Microsoft Defender XDR Reviews

We provide services to medium-sized businesses in the banking and administrative sectors. We are also using Microsoft Sentinel and Defender for 365. 

Defender helps our clients protect against any threats from outside the organization. Defender XDR helps our clients save about 25 percent by offloading some on-prem functions to the cloud. It also saves time because the cloud interface is manageable, and we can investigate incidents quickly. It's easy to create reports and share information with other teams. 

I like Defender XDR's threat detection and prevention capabilities. Defender's built-in identity and access management features are critical. The solution's coverage extends beyond Microsoft software. Defender is easy to use. It has a nice console, and everything is all in one place. 

The console is missing some features that would be helpful for a managed services provider, like device and user management. 

I have used Defender XDR for the last two years. 

I rate Defender XDR nine out of 10. 

I rate Defender XDR eight out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Microsoft support nine out of 10. 

Some aspects of the deployment were not straightforward. It was moderately complex. I enabled all the connections and onboarding process, then implemented a basic set of configurations. It took about seven to 10 days to deploy. 

My clients have seen an ROI from using Defender XDR.

Defender XDR is reasonably priced but may be less affordable in certain countries. For example, it might be expensive for some customers in India. 

I rate Defender XDR eight out of 10. I would recommend Defender XDR. It's a fast solution, and it's easy to train people to use Defender. 

Defender XDR is a solution that protects your enterprise systems and devices.

Defender XDR has helped a lot in terms of capturing all kinds of activities happening on the endpoints where it is. If you want to know what happened at a point in time, you can go to the history and search everything. This helps you investigate exactly what happened if you have a security breach. It doesn't take much time, but I don't have anything to compare it to because Defender is the only XDR we've used. 

Defender XDR has a feature called the timeline that lets you track all activities. It helps a lot with investigations. Microsoft has many identity management features and products that complement each other.

It covers the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of non-Microsoft solutions, but it will not help you to do the remediation. You need another third-party tool to do the remediation. 

Defender protects against advanced attacks like ransomware or email phishing. The protection Defender provides is excellent. It's a great product for preventing attacks and reducing risks for organizations. 

There are a few technical issues with Defender XDR that can be improved. Sometimes, the endpoint devices are not reporting properly to the Defender 365 portal. When you're getting all the information from the Microsoft portal, the devices are sometimes not in sync. We have hundreds of endpoint devices, some needing to be onboarded again. 

I have used Defender XDR for three years.

I rate Microsoft support nine out of ten. It's excellent. 

Positive

We did a POC for a McAfee product. There weren't many differences, but Microsoft Defender was included with our E5 license. The major difference is that we saved money by not purchasing another product. 

Defender XDR is a cloud-based solution. You can access it and see all the information you need inside the Microsoft portal. 

Defender XDR is not expensive. It's average compared to other products. 

I can get Defender bundled with the E5 package. We had considered replacing it, but after evaluating some competing products, we decided there was no significant difference between the third-party products and Defender. 

I rate Microsoft Defender XDR eight out of ten. I think there is room for improvement in terms of its coverage of non-Microsoft technologies. 

Defender XDR can replace multiple security products. It covers everything, including phishing protection, network security, device security, applications, etc. 

The solution has reduced time spent on manual tasks because almost everything is automated. You don't have to do anything. If something happens, you'll get a notification, and it will instantly run the playbook for the incident. For example, a phishing email might take an hour to investigate manually. If you have Defender, you will have all the information you need on the incident page. It's all there, so you can investigate the incident in around 5 to 10 minutes.

Adopting Defender cuts costs. While the solution is a little pricey, you only need two products—XDR and Sentinel—so you don't need to add other security products. You only need to use the Microsoft security stack. 

The advantage Microsoft Defender XDR has over other XDRs in the market is that it's easy to use. You can quickly differentiate between alerts, incidents, devices, software, etc. It's easier to investigate an incident, and you have so many options. You can automate investigations and use playbooks. There's also the live response session, which is something you can't find in any other XDR. 

