Extended detection and response (XDR) offers administrators central management, visibility, and protection for hybrid IT environments. Ideally, XDR platforms should pull data from endpoint devices, network components, and email and cloud solutions for more comprehensive security. This guide covers the top XDR solutions in the cybersecurity industry, including their major features, administrative capabilities, and buying considerations.
Here are the best six XDR platforms:
- Microsoft Defender XDR: Best overall XDR solution
- Trend Micro Vision One: Best for combined detection and response
- CrowdStrike Falcon Insight: Best for a mix of features and support options
- Palo Alto Cortex XDR: Best for enterprise security needs
- SentinelOne Singularity: Best XDR with forensics for junior teams
- Cybereason Defense Platform: Best for detailed attack lifecycle management
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Top XDR Solutions Compared
The following table compares my top vendors based on their important detection and response features and the availability of a free trial.
| Device Controls | Automated Response | Custom Detection Rules | Free Trial | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Defender XDR | ➕ | ✔️ | ✔️ | 90 days |
| Trend Micro Vision One | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | 30 days |
| CrowdStrike Falcon Insight | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | 15 days |
| Palo Alto Cortex XDR | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
| SentinelOne Singularity | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ | 30 days |
| Cybereason Defense Platform | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
✔️= Yes ❌= No ➕ = Add-on
Based on my comparison, Microsoft Defender XDR is the best XDR platform, but all six of my top choices are industry-topping detection and response solutions. Continue reading to learn more about them, or skip down to see how I evaluated the top platforms.
Microsoft Defender XDR – Best Overall XDR Solution
Overall Reviewer Score
4.2/5
Pricing
3.4/5
Features
4.1/5
Usability and coverage
4.5/5
Administration
4.8/5
MITRE ratings
5/5
Customer support
3/5
Microsoft Defender XDR is a cloud-native XDR solution for enterprises. Microsoft’s XDR capabilities include coverage of all network components and environments, priority alerts, and threat response coordination. Defender XDR has plenty of features, like email protection and threat hunting, and it also offers integrations with SIEM and identity management solutions so you can further centralize your security. I recommend it for teams of all sizes.
Pros
Cons
- Contact for quote: Custom pricing available
- Free trial: 90 days
- Query-based threat hunting: Security teams can create custom queries and use them to explore 30 days’ worth of raw log data for specific threat searches.
- Automated self-healing: Defender XDR automates simple healing tasks, like device cleaning, and allows teams to develop customized auto-responses to common alerts.
- Entra ID integration: Defender XDR helps you protect apps and identities by integrating with Entra ID, Microsoft’s IAM solution.
- Copilot: Microsoft’s tool for security assistance answers natural-language questions and gives you options for resolving threats, allowing you to view policies and get device info.
Trend Micro Vision One – Best for Combined Detection & Response
Overall Reviewer Score
4.1/5
Pricing
3.6/5
Features
4.3/5
Usability and coverage
3.8/5
Administration
4.7/5
MITRE ratings
4/5
Customer support
4.1/5
Trend Micro Vision One is a broad security solution offering threat intelligence, attack surface management, and XDR. Vision One’s coverage includes servers, email platforms, cloud environments, and user identities. The platform produces an XDR data lake that collects data like metadata, logs, and telemetry, helping reduce security data silos. For SIEM and SOAR integrations, Trend Micro partners include Splunk, Microsoft, and Palo Alto.
Pros
Cons
- Contact for quote: Custom pricing available
- Free trial: 30 days
- Vulnerability management: Vision One helps you track vulnerabilities’ CVEs and the meantime to patch them.
- Sandbox analysis: Analysts can send suspicious files to Vision One’s sandbox and isolate possible threats during an examination.
- Role-based dashboards: Specific organizational roles — like CIOs or IT operations personnel — receive custom dashboards based on their responsibilities.
- Custom reports: Vision One customers can create out-of-the-box or custom risk reports tailored to the specific reports you need to give.
CrowdStrike Falcon Insight – Best for a Mix of Features & Support Options
Overall Reviewer Score
4/5
Pricing
3.8/5
Features
4.1/5
Usability and coverage
3.3/5
Administration
3.7/5
MITRE ratings
5/5
Customer support
4.7/5
CrowdStrike Falcon is an endpoint protection solution with multiple software plans and capabilities, including Falcon Insight, its XDR segment of the platform. CrowdStrike has features like advanced antivirus, threat intelligence and threat hunting, firewall management, endpoint detection, and incident response. CrowdStrike offers multiple tiered plans, standalone licenses for specific solutions, and multiple support channels like phone and live chat.
