CrowdStrike vs SentinelOne vs Defender: $3 vs $20 [2026]

Irish IT managers have a new deadline hanging over them. The European Commission referred Ireland, along with Spain, France, and the Netherlands, to the Court of Justice of the European Union in September 2026 for failing to notify national measures transposing the NIS2 Directive into law. That gap leaves Irish organisations in an awkward spot: the operational requirements of NIS2 still apply to the sectors it covers, but the domestic legal clarity that should have arrived by October 2024 has not. At the same time, ransomware volumes are climbing. NCC Group recorded 1,073 attacks globally in August 2026, a 12% jump from July’s 960 and the highest monthly figure of the year, with 83 active ransomware groups now tracked in its most recent reporting.

Against that backdrop, choosing an endpoint detection and response (EDR) or extended detection and response (XDR) platform stops being a procurement afterthought and becomes a compliance decision. This comparison lines up the three platforms Irish security buyers ask about most: CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity, and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. We cover official pricing, the 2025 MITRE ATT&CK results that actually exist (and the ones that do not), independent lab scores, ransomware rollback capability, NIS2 and DORA-relevant features, and which platform fits which kind of Irish organisation. Every figure below comes from a vendor page, an independent testing lab, or a named regulator, with a link so you can check it yourself.

It is worth pausing on the scale of the problem these three products are trying to solve before diving into specs. Irish organisations are not choosing an EDR platform in the abstract; a recently disclosed Veradigm data breach is a reminder that even established health IT vendors are not immune, and the HSE’s 2021 Conti ransomware attack, still widely cited as the largest cyber incident in Irish state history at an estimated recovery cost north of €100 million, shaped how Irish public bodies think about endpoint protection to this day. The three platforms in this comparison are the tools that stand between a phishing click and that kind of outcome.

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What NIS2 and DORA Actually Require From Irish Businesses

Before comparing products, it is worth being precise about what the regulations demand, because vague compliance talk is how EDR vendors sell add-ons nobody needs. NIS2 compliance covers 18 critical and important sectors, from energy and healthcare to transport, digital infrastructure, and public administration. Organisations inside scope must put cybersecurity risk-management measures in place and report significant incidents, with an initial notification generally expected within 24 hours of detection. The financial exposure is real: NIS2 can bring fines of up to €10 million or 2% of worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher, depending on the entity type.

DORA adds a second layer for financial services

The Digital Operational Resilience Act has applied since 17 January 2025 and sits alongside NIS2 for EU financial entities. DORA requires banks, insurers, and other regulated firms to manage ICT risk, report major ICT-related incidents, test operational resilience, and manage ICT third-party risk, including the security tools and managed service providers they rely on. The European Supervisory Authorities’ first bloc-wide DORA incident benchmark, covering 2025 data, recorded 3,383 major ICT-related incidents reported that year, or roughly 282 a month, according to Mishcon de Reya’s analysis of the report. For an Irish fintech or insurer, that means the EDR platform is no longer just an IT control; it is part of the evidence trail a DORA auditor will ask to see.

Why that matters for EDR and XDR selection

None of the three vendors in this comparison publish a dedicated, named NIS2 or DORA compliance module that we could independently verify at the time of writing, and readers should treat any sales claim to the contrary with scepticism until the vendor shows you the actual report output. What all three do provide, in varying depth, is the underlying telemetry, alerting, and incident logging that feeds a NIS2 24-hour notification process or a DORA ICT-incident report. The practical question for an Irish buyer is not “which vendor has a NIS2 button,” but which platform’s logging, retention, and alerting workflow will get your security team to a usable incident report fastest. That is the lens this comparison uses throughout.

