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. 

Positive

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 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. 

My company operates as a service provider, so we use Microsoft Defender XDR in our office to provide our customers with security services.

I won't say that the product helped improve how my organization operates, but there is a need to build trust between the user and the product. Microsoft Defender XDR has been used in my organization since we purchased Windows 10 or 11, after which a user does not need to install any products from Microsoft separately. Some of my company's customers insist they want to install antivirus software separately in their environment due to trust issues.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that Microsoft Defender XDR is easy to integrate with other Microsoft platforms or products. Some other vendors of security products provide great features or capabilities of detection, but the best feature of Microsoft is its integration capability.

One important point about the solution that is an area of concern where improvements are required is related to the control center it provides. Generally, antivirus products provide a central control to manage every device in terms of who is installing it or who is trying to disable it, but Microsoft doesn't have such a control center for the antivirus product it provides.

I have been using Microsoft Defender XDR for three years. My company has a partnership with Microsoft. My company is also a reseller of Microsoft products.

As a part of Microsoft's attempt to reduce costs, there has been a direct cut down of the local technical support team. Sometimes, you have to use the technical support offered by Microsoft from other countries, but at times, we speak different languages, just like how people speak in Chinese or Mandarin, but there are still some differences between them. The front-line support from Microsoft has only limited technical abilities or access to their internal system. Sometimes, my company cannot even escalate an issue to Microsoft's senior team members.

The support team of Microsoft is nice as they attempt to solve the problems together with you, but I believe that due to some cost-related issues, they don't have enough permissions. Sometimes, users might feel blocked when trying to connect with the support team.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

My company started with Microsoft Defender XDR when we partnered with Microsoft. Some of our company's customers prefer CrowdStrike, Fortinet, and FortiSIEM.

You don't need to indulge in troubleshooting, making the initial setup phase an easy process because you could just use a GPO on your server to deploy everything. When there comes a problem to onboard some specific devices, and you need to indulge in troubleshooting, sometimes Microsoft Defender XDR's team says it is a problem with the devices a user is trying to onboard, and it's really hard for our company as service providers since we cannot always ask customers to reinstall their server.

Microsoft purposely makes its license combinations complex and includes combinations like Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E5, Office 365 E3, Office 365 E5, and Office 365 E1, so you get confused. Microsoft tries to sell you a bundle of a lot of things together. The licensing model of the product should be made more understandable.

There are other good products in the market, and it is difficult to state which one is better since all of them have micro differences in terms of pricing. There may be components like the user interface or maybe some other elements to judge other products, but when it comes to Microsoft, the most important factor stems from the fact that most people use Windows, so it's all integrated.

The product provides unified identity and access management as long as I use all of the products offered by Microsoft.

It is important for me that identity and access management are included within Microsoft Defender XDR because everything is controlled by your identity in the digital world, making it look like a user's government ID in the digital world. My company has tried a lot to talk to and educate our customers since some try not to use a complex password or MFA, which is the most important thing to protect your identity.

Some integration functions in Azure portal allow users to integrate their third-party applications. With the solution, it is not easy to track third-party applications. For transactions recognized by your credentials, it is not easy to track as they would stop, after which we are informed there is a problem. In my organization, we only know how some third-party applications ask to check the credentials, but we don't know what Microsoft Defender XDR does with it, so the product's security doesn't extend beyond just Microsoft technologies.

The product does stop lateral movement and advanced attacks like ransomware or business email compromise. The product blocks a lot of ransomware, which is good. It is considered to be a strict product, so if some of our customers use some local mail service, they have been blocked because Microsoft considers it to be not secure. Microsoft puts a lot of effort into security.

Microsoft Defender XDR's ability to stop attacks covers the product's ability to adapt to evolving threats. It is better to use it as a cloud-based solution that keeps adapting to changes and providing new features.

The product must adapt and evolve to manage threats since there is a new zero-day vulnerability every day, and there is no way to get protection from it. You cannot rely on the users or the admin to upgrade the features daily, so it's better to adopt it automatically with a cloud-based solution like Microsoft Defender XDR.

