We performed a comparison between Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Symantec Endpoint Security based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cortex XDR presents an intuitive interface, advanced identification of risks, expandability, and compatibility with various other solutions. Users praised Symantec Endpoint Security for its regular virus signature updates and comprehensive administrator's console. Cortex XDR could use enhancements in hard disk encryption, security integration, and customer education. Reviewers said Symantec Endpoint Security could improve its graphical interface, Linux support, and scanning capabilities.
Service and Support: Some customers were impressed with Palo Alto’s support, while others reported mixed experiences. Some users said Symantec customer service was helpful but slow, while others have expressed general dissatisfaction with support.
Ease of Deployment: Some users thought Cortex XDR’s deployment was fast and straightforward, while others consider it to be a complex and time-consuming task that requires thorough planning. Some users said Symantec Endpoint Security was easy to set up, while others struggled with the installation. Deployment time varies depending on the customer’s environment.
Pricing: Some reviewers said Cortex XDR is expensive, but others said it was reasonable for the robust feature set Cortex offers. The cost of Symantec Endpoint Security depends on the licensing terms and necessary security components. While some users find the price acceptable, others believe it could be more affordable.
ROI: Cortex XDR creates value by ensuring system and data security rather than a financial return on investment. Symantec Endpoint Security demonstrates strong stability and incident prevention, leading to reduced downtime. It offers a favorable return on investment.
"Fortinet is very user-friendly for customers."
"Fortinet FortiEDR's scalability is quite good, and you can add licenses to the solution."
"The product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls."
"Forensics is a valuable feature of Fortinet FortiEDR."
"It notifies us if there's any suspicious file on any PC. If any execution or similar kind of thing is happening, it just alerts us. It doesn't only alert. It also blocks the execution until we allow it. We check whether the execution is legitimate or not, and then approve it or keep it blocked. This gives us a little bit of control over this mechanism. Fortinet FortiEDR is also very straightforward and easy to maintain."
"Additionally, when it comes to EDR, there are more tools available to assist with client work."
"Ability to get forensics details and also memory exfiltration."
"We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats."
"Traps is quite a stable product. Once it was properly deployed and configured, you have nothing to be worried about."
"The solution doesn't need a high level of technical training."
"Monitoring is most valuable."
"Provides behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
"The dashboard is customizable."
"The most valuable feature is that you can select remote access of any machine for sandboxing."
"Its ability to react to cyber data attacks is awesome. That is pretty much the use of it. What blows your mind is the ability to access your assets remotely and see what is actually going on with them. You can not only see them in a console. You can also react very rapidly to your assets that are compromised."
"The interface is easy to use and it is more up to date than our previous solution."
"It's a good proxy to control the user's access to the website."
"The best thing about Symantec is its ability to control our endpoints from a single point. You can manage the antivirus definitions, upgrades, remote scanning, etc., from one console."
"The firewall, malware, and anti-virus protection have earned its keep in times past by catching the unexpected."
"No maintenance is required after a successful installation phase."
"Offers good antivirus and local firewall."
"The technical support is very good. They have an Indian support team, so there are no delays in receiving support."
"This solution helps in that I can control quite a few computers from our central location, with ease."
"It's customizable, we're able to tune it to work with our products."
"The support needs improvement."
"We've had a lot of false positives; things incorrectly flagged that require manual configuration to allow. Even worse, after we allow a legitimate program, it sometimes gets flagged again after an update. This has caused a lot of extra work for my team."
"I haven't seen the use of AI in the solution."
"The amount of usage, the number of details we get, or the number of options that can be tweaked is limited in comparison to that with other EDR solutions"
"The dashboard isn't easy to access and manage."
"The EDR console should have more extensive reporting. You shouldn't need to purchase FortiAnalyzer. It should be included in the EDR part. The security adviser cloud platform could be improved with more options for exclusive or intensive rules for devices."
"Detections could be improved."
"The solution is not stable."
"When it comes to core analysis, and security analysis, Cortex needs to provide more information."
"The solution can never really be an on-premises solution based simply on the way it is set up. It needs metadata to run and improve. Having an on-premises solution would cut it off from making improvements."
"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."
"There's an overall lack of features."
"The solution lacks real-time, on-demand antivirus."
"I would like to see better protection, specifically to protect email applications."
"Cortex XDR could be improved with more GUI features."
"We would also like to have advanced tech protection and email scanning."
"It would be nice to have customized reports integrated on the main console with no additional DB server or BI server."
"I would like to see improvements in the anti-virus and the device control features."
"We are not satisfied with this solution. It needs a lot of improvements. It doesn't detect the most recent malware and unknown threats. With most of the users working from home these days, there is also a need for some extra security layer. That's why we are thinking of going for a better solution that will take care of all of our endpoints and work from home situation. Symantec also has to work on EDI technology. Vendors like Palo Alto and Cisco are coming with their own intelligence and cloud infrastructure in which unknown threats are regularly watched and monitored, and they are reported to the admin."
"There could be definition updates installed and running for the product, similar to new EDR solutions that receive updates from the internet."
"Symantec's application security module needs some improvement. You need to create a lot of fingerprints for application security. For instance, let's say I have different brands of ATMs in my environment, like Wincor and NCR. I use GRG to deploy an application control to whitelist some applications. I have to get the exact image of the different models of ATMs. When I tested in the past, some machines would not connect to the server without that."
"We are not satisfied with the technical support."
"Nowadays, threats are changing, and they are moving more towards script control and zero-day attacks. So, we would like to have more control similar to an EDR solution. Symantec Endpoint Protection has certainly come a long way as a traditional antivirus, but because the threats are changing, we would like to have more EDR features so that we have a detailed view of the source from where the infection entered the environment and whether it has tried to connect any other endpoint. It should provide such a detailed view for investigation. It should protect against zero-day threats, etc. These are the key enhancements that can make it a complete solution for any enterprise. Currently, we have seen organizations going for two solutions: antivirus and EDR. With both these capabilities, it would be a complete package."
"They should work on making the virus definition file lighter."
More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is ranked 4th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 80 reviews while Symantec Endpoint Security is ranked 5th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 140 reviews. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is rated 8.4, while Symantec Endpoint Security is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks writes "Perfect correlation and XDR capabilities for network traffic plus endpoint security". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Endpoint Security writes "The solution has given us visibility into compliance within our whole system and helped us ensure everything is updated". Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Darktrace, Trend Micro Apex One and Check Point Harmony Endpoint, whereas Symantec Endpoint Security is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, Trend Micro Deep Security and Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business. See our Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs. Symantec Endpoint Security report.
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