Microsoft Defender XDR Reviews

I'm using the solution for security.

Previously, we weren't using anything and now we can configure privileged access and rules. We now operate in a more secure environment. 

It's great that it's a cloud solution. You don't need to worry about physical hardware.

You can configure the product very easily. It's simple to implement and easy to run.

The XDR platform provides unified identity and access management.

We only use it to cover Microsoft products; it works really well. 

365 Defender stops lateral movement of advanced attacks, like ransomware or business email compromise. It protects us from spam and ransomware. 

So far, we haven't had any attacks. It also allows us to adapt to evolving threats. 

We use the solution's multi-tenant management capabilities. It's easy to access and helps with investigating and responding to threats across tenants. 

With Microsoft, we get multiple services under one platform.

With Defender, we've been able to reduce costs. We've likely saved around 25% in costs so far. We've also been able to save time - around 10% to 20%.

You can customize the product based on your requirements - and everything is available under one platform.

The solution can improve the rules and privileges it offers. They need to be more transparent with changes. Often, changes come too rapidly.

I've been using the solution for seven months. 

The solution is a stable product. I'd rate it nine out of ten.

It's scalable. I'd rate the ability to scale nine out of ten. You can scale according to your needs. 

Support is very good. 

I also use SentinelOne and Splunk. Microsoft Defender is easy to implement and is user-friendly. Splunk, however, is not user-friendly.

The deployment is easy.

We have 20 to 30 people working on the solution. 

There isn't really any maintenance needed. 

The pricing is reasonable. It's cheaper than other options. 

I'm a Microsoft customer. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

I would recommend the solution to others.

We use Defender XDR to monitor our network. We use it for when we analyze email and check endpoints.  

XDR is our second solution. We have two. We have it in basic mode as an antivirus and as an XDR. We use the DLP in our company as well. We can look at threat intel for vulnerabilities, and we check to see if vulnerabilities are present within our environment. We do that through Defender. It's useful for threat hunting. 

We have it integrated with Sentinel and we manage our incidents from Sentinel. We can do a detailed analysis of what actually happened, and it gives us the ability to log in remotely on devices. For example, if you have a problem with your PC, one of my colleagues can take the file from the PC remotely. As long as you have permissions as an administrator you can do that. Otherwise, you can create an incident and escalate it to the right admin.

The file analysis is helpful. When we have phishing emails Microsoft itself can analyze the file in the sandbox and then give you a detailed report. It's helped us respond better and increased the security of our organization.

I like the attack graph of each incident. It's really handy, and there's a summary. For example, you can see what had happened with a timeline. And if you go to investigate, the evidence will be there, including the users and devices. Co-pilot is integrated there as well. With just one click, you have a summary of what to do and the next steps. For young analysts, it is quite helpful.

You can have security administrators or global administrators. You can set up different permission structures outside of Defender.

The solution's security extends or covers more than just Microsoft technologies. Linux machines can be used, for example. It is possible to install an agent for Linux so you can monitor also Linux machines.

Apart from having everything within the same console, you have alerts.

The attack disruption capabilities positively affect our security operations. We can integrate with third parties. If an email comes in with a file attached, Microsoft's intelligence would be able to tell if it's a phishing scam, and it can automate the deletion.

We do educate and train our users, however, it provides an extra security layer that catches suspect emails. It reduces the risk of users accidentally clicking on phishing emails. 

The solution adapts to evolving threats. It's a next-generation solution. The machine learning and AI are integrated. With the help of machine learning, it can block quite a bit of suspicious activity.

It offers multi-tenant capabilities. We have four different tenants, and for each, we have a different console, so I don't directly deal with multi-tenant capabilities; however, it is possible. 

We do use the solution with a variety of others. We haven't reduced the number of other products we use for security. However, it's quite handy. It blocks a lot of malicious attempts. Nothing really gets by it. The automatic incident response and protection have kept us very safe, even though we do have other backups there on offer as well. 

