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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)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (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 September 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.6%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is 2.1%, up from 1.6% 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 Protection2.1%
Other92.3%
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

"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is different from other security tools because we can configure it to use multiple types of scanning or archiving."
"We apply the DLP policies across a range of endpoints and it is very accurate when reporting vulnerabilities, including those in email attachments."
"This solution absolutely eliminated the need to look at multiple dashboards because we have one XDR."
"The best feature is the fact that for certain mobiles you can control your corporate profiles versus your personal profiles. That is amazingly important. Apple just supported the separation of corporate and personal profiles, whereas Android has been doing that for quite some time... Because Android supports that, if an Android phone is lost or stolen, I can wipe out all the corporate-related information from that phone and not touch the personal side. I can separate the apps and I can separate the ability to cut and paste between apps."
"If you have a mid-sized organization, the solution works well."
"The most valuable aspect is information, specifically the automatic investigation of packages."
"The best thing I like about it is its interaction with the other Defender products. It provides the ability to push telemetry up. It gives me endpoint visibility and allows me to take automated actions."
"Updates and upgrades are quite smooth and seamless."
"The incident management on the solution is very good. You get a lot of detailed information about an incident. You also get a lot of documentation in connection with the CVI or integration."
"You don't have to buy a separate email security platform. You can enable that using their endpoint, and I like that. You don't have to have two agents running on the same box."
"Endpoint to network is a good feature, it can protect the line."
"It has certainly helped out our audit efforts because we each stay compliant in terms of various security standards."
"Overall, the product supports everything already feature-wise, because it has email protection, monitoring detection, network intrusion detection, and advanced threat protection."
"What I like most about Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is its notification capability."
"The technical support services are excellent."
"Technical support is very responsive. You just have to open a ticket. They respond in a timely manner. Their response is good. I'm satisfied."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should have more transparency. In the latest edition of Windows, Windows 11, it is a compulsory requirement to connect to a Microsoft account, which in turn has implications for Defender. This should be removed."
"Microsoft Defender protects the computer by using virus definitions that we download through regular updates but nowadays, cybersecurity attacks have become more intelligent."
"I would like to see integrations with other products, such as Spunk and other CM solutions."
"Auto recovery is the most important feature that we would need from this solution. For decryption, similar to Malwarebytes, there should be something to be able to recover the data up to the last normal status. Its ability to recover data to the last normal copy must not exceed 5 to 10 minutes."
"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."
"The reporting in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should improve. The solution has limited features."
"Some integration components for Mac should be added. We use both Windows 10 desktops and Mac desktops, but presently, the Mac component is still lagging a bit behind."
"One thing that was lacking in Defender was web filtering. Its web filtering wasn't as comprehensive. Sophos was a little bit better than Defender for blocking URLs or installing programs."
"Not ideal for advanced threat protection."
"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 has dropped down to a five out of ten."
"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."
"Entire threat protection is not available for the advanced features."
"The endpoint protection looks old."
"There are limits with respect to blocking files by hash value or blocking IP addresses, and these limits should be removed."
"The cloud platform needs to have improvement in terms of the user interface and the different capabilities it has available. It needs to match the other leading next-gen EDR products that are available in the market. That's the reason why we are stepping away from Symantec. Their cloud environment is just generally lacking in comparison to others."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender is an expensive product in my country."
"The cost is competitive and reasonable because most of the expense is log analytics, storage, and data consumption and ingestion. These things can be throttled and controlled, so they are highly flexible. Defender has a lot of advantages over competing products."
"You need a license to use this solution."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is included with a Microsoft E5 license."
"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 price is fair for the features Microsoft delivers. If you want tailor-made features, you have to mix different licenses. It isn't straightforward."
"We are required to pay for the data we ingest, and increasing the data amount incurs additional expenses."
"The solution is an open source version and was free with a paid version of Windows 10."
"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 pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
"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%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

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
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

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.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.