Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Mandiant Advantage comparison

Palo Alto Networks and Google are both solutions in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.6, while Google is ranked #27 with an average rating of 8.0. Palo Alto Networks holds a 4.8% mindshare in XDR, compared to Google’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Palo Alto Networks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Google users who would recommend it.

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...

Read 104 Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks reviews

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5,876 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Mandiant Advantage

Read 6 Mandiant Advantage reviews

2,512 Views
1,130 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...

Mandiant Advantage

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Cortex XDR and Mandiant Advantage are key contenders in the endpoint detection and response category. Cortex XDR generally has the edge in integration and analytics-driven detection, while Mandiant Advantage offers superior intelligence features.

Features: Cortex XDR is recognized for its native integration with Palo Alto products, seamless threat detection capabilities, and robust analytics for threat identification. Mandiant Advantage excels in providing comprehensive threat intelligence, global threat insights, and enriched contextual threat understanding, making it a powerful tool for intelligence-led protection.

Room for Improvement: Cortex XDR may benefit from expanding its non-Palo Alto integration options, enhancing user interface intuitiveness, and improving the depth of its behavior analytics. Mandiant Advantage could improve by offering more seamless integrations with third-party products, optimizing deployment simplicity, and expanding its data analytics functionalities to match utmost industry standards.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cortex XDR offers a straightforward deployment process that integrates naturally into Palo Alto ecosystems, supported by dedicated customer service. Mandiant Advantage provides flexible deployment options coupled with expert-guided threat response services, appealing to organizations requiring strategic advisory services.

Pricing and ROI: Cortex XDR is often seen as a cost-effective choice for enterprises embedded in Palo Alto Networks environments, promising significant ROI through its integrated security solutions. Mandiant Advantage may come at a higher cost but justifies this with an impressive ROI, leveraging its rich threat intelligence capabilities to deliver proactive threat management.

To learn more, read our detailed Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Mandiant Advantage Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Mandiant Advantage

December 2025

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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...

Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

7th

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), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)

Mandiant Advantage

Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

27th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Attack Surface Management (ASM) (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.8%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mandiant Advantage is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks	4.8%
Mandiant Advantage	1.2%
Other	94.0%

Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH

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.

Read full review

SameepAgarwal

Associate Consultant (IT Security) at Triune Digital Security

In-depth traffic analysis and proactive support reduce investigation time

The live IOC feed identifies the type, technique, and tactics used. This becomes handy since then I know what to refer to from the playbook. For instance, if I take a use case of someone with Mimikatz installed on their system, knowing the nature beforehand reduces investigation time. I can quickly apply the playbook to resolve incidents in less time.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to kind of stitch everything together and see the actual complete picture is very useful. I guess you'd call it a playbook. Some people call it the forensics analysis of what was happening on particular endpoints when they detected some malicious behavior, and what transpired before that to cause that. It is also very user friendly. The way they have done everything and integrated all the solutions that they've purchased over the years to make it a very seamless, effective product is very good. One thing about Palo Alto is that they take the products or services that they purchase and make them seamless for the end user as compared to some companies that purchase other companies and then just kind of have their products off to the side or keep different interfaces. Palo Alto doesn't do that."

"Stability is a primary factor, and then there's the ease of distribution and policy management."

"When the pandemic started, Palo Alto came up with many solutions, which helped with the quick shift from on-premises to the cloud."

"What I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is that it is a comprehensive solution that contains everything the organization may need when using endpoints."

"The initial setup isn't too bad."

"The live terminal is probably the best thing ever. It gives you the access to get straight onto any machine."

"The solution allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."

"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pros

"The scalability of Mandiant Advantage deserves a ten out of ten."

"Mandiant Advantage is excellent at providing the full context and all the information, where the information was found, and the full data, including the raw data that was uploaded onto the Internet."

"The live IOC feed identifies the type, technique, and tactics used."

