Microsoft Forefront [EOL] vs Symantec Endpoint Security comparison

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Microsoft and Broadcom are both solutions in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category. Additionally, 85% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Forefront [EOL] and Symantec Endpoint Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about SentinelOne, Microsoft, CrowdStrike and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP).

To learn more, read our detailed Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Report (Updated: October 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)

October 2026

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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...

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH

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.

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it_user772620

Systems Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

There is simplicity in the management of the product compared to its competitors

Web proxy services along with the integrated firewall VPN Intrusion prevention Malware inspection URL filtering The simplicity of managing the product compared to its competitors, like BIG-IP F5 and Citrix NetScaler The ease of deploying mobile functionality through the web proxy has…

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Abhimanyu Das

Senior Cybersecurity Engineer at Kyndryl

Behavioral protection has blocked ransomware and now saves extensive recovery and audit time

The best feature of Symantec Endpoint Security is its effectiveness in malware protection. Its malware protection capabilities stand out due to their ease of management. Although multiple tools assist in this process, managing them all can sometimes be challenging. In terms of malware protection, Symantec Endpoint Security performs well, and its mechanisms, tactics, and techniques are effective. Symantec Endpoint Security offers robust features such as advanced reporting capabilities with a customizable dashboard that integrates EDR timelines, threat maps, and compliance metrics into a single view. Additionally, reports can be exported to PDF or CSV formats, making reporting one of its strong points. It also provides comprehensive device control features, which block unauthorized USB devices and support whitelisting. This helps prevent data exfiltration and phishing scenarios without disrupting user workflows.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The live terminal is probably the best thing ever. It gives you the access to get straight onto any machine."

"Since they've done their most recent update, the ease to isolate endpoints is valuable. If we find one where there is a virus on it, we can easily isolate it. We don't even have to contact the user. We don't have to manually take them off the network. We can easily isolate them."

"They did what they said, and this solution could apply to any scenario."

"Previously, we had to install endpoint protection per machine and then scan and update, but Cortex XDR basically does that centrally and predictably, so we have more time to do day-to-day work rather than spend time chasing those endpoints."

"Its interface and pricing are most valuable, and it is better than other vendors in terms of security."

"In one single alert, we are getting the network telemetry, endpoint telemetry, email security telemetry, and proxy telemetry all in one single ticket, making it very easy."

"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."

"The stability of this product is very good."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pros

"To date we have not had a virus infecting a desktop with Forefront installed - this is the main reason why we will not use another anti-virus solution."

"Performance wise, it's one of the most effective anti-virus solutions we have ever used."

"It has automated the entire user and group management process, thus reducing manual work and help desk cost to a great extent."

"The simplicity of managing the product compared to its competitors, like BIG-IP F5 and Citrix NetScaler, is a valuable feature."

"The snort engine, which is the muscle behind the Sourcefire IPS technology, has always been a joy for me to work with."

"Product has been enough for our customers’ requirements."

"Our ROI is that we can provision users accounts within 30 minutes of them being put into the system."

"It cost us approx. US$250k to set up and is roughly US$200 day to day."

"The product is a good antivirus in terms of the fact that it can do real-time scanning and scheduling, we can plan scans for the weekend, we can also control it on the server for all the clients it manages, and the solution gets real-time updates of virus definition files from the internet."

"Protection from viruses, malware, Trojans, and malicious files is most valuable."

"It's good for large organizations. It's able to handle a lot of users."

"They're one of my favorite products and we're actively working with Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos, ESET, and Sophos."

"The tool has predefined rules, like which actions to block or allow. This makes it easy because I don't have to figure out what policies to deploy."

"It is good for detecting signature-based viruses, and it is user friendly."

"I like that the solution can be scaled to deal with different threats, and the same agent will be integrated into different Symantec products, which obviates the need to deploy multiple agents and keeps things very small and effective."

"It's a single-agent installation with many features including wireless protection."

More Symantec Endpoint Security pros

Cons

"I have faced some issues with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks; there is room for improvement in the sense that certain options prevent us from seeing and segregating data."

