What is our primary use case?
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.
What is most valuable?
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.
What needs improvement?
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.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for two years.Â
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
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.Â
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
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.
How are customer service and support?
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.
How was the initial setup?
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.
What about the implementation team?
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.
What other advice do I have?
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.Â
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.