Microsoft Defender XDR Reviews

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. 

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.

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 a managed security service provider, and we use Microsoft 365 Defender to provide EDR and endpoint, and email protection to our customers.

Microsoft 365 Defender has great threat analytics integration. It has visibility into threat incidents that occur across different organizations, and this is directly integrated into the tool. Rather than checking for indicators that are available online, we can directly look at which endpoint or user has been impacted in the organization, and this makes our job easier.

Another valuable feature is vulnerability management. The inbuilt vulnerability management service automatically scans devices for vulnerabilities and separates them as critical and non-critical. We don't need to have a separate vulnerability assessment device.

In terms of prioritizing threats, we have come across vulnerabilities and threats that are present in our customers' environments and have been able to discover the devices that are vulnerable to particular attacks. We have then been able to immediately inform our customers and help them update to the latest version of the particular software that was vulnerable. There are automatic response actions in the tool so that a threat can be remediated within the tool itself.

I also like the lab devices that are available within the tool itself with which we can do all the tests. We can simulate some threat activities in these lab devices that are provided by Microsoft and don't need to prepare a separate device to validate it or to simulate a threat tag duty.

The threat intel integration provides great visibility into threats. Microsoft has a huge team that handles threat intel research, and their findings are integrated with their tools like Defender or Sentinel. The features within the tool itself work very well. There's an automatic threat handling module available in the tool, and there are lots of threat handling queries specific to different attack campaigns. We can run those queries to know if any IOCs related to those are present in the devices. Also, there are several inbuilt analytics rules available.

We have integrated Microsoft Sentinel and Office 365, and Defender and Sentinel as well. Some, like Office 365, are natively integrated, and there are connectors available for those that are not. It is easy to integrate the solutions. For example, to integrate Defender and Sentinel we just deployed a connector. There was a short latency period, but other than that, it was seamless.

The automatic investigation and remediation (AIR) feature helps to automatically investigate and terminate many of the malicious files. Without this feature, we would have the difficult task of going to each and every endpoint to delete a particular file or prevent execution.

Microsoft 365 Defender has eliminated the need to look at multiple dashboards and has given us one XDR dashboard. We have a wider range of visibility from a single pane of glass, which also makes it easier to manage.

Regarding saving time, the key has been the fact that everything can be managed from a single pane of glass where we have visibility into all of the endpoints and users. Previously, we had to look into each device belonging to the customer before deploying a solution. Automatic remediation and vulnerability management features have saved us a lot of time. The time-savings have resulted in saving us money as well.

Offboarding latency should be reduced. Even after a device has been successfully offboarded using a particular offboarding script, it still shows up as onboarded.

Licensing is also confusing, particularly with regard to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

A good feature to add would be automatic patch deployment. Currently, the vulnerability management feature shows all of the vulnerabilities present in different devices that have been onboarded. It shows what manual actions can be taken or what patches can be deployed, but automatic patch deployment is not an option. It would be great if a patch can also be deployed right from the tool.

I've been using Microsoft 365 Defender for 1.5 years.

Other than a few times where we faced issues with hanging, the solution has mostly been stable.

It's a very scalable tool that can be used in a very small environment or in a very large environment. Everything can be managed from a simple dashboard and can be scaled up or down depending on the customer's environment.

We have had to rely on technical support quite a few times, and they have been very responsive. I'd rate technical support at nine out of ten.

Positive

Because it's a cloud solution, Microsoft 365 Defender is easy to deploy.

I prefer to go with a best-of-breed strategy rather than with a single vendor's security suite, but the tool would need to integrate with as many products as possible, as in an open XDR strategy. However, if you can't integrate with multiple devices by having an open XDR tool, it's best to have a single vendor's tool in order to have greater integration.

If you are looking into Microsoft 365 Defender, my advice would be to make sure that you know your licensing requirements. If you already have a Microsoft-based environment, then this solution may be a good fit as it will integrate with all other Microsoft products. Also, Microsoft is constantly improving their solutions, and it's a good time to be in the Microsoft security sphere.

Overall, I'd rate Microsoft 365 Defender at eight on a scale from one to ten.

We manage around 5,000 computers inside and outside our company. I use Defender to work on our security score by deploying security policies. We apply all the security recommendations to our computers and patch all third-party applications. We check every day for malware to alert our security teams.

Seven months ago, our security score was 50 score and it's now 84. We applied all the security policy recommendations coming from the solution and we became aware of the vulnerabilities and fixed them all, one by one.

We can also automate some tasks and that reduces daily work. And if we get an alert, and we know it is not a false positive, we automate things so that we don't get that alert again.

