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Binary Defense MDR vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Binary Defense MDR
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (14th)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (7th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Binary Defense MDR and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Binary Defense MDR is designed for Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and holds a mindshare of 1.0%, up 0.6% compared to last year.
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, on the other hand, focuses on Extended Detection and Response (XDR), holds 4.8% mindshare, down 5.7% since last year.
Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Binary Defense MDR1.0%
CrowdStrike Falcon Complete MDR7.1%
Huntress Managed EDR6.7%
Other85.2%
Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks4.8%
CrowdStrike Falcon10.1%
Wazuh7.2%
Other77.9%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2588769 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cybersecurity Architect, Information Technology Division at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Phenomenal response time and good handling of context in our diverse environment
We are going to have a meeting with them the following Monday. It will be our first quarterly business review. Half of it is going to be looking at new products and new functions that they are bringing out. So far, I do not have anything negative or a concern. There were two small mistakes that the technician made, and they were remedied immediately. Once we brought them to their attention, they were remedied. I do not have any complaints. They were just simple mistakes that anybody could make, and their response was a positive response. So far, I have not had anything negative to say. The only area for improvement that I can think of relates to statistical analysis for SLAs. They are in the middle of moving to a new product called D3 which is going to do some backend work for them. I know they are working to improve some of the help desk statistics, such as the time the tickets open and the time they are closed. They are working on that function. It is going to be resolved in the next month or two. We have service level agreements with them, but they can use improved statistics for service level agreements. This is the only point of improvement I can identify.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With Binary Defense, we don't just get an alert, but also a detailed rundown of why they're alerting us on it. They tell us what was executed, or the username, script, or IP. That way, we're not wasting time investigating."
"The most valuable part of Binary Defense is its team of cybersecurity analysts. Their analysts filter out the noise and only forward the critical threats that require a response instead of false positives."
"The biggest aspect for us is that they are able to conform to our environment and utilize our tools. That way, we still maintain ownership of all the data and access to the applications, and we never lose control of the ability to run the solution ourselves if we need to."
"In the six months we have been with Binary Defense on this, they run with the ball. They take care of our problems. When we get a ticket, they do not just give us a report."
"One of the main benefits of Binary Defense MDR is the ability to easily meet with their support team to discuss any issues we encounter."
"Binary Defense is comprehensive. We see most of the questionable activity. Once you see things a couple of times and are familiar with the processes, you know what those are. The level of activity is definitely favorable."
"Binary Defense has a human service department that provides live monitoring for our systems."
"Among the valuable features are the agent, continuous reporting, and dashboard. It has all the features we need and we haven't had to customize it, other than turning on certain features that we wanted."
"The product's most valuable features are massive user and feature intelligence exploit detection."
"Provides behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is easy to use and does not consume a lot of hardware resources."
"Palo Alto is the core of the security infrastructure in the environment."
"We've had a significant increase in blocking with a decrease in false positives, because it's looking at how the files work, not just a list of files that it's been told to look for."
"One of the things that I enjoy the most is using policy extensions. It's like having host firewalls to control USB connections. I think it's a wonderful tool to restrict use when connecting to our computers. Another important tool is Home Insights. That is an add-on to the Cortex solution. I like that because we can see all the vulnerabilities in the environment and control what assets are connected to our network."
"Threat identification and detection are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning."
 

