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BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint 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
6.8
Number of Reviews
115
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)
32nd
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) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity is 1.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.7%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.7%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.9%
BlackBerry Cylance Cybersecurity1.6%
Other87.8%
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

"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is its machine-learning capabilities. Additionally, there is full integration with other solutions."
"What I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is that it is a comprehensive solution that contains everything the organization may need when using endpoints."
"The stability is pretty good except for one or two cases, and based on the performance, it's been okay with pretty high performance, no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"The positive impacts I see from Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks include a complete 360-degree view of our security posture altogether, being a uniform platform where we are ingesting logs from multiple resources."
"We use Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks for its ability to detect based on behavior rather than simple virus scan to prevent malicious activities."
"Its interface and pricing are most valuable, and it is better than other vendors in terms of security."
"They did what they said, and this solution could apply to any scenario."
"The product is mostly automated, and we do not have to make decisions, because all the decisions are made by the product itself and we are not required to create any custom policies since the policies that are created are well defined in the product itself."
"The product works pretty well; it does a good job catching viruses, and while we haven't had a chance to test against any kind of ransomware attack, I know it works great and I'm not worried about its capabilities in that respect."
"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."
"The stability is perfect, and it is leaps and bounds beyond our previous solution by McAfee."
"A user can continue to add endpoints and the solution will continue to perform well."
"CylancePROTECT works really well with the way we work."
"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."
"Endpoints are protected in real-time without the need of a centralized server, whitelist, or the ability to connect to a central host in the cloud."
"The solution is extremely scalable. It's got the hybrid functionality, it's got the system functionality and cloud functionality as well."
"Along with security, there are certain IT policies in terms of accessibility of different sites, which are there in the organization, and with everything put together, there haven't been any instances where I have seen any kind of issues such as malware or other malicious event getting through on my laptop."
"What I like most is the protection against phishing emails and anti-spam."
"It is very simple to use and easy to scan systems."
"It is quite stable. We have not had any cases, i.e., viruses, that would require a reboot, etc. We have never had a situation where we needed to reinstall the tools as a result of the Defender application or a feature being corrupt."
"The integration of Defender, Security Center, and the Microsoft compliance score, is the feature we use most to share the results with our clients and to create a roadmap together."
"It is easy to install and use requiring little maintenance but applying updates."
"There are some competitive products on the market, but the best is Microsoft Defender because it's very easy to integrate. That's one reason a lot of clients want Microsoft Defender. It's also very easy to implement compared to other solutions."
"We rely on this product for endpoint protection in our organization because we have not subscribed to any antivirus, apart from Microsoft Defender, and it has improved the way our organization functions because there have been no virus attacks to date on our laptops and it has not negatively affected our end-user experience."
 

Cons

"The product's pricing could be better."
"Fine-tuning the detection policy requires experience because the policy is very complex in Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, and we get high false positive alerts."
"Data privacy is a matter of concern. You have to be careful with data privacy, it can be sensitive and Cortex can have most of your access."
"The playbooks could be improved to include more functionalities or actions."
"The downside to the solution is that there are a large number of false positives."
"Product might have some bugs."
"The product's pricing needs improvement. They could provide more discounts. Additionally, the dashboard and control panel could be enhanced."
"They are charging for Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA) services, so if the per GB data could be provided at a certain level free of cost or at the same cost which the customer is taking for the entire bundle, that would be better."
"It should provide more details about the events that they have detected."
"The product must make the interface a little more user-friendly."
"The process of whitelisting a script that you want to be able to run can be a little bit difficult, or awkward."
"I would like to see a little bit of additional reporting or insight as to what it is doing exactly."
"I would like to see them fix the alerting system so that the endpoint reporting is a bit more streamlined."
"CylancePROTECT could be improved in its technical support and communication."
"I'd like them to do software distribution too, but they said that that's architecturally not at the product line."
"I would like to see a better UI in terms of sifting through more specific data and providing analytics. A little bit more would be nice."
"Windows Defender, which is just a free version, is not as effective. It doesn't have deep support or deep protection."
"If a threat actor comes in, and creates a global administrative account, they can gain access to everything and whitelist then block everything else. Having everything, including Defender, under one brand is like having all of your eggs in one basket."
"The documentation could be better. When they update their manuals, sometimes they refer to products by their old names, so it is a little confusing. For example, the documentation might still say "Advanced Threat Protection" instead of Defender for Endpoint."
"The solution needs to improve its ransomware. It's not so good."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can use more advertising to promote their features."
"If the solution could be integrated more with Defender for Cloud, to be more unified, that would help. It is good now, but even more integration could be done with Defender for Cloud. We see two different portals. If Defender for Endpoint could be ported to the CSPM, Defender for Cloud, that would make things even easier for us."
"I would like MDE to have the ability to isolate a certain amount of time on the timeline."
"We encountered some issues when we were trying to enable automatic updates from our group policy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"Every customer has to pay for a license because it doesn't work with what you get from a managed services provider."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. I have customers that have voiced that the solution is good for the value but if I want to sell more of the solution the price reduction would help."
"It is present, but when compared to other competitive products, I would say it is not less expensive; however, when all of the other added values are considered, the price is reasonable."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"In terms of the cost Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very expensive because we are a Mexican company and when you translate dollars to pesos the cost is very high. The solution is very expensive for Mexican companies. I understand that they have international prices, but I do not think it offsets the price enough for many companies in countries, such as Mexico. The amount it is reduced is not a massive percentage."
"CylancePROTECT is worth the money, but I'm not sure of its exact price. I can't remember off the top of my head."
"The product cost is about $5, per user, per month."
"This cost of the license is approximately $5 USD monthly per user."
"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."
"We pay our license on a yearly basis and have just renewed for two years."
"The licensing part of the product is too expensive compared to other solutions in the market."
"CylancePROTECT's pricing is reasonable, at about €18 per user, per year."
"Our licensing cost for the solution is around $4,000 for six months. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Because Microsoft Defender comes as an add-on, it can be a bit expensive if you're trying to buying it separately. Another option is to upgrade, but the enterprise licenses for Microsoft can also be quite a bit pricey. Overall, the cost of Microsoft Defender compared to that of other endpoint detection solutions is slightly higher."
"It's all pretty easy. For some clients, it's an easier sell because it's just an add-on to their existing Microsoft licensing and Office 365 licensing."
"If you don't purchase the advanced threat protection then there is no additional charge."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comes with Windows 10, and it's free. But for you to be able to manage it in the cloud and use the console, you need to have either an Office 365 E5 subscription or a Microsoft M365 subscription. You need to buy an extra license."
"Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs."
"The license for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is included in the license for the Microsoft Windows operating system."
"You do not need to pay any additional costs for antivirus and anti-malware solutions for endpoint protection."
"For me, the pricing is very good, but for management it's very expensive. Other solutions are less expensive. But when I present all the information and all the reports they say, "Well, it's expensive, but the cost-benefit is very good.""
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise45
Large Enterprise96
 

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: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.