We've saved a lot of time with the automated detection. It reduces the time we need to respond and react. We've saved maybe 30% to 40% of the typical amount of time it would take, thanks to automation. For example, if there is, a phishing email goes to the XDR if we had to do an analysis and a report, that alone might take 20 minutes to an hour. Then, we have to remediate, delete and block. With automation, we can save those 20 minutes to an hour. The process is automatic, so we don't have to manually do it. Also, if you have a bunch of suspicious domains or IPs, it will take time to manually go through everything, one by one. However, we can automate the blocking process and save ourselves a lot of time. 

The AI could be improved. As an analyst, I want to be able to interact more with AI. The AI simply sends summaries. I can't ask it, for example, if it has seen any suspicious activity with device two. I have to go and check device two for myself.

I've used the solution for 15 months so far.

The solution is quite stable. I'd rate stability eight out of ten.

We have 15 to 16 people using the solution in my organization. Then we have users on various Microsoft accounts. There may be 50 or more users in total. We have the solution spread across multiple locations. 

It's a scalable product.

I've had colleagues mention that they were very pleased with Microsoft's support. Once you open a ticket, the response you get is usually within an hour or two. 

Positive

I do use different solutions. Microsoft is very good compared to other market leaders. It's a leader itself. I've used CrowdStrike, for example, and I'm familiar with Zscaler. 

My understanding is it is quite easy to deploy the solution. Between deploying the agent and the initial installation, it may take one to two hours. Then, of course, you have to customize the product. However, as a SaaS product, it's very easy to deploy. I'm not sure if any ongoing maintenance is needed after deployment. 

I don't have visibility into the pricing. However, Defender is included in the price of a larger bundle. As a Microsoft customer, it's my understanding that users can access discounts. 

I'm a Microsoft customer. 

I'd advise new users to try a proof of concept. Before the solution is implemented, figuring out the grouping will be very important. You'll want to implement policies based on groups, so they need to make sense. For example, it would be easy to create a structure based on departments.

I'd recommend the solution to others. Microsoft is quite handy. You can get a full overview of your vulnerabilities, which makes investigations easy.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use Microsoft Defender XDR to secure all data transfers between the company network, databases, and user devices. It also protects against malware, ransomware, and other security threats.

Microsoft Defender XDR provides unified identity and access management.

Microsoft Defender XDR can extend beyond to cover more than just Microsoft technology.

The most beneficial aspect of Microsoft Defender XDR is the integration with Office 365.

We can realize the benefits of Microsoft Defender XDR anywhere from two weeks to three months, depending on the organization.

Microsoft Defender XDR stops the lateral movement of advanced attacks.

When a user exhibits suspicious activity, Defender XDR and Microsoft Sentinel work together to provide real-time protection and automation for prevention. This includes threats like insecure connections, lateral movement by malware, and unauthorized email sending. While Microsoft Defender XDR is a powerful solution on its own, combining it with Microsoft Sentinel and automation creates an even more robust defense.

Microsoft Defender XDR helps to discontinue other third-party solutions in our environment.

The cost savings potential of Microsoft Defender XDR depends on the size of an organization and the specific licensing chosen.

Microsoft Defender XDR streamlines security team workflows by offering a unified console for investigation, blocking, and mitigation.

The integration between all the Defender products is the most valuable feature.

The management and automation of the cloud apps have room for improvement.

I have been using Microsoft Defender XDR for 3 years.

Microsoft Defender XDR is stable.

The scalability of Microsoft Defender XDR depends on your organization's network for on-premises deployments, but it offers excellent scalability for cloud deployments.

Scaling Microsoft Defender XDR on-premises can lead to network and access control list problems, as well as VPN restrictions.

Microsoft Defender XDR boasts a straightforward setup process. This ease of use stems from its integration with existing Microsoft products. Once we have the appropriate license, we can be up and running quickly. Extensive documentation is available, and Defender XDR enjoys broad industry compatibility. Many other security solutions readily integrate with Defender XDR, opening their products to its robust security features.

