What is our primary use case?
We are a managed services provider. We are not just using it for ourselves, but we are also supporting it and deploying it for a number of our customers.
The primary use case is that it's endpoint protection software and we use it to protect our end customers' endpoints, whether they are Apple or computers, laptops or servers.
SentinelOne is software as a service, but it has an agent that has to be installed on a computer or a server onsite.
How has it helped my organization?
Its Behavioral AI recognizes novel and fileless attacks and responds in real-time. What that means is that we have better confidence. For example, a number of users use USB drives which they bring from home. While we have a lot of customers where we have actually restricted the use of external USB drives, there are certain customers where we cannot restrict that use because of the way they run their businesses. The result, for them, is that there is a constant fear that at any given point in time, an infected USB from someone's home computer can actually infect the whole lot of computers within the corporate environment. But having SentinelOne means we have a certain level of peace of mind, so that even if something completely new tries to enter the network or the system via a USB drive, for example, it doesn't matter. The system will detect it and kill it. There is a level of protection which we never felt before using SentinelOne.
As a managed service provider, the most important thing is that the more secure a customer's network is, the less time our team will spend trying to fix issues. One of our customers is a prestigious hotel in London, and they were struggling, literally battling, with a virus that had infected their network of about 90 computers. Whatever we could have done, and all their previous IT company could have done, could not have eliminated that virus. Even if you completely formatted a computer, it kept coming back. The only way we were able to clean that whole network up and stabilize the environment was when we brought in SentinelOne. Before that it was Symantec, and Symantec couldn't do anything to control that infection. But SentinelOne brought in such stability, that since we introduced it into that network about one-and-a-half years back, not a single report has come in of any infection there.
Also, when we have to report on attacks to a customer, the customer always asks us for the root cause analysis. It is very important for us to understand the behavior and to find out where that infection came from and what it initially did so that we can look at that behavior and try to prevent it from happening again elsewhere. SentinelOne helps us in doing the root cause analysis and reporting back to our customers. It gives us insight into where a problem started and how it propagated into the system. Tracking the history of the virus' actions gives that insight, which is very important. Otherwise, there is no way to create a root cause analysis report for a security breach.
The automatic remediation and rollback in Protect mode, without human intervention, is already enabled on almost all of our computers. That helps us minimize the number of technicians we need to work on things. Automatic remediation is a policy which we enable when we deploy the system, which means that a lot of things happen automatically. And from our side, we only keep an eye on the dashboard. That means that we need fewer technicians to support the system. It provides support itself through that functionality.
Overall, SentinelOne has reduced our incident response time, absolutely. In our case, it's particularly true because we have remote teams working from remote offices. With SentinelOne, we don't need to send someone onsite because we can see a lot of things from a single pane of glass on the dashboard. And if there is a problem, we can do all the troubleshooting, and working on that incident, remotely. So it has definitely improved the way we have provided cybersecurity to our customers.
And it has reduced our mean time to repair by more than 60 percent. Previously, when we were using other solutions, we had to do a lot more work.
The solution's automation has also increased analyst productivity. The effect is significant in the sense that the amount of time our analysts used to spend on security has been reduced. These days, they only have a look at the dashboard which is open on one of the screens in our office. They just keep an eye on that and as long as it shows everything is green, they don't even bother drilling down and looking at other stuff. It's only when they see an alarm coming up that they jump in and look at it. That was never the case before. Before, they were remotely accessing computers and working on them and trying to fix issues. That has become a thing of the past since we started using SentinelOne.
What is most valuable?
It's artificial intelligence-based software. The best part is the fact that it doesn't necessarily rely on definitions, like other software. For example, Symantec, AVG, Avast, and Kaspersky, traditional antivirus software, rely on virus definitions. So every now and then, if there is a virus infection, they will compile a new set of virus definitions and push it to the local agent so it will know that this virus exists and that it should keep an eye out for it.
These traditional software solutions have small levels of functionality that may help them to identify if there are any dodgy activities within the computer. They would then try to mitigate those, but only to a very limited extent. With SentinelOne, that's not the case because it basically has its own intelligence to identify any dodgy behavior within the system. As soon as SentinelOne detects anything which is not right, it will start tracing the changes being made. And because it's centrally controlled, it will give the controller team an early indication that there is something wrong and that we need to fix it. Not only that, but it will block it and keep track of it for mitigation.
We also use the solution’s ActiveEDR technology. Because it's an agent-based system, it is monitoring internally. It's not that the central system is doing it. It's keeping an eye on the functioning of the endpoint itself. If the endpoint is functioning properly, it will sit behind the scenes and not do anything at all. As soon as it sees any malicious activity within the system, that's where it's triggered. The artificial intelligence part of the agent is able to differentiate what activity can be considered malicious and what activity can be considered normal. And that's big. It's something that cannot happen without that kind of intelligence in place.