Meet the Three Contenders: Falcon, Singularity, and Defender

CrowdStrike Falcon is the cloud-native EDR/XDR platform built around a single lightweight sensor and the Falcon console, with CrowdStrike positioning it heavily on detection and response speed and a growing cloud and identity security portfolio layered on top of the core endpoint agent. SentinelOne Singularity takes a different architectural bet: an autonomous, AI-driven agent designed to detect and remediate threats on the endpoint itself, including offline, without waiting on a cloud round-trip for every decision. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (sold standalone or bundled into Microsoft Defender XDR and various Microsoft 365 plans) is the option built into the ecosystem most Irish businesses already pay for, trading some best-of-breed polish for deep integration with Entra ID, Microsoft 365, and Azure.

All three were named Leaders in Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms, which tells you the analyst-rated gap between them is narrower than marketing suggests; CrowdStrike’s own writeup of the result, SentinelOne’s, and Microsoft’s are all public. Where they diverge is pricing structure, independent test participation, and how much of the stack you need to buy to get full ransomware protection. The rest of this piece works through those differences with numbers, not adjectives.

It also helps to remember that none of these three vendors is standing still. The same acceleration that is reshaping cloud workload comparisons like EKS versus GKE versus AKS is showing up in endpoint security too, as all three vendors push AI-driven triage deeper into their consoles to cut the time a human analyst spends on a single alert. That is relevant to Irish buyers specifically because smaller security teams, which describes most Irish SMEs and a lot of public-sector IT departments, are the ones with the most to gain from an agent that correctly triages alerts automatically rather than flooding a one-person security function with noise.

CrowdStrike vs SentinelOne vs Microsoft Defender: Full Specs Comparison

The table below pulls together deployment model, platform coverage, and the features that matter most for an Irish compliance-driven purchase. Where a vendor claim could not be independently verified from an official source, it is marked as such rather than guessed at.

Category	CrowdStrike Falcon	SentinelOne Singularity	Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Architecture	Cloud-native, lightweight agent, cloud correlation	Autonomous AI agent, on-device detection and remediation	Built into Windows/Microsoft 365 stack, cloud-connected XDR
OS support	Windows, macOS, Linux	Windows, macOS, Linux	Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS (via Defender for Endpoint)
Ransomware file rollback	Not independently verified as an advertised automatic rollback feature	Yes, explicitly marketed as automatic ransomware rollback	Not independently verified as an advertised automatic rollback feature
Offline/air-gapped detection	Not independently verified	Core design goal of the autonomous agent; on-device detection without cloud round-trip	Not independently verified
Identity threat detection	Included in 2025 MITRE cross-domain evaluation covering endpoint, identity, and cloud	Available via Singularity Identity module	Deep native integration with Microsoft Entra ID
Cloud workload protection	Falcon Cloud Security, referenced in 2025 MITRE cloud-coverage testing	Singularity Cloud Security	Microsoft Defender for Cloud (separate product line)
2025 MITRE ATT&CK participation	Participated; reported 100% detection, 100% protection, zero false positives	Did not participate in the 2025 Enterprise Evaluation	Not verified from available official sources
Independent lab recognition	AV-Comparatives 2025 EDR Detection certification; AV-TEST September 2025 macOS result cited at 100% malware protection	Not independently verified for a qualifying 2025/2026 score in the sources checked	AV-TEST October 2025: 6/6/6 (protection/performance/usability) for Defender Antivirus Consumer 4.18
2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant (EPP)	Named a Leader	Named a Leader	Named a Leader
Managed detection and response (MDR)	Falcon Complete	Vigilance MDR	Microsoft Defender Experts for XDR
Minimum deployment size	Falcon Go capped at 100 devices	No published minimum found	Defender for Business aimed at up to 300 users
Licensing basis	Per device/endpoint	Per endpoint	Per user (covers up to 5 devices per licensed user)

The standout gap in that table is the 2025 MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Evaluation row. SentinelOne confirmed on its own blog that it sat out the 2025 round, which means any claim comparing SentinelOne’s 2025 MITRE score to CrowdStrike’s is comparing a real number to a number that does not exist. That is a meaningful point for a security buyer: CrowdStrike’s 100% detection, 100% protection, zero false positives result is independently testable and vendor-reported from the published 2025 MITRE results, while the equivalent SentinelOne and Microsoft figures simply are not available to compare against it this round.

