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Rapid7 InsightIDR vs VMware Carbon Black Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 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 Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
34th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (21st), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (10th), Threat Deception Platforms (8th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (20th)
VMware Carbon Black Cloud
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
55th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Security Incident Response (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 InsightIDR is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Carbon Black Cloud is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
Rapid7 InsightIDR1.2%
VMware Carbon Black Cloud0.4%
Other95.0%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

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.
SohailHyder - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Cyber Security at Super Secure
Has supported compliance needs for mid-sized organizations but lacks customization and advanced integration
If we pitch Rapid7 InsightIDR against solutions such as SIEMs from Splunk or LogRhythm, it is not as customizable as a SIEM solution is. This is where it can improve if we keep in front the feature sets of a complete SIEM solution. Most common in the market is QRadar, but it is depleting now. It has been taken over by some other products such as Splunk and LogRhythm. If we compare these things with Rapid7 InsightIDR, then there are definitely some gaps that need to be filled. Data retention is also one concern because Rapid7 InsightIDR is cloud-based and operates on a subscription model. Whatever data you want to retain, it has to be paid for separately or it has a cost. Other solutions that are on-premises can have their own infrastructure or they provide some data retention for a month or in some capacity-wise, they provide that solution to them which makes them more attractive.
reviewer2771742 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sec consultant at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Has supported consistent deployment across departments but needs better OS compatibility and detection performance
I am not really looking for a new solution, actually, I was preparing for an interview and wanted to have a comparison between both tools. I have not worked with any of these products before, but we had a training demonstration yesterday with Dynatrace, and I have investigated the Wiz solution better. In terms of experience, it will be my first time with CDR. I am working with something for EDR, specifically, we have an EDR, it's VMware Carbon Black Cloud. They have a hybrid environment, both on-prem and cloud. I would usually recommend this product for big companies, because it's not cheap, so only big companies would I expect to pay for that. The review rating for VMware Carbon Black Cloud is 6 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution doesn't need a high level of technical training."
"The level of security I get for my endpoints and servers is extremely valuable."
"The management capabilities, allow an IT organization to get quite a good picture of attempted cyber attacks."
"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."
"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."
"It is an easy-to-use tool."
"When the pandemic started, Palo Alto came up with many solutions, which helped with the quick shift from on-premises to the cloud."
"The live terminal is probably the best thing ever. It gives you the access to get straight onto any machine."
"InsightIDR’s ability to process millions of transactions per day, and to notify me of the most critical ones, is priceless. InsightIDR has the alerts tuned, and has the ability to quickly drill down to determine the threat level."
"InsightIDR’s ability to process millions of transactions per day, and to notify me of the most critical ones, is priceless."
"Integration with threat modeling from the Metasploit and InsightIDR repositories."
"Simple configuration and automatically syncs to the cloud platform."
"I have seen that Rapid7 InsightIDR provides security to the networks and endpoints in the company."
"The ability to ingest Office 365 log files, then process them into events and display them on a map."
"I like the tool's user analysis feature."
"The incident case management is the most valuable feature. Even though there's always something I find I would like to add to that feature, the ability to quickly sort through all the logs, network and endpoint data, etc., and add it to an incident case as part of the investigation, is nice. Having it automatically timeline that additional data into the original incident timeline, and correlate it to other notable events and activities on the network, results in a huge improvement in our overall confidence that we've quickly traced down the right source of an issue."
"We also took full advantage of its incident response reporting capabilities to act as a “black box” for our infrastructure around strings of suspicious activity. The reporting and incident response capabilities were incredibly helpful during active security concerns."
"The solution does very well as a baseline EDR and provides good process-level management."
"Probably the most valuable feature of CB Response is its ability to isolate a host and take it off the network, so it's not spreading anything. We have two security operations centers around the globe. When an SOC analyst sees something on an endpoint, they can use Carbon Black Response to isolate that host from the customer's environment and prevent any kind of lateral spread."
"We are able to remotely isolate exploited endpoints in seconds and perform a live deep dive of any endpoint into its running processes (as necessary) without the need for extra scripts.​"
"The ability to quickly isolate a system from the network, while still being able to perform some forensics and mitigation work remotely, was of great value to us since we had many mobile and distributed systems."
"The detection response and quarantining are very good features."
"The market information they gather from the community is really good. Their configuration capabilities are good."
"They're highly stable in comparison with other solutions I have."
 