It has a one-click button that we can use to reverse all those dodgy changes made by a virus program and bring the system quickly back to what it was. That's one of the most important features.
Another valuable feature is that if a machine is infected, one that may infect other computers within the network, we have the capability of segregating that machine so that it remains connected to the internet but is cut off from the other machines in the network. That helps prevent spreading of the infection. That's a very unique feature, one I have not seen in the last 10 to 15 years from any other antivirus program. That's amazing.
We have used it on Mac and we have used it on Windows. We have seen a good level of protection, because since installing it for those of our customers who have taken it, not a single report of a breach has come out. I feel very strongly that the system is quite capable.
What needs improvement?
One of the areas which would benefit from being improved is the policies. There are still software programs where we need to manually program in the policies to tell the system, "This program is legitimate." Some level of AI-based automation in creating those policies would go a long way in improving the amount of time it takes to deploy the system.
There is also a bit of room for improvement in the way SentinelOne is deployed. Right now we push it, but a lot of the time the pushing doesn't work. So we have to log in to each computer and do a manual install. That area would help in making the product stronger.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using SentinelOne for about two-and-a-half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's very stable. I have not seen it crash, nor have I seen any other problems.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have not used their technical support. My engineers have used it, and their feedback about the support has been good so far. I don't think they have had complaints.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. But when deploying it to 100 or 200 or 300 machines, pushing it is easier than logging on to each machine and doing it manually. But sometimes, pushing doesn't work and doing it manually takes a little bit more time. But that's a one-off exercise.
We don't have much of an implementation strategy for the solution. As an MSP, there are a lot more things going on, day-to-day, than just dealing with SentinelOne. But for deployment, I get my boys to log on to a customer's systems, do the push, and then whatever does not work through push deployment, they install manually.
For maintenance of SentinelOne, we only have two engineers who look at it on a day-to-day basis. We don't need any more than that. In terms of deployment, it depends on the size of the deployment. If it's a 100-user deployment, we would have a team of three or four who would do it over a few days' time.
What was our ROI?
The return for us is that it has reduced the manpower we require.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Pricing is a bit of a pain point. That's where we have not been able to convince all of our customers to use SentinelOne. The pricing is still on the higher side. It's almost double the price, if not more, of a normal antivirus, such as NOD32, Kaspersky, or Symantec.
I understand that these are not similar products, but for a customer who has a certain amount of money to pay for an antivirus, they can only spend so much. That's where it becomes hard to convince them to pay double the price for endpoint security.
That is the only feature of this product which causes us to step back and not be able to deploy it for absolutely every customer we have. We would love to, but obviously if the customer doesn't have the budget to pay for it, there is not much we can do.
If they can somehow bring the prices down, that would massively help in bringing this to a lot more customers.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked into other solutions, but not as deeply as we went into SentinelOne. Because we liked SentinelOne so much, we just stopped there. And we already had experience with the likes of Malwarebytes, Symantec, and AVG. This was a far superior product.
I haven't had a chance to take a deeper dive into Carbon Black, but that is something I have been told is comparable to SentinelOne.
One of the things which attracted me to SentinelOne was the fact that it is the only product which is tied to the SonicWall platform, and we use the SonicWall platform a lot. A lot of our customers have SonicWall firewalls. Having a combination of SonicWall and SentinelOne provides an end-to-end security arrangement with products that are integrated with each other.
What other advice do I have?
Go for it. It's an absolutely brilliant product. But understand what it is before starting to deploy. Unless you understand the product, you will not know how to use it to the best of its best capabilities.
The solution's Behavioral AI works with and without a network connection, providing the internal protection. But having that network connection is important because it will then be able to report it to the central dashboard. While it will do what it has to do locally, it's helpful when the agent reports back to the central dashboard so that the IT Admin can take action. It is important that the systems remain connected to the internet.
But overall, the Behavioral AI is amazing. It's something very new in the market. The way SentinelOne works and the way it is set up, I haven't been more impressed by any other product. It is a step forward in security.
We have 400 to 500 endpoints using SentinelOne at the moment, and all those customers are happy. We are happy that they're using it, because it helps us secure their network better than what they had before. We have it on laptops which have been given to home users, on computers in offices, on servers in computer rooms. They all have SentinelOne and we are happy with the level of protection that it offers.
Moving forward, with every customer whose antivirus is coming up for renewal in our portfolio, we are recommending getting rid of Symantec and other products and taking on SentinelOne.
It's very effective and it's improving by the day. In the last two-and-a half years I have seen that the way it detects and the way it mitigates threats are constantly improving. It's a very effective solution.
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