SentinelOne vs. CrowdStrike: 3 Key Differences and how to Choose

SentinelOne vs. CrowdStrike: Key Differences

SentinelOne Core Offering

SentinelOne’s core offering is the SentinelOne Singularity Platform, which employs an AI-driven agent to autonomously identify and mitigate cyber threats on various devices, including desktops, laptops, servers, and IoT devices. The AI agent is lightweight and operates locally on each endpoint, providing real-time protection without relying on cloud connectivity or signature updates. By using machine learning and behavioral analysis, the AI agent can detect and respond to known and unknown threats, including malware, ransomware, and fileless attacks. 

SentinelOne uses static AI during the initial investigation phase and behavioral AI during the threat monitoring phase to identify behavioral anomalies. It then implements protections based on a series of non-AI action scripts, stopping and rolling back suspicious processes.

CrowdStrike Core Offering

CrowdStrike’s flagship product is the Falcon platform, a cloud-native endpoint protection solution that offers several editions and modules to address different aspects of cybersecurity. These include:

• Falcon Prevent: The core next-generation antivirus (NGAV) module that uses machine learning and exploit blocking to protect against known and unknown malware, ransomware, and other threats. Falcon Prevent is designed to replace traditional antivirus solutions with more advanced detection capabilities, while minimizing the impact on system performance.
• Falcon Intelligence: This module provides organizations with actionable threat intelligence, providing insights into the latest tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by adversaries. Falcon Intelligence offers intelligence feeds, reports, and API access to help security teams better understand the threat landscape.
• Falcon Insight: This endpoint detection and response (EDR) module offers continuous monitoring and real-time visibility into endpoint activity, allowing security teams to detect and investigate potential incidents. Falcon Insight provides advanced search capabilities, automated threat hunting, and reporting.
• Falcon Overwatch: This module offers proactive, managed threat hunting services conducted by CrowdStrike’s team of security analysts. Falcon Overwatch continuously monitors an organization’s environment for signs of malicious activity, enabling fast detection and response to sophisticated attacks.
• Falcon Discover: This IT hygiene module helps organizations identify and manage their assets, including unmanaged and unauthorized devices, applications, and users. Falcon Discover provides visibility into potential security risks within the environment, enabling security teams to prioritize remediation efforts and reduce their attack surface.
• Falcon Device Control: This module allows organizations to manage and enforce policies for peripheral devices, such as USB drives, to prevent data loss and block potential threats. Falcon Device Control offers granular control over device usage, including read and write permissions, and provides audit logs to support compliance efforts.

Learn more in our detailed guide to Bitdefender EDR, an alternative to CrowdStrike EDR (coming soon)

3 Key Differences between SentinelOne and CrowdStrike

Here is a summary of the main differences between the two platforms:

1. AI Agent vs. cloud-native architecture: SentinelOne’s AI-driven agent operates locally on each endpoint, providing real-time protection without the need for cloud connectivity. In contrast, CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform is a cloud-native solution that relies on cloud-based analytics and processing for threat detection and prevention. This architectural difference means that SentinelOne may offer faster response times on the endpoint, while CrowdStrike benefits from the scalability and flexibility of a cloud-based infrastructure.
2. Modular approach: CrowdStrike offers a more modular approach to its platform, with multiple editions and modules addressing specific cybersecurity needs. Organizations can choose the combination of modules that best suits their requirements, allowing for greater customization and scalability. SentinelOne, on the other hand, offers a more unified solution with its Singularity Platform.

Threat intelligence: Both SentinelOne and CrowdStrike provide threat intelligence services, but CrowdStrike’s Falcon Intelligence module offers more comprehensive, actionable intelligence feeds, reports, and API access. This helps security teams better understand the threat landscape and make informed decisions about their security posture. While SentinelOne does offer some threat intelligence capabilities, they are not as extensive as those provided by CrowdStrike.

SentinelOne vs. CrowdStrike: How to Choose

In conclusion, SentinelOne and CrowdStrike are both capable cybersecurity solutions, each offering unique advantages. SentinelOne’s AI-driven agent and unified platform provide efficient, real-time protection, while CrowdStrike’s cloud-native architecture and modular approach offer scalability and flexibility, with multiple modules addressing various security needs. 

Ultimately, the better option depends on an organization’s specific requirements, security objectives, and preferences. By carefully considering the differences between SentinelOne and CrowdStrike, organizations can make an informed decision to select the solution that best aligns with their cybersecurity strategy and bolsters their overall security posture.

Cynet 360: Ultimate SentinelOne and CrowdStrike Alternative

Cynet 360 is a holistic security solution that protects against threats to endpoint security and across your network. Cynet provides tools you can use to centrally manage endpoint security across the enterprise.

Cynet’s intelligent technologies can help you detect attacks by correlating information from endpoints, network analytics and behavioral analytics with almost no false positives. 

With Cynet, you can proactively monitor entire internal environments, including endpoints, network, files, and hosts. This can help you reduce attack surfaces and the likelihood of multiple attacks.