The identity protection is excellent. It uses some rules, including some built-in rules from Microsoft itself. It identifies risky users and differentiates between a user who is trying to sign in and isn't the actual user. Identity and access management is a valuable component of Defender.

Defender covers non-Microsoft technologies if you're using the full Microsoft stack with Sentinel and Defender. You can ingest logs from other solutions, like Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls. 

It stops advanced attacks like ransomware and phishing in real time and prevents them from entering your environment. There's a feature called Security Advisory that shows you all the latest threats and vulnerabilities in the market so that you can make rules for them. It helps you understand them more. 

With Sentinel and Microsoft Lighthouse, you can use multi-tenant access. It allows you to connect multiple tenants to one tenant, which you can use to monitor everything from there. Before we had Microsoft Defender, we had to go to each tenant, log n from your account, and investigate the incident if it's there. Lighthouse has one page with all the alerts, and they're all connected together. You can investigate every alert from one page.

The design of the user interface could use some work. Sometimes it's hard to find the exact information you need.

I rate Microsoft Defender XDR 7 out of 10 for stability. There are some performance issues maybe 5% of the time. 

I rate Microsoft Defender XDR 9 out of 10. It's easy to scale. 

I rate Microsoft support 8 out of 10. They answer quickly. If you open a ticket, they will respond immediately. You can chat with them or schedule a call. 

Positive

The setup is straightforward. You only need to buy the product and onboard every device. It's like a script for Microsoft Intune. The process takes a couple of days for a small company, but a larger business may require three or four days. 

Defender XDR is fairly priced. 

I rate Microsoft XDR Defender 8 out of 10. I recommend giving the product a try. If it doesn't work for you, try something else until you find a suitable product. There might be other solutions that are a better fit. It's good for my case, but it might not be right for everyone. 

The product replaced Sophos, a third-party product we used, helping us save money equal to its yearly subscription. The product saves us time. We do not have to interfere. It just keeps running.

Considering we haven't encountered any technical problems since we started using it. It is working as intended. It has great stability.

I don't know if that is Defender's feature, but more active monitoring for data breaches would be beneficial. There could be a way to proactively monitor unusual activity versus just depending on viruses and malware. If the traffic seems unusual, it could detect anomalies and update us. It would help us stop malware attacks ahead of time.

I have been using Microsoft Defender XDR since 2015.

We never encountered stability issues.

Whenever we add a license, it automatically sets the account for a new user.

The initial setup process was fine and similar to Office 365. We had to get our email server lifted externally from the premises to the cloud. It is easy to use once all applications are deployed.

Microsoft Defender XDR is already included in our Office 365 licensing. It is better because we're saving money by using it.

The product was included with the Office 365 licensing that we had. So, we decided to try it out. Before that, we were using Sophos.

I haven't run into that particular instance where the security features have extended beyond Microsoft technologies. The only products we use outside of Microsoft are proprietary lockdown applications, and it's not really an issue there.

During staff training, we've been using Intune to detect phishing attempts. It hasn't detected anything in that aspect. However, it has the ability to check for malicious attacks preemptively.

I rate it a ten out of ten.

I'm a deployment engineer for Microsoft products, and we work with multiple SMEs. Customers adopting Microsoft products want the same features they had in their third-party solutions. We look at their requirements and the types of features they need. We determine the security mechanism that best addresses their vulnerabilities. We might suggest Defender for Identity,  Defender for Endpoint, 365 Defender, and Defender for Cloud Apps. In addition to those security solutions, we offer device management. We provide everything.

Defender improves our security operations. I've had chances to collaborate with our SOC team. Our customers face many random attacks they don't know how to prevent, and the SOC team handles them remotely. The security engineers can investigate the incident or use the information from the customer's environment to offer a recommendation. If the customer doesn't have the detection mechanism, we can recommend a product or find a solution for them. 

