CrowdStrike Falcon Reviews

We are using it as an EDR solution for endpoint protection. 

Everything is changing rapidly nowadays, and new threats can come into the organization from any source. I have found this product to be very useful. 

If I want to drill down into an unusual activity or something else, I can do that. I can go deep into what processes were involved, what network operations were involved, and what unauthorized users wanted to do. I can see how CrowdStrike processed and blocked the operation. The investigation is very easy for me. I can go to the tree level and see what is going on. It is very useful.

The CrowdStrike Falcon agent is very lightweight. Users never complain about their PCs getting stuck and things like that. In my previous experience, when anything was getting scanned, our PCs would become slow. Users would complain about PCs getting slow. This is a positive point of CrowdStrike Falcon.

The dashboard area must be improved. We have integration with Splunk, and we are creating a dashboard there. Their dashboard area must be up to date. It should have more details and more options to create the reports and things like that.

I have some concerns about their support. I am not happy or satisfied with their support. Something happened, and we opened a ticket. Their support engineer just vanished, and after a month, he came back and told us that he was off work and could not pursue the ticket. He said that he now has the time, but logs are gone because there is a time limit. We were asked to repeat the test. This is very unusual for me. 

In my organization, we have been using it for the last one and a half years. I have been using it for the last two to three months because I recently joined the organization.

From my understanding and observation, it is a stable product, but I have been using this product only for the last two to three months. I am just in the learning phase.

We have almost 3,000 users using this solution. 

I would rate CrowdStrike's support team a three out of ten. Their support is unacceptable for us. We are doing some testing ourselves. When we found an issue where CrowdStrike should have blocked something but did not, we opened a ticket with CrowdStrike. They tried to communicate with us and looked at the files that we shared. We had updated signatures, and we shared with them the SHA values, but after that, they suddenly vanished. Just two days ago, I got an email from them that the engineer was on leave and he is back now. They asked us to perform the activity again, which is unacceptable.

When any issue happened with Symantec, we opened a ticket, and they would accept their mistake if something was not caught by Symantec. They would then update the definitions and send us the latest updates. This is the way to work on the latest technology trends.

Negative

I have experience with Symantec endpoint protection. As compared to Symantec, CrowdStrike is a very good product. I have also worked with Microsoft Defender.

Every product has some advantages and disadvantages. I have worked with Microsoft Defender and Symantec, and now, I am working with CrowdStrike. Every organization's needs are very different. It depends on what the organization wants. For example, the security requirements of the banking sector are very high. The banking sector has different requirements, the retail sector has different requirements, and a software development organization has different requirements. An organization should weigh the pros and cons and decide based on the requirements.

Overall, I would rate CrowdStrike Falcon an eight out of ten.

We integrate the data from this solution with ExtraHop, which is an NDR. Being able to move between both platforms and have network-level data and transactions over the network feed into XDR CrowdStrike is really powerful. It helps us make better decisions, it makes better decisions without human intervention, and it hones the analytics a little bit. The EDR aspect of it works almost exactly the same as the regular Falcon product. I will say that it's probably a lot better at scale than what we're using it for. I work at a school district, so for the individual schools, it's nice to see and isolate issues and have reports built by individual school locations rather than just everything looking like a whole hodgepodge of computers.

It's ability to do threat hunting is really great, quite robust, and even allows you to do hygiene stuff, like look for old versions of applications that maybe you forgot about or find stuff that people are running that maybe you don't want on your network, and it lets you get rid of those. Also, its ability to do on-keyboard remote response and run PowerShell script through the sensor is pretty sick. It's ability to quarantine devices is also pretty great.

The ability to receive text alerts natively in the console would be kind of cool. Some people put their email on quiet hours, so having it natively in the system would be nice.

I know that they offer an identity piece and a firewall piece and we haven't subscribed to or purchased either of those, but having some of that data in the base program would be good, and then if you want more control, you pay for it. There's times where I want to look at an internet history of a device that's remote, or I want to see logins, successful or unsuccessful. I don't want to manage identity and I don't want CrowdStrike to alert on it, but it would be nice if the ability to see the data was included with the base product. Then that could kind of get your foot in the door with having the ability to look at that information, but not being able to do anything actionable with it.

I have been using this solution for two years. 

The solution has never failed. The only false positives that we get are ones that we test with. I do true and false positive testing every month to make sure stuff is working correctly and the solution picks up on it. 

The solution is very scalable. Our proof of concept was a few devices and now at full scale we have 50,000 devices. It's a cloud console, so if you do the implementation right and the sensor is put on in an automated process, it doesn't matter how many computers you have. It just runs. They have sensors for every kind of device: Macs, Windows, Linux, and I think even Android.

