Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Reviews

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.

We are one of the major drug stores in Germany. We are located in 13 European countries such as Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, and Poland. I'm working here as an IT Administrator, and I'm focusing on software deployment and antivirus solutions.

Our use case is that we got to have antivirus. Cyber insurance forces us to have an antivirus solution that meets the requirements the insurance has. 

In terms of deployment, we're using Defender without ATP in the old world. For domain-joined clients and on the Intune-managed clients, we use Defender in combination with ATP. The on-prem clients are usually old-school domain-joined clients.

We have its latest version. We always try to be at the newest version.

In the old world, we have Defender in combination with SCCM. It's not as good as Security Center, but you have all the reporting stuff that tells you whether your clients are up-to-date or not. The ATP Security Center is the mercy dispense of antivirus solutions because it is so much more than just antivirus. Microsoft Security Center comes with the ATP license, and it provides a really compact but whole view of your tenant and the vulnerabilities in your tenant. I feel that my administration got more proactive than just reacting. I can see that my Office is not up-to-date, or a client is using the old version of Firefox or Adobe Reader. So, Security Center tells me all this, and I can proactively update these clients and have a look at the bad guys in my environment. That was the part that McAfee never showed. I could see my clients with old signature files or engines, but McAfee Orchestrator didn't show the actual vulnerability of the client, which is the great benefit of Microsoft Security Center.

The whole bundle of the product, which is similar to other Microsoft products, is valuable. Ten years ago, you had third-party stuff for different things. You had one solution for email archiving and another third-party one for something else. Nowadays, Microsoft Office covers all the stuff that was formerly covered by third-party solutions. It is the same with antivirus. The functionality is just basic. You have the scanning, and then you also have a kind of cloud-based protection and reporting about your environment. With Microsoft Security Center, you have a complete overview of your environment. You know the software inventory, and you have security recommendations. You can not only see that the antivirus is up to date; you can also see where are the vulnerabilities in your system. Microsoft Security Center tells you where you have old, deprecated software and what kind of CVEs are addressed. It's really cool stuff.

We encountered some misbehavior between Microsoft Office Suite and Defender. We had issues of old macros being blocked and some stuff going around the usage of Win32 APIs. There is some improvement between the Office products and Defender, and there is a bunch of stuff that you can configure in your antivirus solutions, but you have several baselines, such as security baselines for Edge, security baselines for Defender, and security baselines for MDM. You have configuration profiles as well. So, there a lot of parts where we can configure our antivirus solution, and we're getting conflicting configurations. This is the major part with which we're struggling in this solution. We are having calls and calls with Microsoft for getting rid of all configuration conflicts that we have. That's really the part that needs to be improved. 

It would be cool to have just one interface or only one or two locations where you configure the stuff. Currently, they have three locations where you can configure your antivirus. Three locations are too much, and there is too much conflict. It is not a one-to-one configuration. There are some configuration settings that you can only do in SCCM. You don't find them in MDM. So, it's not always one-to-one. 

The last point of improvement is related to the quality of service that Microsoft provides. The quality of service that Microsoft provides should be improved.

We have been using Defender for two years. Two years ago, we migrated from McAfee Endpoint Protection to Defender Antivirus. This migration process took us one year to migrate all systems. So, we're now totally on Microsoft Defender on all workstations and servers.

Scalability and deployment always depend on how many of your clients are online. There is no problem with the scalability and deployments of servers because they are online 24/7, but client management is different than server management. We are located in 13 countries, and we have about 9,000 clients. Of course, they are not always online because of which you're always struggling with your client management. 

If you open a call with Microsoft, you're in God's hands. Some of their engineers are top-notch and some are not. We have some strange calls going on for weeks and months, and nothing is happening. There are always the same questions. The quality of service that Microsoft provides should be improved.

We migrated from McAfee Endpoint Protection to Defender Antivirus. I worked with ePolicy Orchestrator from McAfee for almost 20 years. The user interface of McAfee was fine, but the hassle began with Windows 10. Updating McAfee and the endpoint security stuff was always a hassle. We had to update all the McAfee stuff before having a feature update, so we were always in this hassle of the update process of either McAfee or Windows. Defender is a seamless solution for Windows. 

