Cortex XDR vs. Trend Micro

100% prevention. 100% analytic coverage. 49.6% more technique-level detections. See the data, get the proof and learn the significant reasons why organizations choose Cortex XDR^® over Trend Micro for attack prevention, detection and response.

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Cortex XDR is the better choice for the next-generation SOC

In the latest MITRE Round 6 evaluation, Cortex XDR delivered strong prevention and detection across Windows, Linux, and macOS endpoints, blocking 8/10 malicious steps without generating false positives. Conversely, Trend Micro blocked only 5/10 steps, leaving a significant gap in real-world attack coverage. This underscores how Cortex XDR’s extensive telemetry, integrated analytics, and automated workflows outshine Trend Micro’s more narrowly focused XDR approach.

Cortex XDR goes far beyond Trend Micro’s abilities to deliver a leading extended detection and response (XDR) solution. It delivers:

ML-powered behavioral analytics across multiple data sources
An industry-leading malware analysis sandbox to support your threat hunting
Network visibility that’s integrated into one unified, cloud-based console.

Cortex XDR, backed by Palo Alto Networks, the largest pure-play cybersecurity company, stands out as a superior XDR solution to Trend Micro. In 2023 alone, Palo Alto Networks invested over $1 billion in R&D, showcasing its commitment to advancing cybersecurity. Cortex XDR offers scalable growth opportunities, allowing customers to start with its core capabilities and expand into comprehensive data integration and other Cortex products as needed. This scalability, combined with Cortex XDR’s distinguished performance in the latest MITRE Round 5 Evaluations and its leadership status in the Gartner® EPP MQ, clearly highlight it as a top-tier solution in the industry.

Cortex XDR breaks down data and product silos to provide prevention, detection and response across all data.

Palo Alto Networks extensive investment in research and development elevates Cortex XDR to a proactive leader in the realm of extended detection and response platforms, markedly distinguishing it from Trend Micro’s offerings. This commitment to R&D fuels the integration of cutting-edge technologies, like artificial intelligence and machine learning, into Cortex XDR and ensures it surpasses traditional EDR solutions' capabilities.

As demonstrated by the 2023 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations (Turla) – and reaffirmed in 2024 Round 6 – Cortex XDR weaves together insights from network detection and next-generation antivirus solutions to surpass the threat detection limitations in Trend Micro’s approach.

In Round 6 specifically, Trend Micro struggled with advanced TTPs that required deep behavioral analytics and strong forensics capabilities, both of which Cortex XDR provides out of the box.

This comprehensive combination offers a panoramic view of security threats, enabling organizations to discern and respond to complex threats across their endpoints with unprecedented intelligence and precision. The substantial R&D efforts by Palo Alto Networks manifest in Cortex XDR not just as a product but as a beacon of innovation in cybersecurity, setting a new benchmark for intelligence in threat detection and response.

Here’s what made it a trusted platform:

Cortex XDR leverages advanced analytics capabilities to reveal the root cause and timeline of alerts to identify and quickly stop threats.
Cortex XDR offers robust, remote capabilities that help analysts not just investigate hosts but also perform detailed remediation activities.

Cortex XDR uses robust threat intelligence and provides more than just traditional sandboxing with WildFire malware prevention.

Palo Alto Networks broad range of products and seamless integration make Cortex XDR stand out, especially compared to Trend Micro’s Vision One XDR. Cortex XDR is more than just a quick threat detection and analysis tool with its user behavior analytics and forensic capabilities. It's also a gateway to an advanced suite of security operations solutions from Cortex, including XSIAM, XSOAR and Xpanse.

Cortex XSIAM® takes security operations to the next level with AI-driven analytics, while Cortex XSOAR® simplifies and speeds up how security incidents are managed and resolved through automation and orchestration. Cortex Xpanse® expands this protection by focusing on attack surface exposures and risks, helping to identify and secure potential weak spots.

Cortex XDR's ability to bring broad visibility into one easy-to-use, cloud-based system is just the start. This setup makes managing security simpler and sharpens real-time threat detection, boosting overall security.

