Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Reviews

It's used to improve the security score for the whole system, even if it is the cloud or on-premises version.

The security is very useful.

Its stability is okay.

The solution can scale. 

Technical support has been great.

There's no setup process; a user simply needs to enable it to get started.

We'd like the stability to be better.

I've been using the solution for about two years. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable and the performance is good.

The product can scale if a company needs it to.

There's a big number of users on the solution in our company. It's likely more than 400 users. 

We've dealt with support in the past and found them to be very helpful. We're quite satisfied with the level of service. 

I'm also familiar with Trend Micro, which is similar. However, Defender is specific to Microsoft.

The company does use more than one solution as well. 

There's not really an installation process. A user simply needs to enable it. That's all.

We pay a yearly licensing fee.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

I am using Defender for one of my customers. 

We use Defender with Sentinel, so we can see everything from one dashboard. You can also use the 365 security portal to manage all your Microsoft solutions, but Sentinel covers the entire estate. It has automation features, but I am not the one who configured that. A separate team does that for the customer. 

Defender helps us be more proactive about security with suggestions on how to improve. It provides a Microsoft security score for 365 and Azure, both of which are helpful. 

Defender saved us time. I believe it saved the customer some money, but I could not provide exact figures.

Defender's analytics are much better than CrowdStrike's. It has the ability to intelligently learn and respond to threats. We conducted a simulated ransomware attack to test it, and Defender detected it faster than CrowdStrike. 

My customer is also happy with Defender's interface. It helps them prioritize threats across their environment. We also use Sentinel and Defender for Cloud. I also tested a VM deployed with Defender that reports back to the 365 portal. It's easy to integrate Microsoft security solutions. All of the solutions work in concert, and they're synchronized. I have no problems with integration and can see the entire landscape. The protection is comprehensive. I'm impressed. I have no complaints about the product.

The bidirectional sync with Defender for Cloud is crucial. If I check the other side of the signal, I can update the source of the alerts. It's vital to have a bidirectional connection for analysis and feedback. 

The documentation could be better. When they update their manuals, sometimes they refer to products by their old names, so it is a little confusing. For example, the documentation might still say "Advanced Threat Protection" instead of Defender for Endpoint. 

I have used Defender for Endpoint for three months. 

I rate Defender a nine out of ten for stability. 

Defender scales well. 

I rate Microsoft's support a nine out of ten. They were impressive. Microsoft has excellent support engineers.

Positive

I previously worked with CrowdStrike Falcon. Defender is more effective because it identifies more threats than Falcon.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint a nine out of ten. If someone asked me whether a best-in-breed or single-vendor strategy was better, I would say there's no right or wrong answer. It's better to use one vendor from an integration perspective because it's easier to set up. 

A single-vendor approach also simplifies support. For example, if you use CrowdStrike, you might be using Splunk as your SIEM. When you open a ticket with CrowdStrike, they will only be able to answer questions about their own products. 

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 use it for endpoint security.

When looking at the ecosystem as a whole, security-wise, Microsoft provides a complete solution with the E5 Security suite. Microsoft has a big advantage because Defender knows how to interact with the CASB and all the other security components that you have. Overall, that makes the management of the environment much easier. It's easier to understand what's going on, to become aware of risks, and to take action.

• Defender has very little impact on the end-user.
• The agent works quite well with a minimal impact on the client and server.
• It's very easy to deploy it.

We did a trial of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for about three months, and now we are in the process of rolling it out.

We have about 4,300 users of Defender and it took two days to have it fully deployed. With Cortex it took some time. With Cortex, we had some 500 clients that we had to investigate because for some reason they did not get the agent immediately and we had to do some tweaking to get it to all the end-users.

We used consultants for the deployment of both Cortex and Defender.

We gave Palo Alto Cortex XDR a try and we are now in the process of removing it and going to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. I have experience with both of them.