Microsoft has done a lot to improve Defender. There are not so many differences between basic scanners. If you look at the Gartner studies, Defender has really improved a lot. It came out one or one and a half years before we started to migrate our clients to Intune MDM solution, and within this migration to MDM managed clients, we also established advanced threat protection (ATP) with Defender. It met our requirements perfectly, and we did penetration testing for the solution, and it turned out to be perfect. 

The deployment process is okay. Of course, you always struggle at several points, but overall, the deployment is fine for Defender.

We evaluated a lot of different scanners, such as Passkey. McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator now comes with the option to integrate within Microsoft Security Center, but McAfee came up with its solution a little bit too late. 

In the on-prem world, we are using Microsoft Defender in combination with the endpoint manager to SCCM, and it is fine. I really prefer the interface of McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator, but it doesn't have as many benefits as Microsoft Defender in combination with SCCM.

In terms of the end-user experience, end-users don't like to be bothered with the virus scan. A virus scan is always annoying for the end-user. An end-user cannot actually configure the antivirus and only gets a notification if something is wrong or some malware is found. That's it. There is not really an end-user experience.

The performance of the client is fine with Defender. We are not encountering many performance issues or any serious issues with Defender. When we turned over to Defender, some of the applications that were functioning absolutely flawlessly with McAfee started to have serious performance issues. So, we had to define an exclusion list for some of the processes or applications, but there are always some applications that needed exclusions for McAfee or Defender.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint an eight out of 10.

It comes inbuilt with Windows Server and Windows 10, so we are using its latest version. It is deployed centrally on all the platforms, whether it is a virtual environment, a BYOD device, or an office device. It is deployed everywhere. 

All of our users are on Office 365. By default, every user is getting Office 365, and we are also incorporating this into data leak prevention. We have also enabled Azure Active Directory, so policies are deployed directly from our active directory. 

It has reduced admin overhead. Because it comes inbuilt with Windows, we don't have to deal with the complication of using a third-party solution. We stopped using Symantec Antivirus three years ago. Previously, we had to find a person who knew how to manage Symantec Antivirus. Now, we don't have that overhead. It is also less taxing on the admins because they don't need to license an extra software every year and then deploy and manage those licenses. Everything is seamlessly managed from a central application.

Our full backup is on OneDrive. We had deployed separate storage area networks to back up important data for off-site users, not on-site users. In the current scenario of work from home, users need to establish a VPN connection to run our backup system. When they are at home, we cannot back up their systems if they don't have good connectivity. We also can't tax their broadband connections. Incorporating OneDrive as a backup solution with Windows Defender and Windows 10 has helped us immensely. We were not prepared for having people working from home because we always worked from the office, and 100% office attendance was required, but due to the pandemic, people moved to their hometowns, and we could no longer manage those systems. It became a headache for us when people used to report that their Windows got corrupted. Because they were working from home and there is a big problem of electricity in India, if electricity is not there, the systems suddenly shut down, and the registry gets corrupted. All these things are difficult to handle when you're at a remote location and you don't have your eyes and hands on that particular location. In such times, Windows Defender became a very big helping hand in managing the recoveries of such systems. The backups managed from OneDrive were very helpful. It has saved hundreds of hours of restoring the system in case something goes wrong. There was an instance where a user opened a spam message, and a ransomware attack was done on that system. Because the backup is managed by OneDrive, within 17 hours, this user's whole laptop was recovered without physically working on that laptop. Because of slow connectivity, it took time, but we were able to recover. This is the best feature of having OneDrive backup on the fly and recovery on the fly. These 17 hours were peanuts as compared to the data that we were able to save. This is the best selling point of having OneDrive as a backup with Windows Defender and Office 365.

The best part is that it is built into Windows, whether it is a server base or a desktop base, which gives more control over the operating system. Because Defender, the operating system, and the Office solution are by Microsoft, everything is working like hand-in-glove. Its administrative overhead is less because a desktop user has already got some experience of how to handle a Microsoft Defender notification or administer it. While working on Windows 10, every now and then, users might have seen it popping up, and they know how to do certain things. So, it is not too taxing from an administration point of view where we have to tell users what to do. 

Centralizing policies and rolling everything out is done only from one console. We are able to provide restrictions based on what we want to filter, such as certain apps should not run and certain things should run. Because we are also into website development and code development, sometimes, users need to run certain software or their own build application, which is not possible to specify with an antivirus solution. With Defender, we can centrally deploy a policy where certain parts are excluded, and they can run their code in those particular parts. This is a very nice feature where we don't have to micromanage developers' PCs or exceptions.

