CrowdStrike migration guide
Migrate From CrowdStrike Without A Gap In Coverage
Your endpoints move into containment from the first day of cutover, and the record you inherit is 0% breached.
Updated September 2026 / How we built this
Warden's performance record has been published every week since October 2020 from Xcitium Threat Labs data, including whether any contained activity reached operational impact.
What Matters Most, And Who Operates Security Today
Everything below this point reads from these two answers: the residual burden ratings, the recommendation, the economics and the assessment at the end of the page.
This one is genuinely open. The deciding evidence is contractual and environment-specific, so it belongs in a pilot and a redlined agreement rather than on a comparison page.
Both models provide continuous coverage in a managed engagement. What differs is how much of what is seen needs a human, so compare escalation volume rather than coverage hours. Coverage hours are the easiest thing for either vendor to promise and the least informative number in a managed comparison.
Watch Responsibility Change Hands
Pick a scenario and play it through the seven stages. At each stage both models report who owns it, what happens, who holds authority, what the clock is doing, and what lands on your team.
Both models observe continuously. Nothing distinguishes them at this stage, and any comparison that starts here will look identical.
What Still Lands On You
These are the responsibilities that stay with you under either service. Choose how you operate security above and the ratings adjust.
Rated for: Not sure yet
Choose how you operate security today and every rating, cost assumption and recommendation below re-reads from it.
Without a staffing model these responsibilities cannot be rated with confidence, because most of them depend on what your service contract absorbs. Architecture driven marks the ones set by the endpoint model rather than the contract; service dependent marks the rest. Select how you operate security above for real ratings.
The Cost To Migrate From CrowdStrike, Modeled
Four drivers, three totals. The number that matters is the last one, because vendor spend and retained cost move in opposite directions.
On these assumptions the modelled difference is led by internal security hours and platform. Nothing here is a savings claim: every input is an assumption you set.
Full cost adds the modelled incident and response reserve to direct spend. That reserve is a modelled assumption, not an invoice.
What drives this result: internal security hours (38%), platform (26%), managed service (19%) — together 82% of the gross difference.
Show The Four Cost DriversHide The Drivers+
No competitor IR pricing is modelled here, because none is published. Warden's included incident response is shown as $0 incremental for customers running zero-dwell containment. Treat every separately contracted line as a quote to obtain, not a number to assume.
See the Breach Response Continuum for what each layer includes and where the managed service ends.
Want This Costed For Your Environment?
Tell us your endpoint count and current Falcon licence. We send back a cutover plan and a cost model built on your numbers.
How To Migrate From CrowdStrike In Five Stages
Coverage never drops to zero. Falcon stays in place until Warden has run on the same endpoints long enough to prove it, and nothing is offboarded before sign-off.
- 01 · Inventory
Map what Falcon does today
List the Falcon modules you license, the policies and exclusions in force, the integrations that read Falcon data, and your contract renewal date.
- 02 · Pilot group
Run both on one group
Deploy Warden next to Falcon on a representative group, including your line-of-business applications, and set mutual exclusions so the agents do not act on each other.
- 03 · Measure
Compare on your data
Track alerts that reached your team, unknowns contained, application compatibility and analyst hours for the same period. The pilot checklist below lists each measurement.
- 04 · Expand
Roll out in waves
Extend Warden by department or site, with Falcon still installed, and reconnect SIEM and ticketing integrations to the Warden managed service as each wave lands.
- 05 · Retire
Remove the Falcon sensor
After sign-off, uninstall Falcon using its maintenance token, confirm removal on every host, and time the cutover to your CrowdStrike renewal date.
Four Deployment Paths, No Forced Rip-And-Replace
Nothing on this page argues for cancelling a service that is working. Pick the path that matches your contract position.
Set your operating context above and one of these is marked as the suggested starting point.
Layer containment beneath the service you already buy
Your incumbent MDR keeps its detection, investigation and reporting role. Warden changes the state assigned to unknown execution underneath it. Nothing is cancelled and no contract has to be renegotiated first.
Sensor coexistence, exclusions and endpoint performance on a representative group. Then escalations per 100 endpoints, before and after.
Best when an MDR contract has time left to run, or when the incumbent relationship is working.
Your Assessment, Assembled From What You Selected
No form. Nothing is sent. Read it here, then decide whether you want it printed, emailed or reviewed with an architect.
What Happens When An Event Stops Being An MDR Alert And Becomes A Real Incident?
Managed remediation, formal incident response and an IR retainer are three different things with three different commercial structures. Treating them as interchangeable is how organisations discover mid-breach that the work they assumed was covered is a purchase order.
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The managed service boundary sits between layer 2 and layer 3 for CrowdStrike, where Professional Incident Response becomes a separate engagement. For Warden the commercial offer places a defined level of layer 3 support inside the platform licence. Confirm both boundaries in writing before you rely on either.
CrowdStrike sells breach-scale incident response through its Services Retainer or as a separate engagement, apart from the Falcon Complete managed tier. Deep forensics, breach scoping and litigation-grade investigation sit here.
IR-03 · Vendor documentation · Sep 2026Incident response is included for customers running Warden zero-dwell containment. The included scope is set in the service agreement.