Cortex has quite good management capabilities that give IT organizations quite a good picture of attempted cyber attacks. It has good investigation capabilities, out-of-the-box, in case there is an event that you'd like to investigate. It's quite convenient. Microsoft has those capabilities as well, but you need a bit more training on the product to get the basic information that you can get out-of-the-box with Cortex.

The onboarding process with Defender is much easier. In two days we were able to deploy it to our whole organization. Cortex is much more cumbersome. But the onboarding process is not the issue. A more important difference is that once you have security risks that you would like to mitigate, Cortex more easily gives you information regarding the threats. Microsoft gives you exactly the same information, but you have to know how to dig a bit more and do some manual steps that, with Cortex, are more straightforward.

The main issue that we had with Cortex, and the reason we decided to roll back and go to Defender, is that Cortex has a horrible impact on the performance of the system. For an enterprise-level organization, it kills the system. Users were complaining that when moving between emails in Outlook it would take a lot of time, creating a lot of delays and timeouts. Web browsing and every action on their computers took much more time than usual with Cortex.

I would rate Defender a nine out of 10, while Cortex XDR is a five out of 10.

Our clients use it for antivirus and anti-malware purposes.

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.

Normally, we implement the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules and exploit protections. We also use Microsoft Defender Application Guard and ad blocker. Instead of using the application control list, we use the ad blocker at most of the places.

What I've heard from the customers is that the anti-malware engine is not up to date. So, sometimes, it may not detect such threats. I, however, haven't got any data to show for this.

Its licensing can be better. Currently, customers with the E3 license cannot use many features, and they would like those features to be available. With Windows 10 E5, Microsoft is phasing out all the functionality. They have also made a lot of changes recently where you can also buy add-ons for Defender ATP, but for Office 365, ADT, and other stuff, you still require E5 licensing. If they can improve its licensing, it would definitely be helpful in implementing the features from the security point of view. E5 definitely has more features from the security point of view.

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.

We have been recommending Defender to customers for Windows 10 and helping them in implementing it for two years.

It is okay in terms of stability. I haven't seen any issues. Even if you go for a third-party vendor as your primary anti-malware software, you can get the benefit of Defender in a passive mode. 

I am an Azure engineer, and I work with an architect to design the solutions. I'm not a security person, and I don't know whether it catches all the new malware that comes into the IT world, and how quickly it gets updated because it is not my area of work as I'm not an SEC OP admin. I have read a few articles mentioning that the engine might only be 80% or 90% up to date. Obviously, no engine is 100% up to date, but it is still a little bit behind some of the third-party vendors. 

We haven't used their support much, but one of my colleagues has had some problems, and I think he didn't get good support from Microsoft. So, obviously, it depends on what kind of support engineer you have been assigned. Sometimes, it can be difficult. It is not only applicable to Defender; it could be with any of the products.

While implementing the ASR rules and other things, if you don't put it in the audit mode and don't do proper discovery, then it can definitely break lots of applications. You need to adhere to the implementation guidelines for ASR rules. So, proper analysis definitely needs to be done before implementing those rules because it can affect the business functionality.

Its deployment can take from few weeks to months depending on the size of the organization. In terms of the implementation strategy, we start with the pilot key users, and we deploy those policies. We also deploy ASR rules and other exploit protection rules in the audit mode, instead of directly enabling them. We then monitor the resources in terms of what can be blocked or what can get impacted by those rules. After that, we work with the users to implement it and see whether it breaks anything. If it breaks, then we look at the solutions. After we are happy with all those solutions and we know that enabling it won't break anything on a business side, we just roll it out.

Our clients are definitely seeing an ROI. Some of the clients have already got the licenses, and they can use lots of features of their Defender ATP. They are basically saving the cost of not going with a third-party solution.

Some of the clients who already had another third-party solution are also moving to Defender ATP because they already have the licenses, and they can save the cost on those. One of our clients is using ESET. They have the ESET standard version, so they are not getting any of the other features. They already have an E5 license to use all Defender ATP features. So, obviously, it would be beneficial for them to go with Defender ATP.