Data leak prevention is something that our company requires, and it is incorporated in this solution. Because we are using Microsoft OneDrive, and it is easy to take the backup to OneDrive via Microsoft Defender.

It has helped in improving our security posture.

Its user interface (UI) can be improved. Currently, in the console, you have to dig down for certain things. They've got many different layers to get to things instead of having it all on the surface. You have to go three folds lower to get to specific functionality or click a particular option. It would be good if we can manage the console through menus and instead of three clicks, we can do things in one click. They need to change the UI and work on it in terms of a better user experience. For example, user management should be in one menu, license management should be in one menu, and backup management should be in one menu. Currently, if you click on a user, you will get some devices there, and some devices will be on the other menu. Its UI is complicated. In terms of functionality, everything is okay. We don't want anything to be changed in it.

We have been using this solution for three years.

It is highly stable. We don't even have to look into it to see if it has stopped working, or whether it is doing its job well or not. We have around 500 devices in our organization, and all devices do the regular login with the logs. It is immensely stable.

Its scalability is immense. There is no device, user, or policy limit. You install a device, and it is automatically configured because the policy is deployed from the centralized policy server or active directory.

We have around 500 devices in our organization, and all devices are using it. We have all kinds of devices such as laptops, desktops, notebooks, surface devices, etc. We also have in-house virtual servers on the AWS cloud and in-house physical servers. We also recommend enabling it for our client servers, and we configure policies for them.

Every person in our organization is using this solution. We have approximately 380 users. Its users include everyone from a new joiner to our management president. Last year, our strength was 260, and this year we have 380 users. We are growing, and by 2022, we should have more than 600 users. We are growing in a very good manner, and a group target is there. We are definitely going to grow.

We have been using Microsoft products since the commencement of Windows 95. We have rarely used their support because they make their products in a way that makes them easy to use. Sometimes, there are flaws and issues, and because we are also a Microsoft Partner, we get support on priority. They take a case at the level where they think it will be resolved, and if someone is not able to resolve it, it automatically gets escalated. 

We mostly use our in-house support. In the past 20 years, we have used their support twice. When I used their support last time around four to five years ago, they were really very helpful. They were good and very professional. I cannot comment on how their support is now with the current pandemic and people not working from the office. 

We were using Symantec Antivirus three years ago. When we were using Symantec Antivirus, users used to report that certain popups are there, and what should they do with them. They used to ask, "Is my system infected?" They used to panic on seeing those pop-ups. Most of them were unnecessary and would say that they need to have admin access or a particular software is trying to open a port. Because we are into development, it is a requirement of a developer to open certain ports and to make that application listen on certain ports. Such requirements were very difficult to configure in Symantec. It was difficult to make it understand that these ports are going to be used by developers, and they are going to be opened, and it is not a virus activity. Sometimes, the temporary folder of users used to get infected, and it used to give hundreds and hundreds of pop-ups. We didn't know how to close all those pop-ups in one go because they were not in a group. Imagine sitting and closing a hundred pop-ups. We had to click the Close button on each and every pop-up.

With Microsoft Defender, we can control notifications. We can tell which notifications should go to the users and which shouldn't go to the users and should be forwarded to the admin central console. In terms of user experience, users are happier with less annoyance of pop-ups that they used to get with Symantec Antivirus. They do not need to know each and everything that is going at the backend. Only the admins need to know certain things, and they should know them. With Microsoft Defender, users don't even get to know that they have an antivirus solution on their system because they never get any irritating pop-ups or notifications or slowness of the system. We configure everything from the backend, and we are managing their systems from one console, which is the biggest plus point of Microsoft Defender.

Its initial setup is very easy. It took us just a couple of hours to deploy it on remote devices.

Our implementation strategy was to deploy group policies and manage the DLP policies from the central console.

We did our own research, and because it was a lockdown, we had resources on our hands. We asked one of our system admins to look into the options and the policies that we need to deploy and what we need to do. He went over it for a month and trained the rest of the team. Within one and a half months, it was fully operational on each device, and my whole team was trained on it.

The whole job of its deployment was done by one person, and for maintenance, we have got a five-person team because we have 380 users across the clock and across the globe.

We have very much seen an ROI.