And if we find malware or a threat, we transfer it to level-one technical support to check and, after that, to the security team. But a lot of times, it catches malware and takes action to block it automatically.

Defender has also saved us money, about 30 or 40 percent. When we had Symantec, we suffered one attack against our company and we lost a lot of data and a lot of servers, and that was a lot of money. Since switching, Defender has been perfect, catching all malware and taking action automatically.

It has also decreased the time it takes me to check everything. I now spend only one or two hours a day monitoring things.

I like that it's fully integrated with Windows, Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, and Outlook. It is better than other antivirus solutions because it's fully integrated with all Microsoft products. It's easy to integrate them and onboard all Windows devices from SCCM. That is really amazing. Everything is clear in Defender. It's not difficult.

Also, everything for security is in one dashboard. It's great. It's not only for Defender but email and everything else. it makes things very easy. I can check everything at once.

The dashboard should be easier to use. There is also improvement needed in the reporting when it comes to exporting or scheduling reports.

I have three years of experience with Microsoft 365 Defender.

It is very stable.

It is also scalable.

On-prem, we have around 300 servers, a mix of Linux and Windows. We also have around 5,000 clients, all using Windows 10 and 11. We have a plan to migrate all on-prem servers to Azure. In the next six months we are looking to migrate 90 percent of them to the cloud. 

I like their support sometimes.

Neutral

We used Symantec for antivirus and security and we migrated all users from Symantec to Microsoft 365 Defender. It's easier to use than Symantec or McAfee and we can use it anywhere because it's a cloud solution. Also, with Symantec, we suffered an attack and it did not do anything. In addition, we already had an E5 license with security so we decided to use this license more fully.

I onboarded it to all machines using the configuration in SCCM. It was very easy. It didn't take much time.

We checked McAfee but we went with Microsoft because it has improved its product very quickly. Microsoft Defender of five years ago is not like it is now. Five years ago it was nothing, but Microsoft has improved it very quickly.

It works with Microsoft Sentinel and integrates well with that, but we do not use Sentinel in our company.

Microsoft 365 Defender is an extension of Windows Defender. Windows Defender is an AV that is integrated with Windows OS, and with this extension, you also get the EDR functionality for security purposes. Microsoft 365 Defender gets more access to the device and provides more insights and control over that. Apart from the Windows platform, it also includes other OSs, such as Linux and macOS.

We do have multiple options for deployment. We did deploy it on the cloud. We got the on-cloud license, and we onboarded our devices to the portal. The portal is deployed on the Azure cloud.

It helps us prioritize threats across the enterprise. We also have options to prioritize a specific device and monitor it. We can keep a device on high alert or on the watch out for each and every event. There are different severity levels, such as critical, high, medium, and low. We can set severities on any of the devices. Based on the set severity level, Microsoft 365 Defender can track events, and we can monitor those events from the console.

We get more insights and more information about the devices that we have. Because most of them are Windows devices, we have integrations with Intune or SCCM. It is easy to transfer all the information and see everything in one single portal. If we want to configure anything or control the devices in the whole organization, it is easy because all of them are in the same environment. It is easy to manage and control them.

There are fewer compatibility issues and errors and a better ability to track events. With third-party solutions, I used to see more issues related to compatibility and setting the ports. For each and everything, we had to either go through the support documents or through the support to get information. Most of the Microsoft documentation is publicly available. It is not that you only get that when you open a support case. That's an advantage compared to others.

It helps to automate routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts. We have KQL or SQL queries that we can set up. We can schedule them so that it automatically queries for a specific device or all the devices and gives us a report that we can simply export.

Its threat intelligence helps to prepare us for potential threats before they hit and take proactive steps. It has helped us to recover a few devices. Because it is integrated with the OS, we get information about failed logins.

It saves time and manual labor. Previously, we used to use a deployment portal such as Filezilla or GPOs. We used to manually update the signatures, but now, it is automatic. It saved me pretty much half a day's work.

It has decreased our time to detect and our time to respond. It has saved half a day's work. The sensor constantly connects to the console. In case of an issue, we get an email immediately. We also get a notification in the console. Previously, we used to manually scan the device or query something and then get the results. Because it is automated, we don't need to manually do that. Previously, we used to manually isolate or block a device, or we used to work with different teams to get the device offline, but now, we can simply search the device name in the console and isolate a device from there, which is convenient for us.

