Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Reviews

We use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to secure our workstations, laptops, and servers. It helps us to do virus scanning and malware protection. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is free and part of the licensing stack of other Microsoft products. 

The product should reduce updates since it is hard to keep up. 

I have been using the product for three to four years. 

The tool's deployment was simple. It took about a month to complete since we have over 5000 servers across various platforms. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint helps us save time since we don't have to keep a separate semantic console. 

We can see the threats as soon as they come in. Our security team gets notifications. 

I rate it an 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 am a SOC analyst and I use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to investigate endpoints in our environment and malicious activity.

The visibility into threats that Defender provides is excellent. The logs I receive are quite comprehensive, allowing me to see what is happening on each endpoint, including the running processes and generated alerts. It does a pretty good job of detecting when certain events occur, which helps me stay attentive to potential issues. Overall, it offers significant visibility.

Defender does a good job in helping to prioritize threats across our entire enterprise because it provides me with context by distinguishing between high and medium threats.

We also utilize Azure Sentinel, Defender for Cloud Apps, Defender for Identity, and Office 365. These solutions are integrated together, and whenever one of them receives an alert, it is sent to the main alert queue. I would give the integration an eight out of ten.

Sentinel allows us to collect data from our entire ecosystem. We primarily use it for the network firewall logs, but it can also handle other types of logs.

Sentinel does an excellent job of providing us with comprehensive security protection and visibility into security alerts and incidents. It informs us about policy violations, such as foreign user sign-ins and sign-ins from multiple or different devices, among other things. Therefore, it offers greater visibility beyond just phishing alerts.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has significantly improved our organization by identifying the activities of individual users and effectively hunting for any threatening activities they might engage in. For instance, if a user downloads a malicious file or clicks on a malware-infected link, the software can promptly detect and mitigate the issue on the server.

Defender helps to automate routine tasks and the identification of high-value alerts. Sentinel aids in the automation process by allowing me to address the issue of numerous false positives. Specifically, I automated the handling of certain false positives that originated from a particular IP range. This IP range was generating false positives due to a flagged server, even though the server itself was not actually malicious. In such cases, Sentinel proved to be beneficial as it facilitated the automation and removal of unnecessary noise.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has helped save us the trouble of looking at multiple dashboards by providing a single XDR dashboard.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been instrumental in saving us time, especially by identifying true positives instead of wasting time on false positives.

I enjoy using the live response feature, which allows me to remotely access different endpoints and investigate malicious files, such as malware that people may have downloaded, and other related issues.

Threat intelligence has the potential for improvement, particularly by integrating more sources. This will enable us to accurately identify when a domain or an IP is malicious. If we could obtain information from external sources, it would reduce the need to use different open source tools to verify whether a domain or IP is malicious or not.

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

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is stable. I have only experienced one crash.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint proved to be scalable in our environment, supporting over 500 endpoints.

I have also used Splunk. Splunk is more modular and portable, allowing us to integrate it with a wide range of different tools. In contrast, features of Defender and Sentinel, such as those provided by Microsoft, do not integrate well with as many other options.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint a nine out of ten. It provides me with greater certainty regarding malicious activity compared to Splunk, which demands much more analysis. Defender for Endpoint performs a significant amount of work in terms of identifying and validating malicious elements. This saves us from having to read and interpret a large number of logs. It takes care of the interpretation and conducts about half of the log analysis on our behalf.

I still have to conduct threat intelligence on my own, such as open-source intelligence. I don't automatically search VirusTotal for things, but I still end up doing my own source searching.

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.

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.

Neutral

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our target is to have control over protected endpoints. As a centralized console dashboard, we want to see the exposure level and security weaknesses associated with those protected endpoints.

We are a consultancy company and a Microsoft Gold partner, so we are strictly attached to the Microsoft stack. We have used Microsoft Defender for Cloud for some of our customers on a few occasions.

The solution is deployed on the cloud. From an infrastructure point of view, it's on Microsoft and likely would be geo-distributed. The solution is typically deployed for all endpoints that require cloud protection in an organization. If a company has 300 devices, typically all 300 devices are connected. It doesn't make sense to divide profiles for different departments.

On average, we have 300 to 600 devices and a similar amount of users. In a few cases, we have Defender for Endpoint protecting shared workstations.

The solution helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise. If we're talking about projected vulnerabilities, like an outdated web browser, then there's a different priority associated with that. Conversely, if we have an endpoint out of data, like outdated Windows security patches, it will be registered with a different, higher priority. It helps a lot.

Sentinel enables us to natively ingest data from our entire ecosystem. By design, Microsoft ingests data from Office 365 to Sentinel.

This ingestion of data is critical to our security operations. Without data ingestion, nothing is shown in the dashboard or in the security and compliance portal. If it stops, we don't have data to analyze.

Sentinel enables us to investigate threats and respond holistically from one place. There are threat investigations directly in the portal, which depends on the license. This feature is really important for enterprise-class companies that have a huge emphasis on security.

Since using this solution, we have seen a better perception of incoming and active threats. We're able to see weaknesses or misconfigurations in applications and operating systems for devices.

