Jamf Protect vs. Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR

The main reason we went with Jamf Protect was because we wanted a dedicated macOS security endpoint. Is was easy to implement and migrate over from our previous endpoint provider. As a university we have lab macOS devices that multiple users use. So we have Jamf Protect profiles that block the use of external drives and other other profiles that allow it. We different user accounts requiring different access this can get a bit messy when deploying the config profiles at login for each user that signs in.

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

• Low resource use Protected Agent - stops tampering with agent and is not a resource hog
• Managed and custom Analytics - along with the out of the box Analytics provided by JAMF, admins can also set up their own to focus on areas of concern eg NISTcompliance items
• Vendor support - support is very responsive and knowledgeable

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

• The integration with Jamf Pro has come a long way but could still be a bit more "one stop" vs two tools and two dashboards.

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

Day to day, Cortex is easy to use when you have no alerts and when an agent upgrade doesn't go south. Alerts are far too "clicky", there's too many steps to drilling down to what actually happened to trigger an alert. Investigating alerts in Cortex takes about 5x longer than it should.

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

In some aspects, Jamf Protect was far superior to the others mentioned above. The only downside I can see is that it is only macOS which could be a problem for hybrid environments.

Incentivized

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

• Better detection of malware reducing downtime and risk to network
• Easy to implement
• Can be a bit of a steep learning curve in general

Incentivized

• 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