The EDR features are valuable. By getting the EDR features, we have more control over the device. We have information about events in real-time and more protection against zero-day threats and zero-day vulnerabilities. We can monitor every event or action that a device is going through. We can get an idea if it is something malicious or if we have to take any actions.

Because Microsoft 365 Defender is integrated with the OS, we get more insight into the events or threat activities. With a third-party solution, we could have some limitations or compatibility issues with the OS, whereas with Microsoft 365 Defender, there are no compatibility issues for Windows, and we get more insights and more information on the threats simply by logging into the console.

The onboarding and offboarding need improvement. I work with other vendors as well, and they have an option to add a device or remove a device from the portal, whereas with Microsoft 365 Defender, we need to do that manually. However, once you do that, everything can be controlled through the portal, but getting the device onboarded and offboarded is currently manual. If we have an option to simply remove a device from the portal or get a device added from the portal, it would be more convenient. The rest of the features are similar. This is the only area where I found it different from others. I would also like to be able to simply filter with a few of the queries that are already there. 

It has been almost three months.

I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of stability. It is quite stable but it can be improved for a few scenarios. It is still new for macOS and Linux, and for these OSs, I would rate it a six out of ten in terms of stability.

It is scalable. We are using it pretty extensively. It is for multiple departments, and there are multiple teams handling it. In the tenant I have, there are 2,000 devices that are currently onboarded. We also get information about which devices are not onboarded. I can see that a few hundred devices are not onboarded. We also have a few other clients or partners who are using it but on a small scale. 

It is good. We do get constant responses and inputs from them whenever we raise a case. They are quite helpful. I would rate them an eight out of ten.

Positive

I started working with this solution because I changed my organization. That was the major reason. 

Being able to get the information simply from a single portal and the integration with other portals have been some of the benefits. Previously, we used to get data manually, and then we used a SIEM or event collector to send that data to other portals. Now, we can integrate with other Microsoft portals, such as Intune, and get the same information there as well. That's one convenience I have found.

I am not involved with tenant deployment. I am involved with the onboarding of the devices. If you have the right knowledge, it is completely fine. They do have an admin console. You can deploy multiple tenants and also control through that console, but I don't have access to that. I only have access to my own tenant. I only have control over that. We can also include a tenant for a specific organization from the admin console. That admin console is deployed on Azure.

Most of the maintenance is automatic. Because we allow Windows updates, most of the Defender updates are also included in Windows updates. We don't have to specifically go and check. If we see any alert or we find any suspicious events or something on the console while we are investigating, then it might need manual checks. We do get some recommendations through the console itself for what we can do to improve the device security score. So, it requires some maintenance, but that's only when we detect something or we are investigating something. For maintenance, we have different teams in each section. We have around 15 to 20 people.

I don't have the metrics, but we started to see its benefits within a couple of weeks from the time of deployment.

Its licensing and pricing are handled by someone else. My role is limited to incidents or issues with the portal, but you get what you pay for. It is worth the cost.

We did compare it with VMware Carbon Black and McAfee. We did check Symantec as well, but Symantec didn't have EDR capabilities. So, we dropped it. The final call was Microsoft because we found the integrations and other things easy. It saves time for us because we don't need to go through another team or get a separate team involved just for data transfers.

I would definitely recommend this solution. Getting the product is easy. You simply get the license, but after getting the product, you need to go through the deployment and configuration of the product to match your environment. You can just try out the product and experiment in your own way and learn each and every feature. The documentation is completely public. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten because there are a few areas where it can be improved.

I am a purple teamer in my current job, so I also work with detection response in my organization. My job is to configure alerts and monitor incidents, and to do that, my company uses Microsoft Defender XDR. My company has endpoint detection tools for all the endpoints in the organization, and through Microsoft Defender XDR, we are able to get a top-down view of all the incidents on a daily basis and then actually be able to even customize what kind of alerts we want to look for and what kind of attacks are happening. One of the things that I personally love about the tool is the attack story that it provides. Every time there is a specific incident, it creates a graph and maps it to Mitre Att&ck Framework, so it could be initial access, or you may have malicious activity within the network. The tool can track all of the aforementioned areas, and it gives a confidence level. For example, if it is a high-confidence, high-risk alert, then the tool would probably quarantine that particular endpoint on its own, and then an investigator goes on there and actually verifies it. In my experience in the last six months, the false positive rates have been close to zero. Every time there is a case of high confidence alert, there has never been a case where it was not a malicious activity, and it is something I love about the product.

