Microsoft Defender (Office 365) and Palo Alto Networks WildFire offer threat protection, however, they target different areas of security. Defender focuses on cloud-based threats within Microsoft 365 applications, while WildFire is a broader network security solution with sandboxing capabilities for analyzing suspicious files. They can be considered complementary solutions.
The summary above is based on 99 interviews we conducted recently with Palo Alto Networks WildFire and Microsoft Defender for Office 365 users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The email protection is excellent, especially in terms of anti-phishing policies."
"The product's scalability is good."
"Defender for Office 365 has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and that is the aspect I like most about it. It is simpler, effective, and convenient. The users like the process efficiency."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature is the integration. It's a single console, so we don't have to switch around between multiple products. Another valuable feature is the ease of operations and maintenance."
"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased."
"The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning."
"Scalable ATP solution that's quick to set up. It demonstrates good performance and stability."
"The most valuable feature is the Automatic Verdict, to recognize whether something is a threat, or not."
"The analysis is very fast."
"The way that the solution quickly updates to adjust to threats is the solution's most valuable aspect. When there's a security attack, within five minutes, all Wildfire subscribers have access to updates so that all systems will be safe. Its threat prevention is way better than other vendor products."
"The most valuable features of the solution are user-friendliness, price, good security, and cloud-related options."
"With this product, we receive the best monitoring and reports."
"It has a user-friendly interface."
"We have found that Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable. We currently have six thousand users for the product."
"The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"The pre-sales cost calculations could be more transparent."
"The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year."
"There needs to be an improvement in integrating the product to work across multiple operating systems, and to have better support for non-Microsoft file types."
"The company should focus on adding threats that the solution is currently unable to detect."
"The custom alerts have to improve a lot."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"In terms of what I'd like to see in the next release of Palo Alto Networks WildFire, each release is based on malware that has been identified. The key problem is an average of six months from the time malware is written to the time it's discovered and a signature is created for it. The only advice that I can give is for them to shorten that timeframe. I don't know how they would do it, but if they shorten that, for example, cut it in half, they'll make themselves more famous."
"In the future, I would like to see more automation in the reporting."
"In the future, Palo Alto could reduce the time it takes to process the file."
"The only complaint that we receive from our customers is in regards to the price."
"I would give this product a rating of 9 out of 10 due to some slight issues of performance."
"The product's false positive logs could be more user-friendly to understand. They could provide examples of precious cases to learn."
"The VPN and decryption need improvement."
"The initial setup was a little bit complex, mainly due to the GUI console and management challenges."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is ranked 1st in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 41 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 58 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 writes "Allows for easy reporting of problems, valuable anti-phishing, and anti-malware support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks WildFire writes "Good technical support and provides automatic analysis that saves us time in filtering email". Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Mimecast Email Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Cisco Secure Email and Barracuda Email Security Gateway, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection and Cloudflare. See our Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs. Palo Alto Networks WildFire report.
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