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F-Secure Total vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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

F-Secure Total
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
21st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Office 365 Protection (9th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Anti-Malware Tools category, the mindshare of F-Secure Total is 1.8%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.0%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Anti-Malware Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.0%
F-Secure Total1.8%
Other92.2%
Anti-Malware Tools
 

Featured Reviews

MS
Computer Scientist at Comune di Eraclea
Easy to setup and stable solution
It's a good product for us. The reports and notifications are very good for us.  There is room for improvement in pricing.  In future releases, I would like to see improvements in EDR protection.  So, the only thing that I would like to see in the future is EDR protection and a lower price for…
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

"It's a good product for us. The reports and notifications are very good for us."
"The automatic attack disruption feature in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint works great."
"The technical support from Microsoft is very good. We are part of the Microsoft Suite, and from being part of this we have consistent news regarding Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been awesome, so far."
"It's a Microsoft product; it's easier to deploy this product than other options."
"The threat hunting service is very useful for a security professional."
"I would recommend this solution to others if they don't have many third-party tools."
"We are able to productively integrate with existing on-prem, hybrid, or cloud applications."
"Defender is a part of Windows; you just need to enable it. There is no need to install anything."
 

Cons

"I would like to see in the future is EDR protection and a lower price for F-Secure Total."
"With the XDR dashboard, when you're doing an investigation and you're drilling down to obtain further details it tends to open many different tabs that take you away from your main tabs. You can end up having 10 tabs open for one investigation. This is another area for improvement because you can end up getting lost in the multiple tabs. Therefore, the central console can be improved so that it does not take you to several different pages for each investigation."
"Everything can be cheaper I am sure. So, it could be less expansive."
"The product should reduce updates since it is hard to keep up."
"The second major area for improvement involves enhanced capabilities for different operating systems or platforms. That is, even though we have coverage for different operating systems or platforms such as Linux, we don't get all of the controls and enhanced capabilities that are available with Windows devices."
"I personally haven't experienced any pain points, but some of my coworkers feel that it isn't secure enough."
"The solution needs to improve its ransomware. It's not so good. It could also use some general performance optimization for the computers the solution operates on, to ensure it does not slow down the devices."
"I would appreciate agentic protection as an additional feature in the next release to protect the agents that the business creates."
"I would like to see the next generation of the tool improved to work with other operating systems, like Linux."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We can easily scale and improve security, but the cost is high for us."
"The solution is free and comes with Windows."
"The license cost is around $35 per machine, which is not expensive compared to other products."
"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."
"It is within the same range as other products. It is not too expensive, and it is also not cheap. Its price can be better, but, well, it is Microsoft."
"The solution is an open source version and was free with a paid version of Windows 10."
"Licensing options vary. Some customers buy it as an enterprise agreement and pay yearly. Others buy it as a CSP, so they pay per month. It completely depends on the customer's needs."
"The solution comes free with Microsoft Windows 10."
"I pay for it through the Windows Professional or Standard license. It is a one-time cost for me, and I use the same license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
27%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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, 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

F-Secure Elements for Microsoft 365
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, SentinelOne, OPSWAT and others in Anti-Malware Tools. Updated: August 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.