See what features you can expect from Cylance and CrowdStrike to choose the EDR solution that’s ideal for your business.
Best endpoint detection and response tools can help improve your overall security by identifying vulnerabilities and threats before they cause damage. Cylance and CrowdStrike, two of the best EDR solutions, are based on artificial intelligence and offer both point-in-time threat detection and behavioral monitoring, but which one should you choose?
What is Cylance?
Cylance is an AI-enabled EDR platform that provides real-time protection against advanced persistent threats, zero-day attacks, advanced malware, ransomware and other threats. It also uses AI-driven predictive analytics along with application and script control and device policy enforcement to prevent cyber-attacks.
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What is CrowdStrike?
CrowdStrike Falcon Insight is a cloud-based EDR tool. Falcon Insight provides real-time, continuous monitoring of endpoints to detect threats in memory, on disk, or in transit on your network. It uses a signature-less approach to identify unknown malware based on behavior rather than relying on existing definitions.
Cylance vs. CrowdStrike: EDR Features Comparison
| Function | Cylance | CrowdStrike |
|---|---|---|
| Threat Database | Yes | Yes |
| Automated Threat Detection | Yes | Yes |
| Behavioral Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Stake | Hybrid | Cloud |
| API integration | Yes | Yes |
| Quarantine | Yes | Yes |
Cylance vs. CrowdStrike: mutual comparison
data collection
CrowdStrike maintains a centralized data store where all data is stored centrally, allowing you to monitor and review activity from anywhere. This is especially useful for remote work environments, where it is difficult to get everyone in one place to discuss alerts. Regardless of endpoint health, large enterprises with remote workers can easily correlate data for threat detection, threat discovery, and investigation.
Cylance, on the other hand, is cloud independent: the tool uses an agent-based approach to endpoint detection and response, as well as decentralized data storage, ensuring endpoint protection whether the user is online or offline. This feature is ideal for enterprises looking for an EDR solution that requires minimal system resources and has little impact on performance.
Threat Intelligence
Both EDR tools use AI to monitor endpoints for threat detection. However, Cylance offers a more comprehensive threat intelligence capability through AI to provide predictive analytics that are preemptive at first, gathering information about suspicious files as they enter your network or run on your endpoint devices. Cylance uses a mathematical engine that runs on the endpoint and detects malware using machine learning, behavioral patterns and other indicators of compromise. If it detects suspicious activity, such as an unknown file with malicious intent, it can automatically quarantine it for further investigation.
CrowdStrike threat intelligence is somewhat similar. The EDR tool uses AI to continuously monitor the endpoint activity and analyze the data in real time to identify threat activities, enabling the detection and prevention of advanced threats. However, CrowdStrike uses behavioral models to detect threats. Rather than trying to predict threats, it works by filtering for recorded events in hopes of finding recurring patterns that indicate malicious activity.
Analysis and Forensics
Analysis and forensics are essential parts of any EDR toolset. Cylance provides full analytics and forensic capabilities to analyze malicious events and forensic tools for threat detection and post-mortem investigation after an attack to give analysts context as to how it happened.
Cylance post mortem is best for organizations that are still in the early stages of implementing a security program. It’s a great tool for learning from your mistakes, assessing how well you’re doing and where you need to improve. Meanwhile, large enterprises that can’t afford to face an attack will prefer a solution that provides actionable intelligence and advice on threat activities before they do damage. In these cases, CrowdStrik is better suited as it employs a team of professionals who proactively seek, investigate and advise threat activities.
Stake
Cylance is hybrid (cloud and on-premise), while CrowdStrike is cloud only. If you’re looking for a tool that can handle both on-premise and cloud-based deployments, Cylance may be your best option. However, if you don’t need an on-premise solution, consider going with CrowdStrike; the cloud functionality makes managing many endpoints much easier.
Choosing Cylance vs CrowdStrike
EDR software tools should be a full suite of . by 2022 antivirus capabilities that help detect malware at the point of entry and mitigate system vulnerabilities. Cylance Protection uses artificial intelligence to do both, while CrowdStrike Falcon uses its Indicators of Attacks to search files in real time for suspicious activity. CrowdStrike’s IOA technology also allows you to create your own custom rule sets based on your company’s unique needs and risk factors.
In addition, an effective EDR tool will have a user interface so intuitive that even non-technical users can use it without training or support. Both products have user interfaces designed for ease of use, but they are not quite equal when it comes to functionality. Users find CrowdStrike more user-friendly than Cylance. While both solutions are designed for large enterprises, they also work well for small businesses.
If you are looking for a cloud-based solution, CrowdStrike is your best option as it has a strong reputation in that space. If your organization needs more deployment flexibility and doesn’t mind dealing with an on-premises solution, consider Cylance.
This article is written by Aminu Abdullahi.
