What is our primary use case?
We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.
Sentinel One is being deployed as a replacement for any antivirus solution. In our case, we use it to primarily prevent ransomware and other malware from entering networks or computers, as they're deployed across the entire world now, in this new post-COVID environment.
We no longer have the luxury of the corporate firewall protecting everyone equally. This means that having SentinelOne on each box is providing a solution where we stop the badness before it can spread.
This is a cloud-based platform that we use in every capacity you can imagine. We use it on cloud components in both Azure and Amazon.
How has it helped my organization?
We have tested SentinelOne's static AI and behavioral AI technologies and it performs well. We actually put a laboratory together and we tested SentinelOne against CrowdStrike, Cylance, and Carbon Black side by side. We found that the only product that stopped every instance of ransomware we placed into the computers in the test lab, was SentinelOne. As part of the testing, we used a variety of actual ransomware applications that were occurring, live on people's systems at the time.
My analysts use SentinelOne's storyline feature, which observes all OS processes. They're able to utilize the storyline to determine exactly how the badness got into the network and touched the computer in the first place. That allows us to suggest improvements in network security for our clients as we protect them.
The storyline feature offers an incredible improvement in terms of response time. The deep visibility that is given to us through the storyline is incredibly helpful to get to the root cause of an infection and to create immediate countermeasures, in an IT solution manner, for the client. Instead of just telling them a security problem, we are able to use that data, analyze it, and give an IT solution to the problem.
SentinelOne has improved everybody's productivity because the design of the screens is such that it takes an analyst immediately to what they need next, to make the proper decision on the next steps needed for the client.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature varies from client to client but having absolute clarity of what happened and the autonomous actions of SentinelOne are what most people find the most assuring. The fact that it stops everything and lets you analyze it with great detail, including how it occurred, to improve your overall security infrastructure to prevent such an attack from occurring in the future, is really important to clients because it's almost like a security advisor or a security operation center in the tool itself.
When an event occurs, it gets stopped, and then they have a way to look into that data to find ways to improve the security of their network or what risk factors they need to tend to within the company through education or other means. For example, they may be constantly clicking on the wrong links or the wrong attachments in phishing emails.
Our people constantly use the Ranger functionality. The first thing we do is look for unprotected endpoints in the environment. This is critical because SentinelOne should be placed on everything in the environment for maximum protection. The second way we use it is if a printer or a camera or a thermostat is being used as a relay for an attack, through a weakness in that product, we are able to let them know exactly what product it is. The other advantage of Ranger is that it lets us put a block into the firewall of SentinelOne that's on every Windows computer, and we can stop the communications from the offending internet of things product to every system on the network with just a few clicks.
It's incredibly important to us that Ranger requires no new agents, hardware, or network changes. If you think about it, we're in the middle of an incident response every day. We have between 60 and 80 incident responses ongoing at any time, and having the ability to deploy just one agent to do everything we need to advise clients on how to improve their security and prevent a second attack, is incredibly important. It was a game-changer when Ranger came to fruition.
Various clients, depending on their business practices, are heavily in the IoT. Some are actually the creators of IoT and as they put new products on the air for testing, we're able to help protect them from external attacks.
What needs improvement?
As a cloud-based product, there is a minimum number of licenses that need to be purchased, which is unfortunate.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SentinelOne personally, on and off, for approximately three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
SentinelOne is very stable and the agent rarely fails. The only time I've seen an agent fail is normally on a compromised system. The fact that it even works to protect a compromised system in the first place is amazing, but that's the only time that we actually see the failure of an agent. Specifically, it can happen when there's a compromise to the box prior to loading SentinelOne.
On a pristine new load of a workstation or server where it has no compromises and no malfeasance exists, the SentinelOne agent is incredibly stable and we rarely have any issues with the agent stopping in function. I will add that in this respect, the fact that the agent cannot be uninstalled without a specific code gives us higher stability than others because even a threat actor can't remove or disable the agent in order to conduct an attack against the network. It's a unique feature.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Right now, we have 54 analysts managing approximately 300,000 endpoints at any one time, globally. We operate 24/7 using SentinelOne.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support team is probably the fastest in the industry at responding, and they do care when we have to call them or send them an email due to a new issue that we've discovered. Most of the time, the problem is the operating system that we're dealing with is not regular, but they're still very helpful to us when it comes to protecting that endpoint.
I would rate their customer server a nine out of ten. I could not give anybody a ten. They are a continuous process improvement company and I'm sure that they are constantly trying to improve every aspect of customer service. That is the attitude that I perceive from that company.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Primarily in the last year, the number one solution clients had, in cases where we replaced it, was probably Sophos. Next, it was CrowdStrike, and then Malwarebytes. The primary reason that these solutions are being replaced is ransomware protection.
