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BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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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 Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

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 Endpoint is 6.5%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.5%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity1.6%
Other88.1%
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.
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cortex XDR features advanced threat detection capabilities."
"The best feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is that it collects logs from different sections such as the endpoint, the network, and the cloud, making it easy to investigate alerts, collect some of the investigation packages related to the infected machines, and provide live response."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is specifically designed to prevent zero-day attacks and is part of an ecosystem of Palo Alto, providing customers with a long-term vision to modify and redesign how security is applied in their company."
"I like that the product has behavior-based detection which offers many benefits over signature-based detection."
"Based on my experience with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, I highly recommend it due to its quick response to zero-day attacks and low utilization from end-user devices."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks should be a stable solution."
"It's very stable. I've never experienced downtime for the ASM console or ASM core."
"We can visualize and control the activities in the environment from anywhere."
"The stability of the solution is awesome."
"Does malware analysis. Blocks WannaCry and other attacks that have come out."
"I've found the AI engine in CylancePROTECT to be particularly effective for technology and in preventing unknown threats."
"On the management side, we liked the way it displays things."
"We chose the solution because it doesn't have daily updates, which is important for us in healthcare IT, where network usage and connectivity to hospitals matter."
"CylancePROTECT is going to tell you if there are any issues and you are going to be able to see everything from one single dashboard."
"We have been trained to learn how to use the product and now we have a very good experience with it."
"The solution does a good job of blocking whatever it thinks needs to be blocked and it doesn't require a lot of performance from the computer."
"Auto-remediation: When the product sees malware, it resolves the issue immediately. This protects the machine."
"We can run the virus scan across our entire environment."
"It's very reliable and very dependable."
"The patch updates and version updates are very good. Those happen on an automated basis whenever I'm connecting to the organization network, either through LAN or through the VPN."
"Microsoft has a big advantage because Defender knows how to interact with the CASB and all the other security components that you have, and overall that makes the management of the environment much easier."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's WCS function, a content filtering solution, has proven to be the most useful, stable, and reliable option for our current needs."
"The visibility into threats that the solution provides is pretty awesome... This is something that makes me think, "Wow, okay. If I had my own organization, I would probably get this too." It stops the threat before an employee gets phished or something gets downloaded to their computer."
"This is not an inventory solution, but it helps you take count of how many workstations you have, as well as what software is installed on each of them."
 

Cons

"It is an enterprise-level solution. Its price could be less expensive."
"Although I would say this product is highly-rated, it could probably do more because nothing does everything that you want."
"Additionally, I think the price is very high, and if it can be adjusted, I believe it will be a very good solution."
"The onboarding process could be better."
"The solution should add unwanted malicious hash values to a block list so that whenever the action is triggered, it will automatically prevent the malicious content."
"The deployment is pretty hard."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"While using Cortex, I noticed some aspects that could be improved, such as increasing the synchronization speed between XDR and Xnor."
"Making the dashboards a bit modern to make them easier to search would also be helpful."
"We would like to see secure integration and multi-factor authentication to be able to access the administration dashboard."
"It should provide more details about the events that they have detected."
"Additionally, their channel management has been lacking, with a notable disregard for small and medium-sized businesses, focusing primarily on large enterprises and very large MSPs."
"It could have integration with industrial base HMIS or Human Machine Interfaces Solutions."
"Technical support is bad. I am not happy with the level of support they offer."
"It just doesn't make you feel like you're getting covered or have the best protection, which you should have."
"The stability could be improved."
"Microsoft Defender could be improved with features more like the McAfee ePO. It would be better if I had a console to get all the information for my endpoints. Maybe this is too much for it, but it would be better if it could handle those non-signature-based malicious codes or viruses."
"We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation."
"The application control feature requires improvement."
"In the next release, I would like to see better management reporting."
"It can get a bit laggy sometimes. Other than that, we don't have any issues. They constantly tweak it and fix it up based on users' feedback. It has improved a lot over the past four years. Defender for Endpoint never really used to be a good endpoint security solution, but over the past couple of years, Microsoft has invested heavily in it. So, it has come a long way in all aspects of endpoint security. If they want to make it better, they should just continue investing in the current path of what they've been doing over the past couple of years."
"Microsoft Defender protects the computer by using virus definitions that we download through regular updates but nowadays, cybersecurity attacks have become more intelligent."
"I would just like them to have more consistency, and that's a comment that's across the board with Microsoft. They change things a lot."
"It would be helpful if they offered video tutorial guides."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"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."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"It has a yearly renewal."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."
"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."
"The solution's pricing is around the same as most EDRs but slightly behind some of the major ones."
"The monthly fee is $55 USD per user."
"Currently, we have competitive pricing for Cylance, which is affordable enough to consider."
"CylancePROTECT's pricing is reasonable, at about €18 per user, per year."
"The initial end-point cost may seem a little high (~$55/device/year) but when you look at the total peace of mind that the solution provides, with no reboots for updates, and negligible performance impact, it is well worth it."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The tool is not that expensive."
"CylancePROTECT is an affordable solution."
"We have an enterprise agreement so from my perspective, this is a product that ships with Windows and it is not priced standalone."
"If you don't purchase the advanced threat protection then there is no additional charge."
"We have the E5 security license, and the solution comes with that."
"This solution is part of Windows and comes included with it."
"The price for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is about three euros, which is considered reasonably priced."
"It came with Windows."
"Licensing fees are paid annually through a partner."
"Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
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 Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise97
 

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...
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior sol...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never pu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Blackberry Protect
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Panasonic, Noble Energy, Apria Healthcare Group Inc., Charles River Laboratories, Rovi Corporation, Toyota, Kiewit
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.