SentinelOne vs Carbon Black: Compare EDR software

Before choosing endpoint detection and response software, read this feature comparison of EDR solutions SentinelOne and Carbon Black.

Endpoint detection and response tools are critical to your organization’s security arsenal. SentinelOne and Carbon Black combine aspects of both endpoint management software and antivirus tools to detect, analyze and purge malicious activity from endpoint devices. These EDR tools give greater insight into a system’s overall health, including the status of each machine, and can help you detect endpoint breaches and protect against data theft or system failures.

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What is SentinelOne?

SentinelOne is an endpoint security platform that consolidates several endpoint protection capabilities into a single agent. It incorporates AI-powered prevention, detection, response and hunting across multiple endpoints.

What is Carbon Black?

VMware Carbon Black is an EDR solution that provides real-time visibility into endpoint activity. It’s built to give responders the most data possible, expert threat analysis and real-time response capabilities to combat attacks, minimize damage and close security holes.

SentinelOne vs. Carbon Black: Feature comparison

Head-to-head comparison: SentinelOne vs. Carbon Black

Threat hunting

SentinelOne and Carbon Black offer comprehensive threat hunting capabilities; however, SentinelOne’s Storyline feature gives it an edge in this area. Storyline creates a timeline of all endpoint activity, including IP addresses, to give analysts the context to quickly understand and respond to threats. This feature in SentinelOne is handy for investigating sophisticated attacks that involve multiple stages and numerous endpoint interactions; it also eliminates false positives.

Single agent

With a single agent for managing multiple endpoint devices from a central location, any team can get started and become experts at threat management.

SentinelOne offers a single agent for endpoint management. This feature allows you to quickly deploy the software and start with threat management, regardless of your team’s expertise.

In contrast, Carbon Black requires extensive tuning and configuration across devices, servers and workstations before being used effectively. Its threat hunting queries are also overly complex, and there are several manual steps to deal with alerts and remediation.

Feature parity across OSes

SentinelOne and Carbon Black support Windows, Linux and macOS; SentinelOne offers feature parity across all three operating systems – this means you get the same features and functionality regardless of which endpoint device you’re using – while Carbon Black’s EDR capabilities are limited on Linux and macOS devices.

Device and firewall control

SentinelOne’s EDR solution provides comprehensive device and firewall control, including USB and Bluetooth. This includes seeing all devices on the network, identifying rogue devices and blocking or allowing traffic from specific IP addresses.

Carbon Black’s EDR solution also provides device control (no firewall control), but this is limited to Windows OS and USB storage. However, it allows you to create custom endpoint security policies. This feature is helpful for organizations with specific compliance requirements or needs to meet stringent security standards.

Cloud connectivity

A good EDR tool should be able to provide you with protection even when offline. SentinelOne scores well in this area, with the ability to work online and offline.

In contrast, Carbon Black’s EDR solution requires a constant connection to the cloud to function correctly. This can be an issue for endpoint devices that are often disconnected or have intermittent internet connectivity.

API integration

API integration is vital for automating workflows and getting the most out of your EDR solution.

SentinelOne’s EDR solution offers a well-documented RESTful API that allows you to easily integrate it into your existing security stack. In addition, its Singularity marketplace offers limitless integrations with other security solutions with no-code automation. This makes it easy to get the most out of your SentinelOne investment and automate workflows.

Carbon Black’s EDR solution also offers Open APIs with more than 120 out-of-the-box integrations in four major classes: REST API, Threat Intelligence Feed API, Live Response API and Streaming Message Bus API.

MITRE

The MITRE ATT&CK Framework is a classification system for cyberattacks that helps organizations understand the methods and motivations of attackers. Both SentinelOne and Carbon Black use it to provide insight into endpoint activity and help prioritize response efforts. SentinelOne has a more robust approach according to the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

This fact is evidenced in recent evaluations over four years by MITRE Engenuity. MITRE tested the tools for their response to known threat behaviors perpetrated by known criminal groups Wizard Spider + Sandworm (2022), Carbanak+FIN7 (2020), APT29 (2019) and APT3 (2018). In all tests and scenarios, SentinelOne outperformed Carbon Black with more detections.

Choosing between SentinelOne and Carbon Black

SentinelOne and Carbon Black meet the criteria for EDR tools; however, based on independent third-party testing by MITRE Engenuity, SentinelOne appears to be the more capable EDR tool due to its more comprehensive coverage of threats.

SentinelOne has a gentle learning curve, which is great if you’re worried about your team’s expertise level and how quickly you need to be up and running. If you need support for a wide range of operating systems and need comprehensive device and firewall control, SentinelOne is a better choice.