In terms of the most valuable feature of the product, I think it stems from the way it classifies incidents, as it is the most important area in my field of work. Another valuable feature of the tool is threat hunting. For example, there could be a chain of phishing emails that are being sent to our organization, and it may come up as an alert. Then, I know that I can use the artifacts, after which it gives a list of artifacts, which could be email addresses or IP addresses, to identify the threat actors. I can then go ahead and hunt for them across all endpoints within the network, making it essentially something similar to an SQL query that I can run based on what I am looking for. I get more leads in terms of which other mailboxes this particular phishing attack might have gone to where the user may not have interacted with it. The tool allows us to be more proactive in terms of getting close to the initial compromise. I think the threat-hunting feature is coupled with the alerts that my company has configured, and it allows us to proactively stop attacks, which is probably the most important thing for us.

I think that the tool can do a lot of things in a pretty effective way. A lot of times, one of the things I look at is how the false positive rates are, and so far, I see that they have been close to zero. Honestly, I don't think there is a lot in the area of false positives where the tool could improve. I do think that maybe having a feature within my organization where there are three different domains within which we have to operate would be helpful, as there is currently no unified view within the domains. Within a specific Active Directory, you can have Microsoft Defender XDR running, and so everything, including all the endpoints in that domain, are areas you are able to look at from one particular user interface, but there is no feature in which you can merge two different domains. For example, if there are xyz.com and abc.com, all of the endpoints within each of the domains, our company will have a separate UI from Microsoft Defender XDR, and because of it, we have to monitor three different UIs at each point in time. There is also a lot of automation that I have put in place, so every time there is a high-risk alert, our company gets an email in our InfoSec mailbox essentially. I think having a feature where you can merge everything onto a single dashboard would be something from which my company would definitely benefit because it's just a lot of sifting through different user interfaces and then collating data from it. In our company, we should just make sure that we are able to respond immediately, especially whenever there is a security issue within the organization.

I have been using Microsoft Defender XDR for six months. My company is a customer of the product.

I have been in the company for six months, and I think there has only been one time where I remember there was a bit of a slowdown which was associated with the antivirus server and it was not related to Microsoft Defender XDR. Considering the aforementioned issue, my company had to raise a ticket for support, but it has only happened once.

So far, the scalability offered by the product has been fine because it serves as an internal tool managing essentially all of the endpoints within the network, which essentially includes all of the employees, servers, access points, and all of that. In the last six months, my company has not really scaled up the use of the tool that much, and so the numbers have been constant, more or less. If my company ever plans to double up in size in a short period of time, it will probably be the time when the tool's scalability will be tested. I don't think I have the data points right now to answer questions related to the tool's scalability feature.

I have contacted the product's support team. I feel that Microsoft offers a very good support team, as they are usually well-equipped, and the support team members are currently the ones who set up the tool from scratch. The support team has complete visibility of the environment. Every time there is an issue, it gets resolved within 30 to 45 minutes, sometimes more if it is a bit complicated. For example, if the server is slowing down for some reason, the support team is able to sort it out pretty quickly. I think my experience with the tool's support team has been pretty good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

Before Microsoft Defender XDR, I used some other solutions of the past. In one of my previous organizations, we used to use an SIEM solution like Splunk. The company had a lot of open-source tools, so we used Microsoft Defender XDR and ELK stack to generate alerts from a network monitoring point of view. The company also had Snort rules running on the same endpoint, which was like a blue team device for monitoring the network, and we also had a Splunk Universal Forwarder on the endpoint that was connected to Splunk's server, which was useful for visualization. Splunk was not an XDR tool; it was more about monitoring alerts that we had configured within the organization, customizing them, and making sure that we were able to catch threats based on signatures. There was less automation in the sense of how you can react to an incident. For example, in Microsoft Defender XDR, the moment there is a high-risk and high-confidence alert, it quarantines the endpoint or that particular mailbox and sends an alert to our company, and in such a manner, it stops the attacks, and also lets the investigators know that it is not a false positive, which is something I was missing in a SIEM solution that I used in the past. Alerts were being generated from Snort, and the company where I used to work had an ELK stack running, so we configured the alerts on it. The company also had a Splunk Universal Forwarder that would forward the alerts to a Splunk interface, and it is where we used to visualize all the alerts. In general, it was a combination of different tools that allowed my previous company to have the aforementioned process in place.

The solution is deployed on the cloud model, and our company has opted for the cloud services offered by Azure. In our company, we have Microsoft Access Control Service in place, so everything is controlled through Azure. If there are new members in the team, we give them read-only access to XDR through Azure, so it helps manage the identity and access, and then you can access Microsoft Defender XDR's portal. Our organization also creates specific IDs for every investigator to access Microsoft Defender XDR.