The deployment time depends on each environment and can take anywhere from a couple of days to one month.

The number of people required for deployment also depends on the environment and varies between two to eight people.

The price we see for Microsoft Defender XDR is typically the discounted rate we offer to our customers. However, when we bundle Defender XDR with other Microsoft products, the overall bundle price may differ. Despite any initial price considerations, Defender XDR offers excellent value. It's important to compare similar products to make a fair assessment. For organizations already using Microsoft products, which applies to roughly 90 percent of our customers, Defender XDR is easy to set up. Unlike some third-party security solutions, Defender XDR integrates seamlessly with our existing Microsoft environment, eliminating the need for complex identity management configurations and development efforts.

While the standalone price of Defender XDR might seem high, its value becomes clear when considering the ease of implementation and smooth integration with our existing Microsoft infrastructure, especially when bundled with other Microsoft products.

I would rate Microsoft Defender XDR nine out of ten.

Between one and two people are required for maintenance which is conducted twice a month to roadmap Microsoft and check new features.

I recommend thoroughly reading the documentation. Additionally, if there are opportunities to attend Microsoft events, such as a partner workshop focused on Defender, these would be valuable resources. By participating in these activities, you can gain a deeper understanding of what needs to be done within your environment to successfully implement Microsoft Defender XDR.

I'm managing the SIEM, but the SIEM is heavily integrated with 365 Defender and all the other components. Defender is a natural extension of Sentinel, and our entire SOC team leverages the solution. We utilize it daily for everything related to incident response from an advanced threat-hunting perspective.

We do some KQL-based threat hunting and have set up some custom detections built into the platform, so we can raise an alert about a threat when we see it. Right now, we're onboarding our server environment to push Defender for server agents to see what that looks like. 

Defender is used widely by our SOC for everyday investigations. Our attack surface reduction teams use it for vulnerability information. Other teams at the company use the telemetry data, but it's primarily our SOC using it for incident response. 

Defender XDR has simplified our security operations because we don't need to shift around various portals. If I respond to an initial access event involving phishing emails, I can go to the endpoint and the user's identity in one console instead of having four or five different tabs open for multiple products. 

Since adopting Defender XDR, we haven't consolidated anything because the corporate leadership purchased the E5 license with all of Microsoft's other security solutions. All of those are still in play, but some of Defender's features are creeping into other spaces where it could potentially replace some of their products. 

It allows things like indicator blocking. You can block file caches now. You can block URLs, domains, etc. We might have handled that somewhere else with DNS and stuff like that. We might be blocking domains or adding different intelligence to handle that from the endpoint perspective so the threats are stopped before they get to the network. There are certain functions that Defender might not necessarily take over, but it can augment the entire approach to that security design. It could replace those solutions, but I'm not one to have all my eggs in one basket. However, that's not my decision to make.

Having everything in a single pane of glass saves some time, but it's hard to quantify. It reduces the time needed to respond. It correlates the data in a certain way that probably decreases time spent on manual data aggregation by about 30 minutes per incident. We can aggregate the logs from third-party solutions in Sentinel, run KQL queries there, and look at them together to make some assumptions. That's a significant time saving, but I don't think we're tracking that. 

The way it gathers data is fundamentally different. It's all right here, and I don't need to do separate queries. I can look through the timeline and export the data to a CSV if I want to sift through the data. It likely reduces the time it takes to respond dramatically. One problem we have internally is that we can't deploy Defender for Endpoint on everything. I can't deploy it on a many legacy OS due to the compatibility. It's challenging to address those things when you get so used to having all of this telemetry. When working through that, the advantages of using the platform become clear. It incentivizes us to stop using some of those assets because we can't see anything on them the same way that it gets represented in the M365D. We don't have direct telemetry ingestion into the cloud portal where we can collect logs from all those assets.

