Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Reviews

We use the solution for antivirus and firewall protection.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's visibility into threats is good. The solution helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has helped our organization by providing continuous protection across our organization without overloading our CPUs by running in the background. We realized the benefits of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint while we were comparing it with other solutions.

Microsoft security solutions help automate routine tasks and identify high-value alerts. I used to work as a System Administrator or Network Administrator, so I understand how useful it is for admins to have their routines automated. I am aware that the solution supports policies and ensures that it is very beneficial.

Automation has enabled the process to be automated, such as protecting certain roles or allowing digital transactions, etc.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's threat intelligence helps us prepare for potential threats before they hit and to take proactive steps.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint saves us time and money.

The solution has helped reduce our time for detection and response.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy to load and it runs quietly in the background, unlike other solutions.

The solution is reliable.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can use more advertising to promote their features.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The stability of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is good.

The solution is easily scalable. We have ten people using the solution currently.

I previously used, Symantec Endpoint Detection and Response, ESET Endpoint Security, and McAfee MVISION Endpoint Detection and Response before switching to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

I give the solution a ten out of ten.

The solution is deployed across our local network. 

I recommend the solution and it should not be removed from a person's computer.

The type of endpoint security solution that is used in an organization should be based on the environment.

The solution can be used on everything. It can be used on the cloud. You can also use it for on-premises devices, from servers to laptops. It's a pretty good solution to manage devices and servers.

Usually, our clients have an on-premises infrastructure and they want to start working in the cloud, especially in Azure. We use Microsoft Defender to manage on-premises devices from Azure. Especially over the last two years, a lot of companies have wanted to focus more on their own business and that's why they have us manage their IT security.

The main goal of using Defender for our clients is to do vulnerability scanning and to be aware of any possible security breaches in their infrastructure.

Microsoft Defender is totally integrated with Microsoft 365 Azure. For example, years ago a software company that was working on-premises with Microsoft products came to us. They asked us to help them connect to Azure because with Azure, they could, of course, run their core business, but it would also help them create more value in the market. Microsoft Defender is the best way to manage on-premises devices, but also devices on the cloud.

It also helps us to prioritize threats.

In addition, the solution gives us a single dashboard that we can customize. When our security operators start their day, they look at the dashboard information. If there is a big issue, they automatically get the information. They can send an email to the team involved. The dashboard helps the security team, day-to-day, to ensure everything is secure for the client. The dashboard is really important.

And overall, the solution has saved us 50 percent of our time. It also saves us money because it prevents ransomware and web application attacks every day. Currently, with the war in Ukraine, because I work in Europe, hackers are trying to hack into enterprises, and that's another reason it's really important to have this kind of solution.

It may be saving us 30 percent, in terms of money, because once you have the system in place, you can avoid a lot of attacks and keep secret information away from hackers. When we talk about security, we're also talking about the reputation of the company. Using this kind of solution helps our clients not to lose money through a loss of reputation.

In terms of time to respond, someone who is working every day on the security operation team, can respond correctly within five minutes, to be conservative, to a problem they receive from the scanning done by Defender. It has decreased that time by about 20 percent, although keep in mind that I am a security architect and not part of the operations team.

The scanning part is one of the most valuable features with the automation of vulnerability scanning. That's why we use Defender. It gives us a lot of information on how to improve security.

There are some competitive products on the market, but the best is Microsoft Defender because it's very easy to integrate. That's one reason a lot of clients want Microsoft Defender.

It's also very easy to implement compared to other solutions.

Regarding other Microsoft solutions, about half of our clients take Sentinel, while 90 percent take Defender. They are very easy to integrate. That's one of the reasons, for me, that Microsoft is the best on the market. And in reviews about the best tools on the market, everybody agrees that Sentinel is the best on the market in the security area. When you work with Sentinel, it's easy to work with the Microsoft suite of products. It's easy to integrate every product from Microsoft.

We also use Microsoft Defender for Cloud's bidirectional sync capabilities. For security, they allow us to get all the information we need on time.

After scanning, there are false positives so sometimes you need to manage the results.

