowdStrike platform, so you have 24/7 control and visibility. 

Falcon's deep learning capabilities are flexible and work across multiple operating systems. You can control everything from the same place, whether you're dealing with a Windows, Linux, or Mac device. You can define your policies precisely and decide how you want the platform to respond in any situation. 

CrowdStrike's AI approach is interesting because it improves the capacity to correlate information based on all the deployments on devices worldwide. It analyzes this data to identify something anomalous that could potentially be a problem in your environment. Falcon can isolate the issue to determine if it's a real threat. You will get an email saying the platform has identified a potential problem they are investigating. 

Falcon explains the steps they are taking. After the issue has been resolved, you will get another message showing CrowdStrike's analysis and evidence that the problem is now under control. I get about 20 emails from CrowdStrike daily. 

What needs improvement?

I want more ability to customize how you summarize the data. The default views are fine, but it would be interesting to be able to customize them based on the kind of data you want to see immediately. This can help the administrator gain an immediate overview and reduce the investigation time.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have used Falcon for two years.

How are customer service and support?

I rate CrowdStrike support 10 out of 10. They have one of the best teams that I've worked with. They're very fast and professional, with a high level of skill and knowledge. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I previously used Sophos. It's a good solution that works well with other Sophos infrastructure, like firewalls, etc. For example, if the firewall is from Sophos, it can interact with the software to identify a problem. However, CrowdStrike is more powerful when using hardware from different vendors. It doesn't rely on specific hardware because it works with an agent, so you're more flexible and less constrained. 

Overall, Falcon is more powerful than other solutions. It is light on resource consumption. It has a minimal effect on the client when you have installed the system because everything is controlled by our cloud platform where you can see the portfolio of devices.

How was the initial setup?

The installation was quite easy. The platform is based in the cloud, but you need to download agents based on your operating system. After you install the agents, you only need to configure the various devices on the cloud platform. CrowdStrike's platform is managed by the vendor. You can log in and manage your portfolio of devices and define your policy or apply profiles to groups of users and devices. 

What was our ROI?

We feel like Falcon is worth what we pay.  The cost of the solution is minimal compared to restoring data from a potential attack. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Falcon's price is accessible, and it's a good value for the level of quality we get. We don't have any objections based on the cost, and we understand that you will pay more for an enterprise solution. There is no objection to the cost. It's appropriately priced for the service that we receive.

What other advice do I have?

I rate CrowdStrike Falcon 10 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.
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Buyer's Guide
Download our free CrowdStrike Falcon Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free CrowdStrike Falcon Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.