The most valuable feature is probably the aggregation and correlation of the different telemetry points with Defender for Identity, Defender for Endpoint, and Defender for Cloud Apps. All of these various things are part of that portal. We've wanted that single pane of glass for years. 

We've become early adopters of almost all of the features that they offer through the portal, so we've become good at working through the leading-edge quality of the new features and deciding whether or not we want to implement something in production based on that. We have a close relationship with Microsoft's team, and they present us with opportunities to enable new features, but all of the training is done internally. We have a close-knit team structured between our level two, level three and engineering team. And so we'll come together and say, "Here's this new thing we can do with Defender for Identity. We can reset users' passwords on-prem through the portal." We'll discuss these things and whether to implement them, but it's just our team.  

Defender provides unified identity and access management. There's probably some more granularity that could happen within the existing access control model. You can apply default labels for security admin and this or that. It depends on how you design it. A lot of our security admins can do at-will actions. We want them to be able to do anything else requiring an elevated set of privileges that allow you to design roles or stuff related to assets or identities. 

You have an audit trail for who's doing what, which is great. I think they could make the roles more granular. That would be ideal. Integrated identity and access management capabilities are core to the solution because you don't want people to have too much access. You want to control it to a point. We need people to be able to do what they need to, but I don't want everyone to have domain privileges because they can log into a domain controller through the portal. 

These are the kinds of things the portal lets you do, like the interactive sessions with Defender for Endpoint. However, I would like to see a just-in-time access approach that allows me to do something, and once I'm done with the action, it shuts off that capability.

Defender feels restricted to Microsoft products, but if we augment its capabilities with Sentinel, you can pull all your third-party data sources and everything into the SIEM. That immediately adds a different value to the product. Having some level of normalization on the data helps, but the ability to take data from third-party sources and correlate it with Microsoft sources is beneficial.

The solution stops the lateral movement of advanced threats like ransomware if you set it up correctly and are willing to accept the possibility of false positives on automated isolation, app restriction, etc. It entirely depends on what your team can do with rule tuning and use case detection. 

Our team does customized detections entirely based on what's happening in our environment. We have direct tuning capabilities.  We don't have an automated isolation-based task applied to out-of-the-box rules. That would be scary. We do our best to ensure false positives don't happen. If they do, we can control the outcome and make sure it can tune out the false positives. 

Defender can stop attacks and evolving threats because it can correlate data and make assumptions based on it. If you feed it all of your data, it will do an incredible job. It's dependent on your environment, but I think it does an excellent job of detecting perceived threats. At the same time, you still need a human being to monitor and tune it. 

The advanced threat-hunting capabilities are phenomenal, and the security copilot enhances that, but some data elements could be better or have more context inside of the advanced tables themselves. The schemas feel a little limited to what they're building into the product. It's probably just a maturity thing. I imagine we'll see the features I want in the next year.

Once you've onboarded your servers to Defender, they're housed on Azure. When those things are brought into the 365 Defender portal, I can see clearly that some of those are Azure resources. There is a subscription and the resource group. That data doesn't exist in the tables. We don't want to run automated remediation against our domain controllers, but you can't exclude those using Azure resource tags. You can't tell it to exclude assets from this resource group. 

That data doesn't exist inside the tables you use to build your thresholds or custom protections. I could see where they could improve the data they present to you in the tables. I assume that it will come with time. There's so much happening. Every time I open the portal, there's a new feature. 

We have used Microsoft Defender XDR since earlier this year and prior to this the Microsoft 365 Defender solution. We were early adopters of the platform and changes to the different products being integrated.

I rate Microsoft support seven out of 10. Sometimes, the support teams are great. However, sometimes we know more about the tool in some cases than the people we're talking to. We use it so heavily that our internal team has a better understanding of the toolset than the average SME should. We use it every day, so we live in the portal. I can't comment negatively or positively on the support. It depends. Sometimes, you might get somebody who knows what's going on, but in other cases, we have to figure out the solution on our own. 

