Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Reviews

We used it as an EPP and EDR solution. 

Microsoft Defender made the work quite easy because we didn't have to rely on multiple tools, and we could look at one thing. It had a specific endpoint-level reporting standard as well where you can see the vulnerable threats and the outdated versions. It was very convenient.

We had certain compliance and usage issues. For example, our company wanted to go with CIS, but we didn't have a proper way of measuring whether the endpoints have the right standards in place or whether they were compliant with CIS. Microsoft Defender was like a one-stop for most things because it gave us the vulnerability and patching scores so that our vulnerability management teams can focus on covering up the vulnerabilities and the patching team can check the vulnerable versions and deploy the right versions. It had multiple advantages for us in terms of patching, vulnerability management, adhering to security standards, and EDR and AV capabilities. 

Microsoft Defender was pretty interesting in terms of visibility. When we compare the solution that we had before with Microsoft Defender, there is almost a night and day difference. Microsoft Defender is pretty advanced with the threats. We used to run, simulate, and see whether we were prone to the latest vulnerabilities. It was a pretty good solution in our experience.

It definitely saved us a lot of time. I don't have the metrics, but because it was a one-stop place, we didn't have to navigate through all the controls and go from one place to another to look for different reports for each section. We had one tool that could do everything in one place. It would have definitely saved us nearly one-fifth or 20% of the time. It would have also saved money because you rely on one single tool for multiple things. When you go with the premium suite, you get other tools as well. There is definitely a cost-saving aspect.

It came in a suite. There were multiple other products that were included with it as well in the premium suite. Another factor was that you don't have to invest in two products, and you can get both components, the EPP and the EDR, in one. You can also do simple vulnerability management, CIS hardening, and things like that from Microsoft Defender. Those were the main reasons for considering it back then.

I haven't used the product in nearly eight months. I use it on my device, but I haven't used it at an administrative level. Previously, with Microsoft Defender, we used to have certain problems with the Mac machines, but later on, they came up with various ways so that we could use the MDM solution to do the job. They provided pretty good support. Their engineers came and tried to figure out the solution.

I'm not too sure of its current capabilities, but I'm pretty sure they are doing a good job on Windows and Mac. However, I'm not sure whether they covered Linux. If I remember correctly, Microsoft Defender didn't have anything proper on Linux back then, but if they have improved it from that aspect, it would already be ticking all the boxes.

I have used Microsoft Defender for eight months to one year in my previous organization.

In comparison to the other solutions that I've had experience with, Microsoft Defender was very good.

It was definitely scalable. In my previous organization, we enrolled more than 20,000 endpoints.

It was pretty good. At that time, Microsoft Defender was very new. When they released it for Mac, that's when we got hold of them. There was a time when their support engineers learned certain things from me about it, and I also did learn something from them. It was a win-win situation for both of us.

I would rate their support a seven out of them. The level of support depends on the complexity of the issue. If an issue is small, anyone can solve it, and it wouldn't take much time, but when you run into a complex problem, you need proper people coming in quickly and giving you some support after looking into the issue. Ideally, if they are very well-trained at all levels, that would be good.

We had other products for antivirus and EDR. We removed those two products and replaced them with Microsoft Defender. They both were pretty good solutions in the market back then. One of them is a pretty good solution even now.

We found Microsoft Defender pretty good when we did the PoC as compared to the rest of the tools. Some of the solutions were only antivirus, and some of them were only EDR, whereas this particular tool had a lot of features built into it. So, one agent could do many things. Another reason for going for this solution was that the company I used to work with was a bit biased toward Microsoft. They were a Microsoft customer, and they were comfortable with Microsoft. 

The reliability of support was one of the reasons why we chose Microsoft. When it comes to tools, there are always requirements related to budget, level of support, and other things. When you go for a PoC and look at the demo, you might think a product is stable, but when you run into a problem, the support could be weak. In such instances, what's the use of the product if you don't have good support or if they take at least two to three days to solve a small issue?

I handled the Mac machine part of it. Initially, setting up policies and getting all the configuration profiles in place was a bit of a challenge because they didn't have proper documentation at first. During the PoC, there were not many documents or support articles, but when we were in the deployment phase, they had everything, even specific to particular MDMs, which made it very smooth. We ran into a couple of small problems, but that's pretty common in every deployment. Other than that, it was pretty smooth. 

From Microsoft's side, there is a pretty good deployment strategy in place, but different companies have different objectives and different ways of working. There are situations where certain users and groups might need something specific but other users or groups don't. There could be multiple groups of users with different expectations. So, it is pretty straightforward, but like with any security tool, there could be internal user-level challenges. However, for a company that does not have a very complex environment, it should be a piece of cake. It should be pretty easy.