Pricing Compared: What Each EDR Platform Actually Costs in 2026

All three vendors publish their core per-seat pricing in US dollars; none publish standalone euro pricing for the Irish market, so budget holders should request a local EUR quote from a reseller rather than assume a 1:1 conversion. The table below uses each vendor’s own published figures.

Tier	Price (official, USD)	Billing	Notes
CrowdStrike Falcon Go	$7.99/device/month	Monthly or $59.99/device/year	Capped at 100 devices
CrowdStrike Falcon Pro	$14.99/device/month	Monthly or $99.99/device/year (~$8.33/month equivalent)	Adds proactive threat hunting features
CrowdStrike Falcon Enterprise	$19.99/device/month	Monthly or $184.99/device/year (~$15.42/month equivalent)	Adds identity and advanced response tooling
SentinelOne Singularity Core	$69.99/endpoint/year (~$5.83/month)	Annual list price	Entry EDR tier
SentinelOne Singularity Control	$79.99/endpoint/year (~$6.67/month)	Annual list price	Adds device control and firewall management
SentinelOne Singularity Complete	$179.99/endpoint/year (~$15.00/month)	Annual list price	Full EDR/XDR tier with ransomware rollback
Microsoft Defender for Business	$3.00/user/month	Monthly, paid yearly	Aimed at organisations up to 300 users; covers up to 5 devices per user
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Plan 1/Plan 2	Standalone price not independently verified from official sources	Often bundled into Microsoft 365 E5 or security add-ons	A $12.00/user/month “Defender Suite” figure appears on Microsoft’s site but could not be confirmed as the standalone Plan 2 price

Read literally, Microsoft Defender for Business at $3 a month is the cheapest entry point of the three, and SentinelOne’s Core tier at roughly $5.83 a month undercuts CrowdStrike’s cheapest tier, Falcon Go, at $7.99. But entry-tier pricing is not comparable feature-for-feature. Falcon Go and Singularity Core are the stripped-down versions of each platform; neither includes the full ransomware rollback or advanced threat-hunting capability that a NIS2-in-scope organisation is likely to need once an auditor starts asking about incident response speed. The more realistic like-for-like comparison is Falcon Enterprise ($19.99/month) against Singularity Complete (~$15.00/month equivalent), with Microsoft’s bundled Defender for Endpoint P2 sitting somewhere in between depending on which Microsoft 365 or E5 agreement you already hold.

Benchmark Results: MITRE ATT&CK, AV-TEST, and Gartner

Benchmarks are where EDR marketing gets loosest, so this section sticks strictly to numbers that a named lab or evaluation body actually published in 2025 or 2026.

Benchmark	CrowdStrike Falcon	SentinelOne Singularity	Microsoft Defender
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Evaluation 2025	100% detection, 100% protection, zero false positives (vendor-reported from published MITRE results)	Did not participate	Not independently verified from available official sources
AV-Comparatives 2025	EDR Detection certification claimed	Not verified for a qualifying 2025/2026 score	Approved Business Security Product, 2025 Enterprise Main Test Series
AV-TEST, October 2025 (Windows 11, consumer)	Not in this specific test cycle	Not verified	6.0/6.0 protection, 6.0/6.0 performance, 6.0/6.0 usability
Gartner Magic Quadrant for EPP, 2025	Named a Leader	Named a Leader	Named a Leader

The MITRE row is the one worth sitting with. MITRE’s evaluations are not a simple pass/fail certification; results depend on the exact configuration tested, the alerting mode used, and the specific adversary emulation run against the product that year. CrowdStrike’s self-reported 100%/100%/zero-false-positive outcome from the 2025 round is real and citable, but it describes CrowdStrike’s performance against that specific test, not a guarantee against every attack technique a real adversary might use against an Irish network. The absence of a 2025 SentinelOne or Microsoft score is not evidence those products perform worse. It is evidence that a three-way, same-year MITRE comparison for these specific products does not currently exist, and any article claiming otherwise is making it up.