The worst thing I can think of is when we need to reclassify a domain that they've called incorrectly. In that situation, you send a request into the abyss. you never get a response, and it's like, okay. Do I have to keep checking back over and over again to see if this has been reclassified? 

Neutral

We've experimented with other providers at this point, like Carbon Black. I think Defender meets the enterprise-grade criteria for our needs, but there are some nuanced differences between the solutions. 

I think it's hard to compare due to the sheer volume of the E5 ecosystem in one location. No other tools have that. If you bundle all the Microsoft solutions, it doesn't make sense to compare them to third-party solutions. Defender stands out in terms of gathering data and the way it presents everything in the incident timeline. The only thing it could do better is the filtering capabilities when you're pulling back the data from the timeline. 

Data is expensive if we want to leverage the telemetry that exists within the 365 ecosystem and bring that into Sentinel. I can't pipe that data in without paying an ingestion cost. I know how much data exists in each one of the tables that are there, and it would cost a significant amount of money to bring that in. 

I rate Microsoft Defender XDR 10 out of 10. I don't know of anybody else that's even remotely close to doing what they're doing. It's reduced my work in terms of identifying things. I might be in a position where I'm engineering, but I'm still technically on the response team. I'm using the tool the same way, and it has gotten better and better every time they add something new.

We use it for endpoint protection, monitoring network traffic, and enabling automation of issues, we utilize Microsoft Defender XDR. If we are specifically referring to Defender for Endpoint, it is a perfect solution to monitor user behavior and activities across all of our web portals. This provides an easy way to analyze and generate reports about user online activities.

Microsoft Defender XDR's security extends beyond Microsoft technologies and that is crucial for us.

Defender 365 stops the lateral movement of advanced attacks. An attack disruption would cause a lack of availability of our systems and corruption of data if there is a breach.

Microsoft Defender's ability to stop attacks includes an ability to adapt to evolving threats which is extremely important.

Microsoft Defender has enabled us to discontinue the use of a few different products. We consolidated our antivirus, web filtering, and EDR, and we had an endpoint monitoring tool that we now use Defender for.

Reducing the number of solutions we use has significantly impacted how our security team operates. This is because everything is now managed under one control and one tenant. This unified approach facilitates a natural integration with the various Microsoft products we rely on for collaboration, data storage, email communication, and other critical resources essential to our company's operations.

The discontinuation of many of our security products has reduced manual correlation.

Microsoft Defender has saved our security teams 20 percent of their time by providing a single console to manage everything. 

It helps prioritize threats across our company. It is a product that I use every day. I go into the portal all the time. It is very crucial to my security strategy.

We use additional Microsoft solutions. Most of them are available with E3 or E5 packages, including governance and DLP tools. We have integrated most of the ones we are using. Doing so was not that easy but not that complicated. It requires a lot of knowledge. They work natively together for coordinated detection and response, which is a critical component of my endpoint strategy for security and control. Without that, I would have a huge gap and I would have to find a different product.

One of the aspects I use it most for is as a basic antivirus installed on endpoints.

One of the biggest downsides of Microsoft products, in general, is that the menus are often difficult to find, as they tend to move from place to place between versions. It's unclear who makes these decisions, but simplicity would be a highly welcome change. A great way to achieve this simplicity would be to have built-in wizards within the products to help users accomplish tasks. This would eliminate the need to guess where to find the necessary options to enable or disable features.

The features I would like to see added to Defender are improved web filtering capabilities and a WAF service. However, I may be mistaken, and Microsoft may already offer a similar solution. I understand that our finance department rejected most of the Defender for Azure services due to their cost, but I lack the information to judge their expense myself. I believe that, as with the Azure environment itself, which was initially considered expensive but became increasingly popular over time, the Defender for Azure solution will also gain traction if its price becomes slightly more competitive.

