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ConnectWise SIEM vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

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)
ConnectWise SIEM
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
54th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (51st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (21st), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (26th)
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 ConnectWise SIEM is 0.8%, up from 0.2% 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%
ConnectWise SIEM0.8%
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.
reviewer2711757 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Software Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automated alerting and reporting excel while cost and feature limitations remain
I find automation to be one of the best and most valuable features of the product. Machine learning is incorporated into the solution, though AI is a broader term that I wouldn't apply here. I haven't personally explored AI yet, but I will investigate it. Machine learning functions more as automation in my experience, as there's no training involved yet. I want to conduct R&D on another project with Wazuh to determine how to capture usage, for example, tracking user logins and time spent. This is where I need to implement machine learning. Additionally, the extraction of GeoIP adds complexity. The solution is effectively reducing incident response times in operations.
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

"We switched because there were a lot of added features with Palo Alto that Check Point didn't have, and it was an upgrade for us."
"The normal protection was really effective, and we detected situations that if we didn't have Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, it's highly likely that we would have been affected, but it protected the infrastructure."
"They did what they said. This solution could apply to any scenario."
"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."
"We can use Cortex XDR to get the entire graph of the incidents from source to destination, and we can take remedial action."
"My advice for others looking into using Cortex is that it is very easy to use and very useful for the customer environment, whether it's a public or private one."
"I like that the product has behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
"Stability is one of the features we like the most."
"One valuable feature of ConnectWise Fortify is the ability to add other teams and receive notifications when customers make changes or remove multi-factor authentication in Microsoft or SAP environments."
"We have found the solution has great functionality and it is easy to use."
"The integration capabilities of ConnectWise SIEM are off the shelf, making it easy to buy and use; you just unpack it and use it."
"We have found the solution has great functionality and it is easy to use."
"It's not really visible for the user - which is a benefit."
"Defender is stable, I haven't had any problems with viruses when using it, and it's easy to update."
"Microsoft Defender Antivirus is easy to install."
"It is very stable, highly recommended, free with the purchase of Windows Server, and it is doing its job for Microsoft Windows Server as a good product."
"Defender is an ideal solution for web security."
"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."
"It speeds up our process of detecting vulnerabilities and threats, has significantly reduced the amount of time to respond to threats and manage threats, has definitely improved our security, and also helped us in reducing management costs."
"It's an enterprise solution that provides a centralized console and it supports all the platforms that we use, including Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, and Android."
 

Cons

"The product's pricing could be better."
"Cortex XDR could be improved with more GUI features."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by adding a sandbox feature to better compete with their competitors which have it."
"The playbooks could be improved to include more functionalities or actions."
"Every 30 or 40 days, there's a new version and we need to go and make sure our customer's laptops are upgraded."
"To jump from the partner to Palo Alto directly was challenging."
"There are some third-party solutions that are difficult to integrate with, which is something that can be improved."
"Technology evolves every day, so it would be nice if it gets more secure. It can also have more integration with other platforms."
"The manage portion of the solution is complicated and should be simplified by having different versions to meet the needs of different size companies."
"ConnectWise SIEM is primarily focused on notifications and is limited in that aspect, while Wazuh can automate the elimination process."
"The manage portion of the solution is complicated and should be simplified by having different versions to meet the needs of different size companies."
"ConnectWise Fortify could work on covering more areas, like phishing messages, which have become more complicated to detect."
"It can be more secure."
"From an audit point of view, our auditors would like to have more reports on how things are used, if things go wrong, and how they went wrong. For example, if something got a warning, "Why?" So, we would like more versatility for tracing and reporting. That would improve the product, as long as the user interface doesn't get bogged down."
"The detection of viruses could be a little bit better."
"The application control feature requires improvement."
"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."
"Microsoft Windows Defender doesn't have a game mode."
"The central management console should be improved because it provides limited options to configure Windows Defender."
"The solution needs to improve its ransomware. It's not so good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"I am using the Community edition."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"In terms of the cost Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very expensive because we are a Mexican company and when you translate dollars to pesos the cost is very high. The solution is very expensive for Mexican companies. I understand that they have international prices, but I do not think it offsets the price enough for many companies in countries, such as Mexico. The amount it is reduced is not a massive percentage."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"AV solutions are pretty expensive because they are necessary, not just for protection, but many businesses need them to comply with regulatory bodies and receive accreditation. We recently purchased an E5 license, which gives us access to the entire Microsoft suite. I would say the pricing is competitive; most tools of this kind are similarly priced. There are minor differences between the competitors, but they aren't spectacularly different. Defender for Endpoint makes sense because all our solutions are in the same place, paid for with a single license. The subscription price is around £50 per user per month, though it may have increased slightly."
"If you don't purchase the advanced threat protection then there is no additional charge."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is an expensive solution."
"When customers haven't deployed the solution and don't have licenses, it can be expensive to start from scratch."
"Pricing can always be lower."
"This solution is part of an enterprise license we have."
"The nice thing about Defender and Sentinel is that the cost is based on the data logs that you ingest from the Defender endpoints and data connectors. I don't have to buy a 25- or 50- or 1,000-user or enterprise license. I can buy one license at a time."
"It is free. It is included in Windows 10."
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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
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
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 ConnectWise Fortify?
I haven't utilized the advanced threat intelligence capabilities with ConnectWise SIEM. Advanced threat intelligence ...
What is your primary use case for ConnectWise Fortify?
I do not have experience with ConnectWise SIEM for RMM, as I mostly work on Wazuh, and I have a team that handles Con...
What advice do you have for others considering ConnectWise Fortify?
The review can be made anonymous if just my name and not the company name is used. I would assess the real-time visib...
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
ConnectWise Security Management, ConnectWise Fortify, Continuum Fortify, ConnectWise SIEM, ConnectWise SASE
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
Techvera, Syrex, Clark Integrated Technologies
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about ConnectWise SIEM vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.