The solution can help customers save money because we can bundle it with all the other Microsoft solutions, like email and Defender for endpoint, identity, and cloud apps. Most of our customers use Windows 10 devices and Microsoft Active Directory, so everything is on the same page. Defender can save time by automating investigation and response. We don't need to spend much time because it'll automatically take action in many cases. 

The best feature is threat hunting. There are a lot of other features I like, such as the alert mechanism. The chain alert mechanism has a huge impact. It combines all the alerts into one incident and automatically correlates them with AI. 

Defender has integrated identity access management, and you can add DLP features through a separate solution called Microsoft Purview. Within the cloud, we can create access policies based on each user's risk. It's integrated with Azure AD and on-prem Active Directory, so all the user identities can be managed in a single portal.

We use the multi-tenant management capability, so we can cover customers that have multiple regions. We can easily investigate across tenants based on severity. For high-priority alerts, we start from scratch and ignore what's happening on the endpoints or emails. We isolate the device and ensure that nothing will be released from it. Next, we check this device and some more details.

There is no common area where we can manage all the policies for the EDR, third-party solutions, devices, servers, Windows, Mac, etc., but it's on the roadmap, and we were waiting for that feature. 

I have used 365 Defender for about four years.

365 Defender is stable. There is no downtime. Still, Microsoft is constantly rolling out features, so there are sometimes bugs after new releases. Our customer experience team is collaborating with Microsoft and sharing feedback with them. 

365 Defender is scalable 

I rate Microsoft support nine out of 10. The support depends on the product and the customer's issues. 

Positive

I work with customers coming to Microsoft from other third-party products, so I try to understand what the product does and suggest a solution. The names are different, but all the technology is the same.

Deploying Microsoft Defender isn't complex if you have experience. The deployment depends on the number of users, apps, and the client's requirements. If the client wants to implement XDR, it takes about a month to achieve full functionality.  Endpoint protection takes around five to ten days. It's a cloud product, so it doesn't require any maintenance. 

Defender XDR is agentless, so you don't need to install an agent anywhere. It's a cost-effective option.

I rate Microsoft 365 Defender nine out of 10. We recommend it to our customers. 

I primarily use the solution as an engineer. I use the product to protect the endpoint and I use it to protect my customer's environment. 

The web protection on offer is very good. For a company that doesn't have a firewall, it's quite useful.

It gives feedback and helps protect internet access. It provides you with analysis on the state of the environment and you have a direct link to Microsoft which is doing its own research on security. You're constantly getting feedback from Microsoft resources so that you can be up to date in your own environment and you'll have a better understanding of the security landscape. 

The solution is great for companies on a budget.

Defender provides helpful visibility into threats. It covers a lot and comes with a next-gen antivirus. With that, you can register to the cloud, and, if you have cloud protection, your environment is protected even more. 

It helps us prioritize the threats across our enterprise. It covers all of our devices. You can cover your entire operation with the license you purchase.

Microsoft 365 Defender is easy to integrate with other products. You just have to configure some things in order to integrate everything and you are SDR compliant. We currently have it integrated natively, so we don't have to worry about configurations.

The comprehensiveness of Microsoft's threat detection is good. Microsoft provides a lot of security. It gives you visibility and IT has a lot of control over everything. You can see your environment, including clouds. You can block things within your environment as needed. The applications are easy to manage. It also has app governance to be able to gain visibility into permissions.

The product has helped automate routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts. It has an automatic investigation feature that you can enable. It's great for automation. Thanks to automation, it has helped reduce the time it takes to analyze security events and alerts. You don't have to wait to take action. If there is a threat, you can neutralize it faster and it will record everything for audit records. While I know it has saved us time, I can't quantify that into a specific amount of hours.

We no longer need to look at multiple dashboards. Now, everything is centralized under one dashboard. 

The product's threat intelligence helps us prepare for potential threats and take proactive steps. Since we've been using it, we've had no security incidents.

