BeyondTrust Network Security Scanner, powered by Retina (Legacy) vs. CrowdStrike Falcon

Retina Network Security Scanner is well suited for any environment and infrastructure that would like to expose security deficiencies across their network as well as visualize vulnerabilities as they pertain to assets in their environment. I cannot think of any scenario that would not be appropriate for this product. Since the product carries over to pretty much all assets in your environment, I don't know off the top of y head what it wouldn't be appropriate for.

Incentivized

CrowdStrike Falcon is ideal for large, cloud-native enterprises that prioritize advanced behavioral detection and have a mature SOC to manage their intelligence. However, its cloud-reliant architecture makes it a poor fit for air-gapped or offline networks. Additionally, small organizations with limited staffing may find it difficult to manage, while teams that require integrated SOAR and vulnerability management might be discouraged by the need for additional licensing to unlock those capabilities.

Incentivized

• Besides the fact that Retina NSS performs the fundamental task of scanning all my network devices, one of the main strengths is the speed at which it scans. Time is money and I know people tent to wear that cliché out a bit, but when you are as small as we are of a team, every minute counts.
• We have utilized other network security scanners over the past 21 years and Retina NSS seems to have the smallest footprint with no evidence of scanning degrading performance of the devices scanned.
• They seem to update their database frequently enough that we notice a correlation of threats to discovery.
• There is a small learning curve, but overall, a seasoned IT professional can quickly get up and running in a few hours and get usable results quickly. This falls back on the speed at which Retina NSS scans. My previous network security scanners would sometimes take hours to complete a full vulnerability scan of between 250 - 400 devices, now it only takes a fraction of that time.

Incentivized

• The Log analysis is very detailed and easy to use.
• Prevent and block all type of malwares.
• Great threat intelligence which is very up-to-date with the recent cyber attacks
• very user friendly in access and management
• Automated feature of detecting, taking action and closing incidents using fusion workflow.

Incentivized

• I do not have any obvious cons to report at this time.

Incentivized

• The Dashboard can become overwhelming at times, too much information to absorb
• Computers that may have made it out into the field without the endpoint sensor are very difficult to find
• As with all systems that rely on machine learning false positives occurr

Incentivized

Crowdstrike has a large suite of tools built for helping the engineers triage and respond to security event whenever identified. The ability to customize the security policies and implement more granular policies to different devices based on the functionality is unmatched. Crowdstrike provides so much of ability in a decent budget which ascertains the value for money or ROI.

Incentivized

I think it is a complete and very trustful XDR platform, with very few False Positives. It is very well supported by highly skilled professionals on all levels: from pre-sales engineers, Customer Account Managers and support engineers.

Incentivized

Support is generally pretty fast and gets right to the issue. We haven't had to use them much, fortunately, but the issues and questions we've had are usually answered quickly. The customer success manager/account manager you're assigned will also follow up with you on a regular cadence to ensure you're getting the most out of the subscription. There's not a whole lot of room to improve, other than the general confusion about what is/what is not covered in custom packages you're subscribed to. The initial purchase took much longer because of a package name changes and realignments of different modules into those packages.

Incentivized

There is limited amount of learning that can be completed in an in-person training available. In my opinion, the self-paced learning provided by Falcon portal is more useful over in-person training. The support from Falcon is great and useful to overcome difficulties, if any.

Incentivized

The training provided by Crowdstrike Falcon is complete in terms of the depth of technical knowledge and teaches the users about going through with the platform. There are lots of jargons for different tools that Crowdstrike Falcon has and this training teaches them all which helps in managing the platform better. Plus, the regular knowledge checks are also very helpful for the end user.

Incentivized

Read the documentation

Incentivized

Retina Network Security Scanner is the only product we have used in our enterprise. I have used a product in the past called GFI LanGuard Network Security Scanner and while it did perform the functions of vulnerability testing, etc...it just wasn't nearly as refined as Retina NSS. It was slow and was not as lightweight as Retina as far as end-user detection.

Incentivized

I have evaluated Cortex XDR and SentinelOne Singularity alongside CrowdStrike Falcon, and while all three are capable enterprise-grade solutions, Falcon ultimately stood out due to its cloud-native architecture, broader modular coverage, and stronger identity-focused detection. Cortex XDR performs very well in environments already heavily invested in the Palo Alto ecosystem, particularly for network-to-endpoint correlation, but it introduces additional complexity and infrastructure overhead. SentinelOne excels in autonomous remediation and offline protection, especially with ransomware rollback, but is more endpoint-centric and comparatively limited in native identity and exposure-risk context. CrowdStrike Falcon provided the best overall balance by combining NGAV, EDR, identity protection, exposure management, threat intelligence, and managed hunting within a single lightweight agent and unified console, enabling better scalability, faster investigations, reduced tool sprawl, and stronger protection against modern identity-driven attacks, making it the most aligned choice for our security and operational objectives.

Incentivized

• The product is extremely easy to deploy, extremely positive.
• If you take full advantage of this product as I did, you will maximize your ROI quickly as we did.
• We were able to visualize our vulnerabilities efficiently and effectively and maintain scheduled scans that allowed us to maintain a continuous improvement atmosphere while securing our investments.
• The ability provide reporting allows our IT department to prioritize issues and remediate as required without chasing down low risk issues over high risk issues that need immediate attention.

Incentivized

• Due to some of the difficulties with Support and Sales, we are likely looking to change to another vendor. We sometimes don't feel like customers.
• When the bluescreen incident occurred (worldwide outage) in July 2024, we were unable to contact support due to the high volume of calls at the same time. We had to figure out how to remediate it ourselves, which we did, and recovered before the vendor's official release of fixes. It shook my confidence in them.
• The product itself performed well over the last 2 years, which has kept us safe and productive. The product is good.

Incentivized