Licenses depend upon what you are looking for and what kind of security do you want to implement. There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

When we used to buy Symantec, we used to spend on 100 licenses. We used to spend approximately $2,700 for those many licenses, and they came in packs. To add one more license, I had to buy a pack with a minimum of 10 licenses. I had to spend on nine extra licenses because I can't get a single license, whereas when we go for Microsoft, we can get as many licenses as we want.

If I have 100 users today, and tomorrow, I have 90 users, I can release my 10 licenses next month. With any other software vendor, you buy licenses for one year, and you have to stick with that. If today you have 100 licenses, and tomorrow, you have 50, you have already paid for one year's license. You can't go back and tell them that I don't require these 50 licenses because I have lost my 50 users, but with Microsoft Defender, licensing is on a monthly basis. It gives you both options. You can go yearly and save on it, or you can go monthly. You will, again, save on it. It is very fair everywhere.

My advice is, "Try it, and you will love it." If you go for any other product, you will have to manage everything separately, which becomes an overhead. You will have a separate console, separate licensing, and a separate vendor. You will also get a piece of software that is going to have a layer in between the operating system and your applications, whereas Defender incorporates itself onto the layer where the operating system is sitting. So, you don't tax your resources to manage a product that is already incorporated into all systems. Everybody knows how to use Windows and Defender, so the learning curve is also not there. It is very easy, and it offloads a lot of things such as tech requirements, separate licensing requirements, and separate vendor management. 

I am not advising you to go ahead and discard whatever you are using. You should implement it in a test environment and see what your requirements are because the requirements will definitely impact the licensing. If your requirements are met, and then compare the time required to manage Defender versus the current solution that you are using. You should compare how many hours are you putting in managing both solutions with a different skill set. Only after such evaluation, you should deploy it. 

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is to always keep it simple. Don't complicate.

I would rate Microsoft Defender Antivirus a nine out of 10. If they can make the UI more systematic, I can give it a 10 out of 10.

We are using it only for EDR, but we have a plan to extend it to Microsoft email as well as to the cloud.

Within one month of using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, we could achieve great insights.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a perfect solution. We have used several EDR products, and Microsoft Defender is the best one that I have worked with. It provides great visibility. It is very transparent. We can get so many details about a particular endpoint. It is a great product. I would rate it a five out of five in terms of visibility.

It helps us to identify process-based threats in our environment, not only the signature-based ones. We are able to identify some of the threats that were not detected previously.

We get severity levels from the solution itself. Based on them, we have developed our action plan to act upon any category of incident. It helps to achieve a better SLA to attend to incidents.

I am quite interested in the vulnerability dashboard. It provides vulnerability data according to the CVE database, which helps us to prioritize vulnerabilities in our environment and address them.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint works with Windows and Linux, so we could cover them all. It is suitable for servers as well, not only for endpoints, so we could implement it on most devices in the organization. It has probably saved us 20% of the time. 

It has Kusto Query Language (KQL), so we can use our own queries to find anything.

We can get real-time updates. It is not just signature-based. It provides results based on behavior and successors. It analyzes the behavior and the process. With that, we can achieve greater results that other products do not offer.

We need better support to learn about the product. Documentation is available, but we need some kind of training program so that we can get a better understanding of the product.

We switched to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint about one month ago.

I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of stability.

It is highly scalable. We have around 5,000 users. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of scalability.

Previously, we were using a separate EDR product in our environment. We were using Sophos. Our organization moved into Microsoft 365, so we switched to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. 

We heard that it is one of the best products in the industry. We thought that we would get better results with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. That is why we moved to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and we were able to achieve better results with it.

It is a cloud deployment. It took us a few months to make the switch.

It does not require any maintenance from our end.

Overall, I would rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint a nine out of ten.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides visibility into our workstations at SOC. 

We can react to threats faster and stop them from spreading from one machine to another. It protects from suspicious email attachment downloads. It will lock down the SOC and the workstations. 

It is an EDR product that offers much more information into what's happening at our workstations. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's licensing is confusing. It has conflicting information on the website. We also faced integration issues with other systems. It makes laptops slower than traditional antivirus systems. 

I have been working with the product for a year. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is stable. 

The tool's scalability is good, but we must consider the cost. 

We get good ROI with the product's use. 

The product's threat intelligence prepares us for potential threats and helps us take proactive steps. Its vulnerability management feature is important to us. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has improved our security posture by giving visibility to our endpoints and vulnerabilities. 