There were some problems when my organization tried to discontinue other products during the implementation phase of Microsoft Defender XDR since Microsoft tried to integrate all the products in our organization's environment together. If you have used Microsoft Defender XDR, you have to use an antivirus from Microsoft along with Microsoft Identity Platform Endpoint to get the best results. Sometimes, some customers may try to install some third-party antivirus in their environment other than the one provided by Microsoft, which gets blocked. Sometimes, antivirus software from a vendor goes into passive mode. When an antivirus software is in passive mode, some of its advanced features are not usable, causing some problems the user needs to deal with when using it.

The product's ability to save costs depends on how a user looks at a problem while using the solution. I worked as a part of the security team, and we always used to talk to our company's customers. The solution is sometimes like insurance, especially if you want to avoid some bigger problems and you need to spend some money to protect your environment. In some other IT teams or from some other client's point of view, Microsoft Defender XDR costs a lot of money, and they don't see anything. In the security world, no news is good news. You don't want to have to see everything happen and get plenty of alerts trying to prove the product's worth. The product has to control the attack surface so that you won't be attacked that much, or if there are any attacks, it can reduce the impact.

The product definitely saves time for my organization and our company's client teams, especially considering that it is not possible to manually go through the logs every day. The product did help pop up the abnormal activities so that my organization could just review the important things or abnormal activities.

It is hard to say how much time the product saves since it depends on factors like whether you are using some other products or using Microsoft Defender XDR alone. I guess that the product can save over 60 percent of my organization's time. When you use Microsoft Defender XDR in your IT infrastructure, and it works for you, then you just put it in there, and you will come to know when there are some abnormal activities or when you are attacked. With Microsoft Defender XDR, you can get some signs if you are being attacked.

Microsoft Defender XDR is a nice solution and can be combined with other solutions from Microsoft, but they offer limited flexibility. I want the product to be a high surveillance solution for me and not just an information-oriented tool, but nowadays, Microsoft doesn't provide any options to help choose the users' preferences.

I rate the overall product a seven out of ten.

It addresses various use cases, including monitoring and securing file storage like OneDrive and SharePoint. It has recently incorporated Teams integration to safeguard against malware. Additionally, it serves as a replacement for on-premises Advanced Threat Protection, offering enhanced capabilities. It has proven valuable in highlighting critical scenarios related to credential use and legacy Active Directory, providing substantial assistance in these areas.

When transitioning to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint from our previous use of ATP, we observed significant improvements. Legacy ATP involved numerous signals and a substantial learning curve, but Microsoft Defender for Endpoint establishes a more effective baseline. In comparison to Cylance, which generated a considerable amount of background noise, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint enables us to concentrate on the more critical alerts that demand our attention. Our team is actively phasing out disparate security tools in favor of a streamlined approach. The efficiency gained from having a single pane of glass is a powerful asset for our team.

One of the most valuable aspects is the comprehensive insights it provides into on-premises identities, particularly within Legacy Active Directory. This allows for the examination of use cases related to identities, ensuring there is no misuse of accounts or computers. A crucial aspect for our team is the inclusion of identity and access management tools from the vendor. Despite being a sizable global company, our team is relatively small, considering our global reach. Therefore, minimizing overhead is a top priority for us, and integrating these tools from the vendor becomes crucial in achieving that goal.

My suggestion would be for Microsoft to continue aligning all components within this ecosystem. This consolidation is beneficial as we strive for a more unified and comprehensive view, essentially a single pane of glass, which is highly valued. In the future, I hope for increased third-party integration. While Microsoft plays a role, it's equally important for third-party providers to step up. In our organization, the information security team has endorsed a specific set of products. Integrating the telemetry from these approved products into our systems would be immensely beneficial, providing a more comprehensive view and enhancing our overall security posture. Extending security coverage is of paramount importance. Integrating telemetry could bridge these gaps, fostering greater cooperation among individual teams within the organization. Having teams collectively examine the same information might contribute to advancing collaboration and overall security efforts. The capability to not only thwart attacks but also to adapt to evolving threats is crucial.

I have been using it for the last three years.

It is exceptionally stable, without encountering any notable issues or complaints. Microsoft seems proactive in communication through the message center, keeping users informed about any ongoing issues, and we appreciate the clarity provided through multiple channels.

It has the capability to scale seamlessly, especially with Microsoft's expertise in the cloud. We have over six thousand end users globally distributed across various facilities, with some on-premises deployments due to specific requirements. However, our overarching strategy is cloud-first, and the majority of our infrastructure operates in Azure. In terms of endpoints, the number is substantial, likely exceeding seven thousand when considering both servers and clients.