Also, we would like to see more tools for managing on-premises security. A lot of companies have their own on-premises infrastructure and want to move to the cloud. 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. I know it's tricky, but I'd like to see them add some tools for a really good dashboard to introduce the fact that we also need to be careful about on-premises.

A lot of companies have their Active Directory on an on-premises physical server. When they start the journey of moving to the cloud, especially to Azure, they use Microsoft Defender to do device management, especially servers and computers. But to improve security monitoring it would help if we could monitor on-premises, especially identity. Usually, when hackers hack into an environment, they use tools to get the identity of a person. If we had tools to integrate with Defender, it would help improve security.

I have been working with Microsoft Defender for two years.

It's a stable solution.

It's also a scalable solution.

About 90 percent of our clients have deployments in multiple locations because they are usually multi-national, and that's why it sometimes takes more time to do the implementation.

The technical support of Microsoft is good.

Positive

I have always used Microsoft solutions.

The deployment is straightforward. The amount of time it takes depends on the configuration the client wants, but it's easy enough to deploy. 

If we need to implement it for a client with 2,000 devices, it takes more time. Just the implementation, for me, takes 20 minutes, but after that we have to implement configuration on the cloud, and that is totally different.

If it's a big company, it could take three months, because we have to do discovery. We have a lot of clients that use customized containers and customized Linux servers, and that's where we have to be sure we do the implementation the right way.

Usually, when working with clients and proposing different solutions, they prefer to work with Microsoft Defender because it is integrated. And when you talk about the price, it's really perfect, compared to other advanced threat-scanning products on the market. Overall, 90 percent choose Microsoft Defender because it's great and very easy to put in place. You don't need to install an extra service or do a big design. You pay for the licenses and that's it.

If you're considering working with Microsoft Defender, the first thing you need to do is an inventory of the infrastructure. We need to know what the client has: how many Windows Servers, how many Linux servers, and how much content. And then you need to know what you want to do with the devices. Some devices are not supported anymore. We need to know which devices the client wants to be covered by Defender.

A lot of times, we want to work with Sentinel because it's the best on the market. But Sentinel is more tricky to put that in place. But when you advise a client on security, of course, you propose a lot of solutions, including Defender and Sentinel. You propose the best on the market to improve their security.

Usually, they go for Microsoft Defender, but for Sentinel, sometimes it takes time. They say to us, "We don't have the money right now, let's wait two years." On many of my projects, my clients have already worked in the cloud and they want to start working with Azure. That's why Microsoft Defender is a good tool to implement. There are times we advise the client about Sentinel but they already have a SIEM solution like Splunk.

Defender for Endpoint does not help us automate routine tasks right now because it's extra work. I know we could put that in place, but often, when we start working with a client in the cloud, we spend a lot of money on that. I know, in the day-to-day operations of the security teams of our clients, they have so much to do and it would be really good to implement automation. We propose it to our clients, but it's up to them to decide if they want to do it.

The threat intelligence can help prepare for potential threats before they hit, but this is also something we need to talk to the client about. Sometimes, it's not in our hands. We can propose things to the client, but they have to choose. So far, after proposing these kinds of things to clients, I haven't received their agreement. This part of the solution is really interesting, but it can also be expensive for some clients. It depends on their budget.

And in terms of using multiple vendors for security or a single-vendor security suite, in my current company, we generally advise our clients to have different vendors, but it depends on the client. I, myself, am not a risky guy. But a lot of our clients have Microsoft products, and we'll advise them to use Microsoft products. You don't want to go to war with your client.

Sometimes, they want to work with a lot of different products, but when you try to do that it can be really expensive because you need to work on the connections between them. I usually advise Microsoft because it's very easy and a lot of clients already have Windows Servers, et cetera. It really depends on each case. It depends on who is paying, who is asking, and what they want.

In the past, I needed two, three, or four apps to do my job. With Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, I have all the resources on one site. I can check what the threats are and if the computers need to be updated or if they reboot with various apps. It's very helpful for us. For example, I have colleagues who use different versions of a certain programming software. With this tool, I can check whether they need to update the app because an older version might have a lot of bugs. I can check which applications need to be updated or uninstalled.