The tool helps us save months per year. It also helps us save money in manhours.

 Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has reduced our time to respond and time to detect by a large margin. 

We chose the product because we already use Microsoft products, and it better integrates with them. 

I rate it an eight out of ten. 

Our use case is for financial groups and we use it to control malware, as well as for antivirus. Our focus is on using it as an endpoint solution, but we cover the older servers too.

Of course, we integrate Defender with Microsoft Defender Security Center and the Microsoft compliance score. We use these tools to check the maturity and to guide our clients in using the solution better. The result is that we see growth in security maturity.

When we need to create a new server, we follow certain steps. One step is activating the extension from within the server and using that to check and monitor, in a centralized console, the health of the server. Defender also provides additional information about vulnerabilities and opportunities to increase the overall security.

For example, it will tell us if a library being used has any vulnerabilities. This information is very important for us and for our clients. They use this information to go back to their developers and request fixes. Or it may identify a problem with something in a client's application, where they need another version to mitigate it. And again, when they apply the new version, we can check it using Defender to see if the vulnerability has been resolved.

The anti-malware feature is mandatory for us.

Also, we use policies to mitigate vulnerabilities, but the final compliance score from Microsoft shows us what level the client is at and what level is needed to achieve better results and increase security policy maturity. The integration of Defender, Security Center, and the Microsoft compliance score, is the feature we use most to share the results with our clients and to create a roadmap together.

I would like to see integrations with other products, such as Spunk and other CM solutions. That would create possibilities for me, and for a SOC, to consolidate all events in an older console, not one provided by Microsoft but provided by a third party, and use it to create more insights. Examples of such insights might be the need to create a new policy or the need to mitigate an attack happening now. This type of ability would create a new business case, one that doesn't only use Microsoft solutions.

I've been using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for two years.

The scalability is amazing. Using Azure, the sky is the limit. You just need to understand the business case.

In some cases our clients have small environments, but in other cases they have big environments. Large clients may have 1,000 agents running. But as a consulting company, we work with many types of businesses and many environments of different sizes.

As I mentioned, if the client requests an integration with some third-party tool, we may need to use another tool or develop something to make this possible. But in most cases, you don't need to do so. You just activate it and check if your policy will apply or has already been applied to the server.

We have no problems with Microsoft's technical support. My team resolves level-one and level-two problems, but when we need to check something directly with Microsoft, when it's a level-three issue, we open a ticket and talk with the engineers.

Positive

It's so easy. All activity is in the cloud, for deploying the agents and policies. It's not complex.

You just click, one-two-three, and it's working. In some cases, the deployment takes minutes. If the client needs a particular window or has a critical application running on their machine, it takes more time because of that machine's situation. But in general, it just takes a few minutes.

The harder part, following this, is you need time, like with other tools, to check the events. The tool will provide some insights, but you need to understand them, and after that, share them with the client or with those responsible for taking action.

In addition to Azure, we have partnerships with AWS and Google. We focus on security and use Kaspersky as well. It's all according to the business case. We take the time to understand the business case and then build a draft solution, check it with the client, and after that, we choose the best tool, given the budget available from the client. We create one, two, or three options and the client selects what is best for them.

The main difference between Defender and Kaspersky is the scalability and the installation and deployment process which, with Defender, is so easy.

My advice regarding Defender is the same for any other security solution: Check what you need, what types of logs and whether you will consolidate these logs in another tool. What type of knowledge will you bring from those tools to create and apply new policies and anticipate security problems?

Always check your needs with the business case. Aligning them will help determine what you need to buy. Check inside Defender to see what you need to activate. Every new feature you activate inside the cloud is billed and you need to understand if you really need each feature.

Defender has some effect on the endpoint itself but it does not change the user's work processes. It is a single tool on the endpoint to monitor the activities that happen there, but it does not affect the end-user.

But you need to understand the limitations. There are some limitations with Defender when it comes to non-Microsoft solutions. But that's not unique to Defender. It's the same with every tool. You need to understand its limitations.

What I found most valuable in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that it's out-of-the-box, which brings more value to the customer. The technical support for the product is also one of the best parts, because it's good, in terms of the product knowledge of the technical engineers.

In Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, the devices still need to mature a little more when compared to other AV solutions. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is not as robust, and you cannot customize it much, so that's a challenge. These are the rooms for improvement in the product.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is still being improved. I would say it's still in the development stage. Daily, Microsoft is getting feedback from the customers, so they are modifying the product based on the feedback and requirements of the customers. It's an ongoing process, and as a consultant, I'm in a much better shape, from a consultant point of view, in terms of speaking with customers.

What I'd like to see in the next release of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a single console where you can manage all the policies, Intune, and the EDR capability that can be managed through Intune. There should be a single portal for that to make it more convenient for the security consultant engineer to work with. Right now, I have to hop between different controls. Even the tenant attach feature needs to become more mature in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint because it's just very basic. The concept is good, but it's very basic, so it requires more effort for the engineer to configure.

I've been dealing with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint since 2018.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a stable product.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud solution, so it's always scalable.

Technical support for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is good, and it's the best part. Microsoft knows that the product needs some development, so they're working on improvements, but all the technical engineers I've worked with so far are very technically sound and they know the product.

The initial setup for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is straightforward, if you are aware or have knowledge of it. For example, it's easy if you have gone through all the phases of setting up Microsoft Defender for Endpoint when it started as a manual deployment, manual configuration, then it came through GTO, then SSCM, then Intune, and now SMM. If you have gone through all the phases of deployment, then you know where you need to go and where to change the settings.

If you just started with Intune, or you're dealing with a combination of Intune and a firewall, the initial setup won't be as easy. It could be challenging for a newcomer, because you do not have much experience with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, but they'll give you good support, and they'll try to resolve the challenges that come up when setting up the solution.

Pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is competitive. Out of the bundle, you will get a lot of security, if I talk about Microsoft E5, for example, and get a lot of benefits. If the customer goes and purchases a different solution, it will cost more, so pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is quite reasonable at the moment. There isn't any challenge in terms of pricing, for example, I didn't see a customer who pulled back because of the price. Some prices could be negotiable, and sometimes, as a sales point, the two become negotiable, but they don't bill one and pull back because of the pricing. If you have an E5 license, you get everything.

Customers don't worry about the prices too much, because what they're a little bit worried about is the complete capability of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint in the endpoint security space when compared to other legacy solutions such as McAfee Endpoint Security and Symantec End-User Endpoint Security that are quite mature enough in this market, as seen on Gartner. Sometimes the customer is reluctant to move to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, but not because of its price. I didn't have customers who questioned the pricing for the solution.

I'm currently working with all these solutions: McAfee Endpoint Security, Symantec End-User Endpoint Security, and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, because I'm a consultant. I'm not a customer. I do use it, and the organization I'm in uses it, but I'm a consultant to the customer. I do pre-sales and look into any of the technical aspects of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

In terms of comparing Symantec End-User Endpoint Security with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, they both work, but in different ways and they have different approaches. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint doesn't have HIPS, while Symantec End-User Endpoint Security has HIPS. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has ASR rules which are compulsory, but there are some activities that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can't do in an environment, particularly if it is an air-gapped network. In an air-gapped network, which is very secure, my team can't open the internet, and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint fails in that, despite being an EDR solution, because it's cloud-based and it doesn't work there. Microsoft still doesn't have any solution for mitigating the air-gapped network.

My advice to people looking into implementing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is to do it very fast because the tool is changing very rapidly, so if you are a novice and you are just learning, what you learn might get changed in the next quarter. Some of the functionality might get changed, so you need to keep up with the changes, and you need to learn quickly and implement Microsoft Defender for Endpoint fast.

My rating for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is seven out of ten.

Normally, we use the solution for our workstations.

The solution is quite stable.

You get online privacy. It also protects the machines from malware and trojans.

It's a scalable product.

It is a straightforward setup.

There is always room for improvement. They can improve it on the online protection front since people nowadays are moving online and working from home. That would be a good thing to focus on. 

I've been using the solution for one year. It hasn't been that long just yet.

The product is very stable and quite reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance has been good. 

The product can scale well.

Around 15 people are using it in our organization. 

We may increase it in the future. 

I can't recall ever contacting support.

I'm also familiar with Kaspersky. We were previously using ESET.

The initial setup is quite simple and quite straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

The deployment is fast. It only takes a minute or so.

You only need one person - an engineer - to manage the product once it is up and running. 

We handled the initial setup on our own. We did not need any consultant or integrator help.

We pay annually for a license. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.