We haven't had the need to contact them so far. In general, our experience with Microsoft support has been variable—it can be both beneficial and challenging. While they offer a wealth of resources, there are instances where the response may not align with our expectations. I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

I made the switch from Bitdefender to Defender primarily due to cost considerations. In my professional assessment, Bitdefender appears adequate from a client perspective, but when it comes to enterprise deployment, I don't view it as fully enterprise-ready. We encountered numerous challenges, particularly with installing Bitdefender's agent on Server 2022, which proved to be a significant hurdle for my team, consuming valuable time and resources. The advantage of Defender lies in its ability to seamlessly bring together threat telemetry from servers across various cloud providers, including Azure, and extend this protection to our Windows endpoints, offering a robust and integrated security solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Our implementation strategy was relatively gradual and soft. We enabled the features, allowed it to ingest the data, and then began assessing the generated alerts. Taking a somewhat silent approach, we deferred more to the expertise of our information security team, considering their role as the cornerstone in this aspect. As we moved forward, we aimed to identify areas for improvement and address the specific queries and needs that our team raised during the process. Our ongoing maintenance primarily involves fine-tuning our alerts to align with our specific use cases.

In terms of return on investment, the potential for cost reduction is a key consideration and Defender does provide it. The time saved is substantial, especially if we can navigate through our internal processes efficiently. Specifically for my infrastructure team, using Defender for Endpoint has significantly reduced the time spent delving into emerging issues. As a rough estimate, I would say it saves us approximately six hours a week that would otherwise be spent navigating through the complexities of individual components within Microsoft 365.

I find the pricing to be quite competitive, especially considering its inclusion in our E5 subscription, which provides a comprehensive set of functionalities. Initially, when I evaluated the pricing for add-ons with our E3 subscription, it seemed reasonable. However, we opted for the E5 subscription, absorbing the additional features seamlessly.

I'd recommend exploring Microsoft's Learn documentation, a resource that is sometimes overlooked but provides valuable insights into the capabilities of Defender. It's a good starting point to understand its features. For large enterprises with tools like Visual Studio subscriptions (formerly MSDN), Microsoft offers the option to set up an E5 tenant for testing. This can be deployed freely for up to twenty-five licenses, excluding the Windows license. I suggest diving into hands-on experimentation in a lab environment, combining practical experience with informational reading for a comprehensive understanding. Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

We use 365 Defender to manage organization-level devices and vendor security compliance. We are a retail-focused organization that offers cloud services through Azure, GCP, and AWS, but we manage all the security through 365 Defender. Some of our users are based in other countries, and everything is centralized. We operate in multiple regions. 

We can easily track any other malicious activities or additional applications that will prevent it. We can get it here. It will be a helpful tool once we create policies for DLP and third-party programs. 

365 Defender stops the lateral movement of advanced attacks. It prevents something that happens on the device level from affecting us on the organization level. The solution enables us to track all the details, like the IPs and the device types. 

365 Defender helps us deal with unknown threats by creating custom policies, which enable us to block access by specific unknown sources and unsafe links. 365 Defender has multi-tenant capabilities, and we have multiple tenants, but I'm only involved in the retail part, so I don't have authority over other tenants. 

We were able to discontinue some of our other security products when we implemented 365 Defender, but there are some exceptions. We can use non-Microsoft solutions when the customer requires it. Mostly, we use cloud solutions. We've saved some costs on the security side at the organizational level by reducing equipment costs. Using 365 Defender's automation capabilities, we can cut our vulnerability management time by about 40-50 percent. 

I like 365 Defender's advanced threat hunting. The dashboard is user-friendly with templates for site policies, etc. The most important use case is evaluating the risk links and applications. 

The cost can be high if you want to build custom license packages. Another area for improvement is the policies. In Azure, we need to implement policies in JSON format, but in 365 Defender 365, it would be helpful to use a different format so we can customize the platform.

I have used 365 Defender for more than two years. 

365 Defender can have some performance issues during enrollment. It can take a while at times, but sometimes it's duplicated immediately. That's an issue with some other cloud-based programs like Intune and Azure products. 