Cons

"We found a couple of bugs in the user interface."
"I would like to get more reports from Binary Defense about what they're blocking."
"We found that an earlier version of the agent had high memory usage and that was a bit concerning, but we raised the concern with their support team and they immediately replied that they had noticed the same thing and had a candidate fix already available... it totally fixed the issue."
"It's sometimes difficult to know when to engage Binary Defense or TrustedSec, their sister company. TrustedSec is more focused on offensive security, as opposed to the defensive security that the MDR solution provides. It would be awesome if there were a better bridge between that relationship for when we need to get more proactive services or when we need to do a penetration test."
"If I were shopping for an MDR solution today, I would not only look for a company that has the ability to alert, detect, and remediate, but also the ability to integrate vulnerability management. That's a big thing that they're lacking today."
"I would like to see more frequent check-ins with our security status."
"It's hard to think of anything that they need to improve on, but just to point out something, I would like to see them provide advanced XDR."
"I don't find any downside to them, but if I have to put one, it would be consistent manpower or staffing. The only area where the solution can be improved is going to be with people. As they grow, they are struggling with the same thing that every other company is, which is getting talent and getting that talent to stay, but they've just revised their tiering system to go from a flat analyst and manager to a three-tier solution where it goes through two or three before it gets elevated. That seems to have worked out well, so if one level misses it, the next one picks it up, and it works out fine."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by adding a sandbox feature to better compete with their competitors which have it."
"Limited remote connection."
"Cortex XDR could improve its sales support team, including better commission structures and referral programs."
"Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by offering remote management. It would be useful to look at the client's issue to fix it."
"There's an overall lack of features."
"Previously, the endpoint would leave the environment, not being on our VPN, essentially unable to interact with the server to upload files. It was unable to retrieve new file verdicts. It was using a thing called "local analysis" to determine if something was a malicious file or not. There was no dynamic analysis."
"It's not an ideal choice for smaller businesses, as you need a minimum of 200 endpoints to even use the solution at all."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Binary Defense has changed its pricing model from being primarily based on the volume of data to one based on escalations and incidents they handle."
"It has been good. We have saved money, and we have a better product."
"The solution's price is spot on; if anything, it's slightly below the norm for most services. Compared to building the same team internally, it would cost more to create the same amount of capability than what we get from an external team. Price-wise, Binary Defense is in a great spot."
"It's valued at the right price. Even with the number of endpoints we have, we don't feel that it's a lot more than any competitor. In fact, it might be less expensive when you look at the fact that you're getting a full flex SOC out of it along with the tools."
"The pricing is on target. Working with their sales team on pricing negotiations was a pleasant process. They were very respectful of the constraints we had and I feel that we're paying a fair price."
"After we acquired this platform, we met with a number of different vendors. Binary Defense came in with a proposal that was surprisingly affordable. In fact, we were able to recoup the cost of their services within a short period of time. This is because Binary Defense is able to provide the same level of security as a team of two or three in-house analysts but at a fraction of the cost. As a result, Binary Defense is saving us an estimated $250,000 to $300,000 per year."
"Binary Defense MDR is priced competitively and may be slightly lower than CrowdStrike."
"From the initial cost that Binary Defense came in with, we pared it down quite a bit over the course of 30 or 60 days. My leadership would say that their cost was high, but realistically, they were in line with the market."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"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."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"I feel it is fairly priced."
"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."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"I don't like that they have different types of licenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise46
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Binary Defense MDR?
It has been good. We have saved money, and we have a better product. We are a company that has become an enterprise from a small medium business in two years. Our company passed a certain dollar ma...
What needs improvement with Binary Defense MDR?
We are going to have a meeting with them the following Monday. It will be our first quarterly business review. Half of it is going to be looking at new products and new functions that they are brin...
What is your primary use case for Binary Defense MDR?
They co-manage our Sentinel SIEM instance, and they provide a Security Operations Center (SOC) with 24/7 coverage. They perform research and remediation. They have a separate team for phishing. Tha...
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. The ability to reverse damage caused by ransomware with minimal interruptions to...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions that are very scalable, secure, and user-friendly. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto offers ...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
 

Also Known As

Binary Defense Vision, Binary Defense Managed Detection and Response, Binary Defense Managed Detection & Response
Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Securitas USA, Black Hills Energy, Lincoln Electric,The J.M. Smuckers Company, New York Community Bank, State of Connecticut, NCR
CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Huntress, CrowdStrike, Field Effect and others in Managed Detection and Response (MDR). Updated: January 2026.
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