Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

CylancePROTECT vs Intercept X Endpoint (Sophos) comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersec...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Intercept X Endpoint
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (14th), ZTNA (9th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (7th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (13th), Ransomware Protection (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.5%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity is 1.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Intercept X Endpoint is 1.6%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.5%
Intercept X Endpoint1.6%
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity1.3%
Other93.6%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

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.
Sooraj Makkancherrry - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Operations Manager at Philips
Doesn't have daily updates, which is important for healthcare IT
I face challenges with the exclusion policy - it still scans folders we told it not to, causing issues. When we contact support, they tell us to update the latest agent, but we can't do that immediately due to medical device protocols and validation testing. I wish support would try to understand our issues better instead of giving this standard response. The machine learning feature they use often tells us to upgrade the agent or add things to the exclusion list, which isn't unacceptable. It's a very good and new technology as a tool and antivirus. But sometimes, it doesn't work properly with our medical devices and products, quarantining files it shouldn't even after we add them to exclusions. This is tricky for us.
AM
IT Head at Dee Development
Has struggled to detect major threats but has offered basic protection over time
Intercept X Endpoint could learn from CrowdStrike in terms of overall performance and filtering because performance is most important, especially these days as Windows is getting buggier and buggier, which puts a huge load on the PC, and even with the most advanced CPUs and everything in place, it still lags in performance in so many places, thanks to Windows' clumsy design of these collaboration suites that make it extremely heavy on PC's resources. The interface of Intercept X Endpoint is quite old-fashioned. The Sophos interfaces, including for Intercept X Endpoint, are quite bad actually; to be very honest, even in UTM boxes, they are not great at all. You can hardly see a very small portion of windows while it's creating the firewall rules, and we have been complaining about this for quite some time, but there hasn't been any improvement on those grounds. Intercept X Endpoint's anti-ransomware capabilities failed us during a bad attack, and just because of our own backup policies, we could restore our normal operations; otherwise, if we had to depend on this solution, we would have been long dead because the infection was so bad, it couldn't even detect the infection. Intercept X Endpoint cannot handle zero-day attacks; in my experience, last year, we had this major issue with a malware attack, and it happened just because of our backup policies that we were able to recover without any support from Sophos, which just told us they would charge us some 1 Crore in rupees. Intercept X Endpoint should improve their implementation; things will never be perfect for the new world. This new world is always facing new kinds of attacks and new ways to compromise the system. They need to learn fast, implement fast, and sometimes redesigning the solution is the solution—not just patchwork. There was a time we used to love Sophos because of its fresh design and innovative thought. In my experience, when technical companies are led by MBA professionals, they lose their shine on the technical part and become more dependent on target sales; it turns into a marketing-centric operation that loses the technical focus completely.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Being a cloud solution it is very flexible in serving internal and external connections and a broad range of devices."
"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."
"The information the dashboard provides is very clear."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the fact that it was running in the background and it would intercept any weird stuff, and the fact that it would send things directly to the cloud for sandboxing. It's quite practical."
"The dashboard is customizable."
"It has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"Since they've done their most recent update, the ease to isolate endpoints is valuable. If we find one where there is a virus on it, we can easily isolate it. We don't even have to contact the user. We don't have to manually take them off the network. We can easily isolate them."
"The most valuable feature of CylancePROTECT is the support."
"The non-daily requirement to update signatures is the most valuable feature. From a functional point of view, it is pretty spot on. For instance, we compared an algorithm from five years ago to today's algorithm, and it was 98% accurate. It has the ability to detect and mitigate. In the industrial environment that we work in, there's what we call OT versus IT. You are IT Central, but this is OT. Generally, we don't have the same level of skillset as IT individuals or IT professionals have. This particular product doesn't require you to be a computer scientist to be able to understand its proprietary algorithm and to be able to deploy, use, and work within it. It integrates well with a robust SIEM or SOAR solution, and it plays nice with others. We use other detection solutions like CyberX or site provision with Cisco, and it plays nice. That's one of the things we really liked about it."
"The solution is extremely scalable. It's got the hybrid functionality, it's got the system functionality and cloud functionality as well."
"It is a good endpoint solution. It is very easy to manage and detect the threat immediately. It will take the necessary actions."
"The solution is pretty easy to scale."
"We are quite security-focused. Blackberry Protect as an endpoint solution for our service really delivers what we are expecting."
"The initial endpoint cost may seem a little high (~$55/device/year), but when you look at the total peace of mind that the solution of Cylance endpoint protection provides, with no reboots for updates, and negligible performance impact, it is well worth it."
"Does malware analysis. Blocks WannaCry and other attacks that have come out."
"The threat analysis center is nice."
"The solution's initial setup process was straightforward."
"The solution is scalable."
"There do not seem to be any limitations to the scalability of this product."
"The anti-exploit technology within Intercept X Endpoint is excellent."
"The most valuable features of Sophos Intercept X are the ease of use and the policy options that are simple to understand. Overall, the protection is good."
"The patches on offer are very helpful."
"Everything in Intercept X Endpoints is much centralised which makes it easy for our team to work with. The functions are in a single portal."
 