It definitely takes time to realize benefits from the time of deployment. After we deployed the agent for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, it took about a week to collect data.

Defender for Endpoint doesn't help us automate routine tasks or automate finding high-value alerts. The most valuable feature is attack surface reduction rules, and in this case, we have an automated response. It's a lot like SOAR, which helps to contain security risks in an unmanned way, but it's limited to just that feature.

This solution absolutely eliminated the need to look at multiple dashboards because we have one XDR. It's a worthy capability that helps a lot. Having one dashboard makes our security operations more seamless. To retrieve data, we consult different places within the portal.

The solution's threat intelligence helps us prepare for potential threats before they hit and take proactive steps.

The solution saves us time, but it depends on the point of view. It helps to have a better understanding and outlook on our current situation within our organization and plan proactively for tasks in order to improve our security score.

We saved money by not needing to buy additional pieces of software or deploying additional infrastructure for an on-premises security product.

It also depends on the competitor and the infrastructure required.

Detection and response take minutes because as soon as something is compromised or something happens within our organization, an alert will be triggered within minutes. After we receive an email with an alert, we are likely to start the analysis and remediation if it exceeds or doesn't fall within the scope of the attack surface reduction rules.

The attack surface reduction rules are the most valuable. We're able to have unattended remediation actions when the solution works side by side with a local antivirus like Microsoft Defender or Kaspersky. The attack surface reduction rules help us to proactively block and stop threats.

The visibility into threats is fair. It's accurate and gives us control over threats.

Prioritization is pretty important to us because we need to concentrate on new threats with higher risks associated with them.

Generally speaking, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, along with Sentinel, provides fair, decent capabilities but it depends on the situation.

Reporting could be improved. I would like to see how many security incidents occurred in the last six months, how many devices were highly exposed to security risks, and how many devices were actually compromised.

I have worked with this solution for more than a year.

It's very stable.

Generally speaking, there are no bugs or glitches. We have had issues twice in the past two months, but nothing too critical. Before those two occasions, it hadn't happened in a year or more.

It's highly scalable considering it's a SaaS solution.

I would rate technical support an eight out of ten. It depends on the support engineer who is working on the problem.

Positive

We used Kaspersky, but the version is exactly comparable to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

We switched to Microsoft for better integration. It integrates very well with the Microsoft antivirus, so we don't have to deploy additional infrastructure or an additional piece of software. We have extended security controls over Windows devices especially and a single dashboard.

There is also integration with Intune, which is the MDM from Microsoft.

The initial setup was absolutely straightforward. We spent some time reading the documentation in order to understand how the setup and agent deployment worked, but then it was pretty straightforward.

It took a couple of hours to deploy the solution. Assuming you have the current licenses, you need to enable the features at the tenant level, and then you have to create a policy to distribute the Defender for the Endpoint sensor.

One person is sufficient to set up and onboard devices. The solution doesn't require any maintenance because the solution is upgraded from the cloud. Maintenance is very limited.

We have absolutely received ROI. Initially, it's time-consuming to understand how to onboard devices and start protecting them, but it's pretty easy to replicate the configuration across different customers.

The price is fair for the features Microsoft delivers. If you want tailor-made features, you have to mix different licenses. It isn't straightforward.

Intune is an additional cost. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint works really well with Intune, but you may decide to go for a license that encompasses Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender for Identity, and Intune, which is typically a Microsoft E5 license.

I evaluated other solutions, but the decision diverted to Microsoft products because we have a Microsoft partnership. I requested more information from PeerSpot about the differences between Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Sophos Intercept X because I had to provide a business justification to a customer in order to go for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

There are pros and cons to having a best-of-breed strategy versus a single vendor security suite. I would go for a single vendor security solution just to have convergence but it depends. Considering the fact that I'm working for a Microsoft Gold partner, I haven't had the occasion to make a comparison.

I would recommend implementing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. My advice is to use Intune to have better control, especially for Microsoft devices. I would also advise using third-party local antivirus solutions rather than relying on Microsoft Defender Antivirus, which is a lock-in to a single vendor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We have been using the solution for about six months.

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

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

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

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

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

I worked for an enterprise client in the public sector with half a million endpoints. I'm in Canada, and that's bigger than most US companies. Defender is an endpoint agent, but it's tied into what I would call a SOC outsourcing stack. It's part of a security operations center that is getting threat intelligence, comparing that to endpoint detection and response, and feeding it all back into a SIEM.

I use either E3 or will upgrade to the E5 full suite, or will go a la carte. You can pick one or two off there, but it usually makes more sense to go all E5. Sentinel and Defender are the two things I like in E5 that I work together.

We use Defender's bidirectional sync capabilities at a high level. I'm more of a high-end security architect, so I do the conceptual designs but not the implementation. Even though I like it, I don't know if it gets implemented and used or not. As a capability, as an architect, that's a good thing to have.

Our deployment is still a work in progress, but it will enable us to mature and automate our cyber incident response and threat security posture. Defender helps us automate routine tasks and the findings of high-value alerts. That's the SOAR part we hope to achieve with the project reaches maturity.  

