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Arista NDR vs Cynet comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Arista NDR
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (8th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (17th)
Cynet
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (19th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (18th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (8th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (14th), Threat Deception Platforms (2nd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (9th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (11th), Ransomware Protection (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
it_user1719513 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
it's much easier to create your own queries and hunt for threats
We take in IOCs from my SOC and from AlienVault, and then we focus on traffic that hits IOCs and alerts us to it. The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually. Awake didn't support the manual importation of CSV and JSON in version 3.0, but they added it in version 4.0. It's helpful, but it still has to be a specific CSV format. Automated IOCs are on the roadmap. Hopefully, they will be able to automate the ingestion of IOCs by Q1 next year. I'm currently leveraging Mind Meld, an open-source tool by Palo Alto, to ingest IOCs from external parties. I aggregate those lists and spit them out as a massive list of domains, hashes, file names, IPS. Then we aggregate those into their own specific categories, like a URL category. Awake ingests that just like the Palo Alto firewall does, and then it alerts me if traffic attempts to go into it. Some of that is already on the Palo Alto firewall, which blocks it, but that doesn't mean that there is no attempted communication. I want to know if there's a communication attempt because there might be an indicator on that specific device trying to reach an IOC. Yes, my Palo Alto blocked it, but there's still something odd sitting there, and what if it can reach a different IOC that I don't have information about? I want to focus on it. I could do that by leveraging Awake if it could ingest the IOCs automatically. That's something I leverage Awake for today. I still have to manually import it, which is cumbersome because I have to manipulate the files that I get from the different IOC providers into a specific format that it understands. Once they add the ability to automate that, it'll be more useful.
Roshan Jadhav - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Consultant at Vincacyber
Has improved threat detection and streamlined incident analysis through centralized control and AI-driven insights
People are looking for Cynet because it has next-generation threat protection that detects zero-day threats. It has UEBA (user entity behavior analysis), threat hunting features, and storage device control where we can create profiles and block unauthorized USB storage devices. We can also create threat protection policies to detect malware, ransomware, and many other threats. The most valuable feature is the UBA (User behavior analysis). It has integration with SIEM solutions, allowing us to share our logs to third-party SIEM servers. Cynet has AI integration which showcases complete forensic data about threats, making it very easy to understand what happened with the system and what type of incident was detected. Autonomous breach protection is a feature of Cynet which can detect and mitigate known and unknown threats based on signatures. If there are any signature-less files, malware, or ransomware, it will detect them based on autonomous breach protection capabilities. The centralized management console provides a dashboard where we can see four types of attack vectors and incident counts in real-time. It continuously scans the radar and shows open alerts related to files, hosts, users, or networks. We can easily export these alerts and send reports via email.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Its ability to react to cyber data attacks is awesome. That is pretty much the use of it. What blows your mind is the ability to access your assets remotely and see what is actually going on with them. You can not only see them in a console. You can also react very rapidly to your assets that are compromised."
"These days it's machine-learning technology and behavior-based analytics features that make us more secure."
"We can use Cortex XDR to get the entire graph of the incidents from source to destination, and we can take remedial action."
"The initial setup isn't too bad."
"The interface is easy to use and it is more up to date than our previous solution."
"Palo Alto is one of the tech vendors that always provides top-of-the-line products."
"Cortex XDR features advanced threat detection capabilities."
"I don't have to do much monitoring with it; I don't have to have anybody manually looking at this, it gives us reports, and it lets us know if something needs to be addressed, and we can easily address it."
"The interface itself is clean and easy to use, yet customizable. I like that I can create my own dashboards fairly easily so that I can see what is important to me. Also, the query language is pretty easy to use. I haven't needed to use it a ton, but as I need to go in and do different queries based on their requests, it has been fairly simple to use."
"We appreciate the value of the AML (structured query language). We receive security intel feeds for a specific type of malware or ransomware. AML queries looking for the activity is applied in almost real-time. Ultimately, this determines if the activity was not observed on the network."
"But we had zero visibility into our network before and so now we have visibility into our network."
"It gives us something that is almost like an auditing tool for all of our network controls, to see how they are performing. This is related to compliance so that we can see how we are doing with what we have already implemented. There are things that we implemented, but we really didn't know if they were working or not. We have that visibility now."
"The query language that they have is quite valuable, especially because the sensor itself is storing some network activity and we're able to query that. That has been useful in a pinch because we don't necessarily use it just for threat hunting, but we also use it for debugging network issues. We can use it to ask questions and get answers about our network. For example: Which users and devices are using the VPN for RDP access? We can write a query pretty quickly and get an answer for that."
"The most valuable portion is that they offer a threat-hunting service. Using their platform, and all of the data that they're collecting, they actually help us be proactive by having really expert folks that have insight, not just into our accounts, but into other accounts as well. They can be proactive and say, 'Well, we saw this incident at some other customer. We ran that same kind of analysis for you and we didn't see that type of activity in your network.'"
"When I create a workbench query in Awake to do threat hunting, it's much easier to query. You get a dictionary popup immediately when you try to type a new query. It says, "You want to search for a device?" Then you type in "D-E," and it gives you a list of commands, like device, data set behavior, etc. That gives you the ability to build your own query."
"Other solutions will say, "Hey, this device is doing something weird." But they don't aggregate that data point with other data points. With Awake you have what's called a "fact pattern." For example, if there's a smart toaster on the third floor that is beaconing out to an IP address in North Korea, sure that's bizarre. But if that toaster was made in North Korea it's not bizarre. Taking those two data points together, and automating something using machine-learning is something that no other solution is doing right now."
"The valuable aspects of Cynet are its EDR and XDR components, which are available at a reasonable price point."
"The initial setup is simple and user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the network part of it because most of the endpoint products in XDS products we find Cynet has networking user behavior analysis and network analysis, for the whole team."
"I would recommend Cynet to others."
"The product has valuable front-end features."
"Cynet is light and transparent when downloaded. The product's data aggregation is also valuable since you can see everything you need on a page."
"This solution covers the endpoint and protects your files, users, devices, and network significantly better than the other solutions in the market."
"The dashboard is beautiful, overall easy of use, and the UBA and NBA features are valued."
 