"They have the worst support, as a company, that I have ever worked with, as they are difficult to get a hold of and keep on the phone. They don't know what they are talking about when you get them on the phone. They don't like to respond to messages when you send them to them. They like to "research problems" for weeks on end, then pass you off to somebody else."

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can improve mobile integration to allow access to the console."

"A potential area of improvement for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the cost."

"The technical support is not very good. I find the process difficult."

"The solution should add unwanted malicious hash values to a block list so that whenever the action is triggered, it will automatically prevent the malicious content."

"It automatically detects security issues. It should be able to protect our network devices while operating autonomously."

"The playbooks could be improved to include more functionalities or actions."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks cons

"I’d personally like to see some additional customization capabilities in the reporting section."

"The product has unfortunately reach its End-Of-Life (EOL) at Microsoft and is now replaced by several products."

"Web user interface from 1990s. Users laugh at it."

"Pretty awful. A large initial investment with something that could have been done by one person full time over six years with less hassle."

"One of the biggest pain points was that username changes were not automated and caused problems."

"When using Forefront in a domain network, it is quite difficult to create the group policies needed for definition/engine updates using WSUS."

"Without a local Windows Update Server, the client seems to update very slowly and may take a lot of time."

"More out of box connectors and conducting awareness of the product along with more marketing."

"If there is a suspicious file, it is put into a sandbox where Symantec does an analysis. After the analysis, Symantec marks the file as a risk, but it doesn't blacklist or block the file. If a file is already known to be harmful, I would like them to automatically block or blacklist it to reduce the damage."

"We had trouble with the advanced features, such as the firewall builder and all the network protection modules. We were having a lot of issues because it would sometimes block users or the printing, or it would create issues with the network access resources."

"Future releases should ideally be cheaper."

"We are essentially left with a vulnerability."

"The overall quality of the product needs to be improved because with the last session we had several issues with new versions. Also, the solution needs better protections."

"There was an administrative feature, which was available in the previous version, which has been removed. We would like that feature to be added again, because it helps the customer in many ways, and it's a very user-friendly feature."

"Maybe Symantec Endpoint Security could amend their pricing structure, but they always offer a good product."

"I rate Symantec Endpoint Security a four out of ten. This rating stems primarily from the subpar user interface, which significantly delays my response time when managing firewall rules or investigating issues."

More Symantec Endpoint Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."

"It has a yearly renewal."

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."

"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."

"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."

"It is "expensive" and flexible."

"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."

"It's way too expensive, but security is expensive. You pay for your licensing, and then you pay for someone to monitor the stuff."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"Zero-day threat or advanced attacks should be part of the endpoint. The product should not require you to buy a separate license."

"It is cheap. It is especially cheaper than Malwarebytes, which is three times higher than this. It is also cheaper than Cisco. Its price is almost similar to Bitdefender, Gravity, and CloudZone."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"It could be cheaper."

"Pricing and licensing are important to us when choosing a product."

"Regarding the licensing, it was important negotiate a long contract to get a more attractive price, including advanced support in case of crisis."

"It is normal. If you are an educational institute, they give you a very good discount. If you are coming from the banking side, they may or may not give you a discount. I'm working with seven companies, and normally, they get a 65% to 70% discount on everything."

"It's pretty awesome price-wise. That's why we give it to most of our clients. It isn't very expensive. Compared to Cisco AMP, which is very expensive, its price is okay. It's also cheaper than Malwarebytes."

More Symantec Endpoint Security pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

14%

Outsourcing Company

12%

Construction Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

No data available

Outsourcing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	50
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	57

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	2

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	69
Midsize Enterprise	32
Large Enterprise	63

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. ...

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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...

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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,...

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Which is better - Cortex XDR or Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?

Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?

Symantec Endpoint Security's pricing is better than most offerings based on my research. It seems to be half the cost...

