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Cybereason XDR vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 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
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Cybereason XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
24th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (9th), Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 4.5%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cybereason XDR is 1.0%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 3.8%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks4.5%
Microsoft Defender XDR3.8%
Cybereason XDR1.0%
Other90.7%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

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.
Peter Nowak - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager for Cybereason at Bechtle
Integration of multiple firewalls enables advanced threat detection
The integration of data from firewalls and Active Directory is most valuable. Cybereason XDR facilitates two-way communication, where the firewall sends data to the Cybereason system, and it can communicate with the firewall to stop unwanted communication. Customers can deal with multiple types of firewalls with ease. The behavioral analytics help detect advanced threats when attackers use existing software. The multilayered protection approach, including NGAV, integrates XDR detection with antivirus to assess and counter threats effectively.
reviewer2812758 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infosec at a government with 10,001+ employees
Integrated defenses have unified threat hunting, phishing simulations, and identity investigations
I appreciate Microsoft Defender XDR's MDE, Microsoft Defender tool, which has Attack Simulator. Instead of doing a phishing campaign and getting a separate tool, Microsoft Defender XDR does it all. These features of Microsoft Defender XDR have helped us conduct a phishing campaign quarterly, which has been beneficial. I also appreciate the fact that it has Defender for Office integrated, Defender for Identity, and everything integrated together. I would describe the process of using Microsoft Defender XDR to prioritize incidents in my security operations as quite decent. I appreciate the automatic alerting system where any incidents or alerts we receive come directly to our email. From there, we can open the email, go directly to Microsoft Defender XDR, and start our investigations and remediations. I perceive the integration of security and identity access management in Microsoft Defender XDR as affecting my identity protection strategies very well because it is well integrated with Purview, integrated well with Entra ID, and integrated well with Exchange. I especially appreciate MDO, the Office product. If anything happens and I want to conduct an investigation, it takes me directly to Exchange, where I can also investigate any emails or phishing incidents. Instead of going to different portals, everything can be done from Microsoft Defender XDR. If necessary for further investigation, Microsoft Defender XDR then directs me to that environment. I would assess the integration of AI in guiding security actions within Microsoft Defender XDR as quite positive. Recently, Security Copilot went big, and it is beneficial that I can use that, especially to write KQL. I can do threat hunting features and intelligence all within using Microsoft's Security Copilot. It also has a nice AI feature for threat hunting. I know that all the Defender logs go to Sentinel, and I can pull it up from Microsoft Defender XDR or from Sentinel. The fact that I can actually do all that within Microsoft Defender XDR is a nice feature. In the top module, I can do threat lookups, and I can actually type KQLs in Microsoft Defender XDR and look up incidents. Predictive shielding has had a nice impact on my proactive security measures. It is beneficial that it has, similar to Entra ID, a secure score. For me to improve the product, the secure score helps me out. If I rate it from highest to lowest, I can see what things I can improve. Secure score helps me see what areas I can improve in Microsoft Defender XDR to increase my score and bring it to 80 or more. Knowing Microsoft Defender XDR from using it since 2019, before COVID days, I know that they have improved significantly. It is much more user-friendly and has a very nice vulnerability feature that I find handy and useful. The fact that this feature integrates into Intune is also very decent.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution helps find bugs, and it is safe to use to prevent attacks by hackers."
"Threat identification and detection are the most valuable features of this solution."
"It is a simple platform to use."
"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."
"I've found the solution to be highly scalable for enterprises."
"Cortex is a very good total solution on the endpoints."
"It is easy to use."
"In one single alert, we are getting the network telemetry, endpoint telemetry, email security telemetry, and proxy telemetry all in one single ticket, making it very easy."
"The integration of data from firewalls and Active Directory is most valuable."
"Cybereason XDR's most useful feature is the investigation."
"The solution has an investigation feature, which is useful for building storylines."
"I like that it's fully integrated with Windows, Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, and Outlook. It is better than other antivirus solutions because it's fully integrated with all Microsoft products. It's easy to integrate them and onboard all Windows devices from SCCM."
"Microsoft is a one-stop solution, and it has an answer for any problem you're facing."
"The 'Incidents and Alerts' tab is a valuable feature where we can find triggered alerts."
"Based on my experience, I rate Microsoft Defender XDR as nine out of ten."
"The feature I like the most in Microsoft Defender XDR is XDR because it has taken us a while, but we are a global company with people in a few countries, and now we can have centralized alerts that we send out to Teams messages and clean up infected computers or help people in a very short amount of time."
