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DeepArmor vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Executive Summary

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
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
DeepArmor
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
58th
Average Rating
2.0
Number of Reviews
1
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
212
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (6th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Agentic Endpoint Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DeepArmor is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.4%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.4%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
DeepArmor0.5%
Other89.3%
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.
Muhammad Fahad - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager Tech. & Support (Information Technology) at Texitech
Security needs improvement and email scanning features are not included
The email scanning feature is not available in DeepArmor. We cannot use this for email scanning. There are many options that are not available in DeepArmor. We cannot use separate applications for different internet applications or for different internet scanning. This is why we cannot use it. I would like to see additional features such as email scanning, which should be included, or malware detections, and other cybersecurity features should be included. It could also be more secure.
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 allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."
"On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks a nine."
"The policy configuration is great, the granularity of policies that are available is very helpful, it is straightforward to set up, and it has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Cortex XDR is a simple platform that's easy for administrators and users. You have a lot of flexibility to change or customize the features."
"We use Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks for its ability to detect based on behavior rather than simple virus scan to prevent malicious activities."
"Based on my experience, I would recommend Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks to other people."
"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."
"It is easy to install."
"It's pretty easy to use, works with compliance issues, and is reliable."
"We rely on this product for endpoint protection in our organization because we have not subscribed to any antivirus, apart from Microsoft Defender, and it has improved the way our organization functions because there have been no virus attacks to date on our laptops and it has not negatively affected our end-user experience."
"The security is very useful."
"The price of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is reasonable, as other solutions, such as ClowdStrike, are more expensive."
"Overall, this solution has helped us save 30% to 40% of our time, and our time to detect and respond has decreased by around 40 to 50%."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has changed significantly for the better."
"The feature I appreciate most about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is the portal, being able to see everything rolling up into the portal for a total overview of how the organization looks for all the managed endpoints."
"There are several features that have helped to improve our security posture at the prevention level, such as the attack surface reduction controls and the exploit prevention control."
 

Cons

"The solution needs better reports. I think they should let the customer go in and customize the reports."
"Cortex XDR should have a lightweight agent, and the agent size should not be heavy."
"The server sometimes stops continuously to check things so it would be helpful to receive access updates or technical reasons."
"Fine-tuning the detection policy requires experience because the policy is very complex in Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, and we get high false positive alerts."
"The playbooks could be improved to include more functionalities or actions."
"I would like to see some additional features related to email protection included."
"I have run into some detection issues with Cortex XDR. It needs to be better at detection of internal attacks."
"I don't like that they have different types of licenses. For example, if users select a license, they think they will have all the platforms they need to improve their network or security. But after some time, Palo Alto Networks changed their licensing, and some of the features that, for example, were free at the beginning now have a cost. I think the integration can be improved. For example, a lot of tools are just integrated through APIs."
"The email scanning feature is not available in DeepArmor. We cannot use this for email scanning."
"There are likely some technical improvements or features that could be added, however, I cannot say, off the top of my head, what they would be."
"The major area for improvement is the integration with a managed service provider. We use Microsoft partners to help govern the platform, and as part of an alliance, we want to gather data from each tenant and combine them for a complete view. This process has been complicated, though it has gotten better."
"The GUI is very complex and could be more user friendly."
"Everything can be cheaper I am sure. So, it could be less expansive."
"I would like to see integrations with other products, such as Spunk and other CM solutions."
"The solution could always be more secure."
"If you have multi-cloud like Google and AWS, the native solutions are better for those particular cases."
"It's not easy to create special allowances for certain groups of users. It can be a little heavy-handed in some areas where Microsoft has decided to lock a feature out, meaning they make it hard to make an exception... One company we work with needed to use about 20 different thumb drives for about 20 users. To make that exception for them was very difficult. In fact, you can't really make an exception. But what you can do is allow them to use it and, while it will still alert, you can actually suppress those alerts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The pricing is a little high. It is per user per year."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"The price was fine."
"Very costly product."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."
"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"There are licensing fees."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is included with a Microsoft E5 license."
"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."
"You do not need to pay any additional costs for antivirus and anti-malware solutions for endpoint protection."
"We pay a yearly license for Microsoft Defender. We also have a support contract with them."
"You just pay Windows 10 prices, then you have antivirus software. As a price comparison, Defender's costs are very low."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is more affordable compared to some other endpoint solutions."
"It is an expensive solution. It would be nice if it could be included with the Microsoft Office package."
"The pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
No data available
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise97
 

Questions from the Community

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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,...
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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
No data available
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
AV-Comparatives
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about SentinelOne, Microsoft, CrowdStrike and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.