CrowdStrike Falcon: Strengths and Weaknesses

CrowdStrike’s biggest advantage on paper is the 2025 MITRE result itself: a clean, independently structured evaluation with a 100% detection and protection outcome, backed up by AV-Comparatives EDR Detection certification. For an Irish organisation that needs to show an auditor evidence of a rigorously tested security control, Falcon currently has the clearest third-party paper trail of the three platforms covered here. The platform’s module-based pricing (Go, Pro, Enterprise) also lets smaller Irish businesses start cheap and add identity or advanced response features as they grow, rather than buying a single fixed bundle.

The tradeoffs are cost at the top end and module sprawl. Falcon Enterprise at $19.99 per device per month is the most expensive single tier in this comparison, and CrowdStrike’s broader platform (cloud security, identity protection, exposure management) is sold as separate modules that each carry their own price. An Irish SME that only wants core EDR will likely land in Falcon Go or Pro; anything approaching full XDR coverage pushes toward Enterprise plus add-ons, and the total cost climbs quickly. Falcon Go’s 100-device cap also makes it a poor fit the moment a growing company crosses that threshold.

SentinelOne Singularity: Strengths and Weaknesses

SentinelOne’s core pitch is autonomous, on-device response: the agent is built to detect and act on a ransomware event without waiting for a cloud round-trip, and the vendor explicitly markets automatic ransomware file rollback as a named feature, restoring encrypted or deleted files to their pre-attack state. That is a genuinely distinctive capability among the three platforms here, and it directly addresses the operational-resilience language both NIS2 and DORA use, since a fast, automated recovery path shortens the window between detection and restored service. Pricing is also competitive: Singularity Complete’s roughly $15 monthly equivalent sits below CrowdStrike’s top tier for what is, on paper, a comparably full-featured XDR package.

The weakness is evidentiary, not necessarily technical. SentinelOne skipping the 2025 MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Evaluation means Irish buyers lose the one independently administered, same-year benchmark that lets them stack the product directly against CrowdStrike’s reported numbers. That does not mean Singularity underperforms; it means the company chose not to generate that specific piece of third-party evidence this round, and procurement teams that lean on MITRE results as a tender requirement will need to look at an earlier SentinelOne evaluation year or lean on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Leader placement instead.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint: Strengths and Weaknesses

Defender’s strength is unavoidable if your organisation already runs Microsoft 365: it is already partially paid for, already integrated with Entra ID and Intune, and Defender for Business starts at just $3 per user per month, covering up to five devices per licence. For a cost-constrained Irish SME or public-sector body trying to show “reasonable security measures” under NIS2 without a dedicated security budget, that price point is hard to beat, and the AV-TEST October 2025 result (a clean 6.0/6.0 across protection, performance, and usability for the consumer-grade Defender Antivirus engine) shows the underlying detection engine performs well in independent testing, even if that specific test covers the consumer build rather than the full Defender for Endpoint enterprise product.

The weaknesses are licensing clarity and evidence gaps. Microsoft’s own pricing pages do not clearly separate a standalone price for Defender for Endpoint Plan 1 versus Plan 2 in the way CrowdStrike and SentinelOne list their tiers, which makes like-for-like budgeting harder for a buyer who is not already deep into a Microsoft 365 E5 agreement. There is also no independently verified 2025 MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Evaluation score for Defender for Endpoint in the sources checked for this comparison, leaving the same evidentiary gap SentinelOne has, just for a different reason.

Ransomware Rollback and Incident Response: Where the Platforms Diverge

Given how much of this comparison is anchored in ransomware statistics, the rollback question deserves its own section. Of the three platforms, SentinelOne is the only one that explicitly advertises automatic ransomware file rollback as a named, built-in feature, restoring files to their pre-encryption state without a separate backup-and-restore process. CrowdStrike’s public material describes fast isolation and automated response actions rather than an explicitly branded file-rollback capability, and Microsoft’s available documentation similarly emphasises detection, isolation, and remediation guidance rather than a named automatic rollback feature.