Defender simplifies things if you are managing a multi-cloud environment or a hybrid deployment. Instead of having 10 dashboards, you're now down to three. It creates a fabric. Do I have a single pane of glass? No. However, I have three panes instead of ten.

It can give early warning signs. I'd stop short of saying Defender protects, detects, responds, and remediates. It still doesn't do the remediate part. Defender will ultimately save time and money when we've fully implemented it. I'll find more problems, but I think the integration will save me a lot more time on the operations,  incident response, etc. It's all speculative until you're fully deployed and got key metrics to prove it.

The biggest reason I looked at Defender is that the world seems to have shifted to Office 365 and Azure in the last couple of years because COVID is forcing many people to work from home. Defender has better out-the-box integration with Office 365 and Microsoft security solutions like Sentinel, and its SIEM. CrowdStrike or other top products are excellent, but I'd still need to integrate them.

Defender is great at identifying threats on Windows and Azure products. If the threats aren't related to Microsoft, I will use something else. My view of Microsoft Defender changed significantly over the past five years. I used to think it couldn't compete with best-in-class solutions like CrowdStrike. It was like a Microsoft version of CrowdStrike. Today, I think it's on par pound-for-pound with CrowdStrike on the EDR Gartner MQ capability list. 

If you have multi-cloud like Google and AWS, the native solutions are better for those particular cases. But if you want Azure covered and you use Sentinel and Defender, you can also integrate Defender well with Zscaler. 

Zscaler is more of a multi-CSP fabric with zero trust capabilities that integrate with CrowdStrike and other third-party tools. I use Defender and Sentinel for Microsoft, but I also like that Microsoft integrates very well with Zscaler and vice versa.

The comprehensiveness of Microsoft threat-protection products is great. Five years ago, I would've said don't use it because other products are better. Today, Microsoft Sentinel by itself is a leading Gartner SIEM tool. It has advantages over competitors because of the ability to integrate with Microsoft solutions and automate continuous monitoring of Microsoft AD and Office 365 data.

Sentinel aggregates logs from everything. It's pretty good at that. If you were on Google Cloud or AWS, you would use the native products, but Sentinel is useful if you already have it and you want to use it as the central log aggregator.

Defender offers SOAR plus UEBA, and you can integrate it easily with the endpoint, making it a compelling security fabric as a SOC technology stack. I would put it in the top four along with IBM, Splunk, and maybe Fortinet as one of the better-integrated UEBA types of technology suites.

Microsoft Defender improved a lot. They weren't even on the Gartner Magic Quadrant, and now they've equaled or surpassed the leading solutions. I would suggest they continue doing what they're doing on their product roadmap and develop more SOAR. The last thing for them to tackle is multi-tenant and multi-cloud handling.

I have been using Defender for about five years.

Defender is robust.

I'm still in the early stage, but the scalability seems impressive based on my research and the size of reference clients.

I've mostly seen the pre-sales part, like doing demos and licensing. As far as doing demos and licensing. My experience with the sales organization has been awesome, but I'm not dealing with maintenance, rollover, or contract.

Five years ago, I looked at Micro Focus, ArcSight, and maybe some best-of-breed UEBA and EDR solutions, like CrowdStrike and Intercept. Business considerations led me to choose Defender. 

Security people will go for the top security solution, but executives are worried about enterprise and return on investment. They push for Microsoft security products because they've got Azure and Windows. I now agree that it also makes sense from a security point of view,

As an architect, my experience with the deployment is limited to evaluations and PoCs, and the full roll-out is ongoing. Ultimately, it's a low-maintenance solution. The payoff on automation and maturity is getting ongoing maintenance and support, training, patches, and new product upgrades. That's part and parcel of why it's a good idea.

The price was a problem for me three years ago, but they improved their E3, E5, and a la carte licensing. In other words, you have to get all of E5. That used to be a problem because you had E3, Defender, and guardrails, but you needed an E5 license to get the management suite and the analytics. 

It's more flexible now. You can switch from a la carte to the entire suite when it starts to make sense. It's becoming more economically competitive to go that route.

Defender is good enough if I compare it to the leading EDR solutions on Gartner. I would place it in the top quartile based on cyber threat intel. Cisco Talos and CrowdStrike are better, but Defender isn't that far behind. The payoff for me is the native Microsoft integration. 

Suppose most of my applications and data were still on-premise and I didn't need to work from home because of COVID. In that case, I'd be looking at IBM, Q1 Radar, Resilient, FortiSIEM, or ArcSight because the legacy SIEM products do on-premise security well. However, most of my cloud data is Office 365 in Azure, so that's what prompted me to start looking at Sentinel and Defender. 90 percent of my criteria shifted to the cloud, specifically Microsoft Azure.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint nine out of ten. If you're planning to use Defender, you need to understand the options around E3, E5, and a la carte licensing. This is also true if you do a bake-off between IBM, ArcSight, or other best-of-breed products, understand what capabilities you really need. If you're a small or medium-sized enterprise, you won't have the same needs as a corporation with half a million endpoints.