I have a lot of alerts set up as well. For example, all our users are here in Mexico. If we get someone connecting in the UK or Venezuela or Colombia, we get an alert. I then know I need to change the password and use two-step authentication.

And I get a message when a new threat comes up or I need to do updates to different tools. This is helpful because threats are always working in innovative ways. These are very important messages for us.

Defender for Endpoint saves me a lot of time because I have all the alerts and information in one application. It also saves money because when you lose information due to an attack, you lose a lot of money on the reconfiguration of the sites or the information or on the recovery of a backup or a server. It's very important to have a tool like this. It saves a lot of money. The cost-benefit is very good.

It's a very complete application. I have all the controls in one site. I can track emails, attacks, and threats, and I can research information. I really like this configuration because I have all the information in place. It was very easy for me to configure it to show me all the things that I need in one dashboard for monitoring.

The visibility into threats is very good. I can track the threats very easily in this application. I have also used Trend Micro and it's more difficult to do with that solution. With Defender, I have all the information and I can follow all of the steps and do my job. It's really easy and very impressive.

I also use Microsoft Endpoint Manager to control all our laptops and cell phones. I take care of all those policies in that solution. In addition, I use Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Exchange, as well as Teams and SharePoint. I have integrated them all into one environment. All the solutions are integrated into one solution and that makes my job easier. Integrating them is really easy because you have one platform to configure all of them. In the role of the global manager, I can make all the changes in these solutions. And the process for connecting all these apps is very easy.

I have two different environments, two different types of accounts. I have accounts for administrators and corporate employees, but I also have accounts for students. I can't split these types of accounts. I need a separate configuration for both. I don't have access to the laptops or computers of the students, so I can't deactivate the alerts from the students' machines. I get a lot of alerts from their machines. I need to research how I can get alerts for only the administrative machines.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for three years.

The stability of Defender for Endpoint is very good. I haven't had trouble with it.

The scalability is pretty good. It's easy to scale it.

I have different locations here in Mexico, with about 300 users here and two or three in the UK, depending on the travel schedule.

I have contact with a Microsoft partner here in Mexico as well as directly with Microsoft. If the partner doesn't have a solution, I can contact Microsoft support.

The support is very quick in communicating. Usually, with one mail or one call, the problem is resolved.

Positive

I used Trend Micro and Symantec in the past to research threats, like viruses and malware, but for me, Defender for Endpoint is the better solution. It's very easy to integrate all the tools and gives me a lot of information in one place. It's very easy to detect an attack or email threat.

I also get all the alerts on my cell phone. Because I have all the alerts, if one of my colleagues in the IT area makes a change, I have all the information. That makes it very easy to maintain.

For me, the pricing is very good, but for management it's very expensive. Other solutions are less expensive. But when I present all the information and all the reports they say, "Well, it's expensive, but the cost-benefit is very good."

If you have all the information, and you are clear about what solutions your business needs, and Microsoft has all that information, the change is very easy. It's a very good solution.

I have tried so many antiviruses personally, but this one is integrated with the operating system. That's one of the main reasons for considering this.

The main benefits are compliance and protection from threats.

It helps us to avoid disruption in the business. It helps us see if other solutions are causing any slowness to our end-user machines. We can see if there are any service availability issues. Operations-wise, it helps us a lot to maintain the uptime of our business.

It helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise, which is very important and one of our priorities.

We have the Defender for cloud applications. It's very easy to integrate. It's straightforward. These solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment, which is very important for us.

We did extensive testing of its functionality, and it's very effective. It covers almost all the new, unknown, and known threats. 

It helps automate routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts, which is helpful for incident response and SLAs. It has saved us 50% of the time to respond to the incident.

It helps us to be proactive. It can detect unknown threats and alerts us. We're able to identify any malicious sign-ins or logins. 

It has decreased our time to detect and respond. Previously, we were doing it manually. It took one hour to two hours to detect and respond. Now, it takes us minutes.

It has very good detection and protection capabilities. They have a new feature for ransomware protection. 

It doesn't cause the slowness of the system, which is one of the reasons why I like it.