This matters operationally. The Berlin city administration’s August 2026 Rhysida ransomware incident, confirmed by CERT-EU’s Cyber Brief, saw roughly 5.79 TB of personnel records, financial documents, and government data exfiltrated, with attackers demanding 30 Bitcoin. Separately, CERT-EU reported that on 2 August 2026, a threat actor breached Hungary’s State Treasury, exfiltrated sensitive government data, and deployed ransomware against its Agricultural and Rural Development Office. Neither CERT-EU brief names the endpoint security vendor in use at either organisation, and this comparison is not claiming either incident involved CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, or Microsoft Defender. What both cases illustrate is the stakes: once ransomware executes inside a network, the gap between “detected and isolated” and “fully restored to a known-good state” is measured in days of downtime and, under NIS2 or DORA, in regulatory reporting obligations that start the clock the moment the incident is confirmed.

Managed Detection and Response Add-Ons Compared

Every vendor in this comparison offers a managed layer on top of the core product for organisations that cannot staff a 24/7 security operations centre, which describes most Irish SMEs and a fair few public-sector bodies. CrowdStrike’s managed tier is Falcon Complete. SentinelOne’s is Vigilance MDR. Microsoft’s is Defender Experts for XDR. None of the three publish a precise, standardised per-endpoint MDR price that would let you build a clean side-by-side table; MDR pricing in this market generally depends on endpoint count, response authority granted to the provider, coverage hours, and whether identity and cloud telemetry are included in scope. Industry estimates for MDR services broadly range from roughly $8 to $35 per endpoint per month, though that figure is a market-wide estimate rather than an official quote from any of the three vendors here, and actual contracts vary significantly.

For a NIS2-in-scope Irish organisation without an internal SOC, the practical advice is to request a line-item MDR quote at the same time as the core EDR/XDR quote, specifically asking what the managed service covers during the 24-hour initial-notification window NIS2 requires. A managed service that only triages during business hours but faces a ransomware event at 2 a.m. on a Saturday does not meaningfully help you hit a 24-hour notification deadline; confirm coverage hours in writing before signing.

Real-World Scenarios: Five Situations Where the Choice Gets Clearer

Specs tables flatten decisions that are actually quite situational. Here are five representative scenarios Irish IT leaders describe when they are choosing between these platforms.

• A 40-person Dublin fintech newly in scope for DORA. The firm needs auditable ICT-incident logging more than it needs the cheapest per-seat price. Falcon Enterprise’s identity and advanced response tooling, paired with its independently tested 2025 MITRE result, gives the compliance team a stronger paper trail to hand a DORA auditor than either competitor currently offers.
• A 250-device manufacturing site in Cork with patchy connectivity. Shop-floor systems that drop network connection regularly make SentinelOne’s on-device, cloud-independent detection and automatic rollback the more operationally resilient choice, since the agent does not need a live cloud session to act on a ransomware event.
• A 180-user public-sector body already on Microsoft 365 E5. Defender for Endpoint is very likely already licensed or a small incremental cost away, and the Entra ID integration simplifies identity-based alerting without buying a fourth vendor relationship. For a budget-constrained NIS2-covered body, that existing entitlement is hard to ignore.
• A 15-person software startup with no dedicated security hire. Microsoft Defender for Business at $3 per user per month, or CrowdStrike Falcon Go at $7.99 per device per month, both undercut SentinelOne’s lowest tier slightly or sit close to it; the deciding factor here is usually whichever platform the startup’s existing MSP already supports, since neither product is being self-managed in-house.
• A 1,200-endpoint healthcare group handling patient data across multiple sites. With ransomware’s industrial and healthcare targeting both climbing through 2026 and GDPR’s 72-hour breach notification obligation to the Data Protection Commission layered on top of NIS2, this scenario favours whichever platform the organisation can deploy fastest at scale with a managed tier attached, given this is a 24/7 risk profile, not a business-hours one. Falcon Complete and Vigilance MDR are both built for exactly this kind of always-on coverage.

