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Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs ServiceNow Security Operations comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 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

Torq
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
AI-SOC (1st), AI-Powered Security Automation (1st)
Palo Alto Networks Cortex X...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (2nd), SOC as a Service (2nd)
ServiceNow Security Operations
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Security Incident Response (1st), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (9th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (16th)
 

Featured Reviews

AD
Solutions Architect at ProArch
Automation has streamlined multi-tenant SOC workflows and improves alert handling efficiency
Although the reporting within Torq is not that great, we did ask for many features regarding reporting in Torq, but due to some platform constraints, they could not make the whole dataset available for us to be used in reporting. Except for that, we used some basic reporting. When I used Torq, it was indeed in the early stages of AI capabilities. Only a few customers were allowed to use it, and we were among them. It functioned well as long as we summarized the data properly. If you input garbage, you would get garbage out. Thus, we had to do significant fine-tuning regarding what data context we provided to the AI orchestrator to get meaningful results. In terms of Torq's unified platform approach to AI SOC automation and case management compared to managing multiple point solutions across my security stack, I find it case-centric. The unified view in case management is good since it provides clarity, although there are limitations regarding how many items in case management can be modified at once. Bulk operations are very limited, potentially due to their back-end database or data retrieval processes that can be improved. Regarding improvements for Torq, when we were onboarded, there were aspects we were uncertain about, such as the number of cases that could be generated, what data we could bring in, how many clients we could onboard, and similar concerns. Initially, we also lacked clarity about the number of playbooks or workflows we could build. Different triggers like system triggers, case-based triggers, and others can be employed without restrictions, but when it comes to on-demand and scheduled jobs, there is a limitation based on the subscription and pricing tier that notably caps the number of workflows we can create. No bulk editing across cases was one issue, along with limited filtering related to single grouping constraints. Additionally, the out-of-the-box case templates provided require substantial modifications before they become usable. There is also a feature in the cases for notes that cannot be searched. They are only visible through the UI, which is another area for improvement. The workflow and execution-based charges seem misleading as this was not discussed initially. I am not sure if new customers are made aware of this. It seems that workflows revolving around cases hinder functionality outside of case management, as we have many use cases needing on-demand triggers and schedules for functions like reporting or polling devices. Creating additional workflows to achieve basic functionalities raises costs significantly, which disadvantages customers. While they facilitate optimization and scaling, the support received tends to be very basic. Improvements can be made in that area as well.
EricRise - PeerSpot reviewer
Noc Network Engineer at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees
Automation playbooks have reduced soc noise and now streamline daily incident response
To improve Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR, there can be a learning curve to it. It is not a very user-friendly product; it is complex. It handles debugs and automation playbooks. You have to really spend some time dedicated to learning the product, scripting, and acquiring your certifications on it. Cost is another item as well. That can be quite significant; it does depend on other tools for EDR, whether you are using Palo Alto's XDR system or any number of third-party products for that. There are some reporting and logging restrictions and limitations. Some of those are going to be constraints, including window size limits. Database use with it has limited scalability for that type of application.
SH
Freelancer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Gaining unified control over vulnerabilities has improved governance but pricing and support need work
The market price is slightly high. The pricing should be a little lower because this is a SaaS-based product. Everyone using ServiceNow might be getting many modules, but the overall module cost becomes high with license consumption one by one. I personally see that if ServiceNow is to grow over the next decade, they need to work on the pricing part. Cheap providers are emerging, and in the age of AI, it is evident that the chatbot and the virtual agent features, which are prominent features of ServiceNow, could be completely compromised and replaced by people choosing other tools. If ServiceNow develops a strategy to lower the price and increase the customer base, it could help ServiceNow to grow for another decade. I encountered one issue in ServiceNow Security Operations. The different tools, for example, Tenable and TVM, discovered vulnerabilities that had very limited information when imported. However, the same vulnerabilities from different sources, the TVM and Tenable, had shorter descriptions than what was present in the common vulnerabilities or CVE. If this depends on the implementer, such as Tenable or how other security operations implement them, the text was very limited. Customers were asking questions about why this was happening and if ServiceNow was working properly. The vulnerability information should be updated and the common text should be displayed every time, regardless of how many different tools are used for integration. The vulnerability database should be consistent when it comes to the description to avoid confusion for customers implementing it for the first time. This is an improvement that ServiceNow can make.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Torq has changed the day-to-day experience for my security analysts and me by saving literally thousands of man-hours per month since we have implemented some of these use cases."
"Almost four or five hours of work is now completed in four or five minutes."
"We have seen fewer failures of automations from the time Torq came into the picture, we've had a more streamlined process of handling incidents, and at the same time, we've learned to embed the AI into our incident types, and that is how it has helped us in the automation."
"Once I started to use the system and I saw the potential, it changed all of our work in IT."
"Torq has definitely changed the day-to-day experience for our security analysts, as they feel more excited and feel that Torq interface and workflow allow them to build things themselves."
"According to positive outcomes, Torq reduced manual work and made incident response more efficient."
"Torq has impacted my organization positively by allowing us to earn time and invest resources in other projects that are more meaningful and more interesting, pushing deeper into what a SOC is, and building our processes."
"If I review about 100 vendors that I might work with, Torq is definitely in the top five that gave me personally investment back, just because every bit of effort I put into Torq eventually became a workflow that gave it back to me."
"The Palo Alto ecosystem has a marketplace offering integration with Sentinel or other products."
"The most valuable feature is automation."
"What I like most about Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is how user-friendly it is for development. It is much simpler to work with compared to similar tools I've used."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The solution is user-friendly and easy to configure."
"The most valuable features of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR are its overall track record and features that fit our use case."
"You are going to see a return on investment; you are not going to need as many human bodies filtering out all the noise in your SOC appliances or log files because Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is going to handle sixty percent to seventy percent or better of that workload for you."
"I chose Cortex XSOAR because the client also has Palo Alto firewalls. I can incorporate the data from the Palo Alto firewalls into Cortex and send it into the same data lake to manipulate that data. It lets me manage and monitor the data in one place."
"ServiceNow is a convenient platform to raise tickets, and the respective support team will contact us to resolve any issues."
"I will recommend it to others as it is an enterprise application used by large companies for ticketing purposes."
"We refer to the setup and installation guide provided by ServiceNow. They have good documentation, which makes it easier to handle the process."
"The product's most valuable features include the no-code capability for workflows and flow design, which makes it user-friendly, and the ability to perform advanced configurations."
"This product is a good value for the money."
"It streamlines processes; it collects data, takes that data and turns it into information, and allows you to manage through dashboards and work lists, improving every facet of the overall process."
"The SOAR module of ServiceNow Security Operations is the most valuable feature"
"The most valuable aspect of working with ServiceNow is its meaningful and feature-rich product."
 