There is complexity in accessing the dashboard. Microsoft security suite has a different URL per service or per application. If there was one single place of information, that would help.

They should bring back the feature of a dedicated proxy device for communication to the cloud. As of now, all the agents are required to send the logs directly to the cloud. There should be a solution where you can put a proxy and all the logs are consolidated, like a forwarder.

I've been using it for about five years.

It's very stable.

It's very scalable. We have deployed it only to 250 endpoints for now. It's not enterprise-wide. We have plans to increase its usage.

I haven't encountered many issues so far. Their support is good. I would rate them an 8 out of 10.

Positive

We used another solution. The switch over to this solution was a management decision.

We have a hybrid deployment with the Microsoft Azure cloud. The initial setup was complex. There were some issues because a lot of prerequisites needed to be accomplished. It took us about three months.

We had a staged approach. We first onboarded non-critical assets and then moved to critical assets.

It takes time to realize the benefits from the time of deployment. It took us about two years.

We had around five people for deployment. Some of them were testers, and some of them were admins for the configuration and deployment of agents.

It requires maintenance. We have cloud administrators and desktop support for endpoints.

We did look into other solutions. We have criteria for evaluation. The features that stood out were their reputation and innovation.

I would recommend Microsoft Defender. They are a leader, and they have many deployment use cases. However, it also depends on the requirements of a company. There is no one-size-fits-all. Each company has its own unique requirements.

I would rate it an 8 out of 10.

We have been using it in our test environment. On the customer side, we are using the small business variant of the tool. So, we are using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Defender for SMBs. They're pretty similar, but the one for SMBs is a little lighter.

In our test environment, we have access to 50-seat licenses for everything. So, we are making sure that we are technically in a good place before we begin to offer this kind of solution to our clients. In addition to our solutions, we are delivering services to our clients. So, when we sell an SMB or enterprise Microsoft license, we are able to do the migration, management, and other things for a client.

It works well with different solutions from Microsoft. If a company is using Microsoft 365 package, this security addition is easier to implement and manage because it is from the same vendor. You have greater visibility because they are from the same vendor. Microsoft probably also has larger visibility on the endpoint itself because of its own operating system.

It provides good visibility into threats. I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of visibility.

Its threat intelligence is helpful for preparing for potential threats before they hit and taking proactive steps. We can manage our own images, and we can also inform the client to patch certain things.

I've started to test it from the security point of view. There are plenty of features that are interesting, but at this time, the XDR functionality is most valuable. It is endpoint security on steroids.

It allows you to prioritize threats across the enterprise, which is very important because the SLAs are different for different cases. If the error is critical, you must act now. If something is just informal, it can be done in weeks. 

I miss having an executive dashboard or a simple view for viewing things. Everything is extensive in this solution. Everything is configurable and manageable, but the environment of Microsoft 365 has about 13 administrative dashboards, and in each of the dashboards, there are a gazillion things to set up. It is good for a large enterprise, but for a 200-seat client, you need to see 5% of that.

A simplified SIEM would work so that we don't have to use everything on the Sentinel, which is great by the way, but Sentinel is too expensive for our kind of market. It is an enterprise product. It is not an SMB product.

We have been using it for half a year in our test environment.

It is good. It is stable. Once you set it up, it works, but we haven't tested it on a large time scale. The solution itself is pretty young. We'll see how stable it will be in the next few years.

It is very scalable. We hope to increase the usage of the product. It is being used only by our team for now at multiple locations. It is for laptops in the office and other networks and also for mobile devices. A few tech guys in our department are testing everything that could happen on the client side, and that's it.

I didn't use their support for this solution, but the knowledge base, training, and documentation are pretty good. I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Positive

It is complex. You need to first have a list of computers. Then, you need to set up the plan for these computers, and then, you need to deploy it and apply it. There are too many steps to deploy this kind of solution because it is a Microsoft native solution.

In terms of the implementation strategy, first, you need to have a view of the inventory. You have to have knowledge of what is already installed on an endpoint. You don't want to cause any clashes with some other endpoint security vendor. So, you need to know your devices. The next one is to prepare the package and then decide to deploy it via Intune or via MSI, through group policy.