Use-Case Recommendations: Matching the Platform to Your Organisation

Pulling the scenarios above into general guidance, here is how to think about the decision by organisation type.

• Regulated financial services firms under DORA: prioritise CrowdStrike Falcon Enterprise for its independently published 2025 MITRE result and identity-security integration; budget for the audit trail, not just the per-seat price.
• Manufacturing, logistics, or any site with unreliable connectivity: prioritise SentinelOne Singularity Complete for on-device autonomous detection and automatic ransomware rollback that does not depend on a live cloud connection.
• Public-sector bodies and SMEs already paying for Microsoft 365 E5 or similar: start with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint before buying a fourth security vendor; the marginal cost is usually lower than a brand-new CrowdStrike or SentinelOne deployment.
• Cash-constrained startups and small teams without an MSP: Microsoft Defender for Business at $3 per user per month is the cheapest credible entry point; CrowdStrike Falcon Go is a close second if you expect to outgrow Defender’s bundled feature set within 12 to 18 months.
• Managed service providers serving multiple Irish SMEs: weigh multi-tenant console quality and per-client billing flexibility as heavily as raw detection scores; all three vendors support MSP delivery models, but contract terms and margin structures differ by vendor and by reseller.
• Healthcare and critical-infrastructure operators with 24/7 risk exposure: budget for the managed tier (Falcon Complete, Vigilance MDR, or Defender Experts for XDR) from day one rather than treating MDR as a later upsell; NIS2’s 24-hour notification clock does not pause for a Saturday night incident.

Migration Guide: Switching EDR Platforms Without Leaving Coverage Gaps

Moving from one EDR/XDR platform to another is one of the few IT projects where a gap of even a few hours can matter, since an unprotected endpoint during a migration window is exactly the kind of exposure ransomware operators look for. Here is a practical sequence that keeps coverage continuous.

1. Audit your current estate first. Export a full device inventory from your existing console, including OS versions, agent versions, and any devices the current agent is failing to report from. Those blind spots will follow you into the new platform if you do not fix them first.
2. Confirm licensing fit before buying. Map your device and user counts against each vendor’s tier limits, especially CrowdStrike Falcon Go’s 100-device cap and Microsoft Defender for Business’s roughly 300-user ceiling, so you are not forced into an unplanned tier upgrade mid-rollout.
3. Run the new agent in parallel, not in place. Most EDR agents, including the ones compared here, support running alongside a legacy agent for a defined pilot window. Deploy the new agent to a representative 5 to 10% subset of devices before touching production-critical systems.
4. Validate detection before removing the old agent. Use a safe, documented detection test (not a live malware sample) to confirm the new platform is alerting correctly, and confirm alerts are actually reaching your SOC or MDR provider’s queue, not just the console. A simple PowerShell check across a pilot group can confirm the new sensor service is actually running before you trust the console’s own health dashboard:

Get-ADComputer -Filter * -SearchBase "OU=PilotGroup,DC=corp,DC=local" |
  ForEach-Object {
    Invoke-Command -ComputerName $_.Name -ScriptBlock {
      Get-Service | Where-Object { $_.DisplayName -match "Sense|CrowdStrike|SentinelAgent" } |
        Select-Object MachineName, DisplayName, Status
    }
  }

Run that kind of sweep against the pilot group before touching the rest of the fleet. If any device in the group shows a stopped service rather than a running one, stop the rollout and investigate before expanding to the next wave.

5. Uninstall the old agent in waves, by device group. Remove the legacy agent from each validated group before moving to the next, rather than uninstalling fleet-wide and reinstalling fleet-wide, which maximises the window where a device has no active EDR coverage at all.
6. Update your NIS2 or DORA incident-response documentation. Your regulator does not care which vendor you use, but your documented incident-response plan needs to reference the actual tool you are running, including who gets the alert and what the 24-hour notification workflow looks like on the new platform.
7. Decommission old licences only after a full billing cycle of clean operation. Keep the old platform’s licence active in a read-only or monitoring-only state for one full cycle as a safety net before cancelling, in case the migration surfaces an edge case you missed.

