License allocation

Learn more about how Cortex XDR regulates licenses.

Cortex XDR regulates licenses according to the available license quota and revocation policy.

Enforcement of Cortex XDR Pro Licenses

For the Cortex XDR Pro license, Cortex XDR limits the number of Pro agents and associated Pro capabilities to the number of agents allocated by the license. You can further refine the endpoints on which you enable Pro features in your agent settings profiles.

After utilizing all available Pro per Endpoint and Cloud per Host licenses, Cortex XDR falls back to a Cortex XDR Prevent policy that protects the endpoint but does not include Pro-specific capabilities. When you exceed the permitted number of Pro and Cloud agents, Cortex XDR displays a notification in the notification area. Cortex XDR permits a small grace period over the permitted number but begins enforcing the number of agents after 14 days. If additional Pro or Cloud agents are required, increase your Cortex XDR Pro per Endpoint or your Cloud per Host license capacity.

License revocation

Cortex XDR manages licensing for all endpoints in your organization. Each time you install a new Cortex XDR agent on an endpoint, the Cortex XDR agent registers with Cortex XDR to obtain a license. In the case of non-persistent VDI, the Cortex XDR agent registers with Cortex XDR as soon as the user logs in to the endpoint.

Cortex XDR issues licenses until you exhaust the number of license seats available. Cortex XDR also enforces a license cleanup policy to automatically return unused licenses to the pool of available licenses. The time at which a license returns to the license pool depends on the type of endpoint:

Endpoint Type	License Return	Agent Removal from Cortex XDR Console	Agent Removal from Cortex XDR Database
Standard and mobile devices	After 30 days	After 186 days	After 186 days
(Non-Persistent) VDI and Temporary Session	Immediately after log-off for VDI, otherwise after 90 minutes	After 6 hours	After 7 days

After a license is revoked, if the agent connects to Cortex XDR, reconnection of a specific endpoint will succeed as long as the agent has not been deleted, otherwise, the endpoint is registered as a new endpoint.

If a deleted agent tries to connect to Cortex XDR during the 186 days period, the agent can resume connection and maintain its agent ID. After the 186 days period, the agent ID is deleted alongside all the associated data. In order to reconnect the agent, you must use Cytool to reconnect it or reinstall it on the endpoint, and the agent will be assigned a new ID and a fresh start.

Note

It can take up to an hour for Cortex XDR to display revived endpoints.