I rate Microsoft 365 Defender support nine out of 10. Their support representatives provide solutions based on priorities. They prefer to follow the proper SLA part. 

Positive

The deployment is quick, straightforward, and involves only two people. 

Sometimes 365 Defender is expensive, but it can be moderate, depending on the organization's size and the license type. We're satisfied with the cost because it gives us a product that protects our entire environment with DLP. To compromise some cost, of course, we are to complete the most secure environment. 

I rate 365 Defender nine out of 10. 

We're using it for our email filtering to check incoming emails and URLs. We're also using it for vulnerability management to see the status of our assets that are registered on the system. We also check it to see what kinds of threats and campaigns are currently being launched via emails.

It provides us with better insight into what's going on across our platform. It has also given us a very easy way to respond when threats or alerts come through. And when looking for someone in particular, it helps with that. It hugely improved our insight into what's going on inside the company's premises and environments.

365 Defender also helps find high-value alerts, but we haven't used it for complete automation. It has some automation features where it can try to block or quarantine things, but beyond the default automation configuration, we haven't explored deeper into using automation. The default settings work well.

And while we've always used one or two dashboards, this system has made it easier to have a quick overview on a single platform.

In addition, the threat intelligence helps prepare you for potential threats, to a certain limit, because it gives you insights into where your shortcomings are, your vulnerabilities. It also gives you some security recommendations to make improvements.

And the solution has decreased our time to respond because on high alerts you can get a quick response. The system will notify you very quickly if it detects something at a certain thread level or a custom threat level that you set.

Microsoft 365 Defender has a very great interface to help protect registered devices when it comes to web protection, which is very handy.

We also use the alert systems often. It's a great threat intelligence source for us, providing alerts for things it detects on the network and on the machines. We've used it often when there is a potential incident to see what was done on a computer. That works quite nicely because you can see everything that the user has done, including websites accessed, et cetera. And if something was on the machine, we can see what it was trying to do.

I use the alert system on a daily basis. It gives you a very good analysis of where something was found, which employee or which device. And it often gives you a good history on that. The alerts help me to monitor and check what is going on. That's a very valuable system to have.

We've also tried the attack simulation, which sends out phishing emails internally as a test to see how the users respond. We get feedback and use the training simulation as a result. We've only done that once, and it's something we want to work on a little more.

In addition, we're using the assets on the system as well as the inventory functionality. It checks all the machines to see what software is installed on them.

We've used a lot of the features on the cloud, although not everything to its full potential, but we've used 70 to 80 percent of all the features on the cloud.

In the beginning, it's difficult to navigate the system because it is quite large. Just trying to find your way and understand how the system works can be hard. After spending quite a lot of time searching it's a lot easier, but I wish it were a bit more user-friendly when you're trying to find things.

The information it provides is great, but for a newcomer, it is quite tedious and takes a long time to load. Here in South Africa, when you click, oftentimes you have to wait quite some time before you get to the next page. It's not necessarily internet-related. I think it's just that the service is a bit slow.

Also, while the solution does help to prioritize threats, unfortunately, it doesn't do so for the entire environment. The reason is that it only supports full integration from Windows 10 and up. It provides you certain information from your server environment, but when you start going with legacy services, it is a bit lacking.

Another issue that is sometimes a headache is that they constantly make changes. Things will be merged, they will get different names, or be moved around. Things will be added and other things go somewhere else. They do a lot of development to make the product better, but it's very frustrating having to search for stuff after they've moved it, because you don't always know that they have moved things. They might have little banners, but if you're just working and don't read them, you don't know where things have gone. 

I would also really like to see better integration with the server platforms for managing your server environment. That's something it currently doesn't do. For all the server environments, you either need to make use of group policies or SCCM to manage that independently. It can provide you information on the system, but it doesn't have control over your server line.

Also, I make use of 365 Defender on a business level and on a personal level. On the personal level, there is a lot less functionality. Something that would be very nice is that, for the level you are on, you would only see the product you are subscribed to. For instance, if you log on via the business, you have all your action areas, anything you can do and see, on the left. Because you're using it at a corporate level, you can see and do everything. On the personal level, or in a small business where you're only using some of the features, you still have all the same options, but when you click on them, it tells you that you need to upgrade or subscribe. They should only show you what you have access to, and not all the tabs and then say, "You need to subscribe to get access to this." It just clutters the whole area.