"The advantage of the solution is being able to go look up threat actors and get a lot of detailed information about different attacks and different tactics and general information about threats."

"The feature I have found most valuable is directory monitoring. We experienced an instance of threat actors trying to ensure a complex and massive attack against our customer's infrastructure on the forum. That is, they were animating people on a formum. The solution alerted us to this two days ahead of the attack, which gave us plenty of time to prepare for it."

"It is so valuable to have someone performing these functions outside of our business hours when we don't have staff in the building. We've seen a lot of solid metrics on the amount of malware that it's detecting and resolving. We're pleased with it so far."

"I have never faced stability issues."

Cons

"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."

"Cortex XDR is trickier to configure than other Palo Alto products. This is one area where we are not so satisfied."

"There is a severe gap in functionality between Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For example all folder restriction settings are Windows only. Traps 5.0+ does not have SAML / LDAP integration."

"Data privacy is a matter of concern. You have to be careful with data privacy, it can be sensitive and Cortex can have most of your access."

"It's more focused on network communication. If a customer wants to increase the level of protection and start working with documents, it's impossible to integrate these features into the system. It's more of a communication-oriented system than a content security-oriented system."

"Dashboards do not allow everyone to see what's happening."

"I recommend adding a data loss prevention (DLP) solution to Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. The inclusion of this feature would allow the application of DLP policies alongside antivirus policies via a single agent and console, making it more competitive as other OEMs often offer DLP solutions as part of their antivirus products."

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by adding a sandbox feature to better compete with their competitors which have it."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks cons

"Collaboration of data in my view becomes a bit clogged, requiring effort to understand visually."

"They could have better support. Now that they've merged, they are moving towards a portal system, which isn't very helpful."

"I think that the data query that is used for data cloud language should be improved. It's really hard to query actual data from the platform."

"Sometimes Mandiant Advantage becomes noisy when dealing with widely recognized companies due to false positives."

"Mandiant's on-prem client is too processor-intensive, so it's putting a strain on the local device's CPU. When a scan is running on the device, the other processing tasks slow to a crawl. We're still trying to figure out the correct settings for the client."

"Sometimes Mandiant Advantage becomes noisy when dealing with widely recognized companies due to false positives."

"I have already given them feedback that their UI needs improvement since sometimes there is a lag. The side-by-side depiction of request response and action clogs the screen."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is "expensive" and flexible."

"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."

"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."

"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."

"It has a yearly renewal."

"When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward."

"It's way too expensive, but security is expensive. You pay for your licensing, and then you pay for someone to monitor the stuff."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	43
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	46

No data available

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. The ability to reverse damage caused by ransomware with minimal interruptions to...

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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 ...

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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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Mandiant Advantage?

Sometimes Mandiant Advantage becomes noisy when dealing with widely recognized companies due to false positives. More fine-tuning is required to handle famous company names. It also handles alerts ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Mandiant Advantage?

I use it for cyber threat intelligence. I gather information about newly created domains around the Internet that can be related to my managed company. I monitor these domains for any phishing acti...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Mandiant Advantage?

I would advise exploring multiple functions because there are many different capabilities of Mandiant Advantage. For small organizations, try every feature included in the package. Use known source...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

Cortex XSIAM vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

Trellix Endpoint Security Platform vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 3% of the time

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CrowdStrike Falcon vs Mandiant Advantage

Compared 14% of the time

Recorded Future vs Mandiant Advantage

Compared 9% of the time

Group-IB Threat Intelligence vs Mandiant Advantage

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Mandiant Advantage

Compared 6% of the time

Cymulate vs Mandiant Advantage

Compared 5% of the time

More Mandiant Advantage Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

February 2026

Download Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks product report

Buyer's Guide

Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

January 2026

Download Mandiant Advantage product report

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps

Mandiant Threat Intelligence

Overview

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks provides advanced threat detection with AI-driven endpoint protection and seamless integration, ensuring multi-layered security and automatic threat response.