"The feature I find most valuable is Defender for Endpoint."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is very comprehensive, covering a lot of the services, tools, and applications that we use, so it's very efficient, and it works out of the box."
"The integration, visibility, vulnerability management, and device identification are valuable."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see more UI improvements. Their UI is a bit basic. When we are speaking about Palo Alto Networks they are the big company, so they can improve the UI a little bit. The UI, the reports, the log system can all be improved."
"The setup is quite easy. We had appropriate support from the manager. One thing that was missing was the integration part."
"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 by Palo Alto Networks is not only pricey; it is extremely expensive."
"The product's pricing could be better."
"Cortex does not offer an on-premises solution. However, some customers would prefer not to be on the cloud. It would be ideal if it could offer something on-prem as well."
"If you compare it to SentinelOne, which has more functionalities and detection capabilities on an open platform, the pricing on SentinelOne is far more reasonable and cheaper than Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks."
"The deployment is pretty hard."
"Cybereason's customer support could be better."
"The one thing we sometimes have issues with is its integration with other security applications like antiviruses."
"There could be more integrations with other data sources like NDR systems."
"Customer service is rated as a five out of ten. When they work and reach the right level, they are helpful, but getting to the right person can be time-consuming."
"The documentation on their website is somewhat outdated and doesn't show properly. I wanted to try a query in Microsoft Defender 365. When I opened the related documentation from the security blog on the Microsoft website, the figures were not showing. It was difficult to understand the article without having the figures. The figures were there in the article, but they were not getting loaded, which made the article obsolete."
"I do not think the Incident Queue Assistant has helped improve the efficiency of my SOC workflow."
"The only problem I find is that the use cases are built-in. There is no template available that you can modify according to your organization's standards. What they give is very generic, the market standard, but that might not be applicable to every organization."
"From a performance standpoint, improvements could be made."
"At times, there may be delays in the execution of certain actions and their effects."
"The solution could enhance the threat Intelligence feature by making it more relevant to specific industries. Much of the threat intelligence information isn't directly applicable to our environment. It would be beneficial if the threat intelligence were tailored to the industry, such as healthcare or fintech, where the solution is being used."
"There's still some more work to be done there. Additionally, the limited terminal live access an analyst has is very restricted."
"Microsoft Defender XDR can be improved as a solution because it's still quite costly; it's part of E5, E5 security, so the cost is still quite high, especially considering SME and C customers, or SMB customers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a yearly renewal."
"I am using the Community edition."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"I feel it is fairly priced."
"Our license will require renewal in August, after which the maintenance will continue as usual."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"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 solution is cheaper than Microsoft Defender. It has a subscription and no standard license."
"The license cost for a year is approximately forty-four thousand, and this annual saving is a significant factor in our decision to switch."
"I believe that the pricing of the licensing is fair."
"I would like to have more security features in the lower licenses because not every customer is able to buy E5 licenses. The bundling isn't always easy for our customers to understand. Compared to other tools, it's a good price."
"365 Defender can get expensive because you pay per gigabyte of data ingested. On the other hand, much of the data available in the other Microsoft security solutions are made available relatively cheaply—sometimes at cost or for free. Integrating only a limited set of third-party solutions with Sentinel would be cost-effective. It's much more affordable if companies only have Microsoft stuff."
"The bundling of software makes it easier to manage our setup, but Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs."
"The solution is affordable, and we haven't been hit with any hidden costs. The subscription model is straightforward, and it's easy to understand how much additional features cost. If we need to cancel a license or feature, we do that well in advance to avoid being charged for it, but overall, the pricing and licensing are simple and easy."
"Microsoft should provide lower-level licensing options. They should do it in such a way that even an individual could purchase a license, and it should be entirely flexible."
"Defender XDR is included in the E5 license, but it's a bit too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise54
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise41
 

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 needs improvement with Cybereason XDR?
There could be more integrations with other data sources like NDR systems. Additionally, technical support has been s...
What is your primary use case for Cybereason XDR?
I use Cybereason XDR for customers who don't have a SOC or managed SOC yet and want to be protected on more than thei...
What advice do you have for others considering Cybereason XDR?
I rate Cybereason XDR a nine out of ten. I recommend having hands-on experience and doing some threat hunting to fami...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender XDR is that we are on an E5 license,...
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
From my perspective, Microsoft Defender XDR can be improved with better visibility in certain areas where I can trigg...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft 365 Defender?
My main use cases for Microsoft Defender XDR are telemetry, advanced hunting, and the ability to perform host isolati...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
MOTOROLA MOBILITY
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cybereason XDR vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.