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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Symantec Advanced Threat Protection comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

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...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Agentic Endpoint Security (3rd)
Symantec Advanced Threat Pr...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
24th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.6%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint5.6%
Symantec Advanced Threat Protection2.2%
Other92.2%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

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.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber SecOps Principal at Dotcom Security
Provides end-to-end antivirus protection and has good stability
Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control. It can integrate with other Broadcom solutions, such as Symantec Messaging Gateway and Symantec DLP. If you want to send an email, it gets scanned through endpoint protection and DLP. We get all Symantec functionality in a single pane.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are able to productively integrate with existing on-prem, hybrid, or cloud applications."
"Auto-remediation: When the product sees malware, it resolves the issue immediately. This protects the machine."
"It is already integrated with Windows 10, so you don't need to worry about that."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is different from other security tools because we can configure it to use multiple types of scanning or archiving."
"I enjoy using the live response feature, which allows me to remotely access different endpoints and investigate malicious files, such as malware that people may have downloaded, and other related issues."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has helped reduce our mean time to remediation significantly."
"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."
"This product offers cost-effective threat protection, which integrates with Office 365 and has unified endpoint management features."
"Their integrations are pretty good as are their Sandbox solutions, their proxies, and their LTAs with API or ICAP protocols."
"Currently we have 800-plus nodes connected with this solution, without any issues. The solution is scalable."
"The stability is excellent."
"The great advantage in using this product is it creates multiple services."
"The technical support services are excellent."
"The most valuable feature is Click-time URL protection."
"The most valuable feature is NetFlow threat protection."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
 

Cons

"Sometimes the software doesn't work the way we expect it to, and in those cases, we can't communicate with a device because it may be infected."
"We would like to see more tools for managing on-premises security... Sometimes, we have the tools, like Defender, to manage security in the cloud, but because we are so focused on the cloud, we forget the fact that we need to be sure about the security of the on-premises environment, specifically Active Directory."
"Updates are not coming out of preview quickly enough and it is holding back on the development of the product."
"The anti-ransomware features need to be improved upon."
"I want Microsoft Defender to have the ability to deal with some issues automatically, so I don't need to address that issue manually."
"The detection of viruses could be a little bit better."
"The most problematic part of this program is the difficult customer service."
"Defender by itself is not a solution."
"Scalability could be better."
"The support for new OSs and older OSs could be a little tighter. They need to be more upfront about what protection services they're going to provide on new OSs. I haven't seen the Windows 11 version out yet. It is either already released in Beta, or the Beta will be released soon. There could be a little bit more advanced updates on what they're doing to help protect Windows 11 environments. They can let us know in advance so that we know it is going to be protected. We can't roll out the new OS without putting end-point protection on it. So, they should tell us what is their support model for that, and what are they doing to protect Windows 11. They're not telling me, and that's a criticism. The same issue is applicable to all the other antivirus tools. It is not just Symantec; all of them have this problem."
"The administration interface needs a lot of improvement. It should be UI based, and simple. They need to improve it. It's pretty much not that friendly compared to what we were using as Bitdefender before. It's okay but is improving, actually."
"It should be able to collect information if the agent is disabled."
"Solutions like CrowdStrike, ESET, and SentinelOne have really jumped ahead on behavioral and algorithm-based detection capabilities. Symantec is trying to catch up, but they still have some limitations of being an old-school AV protection program and adding AI and behavioral learning and detection algorithm."
"The support team that Symantec offers didn't know how to solve issues even though they referred to themselves as "engineers"."
"It also needs network-based threat protection for shared folders and files."
"One area for improvement could be the pricing model."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The nice thing about Defender and Sentinel is that the cost is based on the data logs that you ingest from the Defender endpoints and data connectors. I don't have to buy a 25- or 50- or 1,000-user or enterprise license. I can buy one license at a time."
"Its price is fair. It has approximately the same price as the other products such as Kaspersky. It is much cheaper than Malwarebytes."
"I got it with the Microsoft Windows license."
"The solution is included with Microsoft Windows."
"The solution is free."
"Microsoft Defender is an expensive product in my country."
"The license for Microsoft Windows covers Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."
"The cost is high, compared to other products in the market, if you look at it as a separate product. If you look at the cost where it is part of a bundle, the cost is okay."
"The pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
"Symantec Advanced Threat Protection's pricing is comparable."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection has an average price."
"Pricing is good. It is nice to have a great product at a fair price."
"The price is quite expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

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 Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise13
 

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
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Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
ECI
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,574 professionals have used our research since 2012.