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Comparisons

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 16% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Endpoint vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

Cortex XSIAM vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 3% of the time

Trellix Endpoint Security Platform vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 3% of the time

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Competitors

ESET Endpoint Protection Platform vs Microsoft Forefront [EOL]

Compared 59% of the time

VMware Carbon Black Endpoint vs Microsoft Forefront [EOL]

Compared 16% of the time

More Microsoft Forefront [EOL] Competitors

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 7% of the time

Morphisec vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 5% of the time

Trellix Endpoint Security Platform vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 5% of the time

Kaspersky Next XDR Optimum vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 4% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 4% of the time

More Symantec Endpoint Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

October 2026

Download Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks product report

Buyer's Guide

Universal Access Gateways

October 2026

Download Microsoft Forefront [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Endpoint Security

October 2026

Download Symantec Endpoint Security product report

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps

MS Forefront [EOL]

Symantec EPP, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP)

Overview

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks provides advanced threat detection with AI-driven endpoint protection and seamless integration, ensuring multi-layered security and automatic threat response.

Cortex XDR is designed to safeguard endpoints against malware and suspicious activities. It offers advanced threat detection and response capabilities using behavioral analysis, AI, and machine learning. It seamlessly integrates with security infrastructures, providing endpoint security, firewall integration, and enhanced visibility in both cloud-based and on-premises environments.

What are the key features of Cortex XDR?

Advanced Threat Detection: Uses AI and machine learning for proactive threat identification.
Multi-layered Security: Combines various security measures for comprehensive protection.
Endpoint Protection: Safeguards against malware and exploits.
Behavioral Analysis: Monitors suspicious activity for early detection.
Automatic Threat Response: Automates responses to neutralize threats.

What benefits should users expect?

Ease of Use: Simplifies security management with intuitive design.
Resource Efficiency: Minimizes impact on system resources.
Integration Capabilities: Works well with existing security setups.
Reduced Analyst Workload: Automates processes to decrease manual intervention.

Organizations in diverse sectors deploy Cortex XDR to protect against malware, leveraging its advanced threat detection capabilities. Its integration with existing security infrastructures appeals to those seeking comprehensive protection in both cloud and on-premises environments, providing enhanced visibility and threat intelligence.

Palo Alto Networks

Our agile methodology and our integration expertise brings you the best catalyst to craft solutions of exceptional quality and distinctive success.

Microsoft

Symantec Endpoint Security is a comprehensive protection tool designed for antimalware and antivirus defense. Providing centralized management and smooth deployment, it effectively secures environments from small businesses to extensive networks.

Symantec Endpoint Security serves organizations by offering robust protection with features like rapid deployment and centralized management, critical for securing workstations and servers. While appreciated for efficient resource utilization and stable operation, some users report issues with virus detection and cumbersome updates. Pricing is often considered high. It is a popular choice among IT consultants, academic institutions, and service providers for its ability to manage broad and varied security needs efficiently.

What are the key features of Symantec Endpoint Security?

Centralized Management: Streamlines security operations for ease of handling across networks.
Malware and Antivirus Protection: Provides real-time threat detection and EDR capabilities.
Application and Device Control: Manages access and control policies effectively.
SONAR and IPS: Enhances proactive malware scanning and intrusion prevention.
Active Directory Integration: Supports seamless integration with existing systems.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Symantec Endpoint Security?

Reliable Support: Offers assistance which, while helpful, can vary in effectiveness.
Advanced Reporting: Enables detailed security analysis, though customization is limited.
Efficient Resource Usage: Provides stable performance across platforms with minimal impact.
Proactive Scanning: Ensures threats are detected early, enhancing security measures.

In industries like academia and IT consulting, Symantec Endpoint Security fulfills specific needs for robust endpoint protection. Its centralized management and application control make it suitable for educational institutions managing large network systems, while service providers benefit from its flexible deployment options.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank

EUROVIA CS, a. s., King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Public Education Devel, Bank Alfalah Ltd., CLEAResult, St. Lucie County Public Schools, Wiltshire Council

Audio Visual Dynamics, Red Deer Advocate, Asia Pacific Telecom Co. Ltd., Kibbutz Ein Gedi, and AMETEK, Inc.

Buyer's Guide

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)

October 2026

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