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BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs Microsoft Defender for Business comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersec...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
32nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity is 1.5%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 1.6%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.7%
Microsoft Defender for Business1.6%
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity1.5%
Other93.2%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
Sooraj Makkancherrry - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Operations Manager at Philips
Doesn't have daily updates, which is important for healthcare IT
I face challenges with the exclusion policy - it still scans folders we told it not to, causing issues. When we contact support, they tell us to update the latest agent, but we can't do that immediately due to medical device protocols and validation testing. I wish support would try to understand our issues better instead of giving this standard response. The machine learning feature they use often tells us to upgrade the agent or add things to the exclusion list, which isn't unacceptable. It's a very good and new technology as a tool and antivirus. But sometimes, it doesn't work properly with our medical devices and products, quarantining files it shouldn't even after we add them to exclusions. This is tricky for us.
Paritosh Jani - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate VP (Managed Information Technology Services) at Dev Information Tech Pvt Ltd
Has delivered automated threat response and streamlined integration with advanced tools
The best features of Microsoft Defender for Business include it coming as an XDR solution which provides automated investigations, remediations, and endpoint detection and response. Moreover, it can be tightly integrated with vulnerability management or detecting vulnerabilities and pushing them to the SIEM solution. I utilize the advanced threat hunting feature of Microsoft Defender for Business and find it helpful; it's good and improving with every update. Microsoft Defender for Business integrates effectively with the Microsoft ecosystem as with Azure Sentinel, and it has a two-way natural integration. Apart from that, it also integrates with industry SIEM solutions such as Splunk.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Palo Alto Networks Traps improves our security posture and lowers risk by providing next-gen methods to combat against modern threats on all the major platforms."
"Since they've done their most recent update, the ease to isolate endpoints is valuable. If we find one where there is a virus on it, we can easily isolate it. We don't even have to contact the user. We don't have to manually take them off the network. We can easily isolate them."
"These days it's machine-learning technology and behavior-based analytics features that make us more secure."
"Cortex XDR features advanced threat detection capabilities."
"The solution allows control over the user and his machine through Cortex XDR security policies."
"There are a lot of lead solutions in this space, however, Palo Alto is number one."
"Implementing Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has had a significant impact on my security analyst workload because it becomes much easier."
"Monitoring is most valuable."
"The solution is pretty easy to scale."
"The stability of the solution is awesome."
"The solution is stable; it was no problem and all went quite well, with no bugs or freezes."
"On the management side, we liked the way it displays things."
"The solution is stable."
"It is extremely simple to manage and deploy."
"The solution does a good job of blocking whatever it thinks needs to be blocked and it doesn't require a lot of performance from the computer."
"CylancePROTECT works on AI technology, is always up to date, and uses very few resources on your devices."
"Because Microsoft Defender for Business is a native solution to Microsoft 365, it has contributed to my organization's proactive defense strategies by saving time on integration."
"The solution is effective, continuously improving, and highly regarded, especially with Microsoft's leadership in the industry."
"Defender is top class in terms of functional security."
"A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is going on. We have a footprint across all of North America, Canada, and Mexico, so we want to make sure that all our endpoints are protected and we are able to look for any anomalous activity."
"Using Microsoft Defender for Business is beneficial for my company."
"Microsoft Defender for Business offers the best pricing option in the market and is very cost-effective."
"Everything is stable. There have been no technical errors or stability issues."
"The security features in Microsoft Defender for Business that have been most effective for our company include the way it's built-in and intertwined into all the operating systems, giving us a good opportunity to holistically block things for the organization using that tenant."
 

Cons

"I would like to see some additional features related to email protection included."
"They are charging for Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA) services, so if the per GB data could be provided at a certain level free of cost or at the same cost which the customer is taking for the entire bundle, that would be better."
"Data privacy is a matter of concern. You have to be careful with data privacy, it can be sensitive and Cortex can have most of your access."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is not only pricey; it is extremely expensive."
"The connection to the internet has not performed as expected."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve its user interface, which is more complicated compared to competitors such as SentinelOne."
"It's not an ideal choice for smaller businesses, as you need a minimum of 200 endpoints to even use the solution at all."
"The only issues that we have are, one the cost, two the dashboard is not very intuitive, even though you can drill down within the dashboard, we usually have to gather information from other sources to determine locations and if its a false positive."
"Having worked with SentinelOne, Cylance is good, however, it probably needs to add a feature similar to SentinelOne's rollback functionality. With this feature, if you get infected, with a click, you can go back to the pre-infection state. If Cylance could add this functionality to their offering as well, that would be ideal."
"I find the price for Blackberry Protect expensive, so that's an area for improvement."
"The OPTICS component could be made more user-friendly with respect to giving people more information."
"CylancePROTECT's dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"Technical support is bad. I am not happy with the level of support they offer."
"If they can add more features on top of their Persona feature that would be ideal."
"We would like to see secure integration and multi-factor authentication to be able to access the administration dashboard."
"The pricing of Microsoft Defender for Business has a long way to go since people are still preferring solutions such as CrowdStrike and Palo Alto."
"Pricing could be lowered as it is expensive and not suitable for low-budget organizations."
"Defender's threat protection should be fine-tuned to reduce false positives. It could be more targeted, reflecting a continuous evolution in detecting. Also, it could be easier to integrate into other environments."
"The areas where Microsoft Defender for Business could improve include the support, installation process, and wiki. I should be able to find solutions to issues quickly without having to delve too deep."
"If I need logs and don't have local storage bundled with Defender, I need to add workspace and log analytics, which is costly for storing logs of 2 GB, 5 GB, 10 GB."
"The solution's AI is notorious for false positives, and the time you have to spend training it is ridiculous."
"We face a licensing issue with Windows 11 Enterprise not reflecting in our portal, which affects activation. Microsoft's support did not resolve this issue, even after sharing remote desktop and screen details."
"I am not satisfied with Microsoft's technical support. There are challenges with the knowledge and experience of the support staff, frequent redirection between departments, and slow response times."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"Very costly product."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"Our license will require renewal in August, after which the maintenance will continue as usual."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"We would just add more if there are new users, but right now you just need one license for per user."
"It is expensive, but not unreasonable."
"​Shop around for sure and be assured the price you pay will be close to other solutions available, but even at a slight mark-up from the other solutions, you are getting real endpoint protection versus nothing more than a cheap security blanket that might keep you warm at night."
"We went through a third party initially to do the renewal, but we won't be renewing, we will move on to something else."
"The price is reasonable for us at the moment. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten."
"It's not so heavily priced; rather, it's average and decent."
"The monthly fee is $55 USD per user."
"Our licensing cost for the solution is around $4,000 for six months. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool."
"The tool's cost has been a little high, but I do not think it was terrible."
"The tool is cheap, while some other solutions are more expensive. I remember the tool cost about five euros for a workstation or for a user on a monthly basis."
"Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."
"It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Blackberry Protect?
The price is reasonable for us at the moment. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with Blackberry Protect?
I face challenges with the exclusion policy - it still scans folders we told it not to, causing issues. When we conta...
What is your primary use case for Blackberry Protect?
I am using CylancePROTECT as an active learning algorithm. We installed it on almost 20,000 servers and virtual machi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Business?
Our thoughts on the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Business are that we wish it could be better. If the pricing w...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?
I see room for improvement in Microsoft Defender for Business, particularly regarding the consolidation of all securi...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Blackberry Protect
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Panasonic, Noble Energy, Apria Healthcare Group Inc., Charles River Laboratories, Rovi Corporation, Toyota, Kiewit
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs. Microsoft Defender for Business and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.