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BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs Microsoft Defender for Business comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersec...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity is 1.6%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 1.4%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
Microsoft Defender for Business1.4%
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity1.6%
Other93.2%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
Sooraj Makkancherrry - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Operations Manager at Philips
Doesn't have daily updates, which is important for healthcare IT
I face challenges with the exclusion policy - it still scans folders we told it not to, causing issues. When we contact support, they tell us to update the latest agent, but we can't do that immediately due to medical device protocols and validation testing. I wish support would try to understand our issues better instead of giving this standard response. The machine learning feature they use often tells us to upgrade the agent or add things to the exclusion list, which isn't unacceptable. It's a very good and new technology as a tool and antivirus. But sometimes, it doesn't work properly with our medical devices and products, quarantining files it shouldn't even after we add them to exclusions. This is tricky for us.
Paritosh Jani - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate VP (Managed Information Technology Services) at Dev Information Tech Pvt Ltd
Has delivered automated threat response and streamlined integration with advanced tools
The best features of Microsoft Defender for Business include it coming as an XDR solution which provides automated investigations, remediations, and endpoint detection and response. Moreover, it can be tightly integrated with vulnerability management or detecting vulnerabilities and pushing them to the SIEM solution. I utilize the advanced threat hunting feature of Microsoft Defender for Business and find it helpful; it's good and improving with every update. Microsoft Defender for Business integrates effectively with the Microsoft ecosystem as with Azure Sentinel, and it has a two-way natural integration. Apart from that, it also integrates with industry SIEM solutions such as Splunk.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"From a single pane of glass, you can easily manage all of your endpoints."
"The most valuable features are incident creation, policy-based protection, IP whitelisting, and device encryption. These are beneficial for endpoint and server security."
"The biggest positive impact I see from Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a significant reduction in the number of people required to manage it."
"One of the main benefits of the solution is its intelligence to correlate the events into an incident."
"They did what they said, and this solution could apply to any scenario."
"Cortex XDR can integrate the firewalls and determine the tendencies of the attacks. It's a new generation antivirus, with protection endpoints and detection response. It is very easy to use and everybody can operate the solution."
"Monitoring is most valuable."
"Automation and playbooks have helped me significantly, as Cortex Xnor's playbooks predefine the workflow of the automation, such as response processes, alert triggering, and enriching the context, efficiently detecting and blocking malicious attacks with firewalls while eliminating workload and speeding responses for next-generation operations."
"I like the AI and mathematical components that they use, and I like the pre-execution method of protection that prevents infection."
"The most valuable features of CylancePROTECT are its powerful machine-learning capabilities and predictive intelligence."
"On the management side, we liked the way it displays things."
"Even if an endpoint loses connection to the Internet, I know that endpoint is protected against 99.99% of the threats in the wild today."
"The solution’s AI is its most valuable feature."
"A user can continue to add endpoints and the solution will continue to perform well."
"It secures different entry points into the network."
"CylancePROTECT is very stable - we've had no issues with performance and no errors or bugs."
"The most effective features of Microsoft Defender for Business include its threat detection and response capabilities in managing vulnerabilities and ransomware attacks."
"Using Microsoft Defender for Business is beneficial for my company."
"Defender's main strength is its integration with Microsoft Sentinel, offering valuable insights."
"Microsoft Defender for Business works well with the Microsoft Azure Security ecosystem, including Defender for Endpoint and Office 365 Cloud."
"The solution is effective, continuously improving, and highly regarded, especially with Microsoft's leadership in the industry."
"I would recommend Microsoft Defender for Business to others, rating it as ten out of ten."
"I haven't had any problems with the tool's stability."
"Microsoft Defender for Business stands out due to its ease of use, particularly due to the fact that many of my customers already use Microsoft and Azure."
 

Cons

"It should support more mobile operating systems. That is one of the cons of their infrastructure right now."
"They've been having some issues with updating their endpoint agents, and it has been quite frustrating."
"Traps doesn't work with McAfee. You need to remove McAfee to install Traps. This is very common, and its nothing that should be an issue. Some antivirus engines recognize Traps as an threat component, so maybe they need to shake hands somewhere."
"Whenever the tool releases a new version when deploying the product across the organization, I feel like there are some disturbances in the CPU usage after upgrading the tool to the latest version."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by offering remote management. It would be useful to look at the client's issue to fix it."
"The only issues that we have are, one the cost, two the dashboard is not very intuitive, even though you can drill down within the dashboard, we usually have to gather information from other sources to determine locations and if its a false positive."
"If you compare it to SentinelOne, which has more functionalities and detection capabilities on an open platform, the pricing on SentinelOne is far more reasonable and cheaper than Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is not only pricey; it is extremely expensive."
"There are a lot of false positives and it takes up a lot of time."
"I'd like them to do software distribution too, but they said that that's architecturally not at the product line."
"I would not rate this solution in the top five for things like presenting information, or ease of use."
"The solution’s technical support could be improved."
"It could have integration with industrial base HMIS or Human Machine Interfaces Solutions."
"The solution needs better dashboards that are easier to use."
"rom my experience interacting with the primary or the central administrative console, it's quite complex. You would need a fair bit of technical experience to set it up, implement and maintain it. That would be one area for improvement."
"They could improve on the false positives, reporting and whitelisting features."
"Pricing could be lowered as it is expensive and not suitable for low-budget organizations."
"Microsoft should provide batch management solutions with the application, integrating pass management with roles."
"The tool's support is an area of concern where improvements are needed."
"The security could always be improved."
"I am not satisfied with Microsoft's technical support. There are challenges with the knowledge and experience of the support staff, frequent redirection between departments, and slow response times."
"Additionally, the pricing policy poses a challenge, particularly in multi-year contracts, where other solutions like Trend Micro offer more affordable options."
"The threat detection capabilities require significant customization for multistage threat detection."
"We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"The solution is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward."
"CylancePROTECT's pricing is reasonable, at about €18 per user, per year."
"​Shop around for sure and be assured the price you pay will be close to other solutions available, but even at a slight mark-up from the other solutions, you are getting real endpoint protection versus nothing more than a cheap security blanket that might keep you warm at night."
"The solution's pricing is around the same as most EDRs but slightly behind some of the major ones."
"The product cost is about $5, per user, per month."
"This cost of the license is approximately $5 USD monthly per user."
"The licensing part of the product is too expensive compared to other solutions in the market."
"CylancePROTECT is worth the money, but I'm not sure of its exact price. I can't remember off the top of my head."
"It is expensive, but not unreasonable."
"Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool."
"It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors."
"The tool is cheap, while some other solutions are more expensive. I remember the tool cost about five euros for a workstation or for a user on a monthly basis."
"The tool's cost has been a little high, but I do not think it was terrible."
"Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise55
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Blackberry Protect?
The price is reasonable for us at the moment. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with Blackberry Protect?
I face challenges with the exclusion policy - it still scans folders we told it not to, causing issues. When we conta...
What is your primary use case for Blackberry Protect?
I am using CylancePROTECT as an active learning algorithm. We installed it on almost 20,000 servers and virtual machi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Business?
Our thoughts on the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Business are that we wish it could be better. If the pricing w...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?
I see room for improvement in Microsoft Defender for Business, particularly regarding the consolidation of all securi...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Blackberry Protect
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Panasonic, Noble Energy, Apria Healthcare Group Inc., Charles River Laboratories, Rovi Corporation, Toyota, Kiewit
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs. Microsoft Defender for Business and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.