Cons

"It would be good to have a better way to search for a file within the UI."
"The downside to the solution is that there are a large number of false positives."
"In reporting they should have a customizable dashboard due to the fact that C-level people don't like reporting to the IT department. They prefer to have a real-time dashboard. That kind of dashboard needs to have various customizations."
"Managing the product should be easier."
"There are some limitations on the Traps agents."
"To jump from the partner to Palo Alto directly was challenging."
"This product has not improved my organization - in fact, we are in the process of moving back to another product as a result of Cortex's horrible impact on system performance."
"The GUI could be improved."
"The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually."
"When I looked at the competitors, such as Darktrace, they all have prettier interfaces. If Awake could make it a little more user-friendly, that would go a long way."
"I enjoy the query language, but it could be a bit more user-friendly, especially for new users who come across it... They should push it more into a natural language style as opposed to a query language."
"Some of the searching capability is a bit hard to use without in-depth knowledge."
"I would like to see a bit more in terms of encrypted traffic."
"One concern I do have with Awake is that, ideally, it should be able identify high-risk users and devices and entities. However, we don't have confidence in their entity resolution, and we've provided this feedback to Awake. My understanding is that this is where some of the AI/ML is, and it hasn't been reliable in correctly identifying which device an activity is associated with. We have also encountered issues where it has merged two devices into one entity profile when they shouldn't be merged. The entity resolution is the weakest point of Awake so far."
"It's important that Awake continues to develop its APIs to be able to help intertwine their product into the overall security architecture of a company, just because it is a single tool."
"There's room for improvement with some of the definitions, because I don't have time and I'm not a Tier 4 analyst. I believe that is something they're working towards."
"The solution lacks URL filtering."
"The inability to add contact information inside the Cynet is also an issue because it makes things more complicated. I would like to have a simple feature to enter a contact name and number for the person taking care of that unit or that server."
"The reporting is a little weak and could be improved. The other downside is that Cynet does not use the local time zone. It's based off of Greenwich Mean Time."
"Could have better integration with other security applications."
"The reporting is a little weak and could be improved."
"There are some shortcomings in Cynet's integration capabilities that need improvement."
"There have to be more integrations with other firewalls and domain controllers of the network."
"Sometimes, it is necessary for me to make important changes to a hard drive of a computer, and because Cynet does not allow me to do that, I have to go to the console and remove the computer from the security group just for Cynet. After that, I have to wait for 10 or 15 minutes for that to take effect. I would like to be able to disable Cynet locally. I shouldn’t have to go to the console to find the PC and then take it out of the group and then add it again to the group. I should locally be able to disable Cynet on a computer with a password or something like that, but it is currently not possible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"It is present, but when compared to other competitive products, I would say it is not less expensive; however, when all of the other added values are considered, the price is reasonable."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The pricing seems fair, and I do like the licensing model. You use wherever they are, and it is elastic."
"This is an expensive solution."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"The tool's price is moderate."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"Because I represent a hedge fund, I have some leverage. I told them that they had to meet my conditions if they wanted me as a client. It was the same way with Awake. They wanted an initial four-year agreement. Initially, we signed on for a one-year contract, but they wanted the four-year deal when it came time for the renewal. I told them that I was not doing that. I said that they either had to do it on my terms, or I'd go somewhere else."
"The solution is very good and the pricing is also better than others..."
"Awake Security was the least expensive among their competitors. Everyone was within $15,000 of each other. The other solutions were not providing the MNDR service, which is standard with Awake Security's pricing/licensing model."
"The pricing seems pretty reasonable for what we get out of it. We also found it to be more competitive than some other vendors that we've looked at."
"Awake's pricing was very competitive. It's not a cheap option though. It's an investment to utilize it, but it's one that we decided was worth the cost, with the managed services. At our scale, it was a much better option to utilize their software and their managed services to handle this, rather than hiring another person to be an analyst. It was quite cost-effective for us."
"We switched to Awake Security because they were able to offer a model that was significantly less expensive and the value that we get out of it is higher."
"The solution has saved thousands of dollars within the first day. Our ROI has to be in the tens of thousands of dollars since October last year."
"It costs us 20,000 to 28,000 per year."
"The price should not be less than $100 which is quite reasonable for this solution because you are getting multiple components."
"There is an extra cost if you want the support of Cynet."
"I don't have specific information about integration capabilities or licensing costs."
"My company's customers have to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs of the solution. Cynet is not expensive."
"Cynet has a pay-as-you-go pricing model."
"This solution is expensive. I would rate the price as a three out of five when compared to similar products."
"Cynet is cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

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When evaluating User Activity Monitoring, what aspect do you think is the most important to look for?
The support team that stands behind the detection and response. Is there adequate expertise and are they behind you ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cynet?
Cynet is not very costly. We can refer it to other customers because Cynet does not ask for additional costs for add-...
What needs improvement with Cynet?
One area where Cynet needs improvement is tamper protection for Mac and Linux agents. It currently has tamper protect...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Awake Security Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
- Dolby Laboratories- Seattle Genetics- ARM Energy- Ooma- Prophix- Yapstone
Meuhedet, East Boston Neighborhood Health Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Arista NDR vs. Cynet and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.