In terms of duration, you can deploy it on one computer in minutes. If you are deploying it on a thousand computers and everything is set up correctly, it can be done in a few hours, but if everything is not set up correctly, it can take up to a day or a week. 

It took a month for us to realize its benefits from the time of deployment. It takes some time to understand the settings, portal, etc. 

It has not yet saved any time. It has only consumed my time for now because I need to learn and do the training and PoCs, but it is an investment for the future.

The number of people required for deployment depends on the size of the client or the company. I can do it by myself if I have a client with 100 seats, but if there is a corporation or enterprise in several locations, we need to involve the local IT people to confirm everything is okay, etc.

It doesn't require any maintenance, but it requires somebody to take care of the consequences. You can implement endpoint security and just have it there. You don't have to maintain the solution itself, but you need to take care of the alerts. You need to take care of the patches and other things. The number of people required depends on the size of the client.

It hasn't saved us any money yet. It might save in the future, but it depends on the pricing of Microsoft because there are several different parts of the Microsoft solution. 

Everybody would like to see a lower price on everything. The Slovenian market is basically an SME market with clients having up to 100 seat licenses, comprising 90% of the company. They're very price sensitive. So, the price could be cheaper. 

Any additional costs depend on the basic license of the client. There could be additional costs. If somebody needs Plan 2 of Defender for Endpoint, if I'm not mistaken, it is only available as an add-on. It is not included in any license, not even in the E5 license. So, there are some things at an additional cost.

We are always open to suggestions and newer and better things. We are constantly looking around for similar solutions and testing them. Microsoft is the biggest player. Everybody uses something from Microsoft. So, it is a logical next step. For an MSP, by having everything from one vendor or everything under one umbrella, managing clients is easier. This is the main reason for exploring this solution.

At the moment, we are using the Cynet XDR solution, and we also tried SentinelOne. We are going to put it in our portfolio in the following months, but mostly, we are comparing everything to Cynet because we have more clients on Cynet.

In comparison to other solutions that we are using, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has not decreased our time to detect and time to respond much.

In my opinion, from the management and maintenance point of view, it is better to go with a single vendor, but from the security point of view, multiple vendors on multiple layers could work better than one vendor. If one vendor is breached, then everything goes, but if you have several layers with several vendors, and only one is breached, you have other vendors.

My advice to those evaluating Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is to stick with it and train themselves. They should know the solution and try it as much as they can. Microsoft is on the right path here.

It helps to automate routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts, but we haven't yet implemented automation. We are planning to implement it, but at this time, because of a small number of clients, it is easier to do it manually. We just look into the alerts and resolve them one by one. We don't have a few thousand alerts per day, per week, or per month. So, it is manageable to handle them manually.

It would help us to eliminate looking at multiple dashboards and have one XDR dashboard, but we haven't yet managed to do that.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would have rated it a ten, but it is a pretty pricey solution.

We use it for security purposes. It provides important security for some critical systems, such as network devices.

For securing access, USB security helps us block our USB ports and that ensures that users do not plug USB drives into their computers.

In addition, our efficiency in the way we handle our processes has been improved because the solution automates routine tasks and helps find high-value alerts.

It has also saved us a good amount of time, something like 15 percent, while decreasing our time to detect and our time to respond, each, by 5 percent.

It automatically detects intrusion and malware.

It's also easy to use. The interface is user-friendly and the navigation is 
not difficult. It is very easy to move from one hyperlink to another, to move from one solution within the platform to another solution.

And in terms of categorizing the info and the actions that need to be done, it helps you to prioritize threats. That is very important.

The time it takes to restore the application could be improved. It has a lot of dependencies. It's not like the Microsoft security that comes with the OS. Updating through the command prompt, most of the time, it takes some time to download some of these dependencies. They need to make the download of the dependencies more efficient.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for more than five years.

The stability is okay.

It is scalable. We use it for multiple departments, teams, and locations. We have over 5,000 users.