IR-01 · Warden service termsWhat this layer decidesThis is the layer the buyer question turns on. When an event stops being an MDR alert and becomes a real incident, one model routes you to a separate purchase and the other includes a defined level of support.
Where Time Can Enter The Response Chain
No vendor response times are published here. Each service gets its own lane through the same seven links, and each node carries one state, because the dependency type is what determines whether the clock is predictable. Select any node for the explanation and its evidence record.
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What Is Actually Outsourced
Each capability is assigned to a vendor SOC, to automation, to you, or shared. Open a row for the rationale and what to confirm in contract.
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One Stage At A Time, Side By Side
Scenario-independent. This is how each model is structured at each stage of the lifecycle, before any particular incident.
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The Same SOC, A Different Workload
Two SOCs can carry similar staffing and similar playbooks and still generate different workloads, because the endpoint architecture underneath them decides what reaches an analyst and in what security state it arrives. The full architectural comparison lives on the Warden vs CrowdStrike technical page.
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Telemetry accumulates, the platform or an analyst reaches a verdict, and response follows. The volume of judgement scales with fleet size.
Unknown code runs without ordinary trust while it is verdicted. The SOC manages confirmed malicious verdicts rather than chasing candidates.
Fewer events requiring a decision is the mechanism behind lower analyst load. It is an architectural property, not a staffing promise.
Disconnect The Endpoint
A managed service cannot act on a host it cannot reach. This is what each model still does, and stops doing, when the link drops.
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Every Managed-Service Claim, With Its Record
Records prefixed IR cover the Breach Response Continuum. Vendor records cite the public document each was checked against. Warden records cite Warden service terms.
Each record carries the exact service tier, response authority, whether the scope is contractual or marketing, SLA status, geography limits, verification date, our interpretation and the limits of what we can say.
Migrate From CrowdStrike: Managed Service Questions
Ordered against your priorities and staffing model.
Is this a like-for-like comparison of two SOCs?
Only partly, and that is the point. Both are staffed services with monitoring, investigation and response. They differ in what the endpoint underneath sends them, which changes the volume of human decisions each service has to make.
Does a managed service remove the architectural difference?
No. A service can shorten the time to a decision but it cannot change what unknown code was permitted to do before that decision existed. That property is set by the endpoint architecture.
Where is CrowdStrike the better answer?
On credential compromise and lateral movement, where the deciding property is telemetry breadth across identity, cloud and network rather than execution control. Also wherever you have an internal SOC that will use the investigation surface.
Who can isolate a machine, and do you need to approve it?
Both models can be configured with delegated authority. Get the specifics in the contract: what the provider may do unilaterally, what needs your approval, and how out-of-hours approval works.
What happens when the endpoint is offline?
Warden's containment is enforced locally, so its default treatment of unknown code does not change. CrowdStrike documents a reduced functionality mode when the sensor cannot reach the cloud, with cloud-side analytics and hunting resuming on reconnection. Neither service can take response action on a host it cannot reach.
Do I still need an incident response retainer?
Ask both vendors in writing. Response scope inside a managed tier is not the same as major-incident IR, and the retainer is often the largest uncosted line in a managed security comparison. See the Breach Response Continuum for where each vendor's managed service ends.
Is managed remediation the same as incident response?
No, and conflating them is the most expensive mistake in this category. Managed remediation returns an endpoint to a known-good state within the service's defined scope. Incident response scopes a breach across an estate, establishes what an attacker did, and produces evidence others will scrutinise. Both vendors do the first. Only the second requires a separate commercial answer.
What does CrowdStrike's IR retainer commit us to?
CrowdStrike's Professional Services catalog defines the Services Retainer separately from Falcon Complete. Tiers start at a 110-hour minimum, each request draws at least 40 hours unless the order says otherwise, and unused hours are forfeited when the term ends. Confirm the tier, expiry and activation commitments in your order before budgeting.
What IR support does Warden include?
Incident response is included for customers running Warden zero-dwell containment, alongside managed containment and remediation. If you are not running zero-dwell, you may qualify for an IR retainer with no deposit. Contact us to see if you qualify.
Can Warden Managed EDR run alongside an existing MDR?
Often yes, as a containment layer beneath an existing detection stack. Supported configurations and exclusions should be validated in a pilot before production rollout.
How should we evaluate two managed services fairly?
Run both on the same endpoint group for the same period and count escalations reaching your team, hours spent, user interruptions and time to remediation. Detection counts on their own tell you very little about your workload.
How This Comparison Was Built
Eleven Measurements That Settle The Operating-Model Question
Same endpoint group, same applications, same period. Use this as the scope document for a pilot with either vendor, or as the question list for a sales call.
Five measurements are marked as priorities for your context. All eleven stay in scope.
When your MDR escalates at 2 a.m., who on your team takes the call, and what are they authorized to do?
Plan Your Move: Migrate From CrowdStrike With A Pilot
Run both services against your own endpoints for a defined period and count what actually reaches your team.
Shopping by team, not by vendor? Start with our EDR buyer’s guide, or jump to the guide built for your team: best EDR for small business, best MDR for small security teams, or best EDR for MSPs.