Cisco Firepower 4100 Series vs. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR

When we are asked by local partners which security equipment we use we always recommend our Cisco security products. The Firepower firewall is no exception and we can easily recommend this to others who need a fast, secure, and well built system that integrates well with all your existing hardware and software.

Incentivized

Malware that doesn’t leave files behind has become widely available. Anyone who can afford to reverse this trend should purchase technology. Application whitelisting isn’t for everyone, and Palo Alto Networks Traps can help. Enterprises looking for a low-affected, next-generation solution with high protection should consider it. PAN Traps is a great product at a reasonable price, and I highly recommend it.

Incentivized

• Packet filtering
• Great vpn client
• Integrates correctly with other vendors

Incentivized

• Direct Access to devices via Live Terminal which provides operations with scripting, triage, and preservation of artifacts.
• Behavioral Indicators of Compromise which provides alerts on events regarding groups of hosts and their signatures.
• Querying complex data sets involving a variety of devices for network connections, hashes, DNS, etc.

Incentivized

• Too much time to deploy changes
• When there are a lot of entries in the ldap mapping the device runs slow
• You can not make config changes via CLI, only via GUI

Incentivized

• Traps doesn't seem to function as a traditional A/V very well, so it's better as another layer to your endpoint protection
• Traps can cause issues with some legacy or custom programs, so exceptions may have to be made
• Traps falsely identifies things as malicious at times, this is not often though

Incentivized

It not easy to understand the different features it offers. Sometimes you need to spend a couple of minutes to implement a change or even open a ticket with cisco tac to figure it out. Once support is on the phone with you they know how to resolve problems. But it's not an intuitive tool

Incentivized

Cortex XDR does a very good job of blocking suspicious and threatening items. However, as with all software of this nature, it will sometimes block known-good items. The difficulty is in manually whitelisting these known-good items. The interface to whitelist is confusing even for a seasoned IT professional and has been the single most frustrating experience of using Cortex XDR

Incentivized

The support we receive from Palo Alto is one of the best aspects of Traps. It is very easy to recommend their support. It seems much easier to connect directly with someone with a deep understanding of the product rather than other companies where you basically have to make an airtight case that it is some kind of non-standard issue that can't be solved with existing documentation. Palo Alto digs deep and helps with advanced troubleshooting to get things working.

Incentivized

As I mentioned before, the Fortigates have better failover. I think the Cisco interface is easier to use that that of the FortiGate. My only criticism would be that with multiple CLIs, it can get a bit confusing when you are trying to configure something or troubleshoot from the CLI.

Traps is the slickest interface, easy to use and intuitive rule making, and the rest just didn't quite stack up to the performance level of Traps. McAfee and Kaspersky just hog processor and RAM power. I didn't like the interface and functionality of SentinelOne as much as Traps. Palo Alto really put a lot of time into the development of this software, and had some of the founding fathers of IT Security heading the development process. Can't beat that.

Incentivized

• Very stable and does not cause major interruption.
• Supports most of the business requirements.
• Enhance security, risk and compliance.

• After putting Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR on a user's system, users came back with a positive response that there are no performance issues now.
• We are able to track and control granular suspicious and malicious activities.
• Web controls are missing, which if they would have been there would have been very helpful.

Incentivized