Almost every client that I get involved with has been involved in a ransomware case. They've all been successfully hacked and we can place it onto their boxes, clean them up, along with all of the other malware that everyone else missed, no matter who it was. SentinelOne cleans up those systems, brings them to a healthy state, and protects them while we are helping them get over their ransomware event. This gives them the peace of mind that another ransomware event will not occur.
Personally, of the EDR tools, I have worked with Cylance, Carbon Black, and CrowdStrike. I've also worked with legacy antivirus solutions, such as McAfee and Symantec. However, this tool outshines all of them. It has ease of use, provides valuable information, and protects against attack. The autonomous nature of SentinelOne combined with artificial intelligence gives us the protection we cannot experience with any other EDR tool today.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very straightforward. SentinelOne has incredibly helpful information on their help pages. They are probably the fastest company that I know of in the entire EDR space for responding to a client's email or phone call when you need to do something new or complex.
We have covered everything from Citrix networks to more complicated systems that work by utilizing the Amazon and Azure cloud to spin up additional resources and spin down resources. We were able to protect every one of those assets with it. The agent is easy to load and configure and the library allows us to quickly pivot on a new client and get their exclusions in fast enough to not impede business as we're protecting them.
What was our ROI?
When we were at a point of 50 clients, which is an average of 10,000 endpoints, we needed four analysts using Cylance. When we switched to SentinelOne for that same protection, the 50 clients could be covered by two analysts. We dropped our need for analysts in half.
The average cost of a security incident involving ransomware is a minimum of $50,000 USD, and this is something that SentinelOne can prevent.
The product has a rollback feature, where you can take a machine that's been attacked and partially damaged, and you can roll it back to a previously healthy state. That saves endless hours of system administrators' time rebuilding systems. That alone can reduce the cost of an incident from $50,000 down to $20,000. There is a cost because you still have to determine exposure and other factors with an incident response to determine if the threat actor has taken any data, things like that, but on the damage to the equipment, with the rollback feature and the restoration features built in the SentinelOne, and the fact that it stops everything but the most sinister lateral movements today, just means that an incident never has to occur.
This means that there is a great return on investment for a lot of companies. Another important thing to mention is that they don't lose people. Approximately 60% of businesses that are hit with a ransom attack go out of business within six months. If SentinelOne is preventing those incidents from occurring, that return on investment is worth almost the value of the entire company in some cases.
It is difficult to put an exact number on something like that, but the lack of pain and suffering of the employees of the company, because they didn't have to go through an incident response, and the lack of expense for the company to hire lawyers and professional companies to come in and help them during an incident, as well as their increased insurance costs of having an incident is also another factor.
Overall, it's difficult to judge but it's a true factor in the return on investment of owning SentinelOne and utilizing it to protect your environment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing is very reasonable. Unfortunately, because it's a cloud-based product, it has a minimum count for licensing, but other than that, I've found their pricing to be incredibly reasonable and competitive with tools that are very similar.
Considering the invaluable nature of SentinelOne's autonomous behavior, I don't believe anyone else can measure up to that. That makes it an incredible bargain when compared to the cost of an incident for any company.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
There are organizations such as MITRE and ESET Labs that have been doing testing that is similar to what we did three years ago. We just look at those results for the same truth that we discovered in the beginning, and the product continues to improve its performance.
What other advice do I have?
I have been a proponent of SentinelOne for many years. When I learn about somebody who has been hacked and wants to have protection against problems such as ransomware occurring, this is the one solution that I recommend.
The SentinelOne team is open to suggestions. They listen to the analysts and managers that are using their product and they innovate constantly. The improvements to the SentinelOne agent have enhanced its ability to catch everything and anything that comes in, including the detection of lateral movement attacks, which are the worst-case scenario.
When an unprotected agent penetrates the firewall and attacks a network, that unprotected asset has no protection on it so that the hacker can do whatever they want from that box with no impedance. But, the detection of it attacking from a lateral basis has been improved immensely over the last three years.
The improvement in the exclusions library has been phenomenal to help us get the new systems on the air with the new software. It allows the end-user to almost seamlessly get SentinelOne loaded and operational without impacting their business, which is incredibly helpful.
SentinelOne is working on something right now in the Ranger space that is going to allow us to remotely load endpoints that need the SentinelOne protection through the Ranger portion of the application. This is going to significantly improve the security of all of our clients, whether they be in long-term care or short-term incident response, it will help us protect them better. It's a significant improvement to our ability to protect the client.
Of all the products on the market today, I can say that they are the ones that I trust the absolute most to protect my clients.
I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.
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: Partner