CrowdStrike vs. Palo Alto Networks

CrowdStrike’s single console, single agent architecture enables rapid deployment of all platform modules and accelerates investigations through a unified, easy-to-use UI.

Palo Alto Networks’ fragmented platform is spread over three disjointed consoles. It also requires three different agents for full platform functionality, lengthening deployment time and hindering SOC effectiveness.

CrowdStrike was named a “Leader” for the fourth consecutive time in the latest Gartner MQ for Endpoint Protection Platforms and positioned best on both axes. Our single lightweight agent and fully automated updates streamline deployment and operations, ensuring no performance impacts.

Palo Alto Networks’ flawed architecture compromises endpoint security. The Cortex agent’s high RAM and disk usage slows down endpoints, and requires reboots for full exploit protection. It also suffers from a faulty update process that forces customers to deploy updates manually.

CrowdStrike detects identity attacks 85% faster with an anomaly detection engine that analyzes live traffic against behavior baselines and policies. It offers real-time threat prevention, including MFA enforcement and password resets, all through a unified agent.

Palo Alto Network’s Identity Threat Module is limited to detection without out-of-the-box blocking capabilities, missing essential responses such as risk-based access controls and step-up MFA for legacy apps. It also requires a complex setup involving a separate cloud identity engine and agent.

CrowdStrike Falcon® Cloud Security delivers pre-built runtime detections, on-sensor machine learning, and integrated threat intelligence. SOC analysts gain superior initial detections and alert context via a unified console with other CrowdStrike modules, boosting protection and speeding up investigations.

Prisma Cloud relies on static behavioral baselines for detection, leaving customers vulnerable to breach for 24 hours after any new workload is deployed. With no automatic updates, customers need to manually tune baselines to weed out false positives and false negatives.

Designed for the modern SOC, CrowdStrike Falcon® Next-Gen SIEM delivers breach prevention with real-time alerts, rapid search capabilities, and elite threat intelligence. LogScale processes petabytes of data with sub-second latency, all more cost-effectively than rival SIEM solutions.

XSIAM struggles to address traditional SIEM use cases with slow search speeds, limited data visualization, and an arduous onboarding process. Their “automation” is nothing more than standard SOAR playbooks that require extensive manual configuration and on-going maintenance, or expensive professional services.

CrowdStrike is the #1 leader in MDR by market share (Gartner). Ourservices deliver end-to-end response across endpoint, identity, and cloud to conclusively remediate attacks, with zero customer handoffs that waste time or increase risk. CrowdStrike had the highest detection coverage out of all participants in the 2022 MITRE ATT&CK Evaluation for Managed Services.

Palo Alto Networks’ MDR only offers basic remediation through standard agent actions unless licensed for costly IR hours, putting the burden on the customer to fully mitigate attacks. Any remediation beyond basic endpoint response is limited to guidance, not action. Palo Alto Networks’ MDR also provides no platform/agent maintenance, and can’t respond to identity-based threats.

Fully integrated, world-class threat intelligence enables SOC analysts to do their jobs faster and more effectively. Leverage a list of recently published IOCs, adversary attribution, and an automated malware sandbox, all within a single user interface. 230+ adversaries tracked, 200,000 new IOCs published per day.

Palo Alto Networks’ threat intel lacks adversary profiles, and fails to provide meaningful alert context to SOC analysts. Even with Autofocus, customers receive basic adversary attribution without comprehensive adversary information, hindering SOC analyst investigations and productivity.

Built on CrowdStrike’s single unified agent, Falcon Data Protection reliably detects and prevents the movement of sensitive data by combining both content and context across endpoints, identities, data, and egress channels.

Palo Alto Networks’ data loss prevention technology is network-based only, with no ability to reliably detect and prevent sensitive data egress from endpoints, particularly for endpoints not connected to corporate networks.

CrowdStrike’s single-agent platform minimizes deployment and maintenance costs, dramatically reducing TCO.

Palo Alto Networks’ fragmented platform requires multiple disjointed consoles and agents, complicating deployment and increasing operational overhead, leading to a higher TCO.