The support is great. They're quick to respond and you see the same names pretty consistently. They probably do it by region or account or something like that, so it's not just a random person every time.

The setup is as complex as you want to make it. They have engineers that help you. We did a proof of concept first and that was pretty seamless. If you want to build out a bunch of dynamic groups and have different policies affect the different groups separately, you can. If you want to purchase a bunch of licenses for integration with different products, they partner with a bunch of different security vendors and you can make it as complex or simple as you want. If you just want NextGen AV, you can just have NextGen AV and it's super simple and the sensor just sits on a computer, but if you have a bunch of data and want it to be really complicated and want to be able to do whatever you want, you can do that too. It's pretty flexible, in that sense.

Getting it off the ground took myself, one CrowdStrike engineer, and we could have done it with one systems engineer, but we had two because one was on the client side for the Windows hosts and one was for enterprise for the data center and servers. We did it with four people, and me and one other guy manage it ourselves.

We pay for Overwatch, which is kind of like a sock where someone that works for CrowdStrike monitors certain aspects of your network, and then they can make notes and quarantine devices for you, and they'll alert you at 2:00 in the morning. It's really great, but it takes two people to manage the alerts after a bit of tuning to make sure that the stuff that is on your network that you want to be there, that's getting picked up by CrowdStrike, is excluded. I get maybe ten alerts a day, but that comes from having good hygiene in other areas. If you're not preventing those alerts or fixing the problems that CrowdStrike is picking up, you're going to have a lot of work to do, but if you use CrowdStrike as a hygiene tool, it's a lot easier to manage.

My advice would be to automate as much of the management as you can. Sensor deployment can be really annoying, but if you figure out how to automate it in your environment, that will make it way easier. That way, as the devices are provisioned, they have the sensor on them and they just pop up into your console. I know some people do it by hand and that's a nightmare.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of ten. It's really good. 

The tool helps to increase security because the threats we face keep changing, so we need better protection. In the past, we've faced some attacks on our network, and while we managed to deal with them, we realized we needed even stronger protection. That's why we decided to implement CrowdStrike Identity Protection.

The main feature we rely on is the product's intelligence. We appreciate the advice from the team during implementation. One of the main reasons we chose this product is its compatibility with Office 365.

Improvement is always possible. It's challenging to gauge how much future mitigation is provided, especially since we've only been using the product for about one and a half years. Every product faces this challenge because nothing is ever completely foolproof. So, besides relying on technology, we also focus on increasing our staff's awareness of security issues. Feedback from my colleagues suggests that the reporting and dashboarding of incidents could be improved.

I have been working with the product for one and a half years. 

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten. 

Scalability isn't a problem for us. Many big multinational companies use CrowdStrike Identity Protection, so it's designed to handle environments like ours without any issues. My company has 500 users. 

The tool's deployment is easy. Thanks to the installation scripting we utilized, the technical rollout took about two weeks. Then, there was some additional time, around two to four weeks, for customization and configuration. After that, the systems were up and running. So, all in all, it took about three months to have our mitigation strategies in place. We have one engineer for maintenance. 

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. I would recommend it to others. However, it's crucial to understand areas where the product might not provide coverage and how to mitigate those gaps. For example, it covers endpoints, networks, and Office 365 environments, but are there other areas in the attack surface that it doesn't address well? It's essential to be aware of any potential gaps upfront.

The solution helps in preventing incidents. However, it's challenging to quantify the exact impact because we don't know what would have happened without it. It's similar to having insurance for your house. 

The following is a list of use cases that were tested and evaluated against Crowd Strike along with different competitors.

1 - Execution of Fileless Ransomware - The test was conducted using PowerShell script execution, the script was executed using privileges rights and it was successful. Although all the preventive controls were enabled in the CS falcon dashboard, CS falcon had raised a red flag regarding fileless execution, however, the moment it let us know our system got encrypted.

2 - Uploading large volume of Data over the cloud - Using customized script in the USB, a test was conducted to copy (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .png, .jpg, .pdf, .txt, .rtf) files from the system. It performs a copy operation from the whole disk and creates a password-protected .zip file in APPDATA of the complete files, once the protected file is created it then checks the internet connectivity. As soon as the script finds connectivity with 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4. it starts sending the protected .ZIP file over its CnC cloud.

3 - Disabling of CS Falcon Agent - I have conducted a test to disable the Falcon agent from the Windows-based OS. The agent was successfully disabled by booting up another OS and renaming of agent files from the system.