We did a little bit of comparison with Sophos. Sophos also offers cloud and network protection, but it would be an extra cost to buy it if you already have a license of Defender ATP. With Sophos, the USB features are a part of the cloud solution. So, you can configure USB restrictions and other things in the Sophos portal. With Defender, you will have to implement the USB security features via GPO or something else.

I would definitely recommend others to go with Defender ATP if they have got the licenses because it can give them a wide range of security controls. It is integrated with Office portals and Microsoft monitoring systems, so they get the sensors from different places. We haven't come across any security threats yet. From the point of view of its theory, implementation, and architecture, Defender ATP and other ATP integrations would definitely help customers in controlling their organization and implementing the best security rules and policies.

It hasn't affected the user experience much for our customers. Customers only see the notification pop up saying that Defender hasn't found anything and things like that.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint a seven out of 10.

We use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for protection, asset onboarding, and service onboarding. We primarily focus on Microsoft-based endpoints. Specifically, we look for processes to determine if malware, viruses, or adware have been installed.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint helps prioritize threats across our enterprise. The solution notifies us of new vulnerabilities, including those that have been published, exploited, or are being exploited, and it provides some visibility into these threats.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has a significant impact on reducing the number of affected machines. I personally write custom detection rules to analyze the environment and look for specific patterns, such as ransomware. Although some of the pre-built detection rules in Azure on GitHub are useful, they are not as flexible in terms of use cases. Therefore, it makes sense to write custom rules instead of importing the pre-built ones.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint helps automate routine tasks and helps automate the finding of high-value alerts.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint improved our security posture and operations by automating some of the mundane tasks, such as analyzing alerts. This allows us to focus on incidents that were created from specific individual alerts.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint saved us time in terms of operational and C- CERT security. It reduced the amount of time we spend analyzing what happened on a particular endpoint, which processes were started, and which ones were suspicious. For example, it helped us to quickly identify suspicious installation protocols.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint reduced our time to detect and respond by 25 percent.

Endpoint's most valuable feature is deep analysis. It provides a lot more in-depth findings. However, it only analyzes portable files with the .exe and .drl extensions. It does not analyze other file extensions. Additionally, it does not provide all the necessary information about the file's memory usage or size. I have to download the file to my computer to do further analysis. Therefore, the size of the application that the deep analysis analyzes is the only other red flag I can think of.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint does not provide much flexibility in terms of threats. It only looks at what is currently in the environment. It does not provide flexibility like threat modeling, where we can provide our own threat model within the environment. This would allow Defender to provide us with feedback on threat intelligence that is tailored to our organization's needs and threat landscape.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's deep analysis shows that it works well with Microsoft's standard applications. However, it does not function as intended when used with Unix or Linux distributions. Therefore, it would be beneficial to improve support for other systems.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for one and a half years.

In terms of resources, I believe the solution is more resource-intensive because I can initiate multiple automated investigations, which will likely take a day or two to complete.

Our organization has thousands of people using the solution.

I give Microsoft Defender for Endpoint an eight out of ten.

No maintenance is required from our end.

I believe a best-of-breed solution is better because it eliminates some of the limitations of applications that do not provide solid stability in terms of detection time, response time, and eradication. This is because a best-of-breed solution is designed to be the best in its class at each of these tasks. As a result, it can identify threats more quickly, respond to them more effectively, and eradicate them more completely.

When evaluating the solution, we must understand how our environment is structured. Is it a hybrid environment? Does it have Unix, Linux, or Microsoft distributions? And within those distributions, do we plan to purchase multiple enterprise systems to cater to each individual distribution?

It's an AV and EDR. The AV is integrated with the OS and, once you onboard the devices through a portal, it also functions as an EDR.

The main reason it has improved our organization is that it is integrated with the entire Microsoft 365 suite. We get a lot of functionality and a centralized way of operating or controlling all the devices in the environment.