We have been using Microsoft 365 Defender for about two years.

Overall, it has 95 percent stability. We don't have any issues with it. It works well. Microsoft does provide frequent information when there are issues or delays. But the stability is very good.

We're still learning a lot about its capabilities. It's more capable than what we use it for. That is due to a restriction on our resources and availability to get to know the system even better.

We have contacted Microsoft tech support multiple times. They are quick to respond to the original request. Sometimes I have been quite surprised because they have replied within 15 minutes. Some of the questions we had were resolved quickly, on the order of 60 minutes. I had one that took almost two years to get resolved. But in general, they are quick to respond. Their support is very good and quick.

Positive

Before 365 Defender, we made use of Avast as our antivirus, which had its own web console. For malware protection, we used an on-prem Cisco IronPort system that was scanning all our emails. And most of our SIEM logging information was done manually. We had much less insight into what was going on in the company.

Because it was a new solution for us, we had a company that works with Microsoft assist us, to make sure that all the configurations were standard. But since then, we've maintained most of it ourselves. On our side there were no more than five people involved.

It's a very expensive product, but for any threat it has definitely stopped or protected us from, in that sense, it has saved money and time, by preventing things that could have happened. But is it affordable? No, it's expensive.

If you look at everything that the solution entails, and the big cost to companies, especially medium-sized companies, one would like to have a bit of a price decrease due to economic circumstances. The functionality is fantastic, but for medium and small-sized companies it's overpriced. It would be better if it were a little bit cheaper.

We did look at other solutions. In the end, we decided on 365 Defender because it was all integrated. It worked to our advantage because all the products that we needed were already on the machines. All the products that you get from the Defender area are part of the built-in Windows 10 features. It gave us a better way of controlling and managing things. Overall, it made more sense to have one central place to manage and control and be alerted.

My advice is don't be frightened when you start getting into the solution. If you are not used to the environment, it is a mouthful, and it can really scare your socks off. There's just so much to it that you won't really know where to start.

The best thing I can recommend to anybody who is starting is to get somebody who knows the system to give you a walkthrough. Also, look at the tutorials to see what the functionalities are. It will be beneficial for any person to get a good overview of what's going on in 365 Defender, the capabilities and how it looks. But getting in contact with somebody who has some experience already in using it will help you to ask where to find things. "Where do I go from here? Show me how you're set up, so I can at least see some of the functionalities."

My very first impression of 365 Defender was that I was looking for something, but I didn't even know where to start. It was too overwhelming. As I spoke to other people who knew about the system, they gave me an overview and that made it easier for me to understand and to know where to go.

365 Defender is our main deployment, but we've got the endpoints also connected on Intune. They work together to deliver coordinated detection and response in our environment. Our complete suite is pretty much all Microsoft. Our environment is a 50/50 hybrid. We use Intune for certain policy changes and some of the deployments. But because our environment has a lot of legacy systems, we make use of the normal, on-prem deployment services as well.

Sentinel is linked to our on-premises Active Directory. It helps identify things that are happening on-prem. For example, when a user's account instance gets locked out, it will show you, on Defender, from which local machine it was locked out. Or if certain things are accessed, it will show that information on the on-prem Active Directory. It works well. For investigating and responding to threats, it definitely helps by dumping the information in a centralized location with the alerts to identify a bit more flow pattern. If something happens that's not on the cloud area, but it's on-prem, it helps track and identify movement. The information from Sentinel is an added bonus.

Overall, Defender 365 has saved us time, compared to the old ways of doing things, but at the same time, I wish the site was faster. Sometimes it can be very slow.

Best-of-breed solutions versus a single vendor's suite comes down to personal experience. With best-of-breed, at least you know that they have been tested in the industry and have a lot of history behind them. Also, the redundancy would be a lot better. Going with a single vendor sometimes makes it a little bit difficult, especially if they are only focusing on one area. It's a difficult question. It might come down to the way someone was "brought up" in the security industry or the way that they trust these companies.

I give Microsoft 365 Defender a nine out of 10. Once you get to know the system, it's really awesome. It provides a lot of insights.

I'm a Security and Compliance consultant providing 365 Defender as a security solution for my clients.

