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CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 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 Detection and Response (EDR)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
38th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (38th), Vulnerability Management (45th), Application Control (10th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (10th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.0%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.0%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber0.8%
Other89.8%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

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.
Gary Herbstman - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Byte Solutions Inc.
Experienced reduced alert fatigue with streamlined notifications
We use Blackpoint Cyber MDR for our higher-end clients who need a higher level of control over security I appreciate that there are people behind the scenes sorting out valuable alerts from those that are not, so I only get alerts when they are real. This feature ensures that I am notified only…
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 most valuable for us is the correlation feature."
"Being a cloud solution it is very flexible in serving internal and external connections and a broad range of devices."
"I like that the product has behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
"Cortex XDR lets us manage several clients from the same console, and its endpoint defense is more advanced than traditional antivirus."
"If you are looking for security, mainly for advanced threat prevention from ransomware and malware attacks, I would recommend Cortex."
"Cortex XDR is a very capable solution for protecting large networks and a lot of endpoints. It's very useful because the automation is very high, and if you combine it with the features on Palo Alto firewalls, it provides very strong protection."
"One of the things that I enjoy the most is using policy extensions. It's like having host firewalls to control USB connections. I think it's a wonderful tool to restrict use when connecting to our computers. Another important tool is Home Insights. That is an add-on to the Cortex solution. I like that because we can see all the vulnerabilities in the environment and control what assets are connected to our network."
"The scalability of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very good."
"I appreciate that there are people behind the scenes sorting out valuable alerts from those that are not, so I only get alerts when they are real."
"The solution also watches over Microsoft 365 and keeps a copy of logs."
"Their SOC is phenomenal in not monitoring and responding and taking action."
"I appreciate that there are people behind the scenes sorting out valuable alerts from those that are not, so I only get alerts when they are real."
"On my end, the most valuable feature of this solution is that I can install it and forget about it. After that, their SOC team takes over and they only call me when there's a problem."
"The solution is all encompassing and can incorporate email monitoring."
"On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the overall solution as a ten."
"Microsoft Defender can block some viruses or malware. So, it can protect my files. It can save files on Office 365 OneDrive. I use encryption for some files, then I can recover them from OneDrive."
"It's one of the best antiviruses on the market."
"It depends on the licensing. Most of the customers have got at least a 365 E3 license, and they can use most of the features of Windows 10 Defender. So, anyone who has got an enterprise license can start using those features. Some of the customers have got E5 licenses, and they can use all advanced features. Customers with E5 licenses use the advanced site protection (ATP) features and web content filtering without going via a proxy, which gives the benefit of replacing the proxy. They can get the benefit of MCAS and integration with Intune and the endpoint manager. It is a kind of single platform for all 365 technologies. It helps customers in managing everything through a unified portal."
"We had some problem and, after four hours, we had new signatures for the environment by our customers for more than a thousand clients so that we can protect and improve the new setup."
"The primary advantage is that you don't need to install it. It's included in the Windows 10 delivery."
"You can query and access useful information from logs and events, which is powerful and efficient."
"Since we started using this product, we have not had any breaches."
"The attack surface reduction capabilities stand out as the feature I appreciate most, particularly the manner in which they can be customized to organizational functions, such as having separate policy elements and provisions for finance versus IT versus standard end users."
 

Cons

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by adding a sandbox feature to better compete with their competitors which have it."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve its user interface, which is more complicated compared to competitors such as SentinelOne."
"The solution can never really be an on-premises solution based simply on the way it is set up. It needs metadata to run and improve. Having an on-premises solution would cut it off from making improvements."
"The solution should add unwanted malicious hash values to a block list so that whenever the action is triggered, it will automatically prevent the malicious content."
"Being able to filter the events to see those that are related to the actual alert would save time spent by the engineer."
"The solution could improve by providing better integration with their own products and others."
"Cortex XDR could be improved with more GUI features."
"It is an enterprise-level solution. Its price could be less expensive."
"The interface could be more intuitive."
"The interface could be more intuitive. More transparency is needed in the interface as a lot of details are hidden behind the scenes, making them difficult or impossible to access."
"The feature we keep asking for is a vulnerability scan."
"Some texts seem to report items as normal too quickly."
"The solution does not tie into other EDR products like CyberArk or CrowdStrike but that might be more useful."
"While I am very satisfied with the service, supporting additional platforms, particularly Linux support, would be a beneficial improvement."
"While I am very satisfied with the service, supporting additional platforms, particularly Linux support, would be a beneficial improvement."
"Integrating this with third-party systems has some complexity involved."
"It would be nice to have a paid upgrade that would provide additional screening of the day-to-day activities."
"More integration with different platforms is an area for improvement for this product, and should be included in its next release."
"Microsoft support could be more knowledgeable."
"The GUI is very complex, particularly for normal users who work on it."
"I would like to see improvements made to how it secures activities on web pages."
"Lowering the price would be an improvement."
"The UI for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint needs to be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"I am using the Community edition."
"Compared to CrowdStrike, Cortex XDR is an expensive solution."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is in line with other products."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can be costly as a standalone solution."
"You just pay Windows 10 prices, then you have antivirus software. As a price comparison, Defender's costs are very low."
"There are different licenses, such as E3 and E5."
"This is an expensive product and licensing for all Microsoft products is a big issue."
"The solution comes free with Microsoft Windows 10."
"We went for Microsoft Defender once we were informed that it would be part of our Office 365 package. So, we combined the licensing for the OS with Office 365. Yeah. We thought it was a good bargain."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable and fair."
"Compared to ESET, the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is on the higher side."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise48
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise95
 

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 needs improvement with Blackpoint Cyber MDR?
While I am very satisfied with the service, supporting additional platforms, particularly Linux support, would be a b...
What is your primary use case for Blackpoint Cyber MDR?
The solution serves as a baseline security offering. We have implemented it for every client that we do business with.
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 sol...
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 pu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Blackpoint Cyber Managed Detection + Response, Blackpoint Cyber Managed Detection and Response
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
CoreRecon, Peerless Tech Solutions, Lorien Health
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.