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Heimdal Endpoint Security 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
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Heimdal Endpoint Security
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
38th
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
41st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (26th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (26th), Domain Name System (DNS) Security (13th), Ransomware Protection (12th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
2nd
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
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), 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 Heimdal Endpoint Security is 0.6%, up from 0.3% 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%
Heimdal Endpoint Security0.6%
Other89.2%
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.
DEEPAK KUMAR PACHDEO DUBEY - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT Support Specialist at PXGEO
Delivers efficiency and agility with USB control limitations
One area where we lag is that, since we use everything from Heimdal, including XDR and other features, we also use the privilege manager feature called Elevation. What we lack is granular USB control. We have an issue where we can only switch USB on or off. I want to whitelist specific devices in the network, which I currently cannot do.
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

"Traps has drastically reduced our endpoint attack surface via advanced detection capabilities, sandboxing of never before seen programs, and by drastically limiting where executables can launch in the first place."
"We have found in our test Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks to be a very good tool."
"But overall, when we speak about security and protection, they are one of the top providers."
"Threat identification and detection are the most valuable features of this solution."
"We think that this product will help us grow, as it meets our needs currently and we can grow with it over time."
"There has been a significant reduction of approximately 70% to 80% in our internal MTTR and MTTD metrics, now around five to eight minutes whereas previously it was hours, which has helped tremendously."
"The solution helps find bugs, and it is safe to use to prevent attacks by hackers."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has changed the way my security team detects, investigates, and responds to threats, as we are able to see the files, unwanted files, unsecured files, and unauthorized files, so we are quarantining them."
"As compared to multiple solutions I have used in the past, Heimdal is a very agile and lightweight solution."
"Threat intelligence is one of the most valuable features in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."
"At the moment, it is one of the best security platforms for endpoint security in the market."
"It shows us the risky sign-ins, and if a user's password has been compromised."
"It's a very complete application. I have all the controls in one site. I can track emails, attacks, and threats, and I can research information. I really like this configuration because I have all the information in place."
"Microsoft Defender has helped me reduce mean time to remediation."
"The stability is great, it just keeps getting more and more stable and as it matures it's going to be very good."
"It is stable and easy to use. Everything is okay, and there are no performance issues."
"We like that it has a free version available."
 

Cons

"There are some third-party solutions that are difficult to integrate with, which is something that can be improved."
"It takes time to scan the servers and devices."
"The downside to the solution is that there are a large number of false positives."
"Currently, we are monitoring all USB drives and ports but we would like to improve our device control capabilities."
"I recommend adding a data loss prevention (DLP) solution to Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. The inclusion of this feature would allow the application of DLP policies alongside antivirus policies via a single agent and console, making it more competitive as other OEMs often offer DLP solutions as part of their antivirus products."
"When it comes to core analysis, and security analysis, Cortex needs to provide more information."
"If Palo Alto reduces the pricing slightly for their products, it would make them more scalable in markets such as India and globally for cybersecurity."
"It tends to do 99.9% of things. The only thing I'd like is single sign-on authentication into their cloud platform so that my users can be properly authenticated against it."
"What we lack is granular USB control. We have an issue where we can only switch USB on or off."
"Integrating this with third-party systems has some complexity involved."
"The actual product updates have caused a little bit of disruption that could be avoided, so I think that customers need to have more granular controls as to when updates can be deployed versus more done from a top-down deployment perspective."
"I think the overall portal of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could be improved; sometimes there's moving around to different spots and it's a little hard to navigate, so getting used to that was perhaps the biggest hurdle."
"Threat intelligence has the potential for improvement, particularly by integrating more sources."
"Microsoft Defender protects the computer by using virus definitions that we download through regular updates but nowadays, cybersecurity attacks have become more intelligent."
"We need better support to learn about the product. Documentation is available, but we need some kind of training program so that we can get a better understanding of the product."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can improve by providing more and different types of reports."
"I'm not too sure of its current capabilities, but I'm pretty sure they are doing a good job on Windows and Mac. However, I'm not sure whether they covered Linux. If I remember correctly, Microsoft Defender didn't have anything proper on Linux back then, but if they have improved it from that aspect, it would already be ticking all the boxes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an expensive solution."
"I don't like that they have different types of licenses."
"The price of the product is not very economical."
"It is present, but when compared to other competitive products, I would say it is not less expensive; however, when all of the other added values are considered, the price is reasonable."
"Very costly product."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"The tool's price is moderate."
Information not available
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable and fair."
"Licensing fees are paid annually through a partner."
"I recently switched from education to private business, and all I can say is that private business licensing from Microsoft is not cheap until you hit certain quantities or scale. That does not mean that it is not comparable to other industries. It is similar pricing, but it is still crazy to me how much you pay for a client. I feel it is high, but it is in line with other vendors."
"Pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is competitive. Out of the bundle, you will get a lot of security, if I talk about Microsoft E5, for example, and get a lot of benefits. If the customer goes and purchases a different solution, it will cost more, so pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is quite reasonable at the moment. There isn't any challenge in terms of pricing, for example, I didn't see a customer who pulled back because of the price. Some prices could be negotiable, and sometimes, as a sales point, the two become negotiable, but they don't bill one and pull back because of the pricing. If you have an E5 license, you get everything."
"This solution is part of Windows and comes included with it."
"We pay a yearly license for Microsoft Defender. We also have a support contract with them."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comes with Windows 10, and it's free. But for you to be able to manage it in the cloud and use the console, you need to have either an Office 365 E5 subscription or a Microsoft M365 subscription. You need to buy an extra license."
"I'm not too familiar with costs as I'm an architect, though I know about online pricing, as I help two teams with online purchasing and procurement. Nowadays, everyone has an enterprise agreement, such as an E3 license, which we provide to our customers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
17%
Construction Company
16%
Computer Software Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
6%
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

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Heimdal Endpoint Security?
Pricing, compared to what we had before, was quite economical. There was a difference of about twenty percent or some...
What needs improvement with Heimdal Endpoint Security?
One area where we lag is that, since we use everything from Heimdal, including XDR and other features, we also use th...
What is your primary use case for Heimdal Endpoint Security?
My company colleagues and I use this antivirus solution. I am part of a company where I deploy solutions, and I also ...
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
Heimdal Next-Gent Endpoint Antivirus, Thor Vigilance Enterprise, Heimdal Endpoint Detection and Response, Heimdal DNS Security - Endpoint, Heimdal Threat Prevention, Heimdal Ransomware Encryption Protection
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Brother, Symbion, CPH West
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.