Pros and Cons: Side-by-Side Breakdown

Platform	Pros	Cons
CrowdStrike Falcon	Independently published 2025 MITRE result (100% detection/protection); AV-Comparatives EDR Detection certification; flexible module-based tiers	Highest top-tier price ($19.99/device/month); full XDR coverage requires multiple paid modules; Falcon Go capped at 100 devices
SentinelOne Singularity	Explicit automatic ransomware rollback; strong on-device, offline-capable detection; competitive top-tier price (~$15/month equivalent)	Sat out the 2025 MITRE Enterprise Evaluation, leaving a same-year benchmark gap; annual billing structure rather than flexible monthly
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint	Cheapest entry point ($3/user/month for Defender for Business); deep Entra ID/Microsoft 365 integration; strong AV-TEST October 2025 score for the consumer engine	Standalone Plan 1/Plan 2 pricing not clearly published; no independently verified 2025 MITRE score; best value tied to existing Microsoft 365 licensing

What Security Experts Say About EDR and XDR

The shift from standalone antivirus to combined EDR/XDR platforms is less a marketing trend than a response to how ransomware actually behaves. Andrei Hinodache, a cybersecurity solutions expert at Heimdal, frames the shift plainly: “It’s not a revolution, it’s not hype; it’s just simple evolution. The cyber threat landscape is evolving rapidly, so cybersecurity must evolve as well,” he told Expert Insights.

Hinodache also points to why integrated platforms, rather than bolted-together point tools, matter specifically for ransomware response speed: “So, you start seeing a lot of integrations in between the features, not to mention the fact that you can automatically isolate the computer whenever a ransomware attempt is taking place. By having them combined actually gives you a lot more flexibility and speed in your reaction.” That is precisely the operational advantage a NIS2 or DORA-covered Irish organisation needs when the regulatory clock on incident notification starts the moment an attack is confirmed.

On the terminology question that trips up a lot of buyers comparing these three products, Hinodache is succinct: “XDR is an EDR at the base, with some extended capabilities.” That is a useful way to read this entire comparison: all three vendors are selling an evolution of the same core idea, and the differences that matter are in execution, independent validation, and price, not in some fundamental category difference between what CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, and Microsoft are building.

Common Mistakes Irish Buyers Make When Choosing an EDR Platform

A handful of avoidable mistakes show up repeatedly in how Irish organisations approach this purchase, and most of them are about process rather than which vendor wins on paper.

• Treating entry-tier pricing as the real price. Falcon Go, Singularity Core, and Defender for Business are all stripped-down tiers. Budgeting around the cheapest headline number and discovering mid-rollout that you actually need the top tier is the single most common procurement error in this category.
• Assuming “Gartner Leader” means “functionally identical.” All three platforms compared here are 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant Leaders for Endpoint Protection Platforms, but that classification covers a wide range of architecture, pricing, and feature depth. It filters out weak products; it does not pick a winner for your specific environment.
• Skipping the MDR coverage-hours conversation. An organisation under NIS2’s 24-hour notification clock that only confirms “yes, we have MDR” without checking whether that service covers 2 a.m. on a Saturday is setting itself up to miss its own regulatory deadline.
• Buying before confirming device and licensing caps. Falcon Go’s 100-device limit and Defender for Business’s roughly 300-user ceiling have both caught out growing Irish companies that signed a contract based on today’s headcount rather than next year’s.
• Forgetting that AI threat models change fast. Just as the comparisons around running newer open-weight AI models locally show how quickly capability shifts in this space, the detection models behind each EDR platform are retrained and updated on an ongoing basis. A MITRE score from a single evaluation round is a useful data point, not a permanent ranking.

The Verdict: Which EDR Platform Wins in 2026

There is no single winner here, and any comparison that tells you otherwise is oversimplifying a genuinely situational decision. But the data does point to three clear defaults.

