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BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

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

BlackBerry Cylance Cybersec...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 8.1%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint8.1%
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity1.2%
Other90.7%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution runs in the background, and I do not need to care about it."
"One of the best features of the solution is that it's easy to deploy."
"Two or three years ago when the WannaCry virus struck, the people that were on Cylance were the ones that weren't affected."
"Has good RAM capacity for the power I need"
"The solution’s AI is its most valuable feature."
"What's most valuable in CylancePROTECT is the optics feature. I also like its easy-to-use and user-friendly dashboard and monitoring system."
"The most functional item that we use is the process to turn off the false flags that it causes."
"The Application Guard and ByteGuard are useful features."
"User-friendly, offering safety and security."
"The EDR feature is most valuable."
"The stability is great. I haven't seen any outages with Microsoft."
"I find the vulnerability management section of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to be very useful for organizations."
"The whole bundle of the product, which is similar to other Microsoft products, is valuable. Ten years ago, you had third-party stuff for different things. You had one solution for email archiving and another third-party one for something else. Nowadays, Microsoft Office covers all the stuff that was formerly covered by third-party solutions. It is the same with antivirus. The functionality is just basic. You have the scanning, and then you also have a kind of cloud-based protection and reporting about your environment. With Microsoft Security Center, you have a complete overview of your environment. You know the software inventory, and you have security recommendations. You can not only see that the antivirus is up to date; you can also see where are the vulnerabilities in your system. Microsoft Security Center tells you where you have old, deprecated software and what kind of CVEs are addressed. It's really cool stuff."
"It's stable."
"It's a very solid security system, and the advanced hunting and everything really lets you dive deep into things."
"Ensures that I'm working with a product that gets updated regularly without me having to remember to do it. Since it's a Microsoft product, I'm confident that it requires a low use of system resources. The benefit of that being that my computer isn't constantly being drained."
 

Cons

"The product does not do a lot of reporting on what it is taking care of. Enhanced reporting would be a welcome improvement."
"If they can add more features on top of their Persona feature that would be ideal."
"rom my experience interacting with the primary or the central administrative console, it's quite complex. You would need a fair bit of technical experience to set it up, implement and maintain it. That would be one area for improvement."
"The price for this EPP platform is expensive and could be improved."
"The high price of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required. The product's price should be more competitive."
"It should have better support for Windows and Mac."
"I would like to see a better UI in terms of sifting through more specific data and providing analytics. A little bit more would be nice."
"We would like to see secure integration and multi-factor authentication to be able to access the administration dashboard."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can use more advertising to promote their features."
"Windows Firewall is integrated with Windows Defender. Over the last few days, I have had a problem with defining a wildcard on Windows Firewall. For example, I wanted to pull out the connection of my program and install a software package with a lot of executable files. I wanted to prevent it from accessing the internet. I could not select executables by using a wildcard. I had to select a single executable with its full name."
"Updates are not coming out of preview quickly enough and it is holding back on the development of the product."
"There is some functionality that is not quite there yet."
"I would just like them to have more consistency, and that's a comment that's across the board with Microsoft. They change things a lot."
"Defender for Endpoint is complex, and the documentation is detailed. At the same time, it's hard to navigate sometimes."
"I would like to see better integration with their other security products to give better visibility from a higher level."
"I would like Microsoft to have some kind of direct integration for USB controls. They have GPO and other controls to control the access of the USB drives on devices, but if there is something that can be directly implemented into the portal, it would be good. There should be a way to control via a cloud portal or something like that in a dynamic way. USB control for data exfiltration would be a good feature to implement. Currently, there are ways to do it, but it involves too many different things. You have to implement it via GPOs and other stuff, and then you move or copy those big files via Defender ATP. If there is a simple way of implementing those features, it would be great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company is on a yearly CylancePROTECT subscription. Price-wise, the solution is slightly expensive, so I'd rate it as eight out of ten."
"The solution provides me with competitive pricing."
"CylancePROTECT is an affordable solution."
"The tool is not that expensive."
"We pay our license on a yearly basis and have just renewed for two years."
"CylancePROTECT is worth the money, but I'm not sure of its exact price. I can't remember off the top of my head."
"It's not so heavily priced; rather, it's average and decent."
"Our licensing cost for the solution is around $4,000 for six months. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"The solution comes as a part of Windows 10 and it is covered under its license."
"The solution is free with Windows."
"Compared to ESET, the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is on the higher side."
"The licensing fee is a function of your Office 365 license. The feature set you get is a function of the license as well. There is probably an E2 version, an E3 version, and an E5 version. There are several versions, and not all features are the same. So, you might want to check what features you're expecting because you might get shocked. If you only have an E3 license, the capability isn't the same."
"It came with Windows."
"Because Microsoft Defender comes as an add-on, it can be a bit expensive if you're trying to buying it separately. Another option is to upgrade, but the enterprise licenses for Microsoft can also be quite a bit pricey. Overall, the cost of Microsoft Defender compared to that of other endpoint detection solutions is slightly higher."
"The price of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as ClowdStrike."
"It is free. It is included in Windows 10."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise92
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Blackberry Protect?
It is a good endpoint solution. It is very easy to manage and detect the threat immediately. It will take the necessary actions.
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 contact support, they tell us to update the latest agent, but we can't do that immedi...
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, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
 

Also Known As

Blackberry Protect
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Panasonic, Noble Energy, Apria Healthcare Group Inc., Charles River Laboratories, Rovi Corporation, Toyota, Kiewit
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.