I would rate Microsoft's technical support at seven out of 10, because of the time it takes them to respond. But when they finally respond, they give us complete attention and things are resolved within the SLA.

Neutral

Before Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, we were using McAfee.

We constantly get updates from Microsoft that are light and they don't really affect us while we're working. The updates have been very helpful.

I would recommend Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

Our primary use case is anti-malware and virus protection for our machines. We don't operate a network as such; our setup is almost entirely in the cloud.

We use the solution across multiple departments and teams, with about 400 total end users.

Around 90% of our estate is Mac, so we rarely have security alerts, but we get daily reports. The solution lets us proactively advise users about security concerns, especially when downloading files.

The solution is a Microsoft built-in tool, so it's very straightforward to use and monitor from the admin center, it's intuitive. 

As with all antivirus software, the benefits of using it far outweigh the risks of not having it. Protecting our estate, machines, and users is essential. We can take action quickly, for example, when a user downloads something suspicious and step in before the threat escalates. As an organization, we have encrypted files and data it is vital for us to protect.

Defender for Endpoint is a robust solution that works well out of the box. 

We can monitor and manage our security picture from one dashboard, and that's one of the primary reasons we use the solution. Our machines are enrolled on Microsoft Intune, which further simplifies management. With the E5 license, everything is in the same place; that makes our job easier and allows us to be more proactive when confronting threats. Not having to log in and out of different systems to manage devices is an excellent improvement to our operation.

The solution's threat intelligence helps us prepare for potential threats and makes us more proactive. We have the information required to warn our users of threats, including malicious links and phishing emails. The product gives us an accurate picture of the threat landscape, enabling us to adapt our strategy to protect our most sensitive and vital data.

There is a difficult balance working in IT, as we don't want to put all our eggs in one basket; if one system goes down, we are compromised. We want the flexibility and reliability offered by different specialized solutions, but that complicates management. With Defender for Endpoint, we don't need to worry about machines slipping through the gaps and remaining unprotected because the product is connected to the user account and pushed by the tenant. There is no agent, and the solution isn't intrusive; the user doesn't even know it's there. Other vendors I dealt with in the past required clients to be installed and updated, with potential problems coming in if the client isn't up to date. This isn't an issue we have with Defender. 

Our team's knowledge of the solution needs to be improved, and Microsoft could do a better job conveying the necessary information to users. We could proactively use the tool more and explore capabilities we are not yet utilizing.

We have been using the solution for about six months.

The solution is stable; Microsoft goes down very rarely. It happened just a few times over my career. If it does go down, the impact is significant.

The solution is very scalable. Microsoft makes that easy, and we plan to increase our Defender for Endpoint usage.

I've only contacted Microsoft support a few times, and they were always helpful. I don't have any issues with the support; they're good.

Positive

We previously used Symantec Endpoint Security. It was somewhat clunky. The engineers found it too intrusive as it required a client to be installed, dramatically slowing down the machines. We switched to Defender for Endpoint because it's part of the Microsoft suite, and we can use it across platforms for Windows and Mac.

The initial setup is straightforward. Initially, we didn't use the E5 licensing, so it was a basic cloud setup with a license per user. Now we have our own tenants, and we're deploying E5 licenses, and Defender for Endpoint comes as part of the license. A user activates the app in the Office 365 tenant, and that's the setup.

The initial deployment didn't take very long; it was just a tick box exercise. We are moving tenants, so we're giving everyone a new E5 license when they move over. It's quick and easy to assign licenses via a tool we have, which provides users with access to the entire Microsoft suite, including Defender for Endpoint.

Five people were involved in the deployment, all of them IT staff.

I'm not directly involved in taking care of the solution, but it seems lightweight in terms of maintenance. Most of the updating is end-user-driven; users are prompted to restart their machines to stay up to date with security patches.

As we have only been using the solution for six months, I don't think we've seen an ROI yet. I imagine in another two years, we will see a return.

AV solutions are pretty expensive because they are necessary, not just for protection, but many businesses need them to comply with regulatory bodies and receive accreditation. We recently purchased an E5 license, which gives us access to the entire Microsoft suite. I would say the pricing is competitive; most tools of this kind are similarly priced. There are minor differences between the competitors, but they aren't spectacularly different. Defender for Endpoint makes sense because all our solutions are in the same place, paid for with a single license. The subscription price is around £50 per user per month, though it may have increased slightly.