I don't think I can speak much about the pricing model of the product because it is not something I work with, and so I don't know the amount of money being burned by the company for the solution, making it an area beyond my visibility. With the little idea I have about the costs, I can say that XDR tools tend to be a bit expensive. If you are using Microsoft Defender XDR, then you need to go for a subscription-based pricing model. In my organization, which is a relatively large company with close to 3,000 employees, the solution works out well for us. For example, if I had a startup, it probably wouldn't be cost-effective to have an XDR solution in place, and that is where I would probably look at more open-source tools to work with and maybe have a SIEM solution which was a startup, a reason why we had to rely on open source tools. My previous organization also had opted for a subscription to use Splunk, which was expensive, but it was better than getting an XDR tool.

Speaking of whether I started to see the benefits of the product immediately after its deployment or if I had to wait for some time, I would say that Microsoft Defender XDR has been in place from the time I joined my current organization. I immediately saw the benefits of using the product. I wasn't present in the organization at a time when they had moved initially to Microsoft Defender XDR, so I can't speak about the time point during which others in the company saw the benefits or effects of the use of the solution. I think the tool has been very efficient because I have worked in other organizations where they were not using Microsoft Defender XDR, as they preferred SIEM solutions. I have seen that in scenarios where SIEM-based tools were used, it was more of the investigator who had to figure out what was happening because you just had a ton of data coming in from the bottom up. In my previous companies, we had a Splunk interface through which we could indulge in monitoring. I see a stark contrast between the previous products and Microsoft Defender XDR, and it is because the latter-mentioned tool not only allows you to get that bottom-up view where whatever is happening on an endpoint level, I am able to monitor while also being able to push things from the top to down. For example, if I wanted to quarantine a particular file on a subset of endpoints, I can do that from Microsoft Defender XDR, where I can put it on a block list and mark it to a particular Active Directory group, after which I am able to then block that out. The tool is quite effective from a detection and response point of view.

If I consider whether it is better to have just one solution instead of a combination of tools, I would say that it is always better to have a combination of products. The SIEM solution I had used previously was quite efficient in collecting data and in being able to process large amounts of data from where we had a lot of endpoints within a particular network, which I think was fast in many ways. Microsoft Defender XDR internally does the same thing as an SIEM solution. If you ask me, it is always best to have an SIEM solution integrated with an XDR tool because most SIEM products are very good at handling large amounts of alerts, and if you have configured it properly, then you can have a very precise view of what is happening at any given point in time within the network, and once you have it, you can have that database forwarded to XDR that can push down. The XDR tools are very good at classifying events. If you have actions in place as to what needs to be done, then, for example, if an email is marked under the phishing category, you would want to get rid of it from the inbox first. Ideally, it shouldn't even land in the inbox, but if it does, then you want to quarantine it. Pushing a certain action down to the affected devices, I think XDR tools do it brilliantly. I think it is always good to have a match between a SIEM tool and an XDR product or a customization between different tools to help achieve your goals.

The product does require maintenance. With the cloud instances that host the server, our company continuously monitors the health, as we have health checks in place that generate alerts in case something goes wrong, a major reason why we use Microsoft Defender XDR. My company also has Kaspersky's antivirus server, which is essentially hosted on a different server. Sometimes, because of the number of endpoints we have in our company's network, the server does slow down due to resource constraints. It is not my job to maintain the servers in my company, but we have a different team that deals with it. In our company, we do have a couple of instances where the servers are internally managed.

I think Microsoft Defender XDR is one of the best detection and response tools I have worked with as it is quite effective in flagging serious threats for the organization. In our company,we have faced multiple attacks over the last few months, but none of them have been successful, and I think Microsoft Defender XDR has played a major role in it.

Firstly, potential users of the solution should consider that the tool comes with a lot of already customized alerts for any Active Directory environment, but it is always good to understand, especially if you are a new user of the tool. Even if someone is new in the security team, I think it is that person's job to analyze the business, the kind of attacks you could expect coming in, and the kind of visibility that the organization provides on the internet. Once a person gets a good idea about the aforementioned areas, you need to customize alerts and create custom alerts for your organization because that is an area that is going to be unique and different for each and every company, so it won't ever be the same. Microsoft Defender XDR certainly helps with mapping the seven steps of the cyber kill chain, and if the product sticks to it and looks at every single step, lists down the kind of threats, and then customizes the alerts according to that, I believe the users will have a successful time in being able to detect threats before they happen or even while they are happening.

I rate the overall tool a ten out of ten.