The solution automates routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts. That helps a lot. I worked with a different product before and, if we wanted to check if a specific application was affecting our organization, we had to get the application details and then search in the EDR console or on the devices for those application details. But with Defender for Endpoint, you can simply put the application details in a query and run it, and that becomes a customized detection. I don't need to check for the same application again and again. I can get an alert whenever it pops up again.

There is integration with all the products, whether Defender for Cloud or Microsoft Purview or Office 365, so we have a centralized console. There is a sync so that you can get all the alerts in different portals on a single portal. That consolidation makes things easier because we don't have to navigate to multiple portals to check for all the information. Before, we used to only get basic details, like the title or the category of a particular alert. But now, since it is also syncing with Sentinel, we don't need to go to the Defender portal. We can view the entire alert story and related devices, or potentially affected devices, and which devices could be the next targets.

Another advantage is that the threat intelligence helps us proactively prepare for potential issues before they strike. There is an option to check for vulnerabilities and that is not only limited to our organization or the license we bought. We have one filter that will show all the potential threats in the market or that other customers might have reported. We can view them and the steps they have followed. There are all the CVD details that are not affecting our organization, things that are still new in the market, and it will give the remediation steps for them as well.

In terms of deployment, management, and manual efforts, it has saved me a lot of time. Previously, I would review each alert. That meant, during a given week, that I would be on alerts for three or four days, and only then would I go on to other things. It has saved me a couple of days a week because of the automation and auto-suppress rules, which are configured to automatically resolve an alert and trigger an email to me that the alert has come up and the action has been taken.

Because it has been integrated with the OS, we get the entire software inventories, and we even get access to the registries. Those are the primary features. We also have something called advanced hunting, which uses SQL tables to list out all the details of the device and that is also used for threat hunting.

Defender for Endpoint also helps prioritize threats across our enterprise, and we have an option for customized detections, which is an additional feature that differentiates it from other products. The customized detection helps us identify threats.

I would like to see improvement from a management perspective. We have had to depend on Intune for certain tasks.

I would also like to see additional features related to device control. For now, it has all the common features that other EDR and AV products offer, but device control is missing. Device control means automatically syncing the devices without any dependency on other products, like Intune, SCCM, or even Azure. If it could sync between products after only adding it to one product, that would be great.

I've been working with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for close to one year.

It is stable.

It is also scalable. 

Since it's an AV and EDR, you can use it at any location and on all the platforms, including Android and iOS.

Support depends on the support contract you have. The Premier support contract is comparatively efficient.

I would rate their support at eight out of 10. Sometimes, because they have multiple teams, there could be a delay with a ticket going to a wrong team. But once it is routed to the correct team, we get good support.

Positive

I worked with one similar solution, which was VMware Carbon Black Cloud. Defender for Endpoint has the advantage because Carbon Black is a third party to the OS. That is going to create a lot of additional work to manually deploy things, check the installation, see if it's parsing. There could also be compatibility issues. Because Defender is integrated with the OS, you don't need to do those manual tasks to install the product or work through the compatibility issues.

It is pretty straightforward to deploy. There isn't any manual effort, even if you are a new customer and migrating from a different product to Defender. All you need to do is get a license and the credentials to log in.

In the back-end, if we were to deploy the new tenant, it would be on Azure, and there are a series of steps to follow, nothing complex. It's just a GUI. You just need to give the device count and the geographical location. It takes four to five people for the deployment. 

Once the deployment is done, you don't need to constantly monitor it, but four people would be good for operations: two people to manage the devices and configuration, and the other two to review the alerts that are coming and analyze the vulnerabilities. Once a month you should review and update the software. Other than that, there is only maintenance when there is an issue. The signatures are updated automatically.

You can manage the devices on-prem, but if you want the EDR solution, it's completely cloud. You still have the option to control the devices on-prem through SCCM or any other integration, but ideally, it's cloud-based. The back-end portal is on Azure, but the console or tenant for users or management is a different portal. It's not on the Azure portal, it's a different URL.