Pros
Cons
- Falcon Pro: $99.99 per device year
- Falcon Enterprise: $184.99 per device per year
- Falcon Elite: Contact for quote; Falcon Insight XDR falls under this plan
- Free trial: 15 days
- Free demo: Contact to schedule
- Zero trust assessments: Falcon Insight’s ZTAs assess business-wide endpoint health and let you know what OS settings and policies make you vulnerable.
- Incident workbench: Security teams can view an attack from beginning to end to better understand its process.
- CrowdScore: Your organization receives an overall threat score and an incident dashboard that triages alerts for you.
- Data ingestion: Falcon Insight XDR users receive 10GB of free third-party ingested data daily through CrowdStrike Falcon Next-Gen SIEM.
Palo Alto Cortex XDR – Best for Enterprise Security Needs
Overall Reviewer Score
3.8/5
Pricing
2.4/5
Features
3.4/5
Usability and coverage
3.2/5
Administration
4.2/5
MITRE ratings
5/5
Customer support
4.7/5
Palo Alto Networks’ Cortex XDR platform is an advanced detection and response solution that combines endpoint, network, and cloud data insights to reduce admins’ manual work. Its key features include ML-based behavioral analysis, custom detection rules, and threat hunting and intelligence through PAN’s Unit 42 team. While Cortex XDR could be complex for inexperienced teams, it’s a fantastic choice for advanced users and enterprise security needs.
Pros
Cons
- Contact for quote: Custom pricing available
- Free demo: Contact to schedule
- Custom rules: Cortex XDR offers rules based on indicators of compromise (IOCs), like IP addresses, file names, and event correlation rules.
- Cloud lateral movement analytics: Palo Alto finds strange patterns in cloud services based on usage, identifying behavior that’s typically used to move laterally.
- Response actions: Teams can isolate endpoints, remediate malicious changes, and search for and destroy malicious files on a device.
- XSOAR integration: Cortex XDR and Cortex XSOAR integrate closely, allowing you to ingest incidents from Cortex XDR into XSOAR playbooks automatically.
SentinelOne Singularity – Best XDR With Forensics for Junior Teams
SentinelOne Singularity is a comprehensive XDR solution offering an easy-to-use automation ecosystem, enhanced SOAR functionality, and machine speed containment. The Singularity platform also includes RemoteOps Forensics for digital forensics needs. SentinelOne receives generally glowing reviews from users, including for its support team, so I recommend it to less experienced teams, particularly if you’re looking for digital forensics capabilities.
Pros
Cons
- Singularity Core: $69.99
- Singularity Control: $79.99
- Singularity Complete (includes XDR): $159.99
- Singularity Commercial (includes XDR): $209.99
- Singularity Enterprise (includes XDR): Contact for quote
- Free trial: 30 days; only for Singularity Control
- Free demo: Contact to schedule
- RemoteOps Forensics: Singularity Enterprise customers can set automatic evidence collection to be triggered by threats and customize specific forensics profiles.
- Role-based access control: SentinelOne offers six predefined roles and also allows admins to create custom roles and permission settings.
- Network discovery: SentinelOne Network Discovery fingerprints IP-enabled devices on customers’ networks and identifies vulnerable endpoints.
- Firewall control: Singularity lets you perform native firewall control for Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems.
Cybereason – Best for Detailed Attack Lifecycle Management
Cybereason Defense Platform is a detection and response solution renowned for analyzing malicious operations, or MalOps. If you’re looking for top-tier threat visualization, Cybereason shows the complete attack lifecycle. It also offers features like incident triage and custom detection rules. Cybereason is a great choice for teams that need thorough attack lifecycle management and want to investigate a threat’s full picture.
Pros
Cons
- Contact for quote: Custom pricing available
- Free demo: Contact to schedule
- MalOps: Cybereason tracks the history and behavior of a specific threat from its first entry into the network until its attempted attack.
- Incident triage: Cybereason’s incident response prioritizes your business’s most critical assets, so you’re responding to the most important issues first.
- Threat hunting: Teams can search for threat evidence, conduct investigations, and use custom detection rules based on their business.
- Device controls: Cybereason Endpoint Controls help you manage endpoints from one screen.
5 Key Features Of XDR Solutions
While it’s challenging to determine exactly which features your security team needs, core XDR capabilities are a good starting checklist to use while searching. Look for broad security coverage, incident response, automated workflows, threat intelligence, and security integrations.
Central Visibility
One of the major selling points of XDR is its comprehensive view of enterprise assets, not just endpoints. Aside from company devices, XDR platforms should also cover networks, email, and cloud environments. This is beneficial for teams that want to reduce security silos and correlate incidents that show up in different places but might actually be from the same threat.