In terms of our implementation strategy, we first targeted the least impacted devices because we didn't want high-end or critical users complaining about having issues. So, we selected the low-priority users and implemented it for them, and then we tested it out. After that, we implemented it for users with higher priorities. We gradually moved based on the severity.

In terms of maintenance, agent updates are required, which we scheduled automatically. It didn't seem to need much attention. If the product is in a non-complex environment, it won't have many issues, but in a complex environment, there will be some because of VLAN restrictions, network connectivity limitations, etc. We also had issues where agents were not communicating, but it was not because of an issue with the tool. It was mainly because of the complexity of the environment in terms of networking and architecture.

Microsoft Defender decreased our time to detect and time to respond. However, we didn't completely rely on one solution. We had other means as well. We used to have another EDR solution as well, and we used to run both together.

I would definitely agree with a security colleague who says that it’s better to go with a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor’s security suite. For example, if you are a one-vendor customer, the day the vendor gets hit with zero-day or any huge attack, none of your tools or software would work. Your data and other things are also at risk. So, having multiple vendors is good because you'll be covered by different products. 

Microsoft Defender's threat intelligence helps to prepare for potential threats before they hit and take practice steps, but there was another team that was using the threat intelligence and reporting capabilities to see whether the organization was ready. In my previous organization, we had overall IT support, which was then divided into nearly 20 different teams. We had one team specifically to do one specific job. 

For prioritization of threats, if I'm not wrong, Microsoft Defender gives you a severity value. I haven't been in the admin part for long, but it gives you a severity value. Based on that, you can prioritize your threats.

I would rate Microsoft Defender an eight out of ten. 

We use it to prevent malware attacks.

The automatic report is very good, and it is easy to see which user or device has a problem. The benefit we were able to realize immediately was protection.

I like the simplicity of the portal and the integration with Microsoft Intune. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy to use and implement.

It has helped automate routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts. However, we have a small IT team, and we have not automated many tasks.

It has also helped us save a little time, but we have saved more time with email protection. We have saved money as well because of ransomware protection.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's threat intelligence has helped us prepare for potential threats before they hit and take proactive steps. We have a scoreboard of each device and can quickly see which device needs an upgrade.

This solution has made our threat detection and response time faster by a few hours.

Right now, there's a portal for Azure, portals for Microsoft Office, and portals for endpoints. It would be good to have only one portal and integrate everything.

I've been using this solution for five years.

Because it is in the cloud, the stability is good.

It is easy to scale and increase capacity.

We are at one location with multiple departments such as IT, marketing, sales, invoicing, etc. We are a small company and have 53 users of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

I have contacted Microsoft technical support a few times a year, and they have responded quickly. I'd give them a rating of nine out of ten.

Positive

We used a different solution and switched to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint because the integration and alignment with Microsoft was great. The previous solution was heavy, and it took a long time to update. 

The initial deployment was easy and took a few hours.

It is deployed to the cloud, and I don't have to spend time on maintenance.

I deployed it myself.

The ROI is very difficult to calculate, but it may be 20% ROI. We don't have any problems with ransomware or malware.

It is an expensive solution. It would be nice if it could be included with the Microsoft Office package.

In theory, the best-of-breed strategy is not secure, and practically, a single vendor's suite is better because there is only one contact.

I would recommend trying Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and would give it an overall rating of nine on a scale from one to ten.

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.

We use a package of Microsoft security products, including Defender for Endpoint, 365 Defender, Sentinel, and Defender for Identity. You can integrate them with a few clicks. They work together natively, and Sentinel provides advanced monitoring, so you know everything happening in your environment.

It's essential to have one space where you can manage all these solutions together because security can be complicated. It makes it that much more complex to have to navigate to a different portal for identity, email, etc. It's crucial to have a single place to manage all your security operations, so you don't have to move around. 

We started with endpoint protection, where you install an agent on your client with a sensor already built in. Once you have that agent installed, the endpoint can report to the Microsoft security portal. You'll be able to see the device onboarded on the portal using some scripts, and you can monitor most of the vulnerabilities. You can also detect, respond and remedy security vulnerabilities from the portal.

We added email protection by setting policies that will analyze our email. It analyzes our links and attachments to see if there's malware attached. We move ahead to use Defender for Office 365. We also moved forward with Defender for Cloud, and the solution for our workloads, like VM, our network security group, etc. There is another one called Defender for Identity that lets us manage our on-premises and cloud identity from a single portal.