The time it takes to see benefits depends on the end-users' requirements or which products they want to integrate it with. In my case, after two or three months I felt like I had found the good things to integrate it with and had a centralized way to manage them.

The solution has saved us money compared to the other products we use, but it depends on the situation. If there are multiple integrations, you have to get the licenses for those as well. But in our case, comparatively, we have saved money.

We did consider other options, CyberArc and Trellix (which is the new name for McAfee products). But the ease of using Defender for Endpoint and the reduction in manual efforts are why we went with it. Also, collecting and reporting on the data was easier.

The visibility into threats that the solution gives us is the same as other EDR products. But one advantage I have noticed, because I have experience working with a couple of other EDR products, is getting the complete device registry information. If we want to query anything or look into the complete alert or vulnerability details, we can get to the core. We don't need to depend on getting access to the device. We can do it from a centralized console.

I've seen a lot of people saying that they are looking for feature X but it's not there in the product. Most EDR products function in the same way, but they call features by different names. My advice would be to consult with Microsoft's Fast Track support engineers. They can guide you and explain every feature. Go for that first and then implement it.

I would definitely recommend Defender for Endpoint because going with a third party would require a lot of maintenance. For smaller companies, Defender for Endpoint would be more cost-efficient than requiring more headcount to do more maintenance.

The solution is used for endpoint detection and response, however, it also has vulnerability management. I don't use that as much as the endpoint detection and response. I use it in combination with Cloud App Security and Endpoint Manager.

The most valuable feature is the fact that, if you have the M365 E5, it's included and everything is in the bundle. 

It's a very solid security system and the advanced hunting and everything really lets you dive deep into things.

Overall, they're doing a much better job. However, recently, they added the Azure Defender. When you use the Azure Defender licenses, you're already enrolled. 

I prefer that they had the old interface that was not combined with compliance, and still, they've changed that to make it better. I would just like them to have more consistency, and that's a comment that's across the board with Microsoft. They change things a lot.

I probably started diving into Microsoft Defender about two years ago.

Stability-wise, I have not had another product that has been as stable and has had fewer issues. It's amazing.

The solution is scalable. For example, I helped a 12,000-person company put it in and automated it without any issue.

In terms of technical support, I have not had to call them related to anything on Defender for Endpoint. I'm a CSP, so I'm calling and I'm getting different assistance than, say, a home user. That said, at the same time, it really depends on if you're getting level one or level three support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. There's a lot of people putting it in that don't understand it, however. They're not using device groups and auto-remediation settings.

I do a lot of security reviews as well, and what I find is that, although it works well out of the box, there are missing components. Another thing is that people will basically use the product, and yet, not set up the integrations with Cloud App Security and Endpoint Manager. When they do that, they're not getting the full functionality of it. I, on the other hand, know the system, so I see people often having trouble with it. If people are trained or go through training, they would be able to get the full functionality out of it.

I can't give numbers, however, for the price, when you're increasing from an E3 to an E5 license, the amount of features you get eliminates a lot of other systems. Therefore, you do get a pretty good ROI. On top of that, you only have one management system and one reporting system. Overall, the numbers have been quite impressive.

I don't know the standalone costs. It is my understanding that the M365 E5 is $56 a month or something close to that pricing. That would be for the full suite. Just Defender might be $8 a month. I can't say for sure.

I'm a consultant. I primarily work with Microsoft and I do the threat management and check vulnerabilities on the database. I'm looking for something that is not super expensive yet covers vulnerability management and where you can pick the products, and pick alerts, and you get a weekly digest report, just so that we can better manage everything.

I work with pretty much all of the 365 products. I'm pretty widely experienced in Defender. I work for a managed service provider. I'm one of the people that's, besides having my Microsoft Azure architecture, Azure security, Microsoft 365 expert level, plus M365 security knowledge. I focus on Azure and M365 security.

For Microsoft Defender, the product is cloud-based, therefore it is managed and it's updated constantly.

I would advise users to take advantage of Microsoft integrations. I would suggest that they put it all together, so they can use it as a full bundle.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.