When it comes to visibility into threats, 365 Defender is slightly complicated, and much more complicated than competitors like CloudStrike. That's just the "Microsoft way" where everything is usually slightly more complicated. The interface is not clear.

Also, it is not clear when the system is offering a recommendation or just a way to validate something. It is not clear what will be automatically done and what you will have to do yourself.

I have been using Microsoft Defender XDR for almost five years.

Microsoft Defender XDR is stable.

Scaling it is not easy and not complex. It's in between. With Microsoft, sometimes it feels like they hide the menus and you need to search for them with a magnifying glass.

The quality of technical support I receive varies depending on the country from which it originates. Sometimes, I feel I possess greater technical knowledge than the support representative and find it more productive to research solutions online, such as through Google. Conversely, I find that teams based in Europe or the United States typically provide more professional and informative responses.

Neutral

Previously, we used ESET, Cisco Umbrella, and JumpCloud for endpoint security, along with Cisco web filtering. I found Defender convenient due to its integration within our existing Office 365 environment. Since Office 365 is built on the Azure platform and integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft services like email, SharePoint, and others, it was more natural to use everything under the Office 365 umbrella rather than navigate to third-party solutions.

Implementing Microsoft solutions has proven more complex than initially anticipated. Due to ongoing changes, the project remains in progress. Migrating from our previous third-party solutions and establishing full functionality required several weeks, potentially extending to three months.

We hired One Pass, an American consulting firm, for our project. However, I am dissatisfied with the work they delivered. One Pass is a large company with too many people communicating with us simultaneously. We had difficulty speaking to the appropriate person because individuals either transferred us to other employees or were unavailable due to vacation.

My advice is to read up on best practices so that you know what the best way to deploy it is. Otherwise, it will be a mess.

It is very effective as long as you don't need real-time information. For me, that's okay. When there is a need for real data, on the spot, which is not available from Defender, it is available CrowdStrike. But for the way I run my business, it is okay.

In terms of a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor’s security suite, I would go with a single suite.

I would rate Microsoft Defender XDR an eight out of ten.

Microsoft Defender XDR is deployed across our organization, encompassing multiple locations, departments, and continents. With approximately 200 international users, we rely on a team of four in-house administrators for security management. Additionally, we utilize the services of external companies for first-line support, who also handle specific tasks within our Microsoft 365 environment.

We use Microsoft 365 Defender to protect our privacy.

Microsoft 365 Defender's XDR platform provides identity and access management which is important for our organization.

Microsoft 365 Defender's security extends beyond Microsoft technologies, which is important to our organization.

The multi-tenant management capabilities are easy and the support is 24/7.

It has helped save us approximately USD 1,000 per month.

Microsoft 365 Defender has helped save our security team time.

The most valuable feature is the network security.

Since all of our databases are updated and located in the cloud, I would like additional support for this.

I have been using Microsoft 365 Defender for almost four years.

Microsoft 365 Defender is stable. The only downtimes are scheduled by Microsoft and we are provided with advanced notification to prepare.

Microsoft 365 Defender is scalable.

Technical support is one of the reasons we chose Microsoft 365 Defender.

Positive

The initial deployment is easy. Microsoft 365 Defender is plug-and-play. The deployment takes a maximum of one day.

We also evaluated Kaspersky and Trellix XDR but found that Microsoft 365 Defender had additional features that met our needs and their support was better.

I would rate Microsoft 365 Defender nine out of ten.

My role is to monitor Microsoft 365 Defender. We investigate various alerts and incidents that occur there. We utilize the solution to block any malicious domains, URLs, or other harmful elements that could affect our environment. Microsoft 365 Defender is our tool of choice for this purpose, and it helps improve our secure score. We assess the available remediation options to determine if they are suitable for our enrollment. Additionally, we use it for email analysis and make use of all the features provided by Microsoft 365 Defender.