4 - Perform Privilege Task in Crowd strike - CS roles have some additional privileges. While performing host containment, it has the ability to perform the following operations without informing the user: 

* Host Containment 
* Isolating the host from the network;
* Copying data from the host machine into the CS cloud;

Considering the above situation it may cause a breach of user privacy due to which user can file a complaint against InfoSec team.

The solution fits well in the organization and took out valuable output as expected from Endpoint Detection and Response solution.

This solution supersedes the requirement of an Endpoint Protection solution. The cost of EPP can be saved while using EDR.

One good thing is the active association of the Crowd Strike team in terms of support and coordination. 

Features that require further evaluation include:

Let's take an example of ten machines that require CS falcon agent installation. Apart from agent compatibility and ease of installation, one of the most important areas is the network bandwidth which would require whenever an agent updates the server through the cloud. 

An estimated network bandwidth utilization takes 0.4 MB/hour for a single machine to update its probes over the cloud. If we estimate the total working hours in our case it is eight hours, the formula would be 0.4 X 8 = 3.2 MB per host per day is the data uploading requirement on the cloud. It is highly recommended to assess a number of agents and the network bandwidth requirements.

The CS falcon agent is a lightweight agent compared with other agents of EDR products. Moreover, the following is the list of valuable features which I found very useful:
1 - Lateral Movement  
2 - Overwatch detections
3 - Custom IOC blocking
4 - Suspicious Process and Registry operations
5 - Azure/AWS agent installation and easy integration with SIEM
6 - Triage of the complete incident is well created in the CS dashboard. It helps to show complete details about the incident.
7 - It is an agent-based license not machine-based, so once the machine gets outdated/old, installation of the same agent license in another machine is possible.

Area of Improvement

The products still require improvement in the Apple environment (Mac). Currently, this solution (as of July 2022) is not compatible with MAC OS (X), Catalina, or Big Sur.

Similarly, the product is also not compatible with Unix-based systems including AIX, Darwin, and FreeBSD.

CS Falcon sensing capabilities for non-domain machines should be enhanced since the agent doesn't detect the neighbor's IP Address and/or any anomaly which was identified in the network for the non-domain machine.

Additional Features required in the Next release:

The product requires an add-on feature which should be a turnkey feature if it requires to be turned on to XDR no changes should be required to be made on the user end as the agent is already installed.

The solution has been used for around two years, including the demo version with full features and final version with specific features.

This solution has been used without any compatibility issue and/or technical failure due to anti-virus installation.

When we procured Crowd Strike as an EDR it was on the Gartner top ranking as well.

The agent was being utilized in Windows Servers (2016, 2019), Linux Servers (Fedora, Red hat, Cent OS), Windows Endpoints (10, 11), and Mac. 

The solution is stable and we have used it for more than 2500+ hosts.

It is a cloud-based solution - so scalability is not an issue.

When it comes to customer service and support is that the principal engages whenever required.

Positive

This was the first product that we evaluated out of 6 (six) products.

The setup was straightforward and it's easy to use.

A vendor team was engaged in the installation of the complete solution.

Licensing is relatively low than other EDR solutions.

We evaluated Carbon Black and FireEye.

Crowd Strike is a good solution. However, it requires you to build more features in protecting Endpoint agents for example:

DOM Improvement
DLL's Injections
Detection of CNC in Network Neighbors
Detection of similar attack surfaces in the network.

The Insight feature is one we found the most useful. It does behavior-based analysis and gives us the most appropriate information.

The initial setup was easy.

It's pretty stable.

The scalability is good.

Most organizations are currently looking for a scheduled scan to meet their compliance needs. Other players like Symantec and Trend Micro, FireEye, et cetera, are still providing the signature-based regular scheduled scans also, which is not available in CrowdStrike. That is one parameter that we feel should be there in CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is only working on the dynamic or the files under execution. CrowdStrike is not scanning the static files.

The product could be more accurate in terms of performance.

We'd like to have a single-click recovery option. With some machines getting corrupted by malware, we need an easy way to start with a blank slate if things happen. That one feature should be there in the EDR.

I've been working with the solution for three years. 

With CrowdStrike, we have found that there are a few missed detections. We would not say it is completely reliable or 100% reliable, however, the ratio of missed detection is more in CrowdStrike. In SentinelOne, we found that it was more accurate. We are seeing it act more efficiently.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. Being a cloud solution, it can scale well. 

Technical support is average. We are not seeing any extraordinary service and not many issues also. It's average, it is as expected.

I'm also familiar with Symantec, Trend Micro, SentinelOne, and FireEye.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It's not overly complex. You still need expertise, however, it's pretty reasonable. 

We did not need any outside assistance. 

The pricing of the solution is average. 

We are a managed security service provider.