Just ensure the vendor can demonstrate how this works in the platform and that it isn’t an empty claim.
Incident Management & Response
Teams should not only be able to view the history of an incident — where the threat first originated and its progress through the network — but also have resources to mitigate it. Incident response includes halting executable processes and quarantining compromised applications. It’s one of the most important capabilities of XDR and encompasses multiple XDR features, like device control.
Customizable Workflows & Automation
While “workflows” might first seem like an industry buzzword, it just means the ability to design response patterns for your security teams that make sense for your security infrastructure. If your XDR solution notices a particular behavior, it follows alert and response steps according to the workflow your team already developed. Ideally, these workflows are automated — security teams can’t be everywhere simultaneously, and automated responses are often faster.
Threat Intelligence
XDR platforms should draw data about vulnerabilities and threats from multiple locations. Good solutions offer varied threat intelligence sources or feeds so your security team receives plenty of threat data. It’s also important for any threat intelligence to be trustworthy, clean data so you’re operating based on accurate information.
Integrations With Other Security Products
XDR solutions shouldn’t be entirely locked into one particular vendor. They should offer integrations within a vendor’s infrastructure and provide connections with other products. Without third-party integrations, XDR will silo threat data and prolong businesses’ security challenges because they still don’t have all the information they need in one place.
How I Evaluated the Best XDR Solutions
I created a product scoring rubric to compare XDR platforms and evaluated industry-leading solutions using six major criteria and individual subcriteria. The six categories I selected, like features and support, are significant for buyers to consider when purchasing an XDR platform. I weighted each criterion based on importance, and weighted all the subcriteria, too. How each solution met the criteria I set, as well as criteria weighting, determined the platform’s total score.
Evaluation Criteria
First I considered product features, including device controls and automated response, which are the backbone of XDR. I also looked at usability and product coverage, like documentation and device support, and administration, including APIs and deployment options. Next I evaluated customer support options, like phone and 24/7 channels, and MITRE ratings, which test vendors’ real-world capabilities. Finally, I considered free trials and pricing transparency.
- Features (25%): This category covered important XDR capabilities like threat hunting, detection rules, and email and cloud protection.
- Criterion winner: Trend Micro Vision One
- Usability and coverage (20%): I considered features that contribute to ease of use, like managed services, and product coverage, including network and IoT protection.
- Criterion winner: Microsoft Defender XDR
- Administration (15%): This category included APIs, security policy management, and dashboards, as well as other subcriteria that ease administrative work.
- Criterion winner: Microsoft Defender XDR
- Customer support (15%): I evaluated support channels like email, phone, and chat, as well as the availability of demos, community forums, and technical account managers.
- Criterion winner: Multiple winners
- MITRE ratings (15%): Vendors’ independent security testing scores help show their product’s true abilities.
- Criterion winner: Multiple winners
- Pricing (10%): I looked at XDR platforms’ pricing information and the availability of free product trials.
- Criterion winner: CrowdStrike Falcon Insight
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What’s the Advantage of XDR?
Because XDR solutions ideally combine threat insights from multiple sources in your business’s infrastructure, they’re more comprehensive than standalone EDR or NDR solutions. However, they must be properly configured and used by your IT and security teams to gain the most accurate and useful information.
What’s the Difference Between XDR & EDR?
While EDR mainly deals with endpoint security and incident response, XDR extends to other infrastructure components, including networks and email accounts. Many EDR solutions have XDR capabilities and vice versa, which can make buying decisions confusing — you’ll see a lot of overlap. But if you’re searching for an XDR product, look for protective features for network and cloud assets, not just endpoints.
What’s the Difference Between XDR & MDR?
MDR is a managed service for businesses that want threat intelligence, insights, and incident response handled by an external team. Vendors offering MDR perform threat analysis and handle security incidents for their customers, which is a good choice for businesses with limited IT or security teams. MDR can cover both EDR and XDR services — it just depends on the capabilities of each MDR offering. All of my XDR picks offer a managed version.
Bottom Line: The Best XDR Solutions
Extended detection and response helps businesses manage various security assets, not just endpoints. In addition to greater ease of management, knowing how threats connect within different parts of your infrastructure helps security teams better understand how incidents originate and develop.
It’s also important to remember that XDR won’t automatically catch and detain all threats. It must be configured and studied over time before becoming a consistent and effective tool for your organization. It should also work well with any existing security tools so your business can improve its overall security posture.
If your business is debating which type of security platform to choose, read about the differences between XDR, SIEM, and SOAR next.