Microsoft 365 Defender offers excellent visibility into our environment. We have a dedicated team that focuses solely on handling threats. As for me, I mainly deal with the architectural aspects of the overall environment. However, we rely on Microsoft 365 Defender for threat detection, and in the future, we plan to implement Sentinel as well. The reason for choosing Sentinel is that its integration is much more compatible, as Microsoft does not send various logs for other third-party tools like QRadar or any other tool. Therefore, we have decided to move forward with Sentinel.

Microsoft 365 Defender assists in prioritizing threats across our organization by offering real-time threat analysis. However, it does not provide upcoming threat alerts, such as identifying vulnerable technologies for our environment. To secure them, we can access the security score and follow the recommended actions. The platform displays current metrics and trends.

We are currently in the process of integrating Microsoft Defender for cloud apps and Microsoft 365 Defender, with 80 percent completion. Both solutions work together to deliver coordinated detection and response across the environment. We have one unified dashboard to monitor and control both solutions from a single place.

To create a fully comprehensive threat protection environment, we will integrate Sentinel with Microsoft 365 Defender and Microsoft Defender for cloud apps. This integration will allow us to receive additional data related to threats that are currently not shared by Microsoft.

Microsoft 365 Defender is an excellent tool. It is compatible with Teams and Outlook, making it ideal for threat detection and mail security in a Windows environment, which is commonly used by many corporate entities.

Microsoft 365 Defender is helpful in automating routine tasks and identifying high-value alerts. The Microsoft dashboard facilitates the remediation of alerts by grouping alerts of the same kind, which is beneficial.

Microsoft 365 Defender helps reduce the number of dashboards we need to look at, but it does not completely eliminate them.

Microsoft 365 Defender has saved us time by consolidating many of our solutions into a single tool.

Microsoft 365 Defender helps reduce our MTTD, but Sentinel would help decrease our MTTD even further.

The 'Incidents and Alerts' tab is a valuable feature where we can find triggered alerts.

Microsoft Cloud App Security has now transitioned its alerts to 365 Defender. As a result, all alerts that were triggered in Microsoft Cloud App Security are now visible in Microsoft 365 Defender.

It is beneficial that we can search for any of the devices. If we choose any of the devices, it will display the alert, incident, and the entire timeline related to that particular device. These are the features covered, including the ability to run antivirus directly on the device, isolate the device, and apply restrictions. These are the positive aspects of the solution. The same applies to 'Identity' as well. 

We can also investigate that router using email. The image represents the user's complete inbox. We can find out who the main users are, what the titles of the emails are, and how much malware we have received, including the number of phishing emails. We can see all this information in that explorer. Additionally, that thing is also beneficial.

There is a section titled 'Action and Submission.' When we submit any kind of share value for evaluation to Microsoft, they take a significant amount of time for the process.

When discussing the secure score, which includes overviews and recommended actions, some of these recommended actions are not applicable to us, particularly those related to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which we do not use in any of our environments. Nevertheless, there are instances where options to disable macros and various configurations appear, even though they shouldn't be present.

I have been using Microsoft 365 Defender for two years.

Microsoft 365 Defender is stable.

Microsoft 365 Defender is scalable. The solution can handle numerous endpoints, and as our user base grows, the number of endpoints automatically increases.

Many times, the engineers assigned to our tickets are not very knowledgeable about the solutions and features.

Neutral

I would rate Microsoft 365 Defender an eight out of ten. There are many rapid and independent changes happening each month or every other month, making it difficult to keep track of them.

I prefer adopting a best-of-breed strategy instead of relying on a single-vendor security suite. I have observed this approach being implemented in numerous organizations.

Microsoft 365 Defender surpasses most platforms available in the market in terms of advancement and offers extensive integration with other Microsoft solutions. I highly recommend this solution.

We mainly use it to defend endpoints.

We have seen fewer threats with the solution. The attacks that we experienced in prior years have reduced drastically since we implemented Defender.