If independently published, same-year benchmark evidence matters most to your compliance team, CrowdStrike Falcon currently has the strongest paper trail: a published 2025 MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Evaluation result of 100% detection and 100% protection with zero false positives, plus AV-Comparatives EDR Detection certification, at a top-tier price of $19.99 per device per month. If automatic ransomware recovery and resilient on-device detection matter most, especially for sites with unreliable connectivity, SentinelOne Singularity Complete is the only one of the three that explicitly markets automatic file rollback, at a lower list price of roughly $15 per endpoint per month. If budget and existing Microsoft 365 licensing matter most, Microsoft Defender for Business at $3 per user per month is difficult to beat on pure cost, provided your organisation’s risk profile does not demand the independently tested detection evidence CrowdStrike currently offers or the rollback capability SentinelOne offers.

For most Irish organisations newly grappling with NIS2 or DORA in 2026, the honest advice is to request a proof-of-concept deployment from at least two of the three before signing anything, and to specifically ask each vendor to walk through how their platform’s alerting and logging would support a 24-hour NIS2 incident notification in practice, not just in a slide deck. Looking beyond endpoints, the same “verify before you trust the vendor’s claim” discipline applies to credential and identity security tooling, and increasingly to the personal and Windows-based handheld devices (the kind compared in our ROG Xbox Ally X vs Steam Deck OLED breakdown) that employees now connect to corporate Wi-Fi, which is a widening part of the attack surface regulators expect covered too. For a fuller picture of what else is moving in this space, our cybersecurity coverage tracks the ransomware and compliance stories referenced throughout this piece as they develop.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is CrowdStrike Falcon better than Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
Falcon has stronger independently published 2025 benchmark evidence, including its MITRE ATT&CK result and AV-Comparatives certification, but Defender is deeply integrated with Microsoft 365 and Entra ID and costs less if you already hold the right Microsoft licensing. “Better” depends on whether your priority is independently tested detection evidence or total cost of ownership inside an existing Microsoft estate.

What is the difference between EDR and XDR?
EDR focuses on detecting and responding to threats on individual endpoints. XDR extends that same detection and response model across additional telemetry sources, such as identity, cloud workloads, and network data, correlating signals across the environment rather than looking at endpoints in isolation.

How much does CrowdStrike Falcon cost per endpoint?
CrowdStrike’s published pricing runs from $7.99 per device per month for Falcon Go, up to $14.99 for Falcon Pro, and $19.99 for Falcon Enterprise, with discounted annual billing available at each tier.

Does SentinelOne publish public pricing?
Yes. SentinelOne lists Singularity Core at $69.99 per endpoint per year, Control at $79.99 per endpoint per year, and Complete at $179.99 per endpoint per year on its official pricing page, equivalent to roughly $5.83, $6.67, and $15.00 per month respectively.

Does NIS2 require a specific EDR or antivirus product?
No. NIS2 does not mandate a specific vendor or product. It requires in-scope organisations across 18 critical and important sectors to implement appropriate cybersecurity risk-management measures and report significant incidents within set timeframes, with fines of up to €10 million or 2% of global turnover for non-compliance. The choice of EDR/XDR platform is an implementation detail in service of those requirements, not a named legal requirement itself.

Can you run two EDR agents on the same endpoint during a migration?
Most vendors, including the three compared here, support a temporary parallel-run period for migration purposes, but running two full EDR agents long-term on the same device risks conflicts and performance issues. Treat parallel running strictly as a short validation window, not a permanent configuration.

Which platform is best for a small Irish business with no dedicated security team?
Microsoft Defender for Business at $3 per user per month is the lowest-cost credible option, particularly if the business already uses Microsoft 365. CrowdStrike Falcon Go is a reasonable alternative if the business expects to outgrow Defender’s bundled features within a year or two.

Why did SentinelOne skip the 2025 MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Evaluation?
SentinelOne confirmed its non-participation on its own blog without this comparison speculating on the company’s internal reasoning. What is verifiable is the outcome: there is no 2025 SentinelOne score to place alongside CrowdStrike’s published 2025 result, which matters for buyers who use same-year MITRE results as a procurement filter.

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