Many of our users are on older operating systems and browsers with vulnerabilities that harm the environment. An attacker can take advantage of those old browsers to access the infrastructure. Defender for Endpoint lets us identify those browsers with vulnerabilities and resolve the issues. We can also find processes that we didn't initiate and stop them right away.

Defender helps us prioritize threats from the security portal. It shows us the dangers that matter the most to our own organization and which threats we should address first to achieve the most significant improvement in our security posture. 

We can manage Defender for Endpoint and Defender for 365 from the same integrated security portal, and it's user-friendly. Microsoft is much more user-friendly than Sophos. 

Microsoft covers every aspect of security and the global challenges we face. The biggest threat today is identity and access management. If someone has access to your identity, they can access much of your technology. They have solid solutions for identity, email, and cloud. I don't think there's anything Microsoft left out. Microsoft has your security environment protected. 

Sentinel enables you to ingest data from your entire ecosystem from on-premise to the cloud. It has single sign-on technology, so you can use your account from your on-prem to sign on to the cloud and vice versa. A user doesn't have to remember a lot of passwords.

Sentinel's data ingestion is essential. Security tasks can be tedious. It's great to have technology that lets you integrate all your data from different sources. You can also incorporate data from other clouds, not just Azure. You can have data from Azure and on-premise. 

So far, Sentinel is one of the most comprehensive SIEMs I've seen. They have even added this XDR. Sentinel doesn't just do SIEM and SOAR. It also covers XDR. The automation is there, so you don't have to do much work. The automation helps you look at the activities behind all this data and correlate them to see the relationships. It gives you information at a glance to see if there is a relationship between these various data sources. 

Defender saves us time. A task takes typically three days and could be accomplished in one day using Microsoft technology. With an on-premise network, you need to switch between portals on all your network devices, but you can achieve that from one portal. You can set policies that will block traffic to your infrastructure, so it saves time. The advanced threat protection using AI has also reduced our detection time. 

We've also saved money. We previously managed the technologies on-premise, so we had to maintain the solutions ourselves. We spend less using Microsoft cloud technology because we don't need to pay for those extra features. We only need to pay for operational expenses. 

We don't have to go to the affected devices when we see a security vulnerability from the portal. We can respond to those issues and resolve them using an endpoint management solution, like Intune. When we resolve a security issue, it takes a week to see the score, but we see the results immediately.

I like the security score that you can see from the portal. You can see the list of the vulnerabilities, and the security score tells you how well your organization is managing those vulnerabilities. It's a strong feature that helps improve your security operations.

Another helpful feature is the recommendations. The portal will guide you on how you can resolve those issues from your own endpoint. This feature is great if you don't have that kind of experience. It will help you understand the technology better and improve your security posture. 

Defender provides useful alerts and groups them. It sends an alert to your portal if it detects any malicious activity, and you can group multiple alerts to form an incident. 

I would like to see Sentinel better integrated with the rest of the security technology within one portal. 

I've been using Defender for more than a year.

I rate Microsoft support seven out of ten. I had some cases a while back and told an agent my issue. When I called the next day, I had to explain everything again to a different person, so I found it annoying to repeat myself all over. 

It would be helpful if they had some coordination between their support, so we don't have to repeat ourselves. They should be able to transfer your details from one agent to another. 

We previously used Sophos.

Defender doesn't cost that much. When you use Microsoft technology, you can start with the free version and see how much the technology helps your organization solve security problems before you use the subscription. They also do this pay-as-you-go model, so you only pay when you use it. 

I rate Defender for Endpoint nine out of ten. It's great. I don't have anything negative to say about those technologies. They are serving their purpose.

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.

It's an antivirus product, so its main use is to protect us.

This is a really good product, it's user-friendly and offers us safety and security. 

The technical support could be improved. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The solution is stable. 

In terms of scalability, we went from 10 pilot machines to 35,000 devices.

The technical support isn't too bad but their responsiveness needs to be improved. I'd say it's their biggest issue. 

The initial setup is very easy, probably one of the easiest onboarding processes I've done. Implementation was done in-house and takes a few minutes per device; click it and go. I deal with anything related to antivirus patching and encryption and we have four cyber analysts that look after whatever comes out of ATP or Defender for Endpoint. 

My advice would be to plan carefully and make sure you take notice of what's coming out because it pushes out a lot of very useful information. It's a matter of having sufficient staff because the amount of information it gives you is phenomenal. If a company doesn't have sufficient resources then any other antivirus might work, but this thing produces so much useful information that if you're implementing this solution it's worthwhile having the staff to deal with it. 

I rate this product 10 out of 10.