We also use Microsoft Defender for Identity. Their integration is very good. If you are a Microsoft 365 SaaS solution user, it is perfect. It works very well with all the services provided by Microsoft. These services work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. We are pretty much a Microsoft shop, so the integration of these different services is very important for us to secure our offices.

Microsoft 365 Defender's threat protection is very comprehensive. The service that is available now is much more comprehensive than what was available a few years back. The only area that I see lacking is the dashboard. I can create my own dashboard, but the preset security dashboards should be much more functional.

Its threat intelligence helps prepare us for potential threats and take proactive steps before the threats hit. The vulnerability scanning feature is great, and the Secure Score feature that scans the endpoints for vulnerabilities and keeps them up to date reduces a lot of the attacks that can possibly happen.

Microsoft 365 Defender has saved us time. It has saved at least 30% to 40% of our time.

Microsoft 365 Defender has saved us costs. Previously, we had to pay for third-party protection services separately, but because it is now integrated with our E5 licenses, it saves us a lot of money.

Microsoft 365 Defender has decreased our time to detect and respond. We now have visibility and this led to about a 20% to 30% reduction. 

The EDR and the way it automatically responds to ransomware and other attacks are valuable features.

The visibility into threats is not as good as other products in the market such as CrowdStrike, but if you know where to look, you can gain access to what is going on. The way the dashboard is designed is not as great as other products.

It helps to prioritize threats across the enterprise, but a lot of administrative overload is involved in determining which threats to prioritize. As compared to other products, it is a bit lacking.

Similarly, it helps to automate routine tasks and finds high-value alerts, but a little bit more automation would be appreciated.

Automated playbooks and automated dashboards would be preferable to the way the data is currently being presented. That is because a lot of organizations that I have worked with over the past years do not have full-on SOC or threat detection services. They should put in more automated response capabilities and dashboards for smaller organizations.

I have been using this solution for almost three years.

It is a very stable product. Our attack metrics have come down drastically since we integrated with Defender. In my opinion, it is a very stable product.

It is very scalable. I do not know about third-party clouds or third-party solutions, but when you are a Microsoft shop or have Azure or a hybrid setup, it is very scalable.

We have multiple departments and multiple locations. We have client-facing computers, and we have in-house and on-prem computers. We also have Azure VMs. 

Their support can be better. Their response time is good, but their knowledge and documentation are a bit lacking. Technology is moving faster than the documentation and the knowledge that is being provided to the support team. Their support team pretty much looks at the same documentation that we are looking at, but the technology is moving a lot faster than they can catch up. I would rate their support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

We used CrowdStrike and Trend Micro. We switched to Microsoft 365 Defender because we wanted to integrate services.

The solution is deployed on the cloud, but the endpoints are connected on-prem. In our organization, we have quite a few endpoints, so it took about three or four weeks.

The setup will be straightforward for big organizations if they have a complete IT department, but for a small organization, implementing the same service becomes trickier because they do not have full-fledged IT departments. That is where the problem lies. 

More automation would be better. However, automation is present with Autopilot and other services where you can integrate everything.

In terms of maintenance, you have to fine-tune the services on a regular basis and tweak the deployment as per your requirements.

We have about eight admins who worked on the implementation of the solution.

We have probably seen 30% to 40% ROI.

It is fairly priced because we get complete integrated services with the E5 license.

To a security colleague who says it is better to go with a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor’s security suite, I would say that a single-vendor strategy worked for us because it brought down our investment in terms of licensing and cost. The deployment across the organization has been a lot easier than integrating third-party solutions in different areas of the organization. For example, Defender integrates very well with both the endpoints and the cloud. Whereas with a third-party solution, we have to get different applications that need to connect back to the service to get the solutions that we require. Native integration is very useful for us when it comes to Microsoft. That is what I would recommend.

If you are a Microsoft shop, I would highly recommend it, but you have to do a PoC.

I would rate Microsoft 365 Defender a nine out of ten.