Cons

"To jump from the partner to Palo Alto directly was challenging."
"Every 30 or 40 days, there's a new version and we need to go and make sure our customer's laptops are upgraded."
"If they had pulse rate detection, it would be better."
"The solution should offer more dashboards and they should be better customized."
"It automatically detects security issues. It should be able to protect our network devices while operating autonomously."
"In an upcoming release, the solution could improve by proving hard disk encryption. If it could support this it would be a complete solution."
"While using Cortex, I noticed some aspects that could be improved, such as increasing the synchronization speed between XDR and Xnor."
"Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth."
"It should have better support for Windows and Mac."
"The solution’s technical support could be improved."
"If they can add more features on top of their Persona feature that would be ideal."
"They could improve on the false positives, reporting and whitelisting features."
"The stability could be improved."
"An area for improvement in CylancePROTECT is its pricing, as it's a bit costly."
"​It needs real analysis of quarantined files. The EDR product isn't showing much right now."
"The process of whitelisting a script that you want to be able to run can be a little bit difficult, or awkward."
"The EDR could be improved, and perhaps the User Interface."
"The detection and the AI capabilities should be improved upon."
"The pricing could be a bit lower to match the normal retail pricing."
"We are not able to merge the sub-estates. If we create multiple sub-states and there may be instances where a user is in a different sub-state, it may not be possible for us to relocate that user from one sub-state to another through the console. We have to merge them manually which is not ideal."
"Sophos has a lot of different features. Some of them are tied to different clients, which may mean that different prices or licenses have to be added on. It can be a little bit confusing if you're not familiar with the logic of how they work. They can make it a little bit clearer."
"Technical support is too slow to schedule meetings."
"It would be a value-add if they can include integration with other technologies or solutions, like Fortinet, Blue Coat, etc."
"Intercept X Endpoint's anti-ransomware capabilities failed us during a bad attack, and just because of our own backup policies, we could restore our normal operations; otherwise, if we had to depend on this solution, we would have been long dead because the infection was so bad, it couldn't even detect the infection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a little high. It is per user per year."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"The cost depends on your chosen license type, like Pro or other licenses."
"Every customer has to pay for a license because it doesn't work with what you get from a managed services provider."
"When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward."
"I feel it is fairly priced."
"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"The tool is not that expensive."
"This cost of the license is approximately $5 USD monthly per user."
"It's not so heavily priced; rather, it's average and decent."
"We pay our license on a yearly basis and have just renewed for two years."
"The solution provides me with competitive pricing."
"The price is reasonable for us at the moment. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten."
"CylancePROTECT's pricing is reasonable, at about €18 per user, per year."
"Currently, we have competitive pricing for Cylance, which is affordable enough to consider."
"The price of this product should be reduced because it is a little high."
"We have an annual subscription."
"Its cost is good."
"The solution offers both a three-year license and an annual license. I would rate the product's pricing a one out of ten."
"Its price is reasonable."
"The pricing is average for software like this, but you can purchase additional services if you wish."
"The price of Sophos Intercept X is competitive."
"We were able to eliminate the ransomware using the one-month, full-featured trial license."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) solutions are best for your needs.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business75
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

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. ...
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 th...
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,...
What do you like most about Blackberry Protect?
It is a good endpoint solution. It is very easy to manage and detect the threat immediately. It will take the necessa...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Blackberry Protect?
The price is reasonable for us at the moment. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with Blackberry Protect?
I face challenges with the exclusion policy - it still scans folders we told it not to, causing issues. When we conta...
How does Crodwstrike Falcon compare with Sophos Intercept X?
I like that Crowdstrike Falcon allows me to easily correlate data between my firewalls. Its detection and machine lea...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sophos Intercept X?
Intercept X Endpoint has some impact on the budget. It is quite costly when measuring Intercept X Endpoint's protecti...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Blackberry Protect
Sophos Intercept X
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Panasonic, Noble Energy, Apria Healthcare Group Inc., Charles River Laboratories, Rovi Corporation, Toyota, Kiewit
Flexible Systems
Find out what your peers are saying about BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs. Intercept X Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.