Cons

"Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth."
"It would be good if they could make an exception for applications. Sometimes, it can be a bit of a challenge to make exceptions for certain applications that have been used as rogue."
"We would also like to have advanced tech protection and email scanning."
"In terms of areas of improvement, we have not completed our review of the product. We're also looking at other products. So, it's a little bit hard to tell what could be different because we have not completed the review of this product, but based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."
"The installation should be easier and the Palo Alto pre-sales and sales teams should have more information on the product because they don't know what they are selling."
"They have the worst support, as a company, that I have ever worked with, as they are difficult to get a hold of and keep on the phone."
"It takes time to scan the servers and devices."
"If Palo Alto reduces the pricing slightly for their products, it would make them more scalable in markets such as India and globally for cybersecurity."
"The ability to tune the collector for custom logs would greatly help."
"Cloud risk assessment is one area where I think they need a lot of improvement."
"Needs a better ability to customize the check within the console."
"If we pitch Rapid7 InsightIDR against solutions such as SIEMs from Splunk or LogRhythm, it is not as customizable as a SIEM solution is."
"There are certain limitations with Rapid7 that I am working on."
"The reporting is the weakest aspect. There needs to be multi-level grouping for events (for example, group by user and destination). Right now, we can do a group by user and a separate table or group by destination. But I'd be more interested in where a person was logging into instead of who was logging in or where he was logging in."
"It would be useful to import threat intelligence in YARA format along with known incorrect email addresses."
"One of the things that could be better is digital forensics. It is there, but it can be better. They could provide more on the endpoint detection level."
"The support team of Carbon Black CB Response needs improvement. At present, they need a lot of information. Then they give you an answer that they already gave you. You tell them it didn't work, and then they take a long time."
"The solution's support could be improved."
"Setup is incredibly complex and poorly documented."
"The biggest issue I encountered was one where old logs were not being overwritten as expected so the system drive kept filling up from time to time. However, support was usually quite responsive and happy to jump on a remote session to take a look at it for us. That log bug has probably been resolved with an update by now."
"I recall we couldn't upgrade because the sensor was not compatible, and the latest VMware Carbon Black Cloud version was not compatible with the latest Red Hat version, so we couldn't actually update since it's a security tool, and it does not allow us to update."
"They need to improve the batch console. It needs more capabilities. We are limited by the ones it provides..."
"The solution can only handle about 500 bans or blocks."
"One area for improvement is the maturity of its vulnerability features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"The cost depends on your chosen license type, like Pro or other licenses."
"I feel it is fairly priced."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"I rate Rapid7 InsightIDR's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The solution has a mid-range price point in the market"
"Licensing is straightforward. If, for some reason, you don’t meet the minimum licensing requirements, there is a third-party managed service that can help."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"Licensing is by endpoint and amount of retention time (at least ours is). Default retention was one year, but we are able to push the retention further if needed. There's also a provide-your-own-S3 option for longer retention if you don't want to pay for the additional retention years in your Rapid7 agreement."
"The pricing is good, and it is not very expensive."
"​I am sure that there are cheaper products out there, but none that meet so many of our needs whilst maintaining stability and usability.​"
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is priced very well and is cost-effective."
"We had no issues purchasing through our preferred reseller and were able to get a fair price even when not purchasing direct. Carbon Black Enterprise Response didn’t break the bank, though adding on the matching antivirus and anti-malware components of the Protect product was more than we could afford, even with some discounting. Cb Response is really designed to complement Carbon Black’s Defense product. While Response can be used on its own, coupling with Defense seems like the best strategy if you can afford the price tag."
"The solution is very inexpensive so there is great cost savings to using it."
"Pricing for this solution could be made lower."
"VMware Carbon Black Cloud is an expensive solution."
"You need to pay for the licensing of the product. The pricing is costly."
"Purchase Professional Services up front as part of the implementation package, then renew hours annually to ensure you have adequate support for upgrades and enhancements. Overbuy by at least 10% to account for infrastructure growth."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
6%
 

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 Business20
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

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 SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is a...
What do you like most about Rapid7 InsightIDR?
During simulations or demonstrations, the tool generates alerts, providing details such as the specific application, ...
What to choose: an endpoint antivirus, an EDR solution or both?
I can recommend Carbon Black, an award-winning next-gen anti-virus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) s...
What's the difference between Carbon Black CB Response and Carbon Black CB Defense?
Carbon Black offers two different levels of Endpoint Detection and Response. One is the VM Carbon Black Cloud Endpoin...
What needs improvement with Carbon Black CB Response?
I see room for improvement as I remember some problems on compatibility with some operating systems; I recall we coul...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
InsightIDR
Carbon Black CB Response
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
ALLETE belk
Find out what your peers are saying about Rapid7 InsightIDR vs. VMware Carbon Black Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.