We are using a SaaS offering and therefore, in terms of the version, we are not bothering so much on worrying which we are on. It is automatically getting updated. We are running on the latest version at all times.

While I would recommend the solution, CrowdStrike, when it first came into the market, it was sort of a single choice for many customers. Now, we can see there are many other competitors also. Those are providing pretty good functionalities in a more efficient way. We could see that other solutions are better than CrowdStrike.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use CrowdStrike Falcon for endpoint protection and cybersecurity.

We implemented CrowdStrike Falcon to ensure our systems were secure and there were no infiltrations to our system.

We deploy CrowdStrike Falcon across a variety of platforms, including cloud and edge environments. We ensure it meets rigorous security standards, is properly certified, and adheres to our data management policy.

We integrated CrowdStrike Falcon with our end-user systems and servers.

Since implementing CrowdStrike Falcon, we haven't experienced any serious threats, and we've seen a decrease in phishing and ransomware emails. This suggests it's been very effective in mitigating those threats.

The UI is easy to use and comprehensive.

CrowdStrike Falcon's performance has improved our user productivity.

CrowdStrike Falcon offers a comprehensive dashboard that is highly effective in protecting against and blocking external infiltration attempts.

The pricing structure should allow for some flexibility.

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for almost 3 years.

CrowdStrike Falcon is stable.

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

The technical support is good. We have not had any issues with them.

Positive

The initial deployment was straightforward. The deployment doesn't take more than one day. Those involved with the deployment are system engineers, IT analysts, and software engineers.

The implementation was completed in-house.

The price is fixed with no room for negotiation.

I would rate CrowdStrike Falcon 8 out of 10.

We have deployed CrowdStrike Falcon in multiple departments, locations, and satellite offices.

CrowdStrike Falcon doesn't require maintenance from our end other than the updates.

I recommend CrowdStrike Falcon to others.

We use CrowdStrike Falcon for intrusion prevention management.

CrowdStrike Falcon proactively blocks threats and provides us with insights.

CrowdStrike Falcon integration is seamless.

The endpoint and server management are the most valuable features of CrowdStrike Falcon.

CrowdStrike Falcon's GUI requires improvement for user-friendliness. The console's available options are unclear, making it difficult to understand and extract details. Additionally, correlating information within the console and reports proves challenging.

I have been using CrowdStrike Falcon for two years.

CrowdStrike Falcon had some initial stability issues in our environment, likely due to its new integration. However, it appears to have matured and is now functioning reliably.

Being cloud-based, CrowdStrike Falcon offers easy scalability. Adding licenses through procurement increases resources without the need for additional hardware, making scaling straightforward.

While the technical support meets all response time commitments outlined in our Service Level Agreement, some users believe they should strive for a higher standard – a Security Level Target. This means responding to security incidents immediately, not just within SLA windows. Security tools are crucial for our environment's protection, and their use shouldn't be limited by SLA constraints.

Positive

After using Symantec, Trend Micro, McAfee, and VMware Carbon Black, we migrated to CrowdStrike Falcon due to a lack of support from the previous vendors and their shortcomings in comprehensive threat detection.

I would rate CrowdStrike Falcon eight out of ten.

The maintenance required is reasonable.

We have 6,000 endpoints in our environment.

CrowdStrike Falcon shines with its user-friendliness, providing clear insights into the endpoint environment. Proactive features are a major plus, offering actionable items and valuable attack path simulations that empower better decision-making.

A popular choice for Data Loss Prevention is CrowdStrike Falcon. This is the primary function our clients leverage it for, as it offers industry-leading DLP capabilities.

CrowdStrike Falcon has helped our customers secure their confidential data.

The DLP is the most valuable feature of CrowdStrike Falcon. Additionally, the scanning is good and the deployment is easy.

The console is not user-friendly or visually appealing and has room for improvement. I would like a single pane of glass dashboard.

I have been an integrator of CrowdStrike Falcon for one day. 

CrowdStrike Falcon is stable.

I have also worked with Trend Micro and Panda.

The initial deployment is straightforward. I would rate the ease of setup nine out of ten.

Two people are required for the deployment.

I need to upgrade the software occasionally but it doesn't require continuous maintenance.

While the specific deployment time varies depending on each client's individual environment, on average the process can be completed in a couple of days.

I only deploy the solution for clients, I don't calculate their ROI.

CrowdStrike Falcon's pricing is reasonable. We can customize features and that affects the pricing.

We pay 40,000 dirhams per 100 users.

I would rate CrowdStrike Falcon nine out of ten.

Our clientele ranges from small to enterprise-level businesses.

I recommend CrowdStrike Falcon as it provides all the features of an EDR.