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Guardz vs Varonis Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 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 Ransomware Protection
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Guardz
Ranking in Ransomware Protection
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (43rd), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (58th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (72nd)
Varonis Platform
Ranking in Ransomware Protection
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (17th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (8th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (6th), Data Governance (5th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd), Compliance Management (8th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th), Insider Risk Management (1st), AI Security (9th)
 

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.
Steve Bowtell - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at Cyber Active
Exceptionally easy to integrate and covers a multitude of cybersecurity issues
The solution's interface appears very simple, but it is very complicated in the back end. So, it removes all the complications that an MSP or an MSSP would normally have. The solution's maintenance depends on whether you run it like an MDR platform where you provide the detection response part for the customer. That would normally be the MSP part. Sometimes, you have customers who are just happy to get an email and tell them what the problem is, and they fix it themselves. If there's no in-house expertise, the MSP or the MSSP can do the maintenance. If there's in-house expertise, it's just a matter of advising them. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
TarunKumar11 - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Leadership Council at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
Data governance has strengthened and automation now reduces risk and manual compliance work
Varonis Platform offers key features including data discovery, data classification, data analysis, governance, user and entity behavior analysis, also known as UEBA, which helps in ransomware detection, insider threat detection, and compliance reporting. It does a lot of automation from a remediation standpoint, as well as investigation and forensics. The number one feature that makes the biggest difference for my clients is visibility into unstructured data; that is the most difficult for organizations to achieve. They do not have a good understanding of where sensitive data resides, who has access to this data, whether this access is appropriate, and how data is being used. Varonis Platform provides visibility, governance, threat detection, and automated remediation around data. Varonis Platform is a great data discovery platform that provides visibility into sensitive data estimates and how it is being used. Clients have been able to reduce excessive permissions, strengthen their compliance posture, detect insider threats, and ransomware activity, which would otherwise be difficult and manual. Varonis Platform is deployed in my clients' organizations in a combination of all types. Many clients use Varonis Platform in a largely SaaS-based model since it is a data security platform consumed in this way, and many organizations still operate hybrid environments. As far as Varonis Platform is in a position to get the data source and identify systems, it can discover and classify more secure data. Deployment in most of our clients is cloud-based, connecting to Microsoft 365, AWS, or other SaaS applications such as Salesforce. In other environments, it is a hybrid deployment with SaaS and on-premises, including file servers, NAS devices, and AD servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The multi-layered approach to the product gives you confidence that it will stop exploits, ransomware, worms, or viruses from compromising endpoints, essentially providing peace of mind."
"My advice for anybody who is considering Cortex XDR is that it is a complete solution, and has very good features."
"These days it's machine-learning technology and behavior-based analytics features that make us more secure."
"Cortex XDR features advanced threat detection capabilities."
"The policy configuration is great, the granularity of policies that are available is very helpful, it is straightforward to set up, and it has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"Cortex XDR is a very capable solution for protecting large networks and a lot of endpoints. It's very useful because the automation is very high, and if you combine it with the features on Palo Alto firewalls, it provides very strong protection."
"Stability is one of the features we like the most."
"After deploying Traps, we saw the performance of the network improve by 65 to 70 percent."
"The solution is exceptionally easy to integrate and covers a multitude of cybersecurity issues."
"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."
"The 24/7 support is the most valuable feature, and they have been able to answer support questions pretty quickly."
"That alerting and reporting service is great."
"The example I used with the hospital gives a very clear picture of the ROI."
"Varonis Platform has positively impacted my organization by providing clarity regarding data and permissions, improving visibility, security, and compliance."
"Varonis Platform support has been amazing throughout every step that we have taken with them."
"Varonis offers robust data access governance, allowing us to understand which sensitive data exists and who has access to it."
"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."
 

Cons

"The solution lacks real-time, on-demand antivirus."
"The solution could improve by providing better integration with their own products and others."
"The dashboard could use some significant improvement, just making it more useful with more information. It has a limited amount of information right now. It is customizable, but I'd love to see a better out-of-box dashboard."
"The connection to the internet has not performed as expected."
"However, if you do not have Palo Alto in your environment, you are paying these additional services just for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, so it is not a cost-effective solution."
"There is also no recovery feature; if some endpoint is under attack there must be the possibility of recovering it or restoring it to a normal state."
"The server sometimes stops continuously to check things so it would be helpful to receive access updates or technical reasons."
"We have found that there are times Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks does not detect some of the viruses, we have to use another protection solution called Kaspersky."
"The solution's security awareness training and phishing are very United States-focused and don't work very well in Australia."
"It would be beneficial if the reporting in Varonis Platform could use PDFs instead of Excel for better graphs, as the dashboards are really good, and it would be nice to have simplified dashboards in PDF for business reporting purposes."
"For unstructured data monitoring, it's one of the top ones, if not the top one, due to its usability."
"We have Microsoft Office 365. I just saw an article today which says that they're actually getting integrated with Microsoft Office 365, which would be a useful feature. For user-based reports, log on activity, and stuff like that, it doesn't seem to really be present like Log360. That could just be my inexperience with it. I've been dealing with it for only about two and a half months."
"The solution's interface is a little complicated with regard to setting up filters and reports."
"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."
"The troubleshooting capabilities could be improved. It has so many interconnected components."
"Be prepared that when you implement the product, you will have to tune it as you go."
"It is significantly complex."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."
"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."
"It's way too expensive, but security is expensive. You pay for your licensing, and then you pay for someone to monitor the stuff."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"This is an expensive solution."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"The price of the product is not very economical."
"I like Guardz's pricing model because it's very cost-effective and has no long-term commitments."
"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."
"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."
"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."
"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

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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,...
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What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?
Varonis Platform could be improved because when I used it, we had a significant issue related to the large volume of ...
What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?
My main use case for Varonis Platform is to monitor access to sensitive data across file shares, Microsoft 365, and S...
What advice do you have for others considering Varonis Platform?
Varonis Platform receives a rating of seven out of ten. I chose seven out of ten because the user experience was easy...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
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Nottingham Building Society
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