Cons

"Regarding stability, I have noticed some lagging, crashing, and downtime, which is one of my largest gripes."
"However, we did encounter some problems with custom steps, which definitely affected our progress, and the speed of bug fixes is also a bit slower than expected."
"Even now, we have workflows that are in production that use AI steps and I get different results, making it unusable to some degree."
"The workflow and execution-based charges seem misleading as this was not discussed initially, and creating additional workflows to achieve basic functionalities raises costs significantly, which disadvantages customers."
"The case management piece, due to the platform being an automation-first tool, lacks real robust out-of-the-box case templates or good solutions for creating those without spending a lot of time doing development work, which makes the overall experience poor, honestly."
"Regarding the pricing of Torq, I would say it is expensive."
"I wish Torq's AI assistant for building templated workflows from scratch worked better; when you start with a blank slate, asking AI to help you build or template the workflow out does not go well."
"If Torq could enhance its AI features, it would benefit customers significantly by making the platform even more user-friendly."
"For building automation, there is not a lot of good documentation. The documentation is there, but it is not very good from my perspective."
"It is both difficult to implement, deploy, and integrate the product."
"It was expensive, making it essential for the customer to evaluate whether ROI is coming from the business model, as they are also acting as a SOC provider."
"The solution requires DV but does not support open-source DV elastic searches."
"To improve Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR, there can be a learning curve to it. It is not a very user-friendly product; it is complex."
"The complexity of Cortex XSOAR has a trade-off with its versatility. The deployment requires integration and the development of integration modules."
"The price of the solution could be lower."
"Palo Alto needs to develop more AI-centric products."
"The product of ServiceNow Security Operations needs more features. The product is called SecOps, but it is not security operations in terms of SIEM solutions."
"In future releases, I would like to add a follow-up and reminder feature. For the tickets in our queue, we could set reminders. This would help us prioritize older tickets before moving on to new ones."
"I would rate technical support for ServiceNow Security Operations as a six out of ten in terms of faster resolution."
"You can't connect to anything. It doesn't interact with things very well."
"There is room for improvement in terms of developer support and documentation."
"Report generation within ServiceNow can take some time. Additionally, there are occasional issues when raising a ticket, which can also consume time."
"An area for improvement I observed in ServiceNow Security Operations is the need to maintain correct CMDB data because if you're unable to do this, you can't perfectly maintain the vulnerability data. CMDB data in ServiceNow Security Operations needs to be accurate. As I've been working on ServiceNow Security Operations for only seven months, I still need more time to try all its modules before I can give recommendations regarding additional features I'd like to see in the solution."
"The initial setup is difficult."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It's cheaper compared to its competitors."
"It is expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing a nine."
"The solution is based on an annual licensing model that is expensive."
"There is a yearly license required for this solution and it is expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution is a bit on the expensive side."
"Palo Alto offers significant discounts to customers who purchase the products repeatedly."
"The solution is more expensive than BMC Remedy, the other ITSM tool available in the market."
"If you're going to implement it on your own, there would be internal costs. If you're going to implement it through a contractor or consultant, you have to pay for that."
"It is an expensive product."
"This product is a good value for the money."
"Compared to competitor tools, ServiceNow Security Operations is more affordable"
"The product is more expensive than other solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise33
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Torq?
There are some bugs in Torq, of course. They can be present in data transformation, some UI debugging, and other area...
What is your primary use case for Torq?
My main use case for Torq is the automation of cyber security processes through a SOAR platform and APIs. A main exam...
What advice do you have for others considering Torq?
Regarding someone thinking about using Torq, I recommend looking into their provided academy to start working with th...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
We can quantify the reduction. It is more than sixty to seventy percent reduction in the MTTR, as per documents from ...
What needs improvement with Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
The negative aspect of Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is the price; cost-wise, it is a bit higher. Other than enterp...
What is your primary use case for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR?
We are a partner for Palo Alto as a service provider. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR is used as a SIEM solution or X...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Security Operations?
In my opinion, the pricing is quite affordable considering the features, and I do not find it expensive. I would not ...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Security Operations?
I would like to see new features added, particularly regarding the incident upgrading part. For instance, if you have...
What advice do you have for others considering ServiceNow Security Operations?
For someone looking to use ServiceNow Security Operations, I recommend that they read about the documentation and spe...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Demisto Enterprise, Cortex XSOAR, Demisto
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cellcom Israel, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, esri, Cylance, Flatiron Health, Veeva, ADT Cybersecurity
DXC Technology, Freedom Security Alliance, Prime Therapeutics, Seton Hall University, York Risk Services
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks Cortex XSOAR vs. ServiceNow Security Operations and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,817 professionals have used our research since 2012.