2026 Buyer's Guides Crown CrowdStrike, SentinelOne and Sysdig as Category Leaders While Major Vendors Shift Detection Testing from MITRE to SE Labs' PIVOT

GBHackers' September 11-16, 2026 series of five '12 Best ... Compared (2026)' buyer's guides ranks CrowdStrike and SentinelOne as the cross-category EDR leaders, Sysdig and Prisma Cloud atop cloud workload protection, and Sophos, Broadcom and Check Point for…

Between September 11 and 16, 2026, GBHackers published five editorial buyer's guides covering endpoint encryption, ransomware protection, server security, cloud workload protection (CWPP) and CASB. All are feature-and-pricing editorial assessments rather than lab tests, and they converge on a consistent vendor map: CrowdStrike and SentinelOne lead EDR in both the ransomware and server guides; Sophos appears in encryption management (BitLocker/FileVault management with key escrow) and ransomware MDR (alongside Huntress); Trend Micro leads virtual patching and is scoped to API-based email/collaboration protection in the CASB guide; Palo Alto Networks' Prisma Cloud is the CWPP breadth benchmark alongside Sysdig's Kubernetes runtime depth (Falco lineage), Aqua's lifecycle security and Wiz/CrowdStrike agentless speed; and Microsoft products (Defender for Servers, Defender for Cloud, Defender for Cloud Apps in M365 E5) recur across server, CWPP and CASB categories. The encryption guide argues full-disk encryption is largely solved by free BitLocker and VeraCrypt, with paid value in management and compliance. Two wire reports carried the same CWPP comparison with consistent rankings; no factual disagreements were found across the seven reports. In parallel, Infosecurity Magazine reports that UK-based SE Labs launched PIVOT on September 15, 2026 - a six-month program in which its ethical hackers replicate nation-state and criminal attack chains against participating products, with an October test phase and results verified by Gartner and Forrester analysts due January 2027. Broadcom (Symantec/Carbon Black), CrowdStrike, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks and Sophos have confirmed participation. The launch follows the decline of MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations: Enterprise, which fell from 30 vendors in 2023 to 19 in 2024 and 11 in 2025 after public withdrawals by Microsoft, SentinelOne and Palo Alto Networks; MITRE is still executing its 2026 Enterprise evaluation, with results due in December. The threads overlap: vendors ranked as leaders in the guides - CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks and Sophos - have joined PIVOT, while Microsoft and SentinelOne, also prominent in the guides, publicly quit the 2025 MITRE round (their PIVOT participation is not stated).

• GBHackers published five '12 Best ... Compared (2026)' buyer's guides between September 11 and 16, 2026, covering endpoint encryption, ransomware protection, server security, CWPP and CASB; all are editorial feature/pricing assessments,…
• Endpoint encryption: the guide says full-disk encryption is largely solved by free BitLocker, VeraCrypt and Cryptomator; paid tools (Sophos Central Device Encryption, Broadcom Symantec Endpoint Encryption, Check Point Full Disk Encryption)…
• Ransomware: no single product stops ransomware; the recommended layered stack pairs CrowdStrike/SentinelOne EDR and Deep Instinct pre-execution deep-learning blocking with Huntress/Sophos MDR, ColorTokens Xshield microsegmentation and…
• Server security: CrowdStrike and SentinelOne top server EDR; Trend Micro Deep Security leads virtual patching for unpatchable estates; Microsoft Defender for Servers is noted for Azure and hybrid economics; Uptycs ranks best for…
• CWPP: Sysdig (Falco lineage) leads Kubernetes/container runtime depth, Prisma Cloud is broadest across hosts, containers and serverless, Aqua is strongest on cloud-native lifecycle, and Wiz/CrowdStrike lead agentless speed and platform…
• CASB: standalone CASB pricing has dissolved into per-user SSE subscriptions - Defender for Cloud Apps ships in Microsoft 365 E5 (per-user add-on otherwise), Netskope, Zscaler and Skyhigh bundle CASB into per-user SSE tiers, and Forcepoint…
• SE Labs unveiled PIVOT on September 15, 2026: a six-month testing program in which its ethical hackers replicate nation-state and criminal attack chains, with an October test phase and results due January 2027, verified by Gartner and…
• Confirmed PIVOT participants: Broadcom (Symantec/Carbon Black), CrowdStrike, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks and Sophos.