The only issue I've had is, when it comes to deployment, the steps I must take around policy setup. That is challenging. We're working on the onboarding and configuration policies. We're collecting feedback from customers and partners in hopes of refining the future design for deployment.

I've used the solution for about two years.

The feedback I have received from customers is that the stability is very good. 

The product scales well.

If you have a license through a partner, it's the partner that will support you.

The only issue with Microsoft is the response times. They are very competent, however, sometimes you will send an email and get no response. 

Neutral

I previously used Sophos. I then switched to Microsoft Defender. The Sophos deployment is quite easy in comparison. You can do everything from a single portal. They had already achieved effective centralization. 

Right now, there are two different ways to onboard. You might have to have a different partner to configure policies. However, right now, you can also create policies from the activity center, so you don't have to do it from the device itself.

How long a deployment takes depends on your scope and the number of devices you are covering. 

If you do not get a license for the portal, you'll have to use the manual to deploy. If you have an older server you may encounter some issues. However, if you upgrade the server at the same time, you'll have fewer problems.

We do use more than one Microsoft security product. We've integrated with other products. 

I do not make use of the directional sync capabilities at this time. I'm also not using Microsoft Sentinel.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If the deployment of the agent was better, I'd move my grade closer to ten. It should be more automatic. You also shouldn't have to install the logs. 

I use 365 Defender to protect against phishing attacks and filter out our email to pick up certain vulnerabilities. For example, if someone sends out their credentials, it triggers an alarm. 

Features like filtering and phishing simulation increase our email security. The main purpose is to protect employees and sensitive company information. Everything is connected, so an intruder can potentially access sensitive, confidential information by breaching just one account. 365 Defender is a good way to protect the entire environment. 

Defender helped us automate tasks because we had everything preconfigured. We create alerts and automated responses, which save us some time. Threat intelligence is helpful. For example, if there is a suspicious IP address based in Russia, we can block that address. I didn't do much of that, but it's possible.

365 Defender provides solid visibility because we can map out what's happening and get a good overview of the intelligence. The timeline feature is excellent. I also like the phishing simulation. We have phishing campaigns to educate employees and warn them about these threats. 

I also like that Microsoft has a lot of resources online. It's easy to Google information about the tool and what it can do for your organization. 

The interface could be improved. For example, if you want to do a phishing simulation for your employees, it can take a while to figure out what to do. The interface is a bit messy and could be updated. It isn't too bad, but doing some things can be a long process. 

I used Microsoft 365 Defender for 10 weeks during an internship. 

365 Defender is highly stable. I've never had any issues with it. It can be slower at times, but that may not be product's fault. Maybe there's too much traffic or an issue with the connection. 

365 Defender can scale. More than a thousand people work for this company, and some of them have multiple endpoints, like laptops, workstations, phones, etc. 

I've used CrowdStrike and some other tools for endpoint and email security. Microsoft Defender is excellent because it covers everything in one place, including endpoint protection, email security, phishing simulation, spam filtering, etc.  

365 Defender is billed per account. I don't know the exact price, but my supervisor told me that Microsoft Defender is cheaper than the alternatives. It's bundled, so you get all the features in one place. 

I rate Microsoft 365 Defender a nine out of ten. It's an excellent product that protects employees and organizations from attacks. If you have it configured correctly, you should be good. It's an ideal solution for new companies that are starting up and need protection. 

If I were asked to pick between a best-of-breed strategy or getting all of my solutions from one company, I would say that it depends on the product. Many companies have products that offer the same quality as others. The Microsoft family covers so much, but you can also try CrowdStrike for endpoint protection or Proofpoint for email security. 

Each platform offers flexibility, and some can be better than Microsoft, but when it comes to creating configurations, I feel that it's a better option. Also, you can get a better price by purchasing all your solutions from one company. 

It has helped us identify a lot of loopholes within our environment and mitigate risk. It has improved user experience as well.

The visibility into threats provided by the solution is amazing. If you have Sentinel, you can integrate it with Microsoft 365 Defender. You can then access all of the logs at once with a code. You would be able to quickly analyze and react to any threat.