Cortex XDR is designed to safeguard endpoints against malware and suspicious activities. It offers advanced threat detection and response capabilities using behavioral analysis, AI, and machine learning. It seamlessly integrates with security infrastructures, providing endpoint security, firewall integration, and enhanced visibility in both cloud-based and on-premises environments.

What are the key features of Cortex XDR?

Advanced Threat Detection: Uses AI and machine learning for proactive threat identification.
Multi-layered Security: Combines various security measures for comprehensive protection.
Endpoint Protection: Safeguards against malware and exploits.
Behavioral Analysis: Monitors suspicious activity for early detection.
Automatic Threat Response: Automates responses to neutralize threats.

What benefits should users expect?

Ease of Use: Simplifies security management with intuitive design.
Resource Efficiency: Minimizes impact on system resources.
Integration Capabilities: Works well with existing security setups.
Reduced Analyst Workload: Automates processes to decrease manual intervention.

Organizations in diverse sectors deploy Cortex XDR to protect against malware, leveraging its advanced threat detection capabilities. Its integration with existing security infrastructures appeals to those seeking comprehensive protection in both cloud and on-premises environments, providing enhanced visibility and threat intelligence.

Palo Alto Networks

Mandiant Advantage is a multi-vendor XDR platform that provides security teams of all sizes with frontline intelligence. Mandiant Advantage aims to speed up operational as well as strategic security and risk decision making. Mandiant Advantage provides security teams with an early knowledge advantage through the Mandiant Intel Grid, which provides platform modules with current and relevant threat data and analysis capabilities. Organizations are better protected from cyber attacks and more confident in their readiness when they have access to continuous security validation, detection, and response.

Mandiant Advantage Features

Mandiant Advantage has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Threat intelligence: Front-line intelligence that enables a defender to be aware of the strategies and tactics that opponents are employing at this moment. Organizations will be able to contextualize, prioritize, and implement the most pertinent new intelligence by fusing ASM and threat intelligence.

Security validation: This allows security teams to optimize, rationalize, and prioritize their security activities from a budget and manpower viewpoint. It measures the effectiveness of security controls applied within an organization. Controls can be evaluated against the most recent TTPs actively used by threat actors by incorporating information into the security validation procedure. Organizations can determine whether their security policies are successfully thwarting or detecting attacks against their external attack surface by integrating ASM and security validation.

Automated Defense: In order to fuel SOC event/alert correlation and triage, Automated Defense combines knowledge and intelligence with machine learning. This is similar to integrating a machine-based Mandiant analyst into your security program. By merging ASM and Automated Defense, more context is given to Automated Defense, enhancing the relevance and usefulness of alarms.

Attack surface management: ASM offers a continuous, scalable method for locating hundreds of different asset and exposure types within on-premises, cloud, and SaaS application environments. In addition to assets being found, technologies in use are also identified, and vulnerabilities are confirmed rather than just speculated. Cyber defenders are able to effectively and efficiently limit their external exposures by integrating the full Mandiant Advantage suite into ASM, which prioritizes and validates the information regarding the attack surface.

Mandiant Advantage Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Mandiant Advantage. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Boost your current security investments: No matter what security policies you have implemented, you may improve your security capabilities by automating Mandiant's expertise as a virtual extension of your team.

Improve your visibility and priority: View the threats Mandiant is continuously monitoring across your attack surface and internal controls in order to prioritize and drive focus.

Flexible deployment: Depending on your needs, Mandiant Advantage can be supplied as technology, along with support, or as a fully managed contract.

Scale efficiently: Without the need for time-consuming and expensive human labor, a SaaS-based strategy deploys in hours, scales with your environment, and provides constant expert analysis.

Google

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank

Stater Bros. Markets, Rush Copley, Blackboat, CapWealth

Buyer's Guide

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Mandiant Advantage

December 2025

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