All our solutions are Microsoft 365 products, including security, identity, etc., so we have better protection from advanced cyber attacks. It's also easier to ensure compliance with data regulations through the Microsoft Purview portal, which has templates for various regulations on medical privacy and personal data.

365 Defender helps us automate routine tasks and prioritize high-value alerts. Automation allows us to use time more efficiently. It makes functions easier by consolidating data from multiple Microsoft portals into a single dashboard. You can customize the playbook however you like and get a centralized view of the various components.  

The Threat Explorer feature helps us understand emerging threats in real-time and take steps to safeguard our environment. 365 Defenders saves us money because it's a bundle. If you purchased each of these solutions as a standalone product, it would cost you more than $60 per user per month, but you get them for $12 a month in a package. 

365 improved our detection and response times because we catch issues earlier in the chain of events. All the components of 365 Defender work together to provide instant detection. 

The most valuable feature depends on the scenario. For compliance, I like Microsoft Purview Information Protection and Data Loss Prevention. Sentinel is the most helpful feature for security. 365 Defender helps us prioritize threats across an enterprise. It's a crucial feature for the managed services team. 

I also have Defender for Cloud Apps and Defender for Office. Integrating other Microsoft solutions with 365 Defender is seamless. Microsoft has better documentation than some other solutions. I also work on AWS, but I feel more comfortable with Azure. There are some limitations with a standalone license, but integrating Microsoft products is a seamless experience that produces insightful analytics.

Sentinel enables us to ingest data from our ecosystem, giving us a complete picture of the entities associated with an incident. Those analytics are pretty helpful. We develop playbooks customized for any executive or developer-based summary. It depends on what we want to show and our creativity. 

365 Defender has multiple subsets, including Defender for Cloud Apps. When integrating Defender for Cloud Apps with apps on third-party cloud platforms like AWS or GCP, there are limitations on our ability to control user activities. If Microsoft added more control over third-party products, that would be a game-changer and help us quite a lot.

I have used 365 Defender for five years.

365 Defender is stable.

365 Defender is scalable. It's easy to create and manage groups, set policies, and add users. 

I rate 365 Defender support a seven out of ten. When I raise a ticket, I'm usually redirected to a third-party vendor like Convergence. I would prefer it if Microsoft India handled our tickets instead. That would be helpful. The third-party vendor sometimes doesn't have comprehensive knowledge of the product. 

Neutral

The deployment varies from client to client. Our implementation strategy is based on the client's business requirements and the RFP. You need at least two people to deploy 365 Defender, but you might need more support staff for larger jobs. 

It all depends on how a client wants to proceed, but we typically perform an audit before consulting to identify missing components or security controls. For example, if the client requires HIPAA compliance, we must control the data about specific patients. After following up on everything, we recommend the appropriate Microsoft product, and each has a separate timeline. 

I'm on the consulting side, so once we are done with the implementation, a managed services team takes over the maintenance on an SLA of one to three years. 

The price of 365 Defender is reasonable. 

I rate Microsoft 365 Defender a ten out of ten. Microsoft is a one-stop solution, and it has an answer for any problem you're facing. Before implementing 365 Defender, you should be clear about the problem you want to solve. Hiring a consultant can help, but typically, my clients know maybe three out of the five things they should know. 

We are yet to use Microsoft Defender XDR for ourselves as we are yet to procure the product.

Vulnerability assessment and just-in-time access are some valuable features of Defender for server plans. Additionally, the threat detection at the OS level is a very good feature of Defender.

Microsoft could improve on threat hunting and build more on threat detection and handling. The cybersecurity and cloud security posture features are a bit lesser than standard security products.

We have not yet used Microsoft Defender XDR as we are yet to procure the product.

I was working with CrowdStrike before Microsoft Defender XDR. CrowdStrike has advantages in terms of threat hunting.

We are doing it for the first time, so I have nothing to compare in terms of ROI.

The pricing is a little high, however, it is on par with other competitive tools in the market.

I have not evaluated other XDR solutions besides CrowdStrike.

I would recommend Microsoft Defender XDR to others as long as they are aligned with Microsoft products, cloud, or on-prem, especially if they are using Microsoft Windows architecture. I would rate Microsoft Defender XDR six out of ten overall.