On the other hand, Trend Micro’s limitations, particularly in its manual sandbox that is pay-as-you-go and the lack of integrated user behavior analysis could leave gaps in protection. Palo Alto Networks offers a more complete solution, with Cortex XDR as the foundation, allowing organizations to smoothly upgrade to more advanced security programs as their needs grow. Cortex XDR provides tailored threat detection and investigation intelligence by:

Integrating with the WildFire® malware prevention service to detect unknown threats in a cloud analysis environment.
Leveraging behavioral analytics to profile behavior by tracking more than 1,000 behavior attributes.
Having behavior analytics based on host and user profiles, forensics and network visibility natively integrated into Cortex XDR.

Cortex XDR’s incident management dashboard intelligently groups related alerts into one incident with unified incident management.

SentinelOne’s lack of customization hurts enterprise readiness.

In the 2024 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations (Round 6), Cortex XDR continued its winning streak by stopping the majority of adversary techniques with no configuration changes. By contrast, Trend Micro had multiple missed substeps and partial coverage, requiring tuning to catch what Cortex XDR caught by default.

Cortex XDR also recently outperformed Trend Micro — and all other XDR vendors — in the 2023 MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations (Turla). Cortex XDR was the only vendor with 100% Prevention and 100% Analytic Coverage, delivering 49.6% more technique-level detections than Trend Micro.

Cortex XDR was named a Leader in the 2023 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms (EPP). Gartner highlighted Cortex XDR’s completeness of vision and ability to execute.

Enterprise readiness and an intuitive display are key supporting reasons for Cortex XDR’s market leadership. Cortex XDR’s central console enables analysts to manage, investigate, hunt and respond to incidents. Meanwhile, Trend Micro lacks a centralized action center and doesn't offer a single investigative interface that combines network and endpoint data, user behavior analytics (UBA), EDR and mitigation tools.

Here’s what makes Cortex XDR’s integrations more open and flexible to the needs of growing organizations:

Ingesting, mapping and using data from any number of third-party sources that are delivered in standard formats like syslog or HTTP.
Having Cortex XDR use that data to generate XDR alerts within our incidents to quickly scale visibility across an organization.

Products	Trend Micro	Cortex XDR
Latest MITRE Round 6 Results	Gaps in Prevention and Detection Blocked only 5/10 attack steps, leaving coverage gaps	Consistent, Real-World Efficacy Blocked 8/10 malicious steps with zero false positives
	Multiple false positives and missed detections	No configuration changes needed
	Required tuning mid-evaluation to catch advanced TTPs	Achieved top-tier coverage across Windows, Linux, and macOS
Real XDR	Lacks the full picture It doesn’t have the ability to fully integrate with third-party EDR solutions as well as ingest their data and apply detection rules and querying capabilities.	Broader visibility Incorporates data from endpoint, network, cloud and virtually any source regardless of vendor.
Real XDR	Currently, there are no integrations available for common formats such as CEF, syslog, Filebeat and Logstitch.	Provides visibility and forensic analysis of any endpoint, regardless of security vendor.
Critical Feature Set	Fragmented solution Doesn’t allow you to integrate with any network next-gen firewall vendor to send/receive malware signatures in order to be able to stop threats in the network or endpoint as fast as possible.	Full and flexible features Integration with Palo Alto Networks NGFW and Prisma® Cloud further extends SOC visibility to the network and cloud.
	Unable to support automatically sending large unknown files to a cloud sandbox [up to 100 MB].	Integrated cloud sandboxing delivers complete endpoint threat protection with static analysis, behavioral analysis, on-execution protection and dedicated ransomware protection.
	Doesn’t allow you to see the full list of additional protected processes by the Exploit Protection Module on Windows/Linux/MacOS systems from the central console.	Uses machine learning-powered user behavioral analytics across any data source to identify anomalies and raise alerts with insight in real time.
Enterprise Readiness with Built-In Incident Management	Individual alerts hinder investigations Doesn’t allow you to use the collected data from endpoints to profile user behavior and detect anomalous behavior or new admin behavior and other stealthy attacks.	Automation speeds results Alerts across datasets are automatically stitched together to see the bigger picture.
	Doesn’t have a central console to manage, investigate, hunt, mitigate and respond to incidents.	Alerts are reduced by 98%* with intelligent alert grouping and deduplication.
		Investigation time is reduced 88%† by revealing the root cause of any alert with cross-data insights.

^{* Based on an analysis of Cortex XDR customer environments.
† Palo Alto Networks SOC analysis showing reduced investigation time from 40 minutes to 5 minutes.}