No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Microsoft Defender for Business vs VIPRE Endpoint Security comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 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 Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (15th)
VIPRE Endpoint Security
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
53rd
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 1.4%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VIPRE Endpoint Security is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.9%
Microsoft Defender for Business1.4%
VIPRE Endpoint Security0.6%
Other94.1%
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.
Paritosh Jani - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate VP (Managed Information Technology Services) at Dev Information Tech Pvt Ltd
Has delivered automated threat response and streamlined integration with advanced tools
The best features of Microsoft Defender for Business include it coming as an XDR solution which provides automated investigations, remediations, and endpoint detection and response. Moreover, it can be tightly integrated with vulnerability management or detecting vulnerabilities and pushing them to the SIEM solution. I utilize the advanced threat hunting feature of Microsoft Defender for Business and find it helpful; it's good and improving with every update. Microsoft Defender for Business integrates effectively with the Microsoft ecosystem as with Azure Sentinel, and it has a two-way natural integration. Apart from that, it also integrates with industry SIEM solutions such as Splunk.
SS
IT Security Analyst at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
Easy to upgrade and manage but needs better reporting
There just was a lot about it that I didn't like. For blocking certain items, such as USBs, we felt like it was slowing down the network too much. Therefore we utilized a GPO for blocking things like that instead. Our environment was big and I didn't feel like the console did a good enough job. We outgrew the product. I've been asking for a change for a couple of years now, and it finally got approved. In terms of the console, I had over 2000 endpoints in there and there wasn't even a search feature for me to look through them. If I had to find where a policy was I had to sort in alphabetical order to find an endpoint that I wanted. They need to offer a search function within the console - maybe something that shows a "last connected" notice. That way, it's easier to manage obsolete machines that you don't need anymore. They had a very vague setting, like after so many days, when do you want us to remove these, you'd see them. I just wish the console was a little more responsive when I would do commands. The reports could have been better. The product would show a lot of endpoints as not communicating. That was another pain point. We constantly had to run an SQL query to clean up the database as I would know immediately when I was in the console, that it just wasn't being responsive. I could tell I was being given bad data and that we had to clean up the database. As soon as I would clean up that database, it was like a purging of the SQL database and it would become a lot more responsive. The problem was that our environment was too big. We're going through a growth spurt right now. In the end, the solution is small and much better suited for a small business. We would get a lot of false positives and instead of them fixing the false positive, they would just want us to put in an exception, which I didn't care for. The product is based on an older model of signature files. It doesn't use any artificial intelligence or anything. It was slow to refresh the policies and computer scans. The larger we got, the more it became an issue. If a company stayed small, I'm not sure if they would have noticed.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The scalability of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very good."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning."
"These days it's machine-learning technology and behavior-based analytics features that make us more secure."
"Cortex XDR can integrate the firewalls and determine the tendencies of the attacks. It's a new generation antivirus, with protection endpoints and detection response. It is very easy to use and everybody can operate the solution."
"After deploying Traps, we saw the performance of the network improve by 65 to 70 percent."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is its machine-learning capabilities. Additionally, there is full integration with other solutions."
"The best features of Microsoft Defender for Business include it coming as an XDR solution which provides automated investigations, remediations, and endpoint detection and response."
"I rate Microsoft Defender for Business a 10 out of 10."
"The interface is quite user-friendly."
"Microsoft Defender for Business works well with the Microsoft Azure Security ecosystem, including Defender for Endpoint and Office 365 Cloud."
"I recommend Microsoft Defender for Business to startup organizations looking for a plug-and-play solution."
"If you're an Intune user, you can bring in certain capabilities like system-hardening policies, which further enhances the security."
"Microsoft Defender for Business is good for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers solid security flexibility and integration with tools like Microsoft Lighthouse and some other software. It takes some of the features of Defender for Endpoint EDR and provides those services for small and medium-sized business environments."
"It is scalable."
"In general, it was pretty easy to manage."
"It has improved the way our organization functions, made things run faster in our company, and has done a fantastic job of keeping our networks free of virus."
"It has low overhead as far as machine resources are concerned. Everything runs faster with VIPRE installed versus some of the competitors. It has also been pretty easy to use. It just runs and gives us reports. It also sends us alerts when there is something that we need to look at. It does its job, and you just look at the reports. In other ways, you just forget that it is there."
"Technical support was always very helpful and responsive."
 

Cons

"We have found that there are times Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks does not detect some of the viruses, we have to use another protection solution called Kaspersky."
"Traps doesn't work with McAfee. You need to remove McAfee to install Traps. This is very common, and its nothing that should be an issue. Some antivirus engines recognize Traps as an threat component, so maybe they need to shake hands somewhere."
"In an upcoming release, the solution could improve by proving hard disk encryption. If it could support this it would be a complete solution."
"It would be good to have a better way to search for a file within the UI."
"The negative aspect I see is the economic model used by Palo Alto."
"They are charging for Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA) services, so if the per GB data could be provided at a certain level free of cost or at the same cost which the customer is taking for the entire bundle, that would be better."
"Cortex XDR could be improved with more GUI features."
"The solution needs better reports. I think they should let the customer go in and customize the reports."
"The tool's support is an area of concern where improvements are needed."
"The technical support from Microsoft is very poor. I would rate it a one, as their technical staff are very junior and take a long time to respond to simple questions."
"I see room for improvement in Microsoft Defender for Business, particularly regarding the consolidation of all security solutions in one place and the integration of AI and data security into the same platform."
"Threat protection could be improved even though it is already a built-in feature."
"Talking with the tool's technician about any problem is very complicated."
"I have an open case for close to two months with no responses or updates, except for an email response, and I've made four or five phone calls regarding the Microsoft Interconnect for AD and cloud tenant."
"I am not satisfied with Microsoft's technical support. There are challenges with the knowledge and experience of the support staff, frequent redirection between departments, and slow response times."
"If I need logs and don't have local storage bundled with Defender, I need to add workspace and log analytics, which is costly for storing logs of 2 GB, 5 GB, 10 GB."
"Their management interface is a little buggy as it will hang up and crash from time to time."
"We would get a lot of false positives and instead of them fixing the false positive, they would just want us to put in an exception, which I didn't care for."
"Their management interface is a little buggy. It requires a few system resources on the management interface. Its reporting can also be better. Overall, the reports are pretty good. They patch some third-party software, but if they can expand what they do for reporting and patch enterprise software, it would be handy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is "expensive" and flexible."
"The pricing is a little high. It is per user per year."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"The pricing seems fair, and I do like the licensing model. You use wherever they are, and it is elastic."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"The tool is cheap, while some other solutions are more expensive. I remember the tool cost about five euros for a workstation or for a user on a monthly basis."
"Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool."
"Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."
"It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors."
"The tool's cost has been a little high, but I do not think it was terrible."
"Its price point has been phenomenal. Our previous solution from Trend Micro was triple the cost of it."
"Its price point has been phenomenal. Our previous solution from Trend Micro was triple the cost of it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
18%
University
9%
Government
5%
Wholesaler/Distributor
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
No data available
 

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 Microsoft Defender for Business?
Our thoughts on the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Business are that we wish it could be better. If the pricing w...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?
I see room for improvement in Microsoft Defender for Business, particularly regarding the consolidation of all securi...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
VIPRE Cloud, VIPRE Endpoint Security Cloud Edition, VIPRE Endpoint Security Server Edition
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Information Not Available
College Station ISD, Mid-West Companies, Guardian Network Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Business vs. VIPRE Endpoint Security and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.