We are able to prioritize threats with this solution. Depending on the type of license you have, you will be able to access different capabilities. We place very high importance on prioritizing threats because the easiest way to get attacked is through the user or the endpoint. You must have multiple layers of security.

We use several Microsoft security products such as Sentinel, Defender for Office 365, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (Cloud App Security). Microsoft has the highest form of integration, so these solutions integrate in a straightforward manner. Once Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is unlocked, you can connect to third-party applications as well.

These solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response. The threat protection that these Microsoft security products provide is comprehensive and very effective.

We use Microsoft Defender for Cloud and make use of its bi-directional sync capabilities. It gives us access to reports and makes reporting much easier as well.

Microsoft Sentinel enables us to ingest data from our entire system. Data ingestion is very important to our security operations because it makes it easy for us to know if there are any vulnerabilities or threats. It flags it, and we can analyze it and also create a query, which brings to light threats. We can then mitigate the threat or attack breach on the device.

Sentinel enables us to investigate threats and respond holistically from one place. It makes life easier for us and helps us not to be caught unaware. There are many forms of alerts that notify you immediately of any threats. You can set up automations, which might even fix the issue or mitigate the issue immediately without the need for intervention. That is, you can create a rule to automatically fix a particular problem.

Sentinel captures a lot of logs, and you'll be able to create action plans through the application to directly handle particular threats. The integration has been done already, so automatically it will send a signal to the environment or to the solution you have integrated with to carry out a particular action.

The cost of Sentinel is on the higher side compared to that of other standalone solutions.

We can automate routine tasks and write scripts to carry out difficult tasks, which makes things easier for us.

This solution has helped us to save 60% to 70% of our time.

Microsoft 365 Defender provides one XDR dashboard, so we don't have to look at multiple dashboards. In the Import Center, all you need to do is to select the solutions that you want, and it will give you multiple options on different categories and different data. It's amazing and straightforward, and you won't need to open other tabs.

We have been able to prepare for potential threats before they hit and take corrective steps. We can immediately identify users or systems that have viruses or malware. We can also find scripts that have errors underneath them. We can discover each element from the history and delete it. It covers a lot of aspects, and the integration with Sentinel helps as well.

Because there's someone actually monitoring everything, when there is a threat or any form of abnormality, all they would need to do is to create a rule or a query to create a particular section and add the action that needs to be carried out. It's easy to get to reports as well. Overall, the solution has decreased our time to detection and our time to respond by 60% to 70%.

Microsoft tends to provide too many features, which makes the solution prone to bugs.

Also, 365 Defender needs to be more flexible during deployment. When it comes to causal admittance, at times it seems slow.

We have been using this solution for about three years.

The stability is okay. Microsoft has evolved a lot, so they tend to make sure that the solution is up to date and up to par with best practices in the environment. They add new features as well.

It's very scalable.

The level of support you get depends on the knowledge of the engineer who has picked up your ticket. I'd rate technical support at seven out of ten.

Neutral

The initial deployment is straightforward as long as you meet the prerequisites. 
It doesn't really take a lot of time to deploy. All you need to do is to set up the policy, then assign the license to the users. Microsoft handles the maintenance of the solution.

Defender Plan 1 is tenant-wise, and Defender Plan 2 is per-user, which makes it more expensive. To have certain features, you would need to purchase the E5 license. For all of the capabilities that the tool provides, the price, though it can be high, is fair. 

I don't think having a single vendor's security suite is the best because once the threat actors are in through the surface, it's easy for them to penetrate. This is because they'll know all the cracks in that particular product. However, if you have another vendor protecting you as well with a different signature database that is separate, then the attackers have multiple walls that need to be cracked.

An average-sized organization can go for the Business Premium plan. Larger organizations can go with E5, which comes with the full functionalities of Microsoft 365 Defender. Overall, I'd give this solution a seven out of ten.