We evaluated Sophos Intercept X and Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

Defender for Endpoint helps us automate routine tasks, but I don't specifically know what kind of automation it does or what we use it for, as the InfoSec team is responsible for that. 

No solution is completely foolproof, but the configuration has a large part to play in the quality of the protection. 

We have been in business for two years, so we're a relatively small and young company. Nevertheless, it's vital to have protection against malicious actors. The threat landscape we face today is complex and diverse, so our threat protection needs to be up to par. That's the benefit of using the product; we need to protect our data, and having a tool that informs us of potential threats is excellent.

As an end user, the solution didn't personally save me time, but I imagine it did for the InfoSec team who deal with it directly. The security reporting will all be in one place, and we don't have to go to the marketplace to look for separate tools to fulfill different functions.

Our server is on Azure, so we get alerts on Microsoft Defender. If it's an endpoint alert, we investigate the endpoint based on the type of endpoint it is, whether it's a computer or a phone, et cetera. We then figure out what kind of file was downloaded, if it was bad or good, based on the hash file. 

We also use Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for email, where we get alerts based on phishing emails, spam, and we investigate them. We also do Sentinel queries, with KQL (Kusto Query Language).

Automation has had a positive impact. When we have a lot of false-positive alerts, we are able to set up a condition in Microsoft Defender where it will automatically close that as false. I don't create those conditions, that's something our security engineer does, but it makes my job easier.

Also, threat intelligence helps against potential threats before they hit. You can actually block and delete the emails from MDE whenever you detect them, or when they report, "Hey, this is a phishing email or spam email." It's also able to block and detect a bad or phishing URL. It has decreased our time to respond because if it detects a URL, we're able to automatically block and delete it before a user even sees their mailbox the next morning. It's very fast in detecting and we like that.

As a SOC, it has saved us time, on the order of 60 percent of our time.

The Microsoft Sentinel part is the most valuable when you have to search for the malicious folder or file the user downloaded. We use it to ingest data from our entire ecosystem and that is very important if we have to go back 30 days and investigate cases, and we need more details. It's able to ingest that much data. That's pretty important.

Sentinel also enables us to respond holistically from one place and that's good for my job. It makes it easy.

Also, the visibility into threats that the solution provides is pretty awesome. I had never actually seen this type of technology before. It was the first time I had exposure to the cloud. This is something that makes me think, "Wow, okay. If I had my own organization, I would probably get this too." It stops the threat before an employee gets phished or something gets downloaded to their computer. Even if it gets downloaded to the computer, it doesn't spread to the other networks, because Defender will automatically block it.

Another thing that is pretty awesome is that our Microsoft security products work natively together and deliver coordinated detection and response throughout our environment. As a SOC person, it makes my job very easy.

When it comes to the comprehensiveness of the threat protection from these products, so far I have seen how it's able to pick up the smallest script that is hidden in any type of malicious file. It's so good. And it gives you all the details: what kind of script was run, what kind of hash file, and what type of command was run. I'm pretty happy with it.

If there were more template queries in the library, that would make it much easier. They could have basic things, like, "Where's the IP for this user?" or, "What file was downloaded from this user?" If there were more of those basic queries that would help. I haven't seen basic ones, but there are a lot of advanced queries, where people need to know the KQL language to understand them. I'm still learning so that's why I'm providing that feedback.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for almost a year.

The stability has been really good so far. I haven't seen it go down or have an issue where it didn't work. 

We have had some integration issues when something breaks, but that's just occasional. So far, it's good.

We have it deployed across various departments. The IT users have more privileged settings.

When I started with this company we used Splunk before we switched to Sentinel. We switched because Sentinel seems way faster.

I wasn't involved in the setup of the solution, but when it comes to maintenance, we have security engineers who maintain our alerts, in case there are false positive alerts coming in.

Work on Sentinel. It has a lot of power versus the Microsoft Defender solution.