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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Norton Security Premium [EOL] 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

Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (6th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Agentic Endpoint Security (3rd)
Norton Security Premium [EOL]
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

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.
RC
Project Manager at Amdocs
User-friendly solution with good blocking
I mainly use Security Premium as an antivirus.  Security Premium's best features are blocking, notifications, and the user interface. Security Premium's cost could be lower. I've been using Security Premium for a year. Security Premium is stable - I haven't faced any issues or bugs while using…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For the most of it, it seems like Defender is well truly up there with the other best players in the market."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is free and part of the licensing stack of other Microsoft products."
"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 is easy to use because it is already pre-installed in Windows 10."
"It is already integrated with Windows 10, so you don't need to worry about that."
"The solution's latest features for threat analysis are updated to provide us with future protection against the latest threats worldwide."
"Microsoft Defender has helped me reduce mean time to remediation."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has helped free up my SOC team to work on other projects or tasks because it has automated some things and allowed them to use that time to focus on other areas."
"With the heightened security around phishing, identity theft, and malware, this is a good product."
"The dashboard is good."
"In general, technical support has been helpful."
"We like how it can check for issues, including files and web browsers, as it is a full-stack solution for antivirus for personal use and it is pretty effective."
"Flexible antivirus and antimalware software. It also provides protection against ransomware. It's flexible, easy to handle, scalable, and stable."
"The antivirus aspect of the solution is very good, and the support we receive from Norton is excellent."
"Norton Security Premium is good, and it's pretty simple to install."
"The internet security was a plus, and it's pretty good."
 

Cons

"With increase of cyber threats and cybersecurity issues, I would recommend that the product be developed like an AI product with more features which can counter any threat in the coming eras."
"The frequency of the patching, and the frequency of the updates, are not included with the free version."
"There is some functionality that is not quite there yet."
"Some of the integrations that Defender should include involve the use of the web app."
"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 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."
"I'd like to see a quicker response time from the company's technical support."
"The management console is something that can be improved."
"It would be helpful for me if this solution works on our cloud backup data."
"I don't like the password manager of Norton Security Premium. I really dislike it."
"They say Norton Security Premium is an all-in-one solution, but we don't know exactly what's in it, e.g. they didn't make an effort to explain the difference between a virus scan and a ransomware scan."
"The only problem with Norton Antivirus is that it consumes a lot of resources like CPU and memory in the background. Whenever it's scanning, my laptop becomes very slow, and the worst part is you cannot do anything about it. As this product is secured by my local IT team, you cannot even kill that process, and that's what I've felt about many other antivirus solutions. I'm using McAfee for personal use, and I have the same problem."
"Sometimes the program is too complex, and simplifying it might be an improvement."
"During scanning, sometimes, there is a heavy load on the workstation. This needs to be improved."
"Having a dashboard that shows the different functions of Norton Security Premium can convince end users that the software is more than just an antivirus solution. This product offers several features, but end users think that it's just one out of the box solution, because the different functions are not explained in detail."
"As far as improvement to the product, perhaps the price could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"We have the E5 security license, and the solution comes with that."
"The license for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is included in the license for the Microsoft Windows operating system."
"You just pay Windows 10 prices, then you have antivirus software. As a price comparison, Defender's costs are very low."
"Currently, for us, Windows Defender is free with the purchase of Windows Server. Pricing is an important point for us when we are looking at the competitors of this solution. If we choose to go with another vendor, we will have to pay some license fees."
"When compared with other vendors, the pricing is very high."
"The solution is free."
"It is built into Windows 10. If our clients are using Microsoft Defender, the cost goes away for them."
"The licensing fee for this solution is not expensive."
"If they could come down in price that would be good. It's not exactly the lowest."
"Pricing for this software is competitive."
"The solution gives the value for the money."
"Security Premium costs around US$100 for three years, which is a little expensive."
"We have a yearly license, and each license is around 20 or 30 Jordanian Dinars plus taxes."
"I don't pay for a license."
"As I have been a long-time customer, I was given a fair price of $49.95 per month for the first four to six months."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise97
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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Also Known As

Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
Norton Internet Security
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Temple University
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