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Cisco Secure Endpoint vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Cisco Secure Endpoint enhances productivity and reduces costs by streamlining threat detection, integrating tools, and minimizing manual intervention.
Sentiment score
7.3
Organizations achieve financial gains and efficiency by using Microsoft Defender, eliminating third-party solutions, and enhancing security management.
Without detection and protection measures, organizations would face substantial payments and reputational damage, including the necessity to inform customers about data breaches, potentially leading to loss of business.
We have seen a return on investment when using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it saves labor by reducing the need for staff to focus on it.
The biggest return on investment for me when using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is the time saving.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Cisco Secure Endpoint support is praised for responsiveness and expertise, providing quick issue resolution and valuable user guidance.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft's Defender for Endpoint support is generally effective but experiences vary; premium options offer swift, knowledgeable assistance.
Cisco has good technical support, especially considering these are newer solutions compared to traditional routing and switching products.
The level-one support seems disconnected from subject matter experts.
I rate Microsoft support 10 out of 10.
Due to our size, we don't have access to direct technical support, but the knowledge base, Microsoft Learn, and the articles available are really good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Cisco Secure Endpoint is scalable, integrates with SecureX for efficient management, and supports diverse industries without extra resources.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint efficiently scales with diverse enterprises, integrates seamlessly with Microsoft products, supporting growth effectively.
Cisco Secure Endpoint is definitely scalable.
We managed to scale it out in a short amount of time, with two months of planning and three months of implementation on 10,000 computers.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is scalable enough to handle various devices across environments, whether they are laptops, Android devices, or operating in hybrid environments.
Compatibility is its main feature.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Cisco Secure Endpoint is highly stable, reliable, and trusted for performance, earning high ratings from users in various enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is praised for stability, efficiency, and low resource impact, despite minor occasional bugs.
We have not encountered any problems.
I haven't seen any outages with Microsoft.
I rate Defender 10 out of 10 for stability.
Defender for Endpoint is extremely stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Secure Endpoint requires better integration, reporting, and UI enhancements, alongside improved pricing, AI capabilities, and IoT support.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint struggles with support, integration, UI, performance issues, and lacks essential features and platform support.
The forensic capabilities need enhancement, especially for deep forensic data collection.
Repeated interactions are necessary due to Level One's lack of tools and knowledge, hindering efficient problem-solving and negatively impacting our experience with Microsoft support.
We use Microsoft partners to help govern the platform, and as part of an alliance, we want to gather data from each tenant and combine them for a complete view.
Providing more detailed information on how Microsoft Defender for Endpoint detects vulnerabilities.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Secure Endpoint offers competitive and flexible pricing with value-rich features, despite some complexity in licensing.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers cost-effective, flexible pricing options integrated with Microsoft services, including discounts for education and volume.
Cisco is aggressive in pricing, making it competitive and sometimes even cheaper than other good products like CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, or SentinelOne.
Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs.
It costs $15 per VM for the P2 plan, which is seen as affordable for customers.
The pricing, setup, and licensing were very easy and simple.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Secure Endpoint provides advanced security features, cross-platform support, and ease of use with strong threat intelligence and support.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers seamless integration, real-time protection, and automated response, ensuring robust security with minimal impact.
Cisco Secure Endpoint is very good in machine learning, which allows it to secure offline contents even if not connected to the internet.
Defender for Endpoint's coverage across different platforms in our environment is pretty good. We have devices running Linux, Mac OS, Windows, iOS, and Android. It covers all of them.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides a unified management interface allowing customers to manage their on-premises and hybrid infrastructures from a single pane.
One of the best features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is its database for identifying zero-day attacks or malware attacks.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Secure Endpoint
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
12th
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Cisco Security Portfolio (6th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
1st
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
197
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cisco Secure Endpoint is 1.5%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 10.6%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmed-Dawood - PeerSpot reviewer
A tool that offers good performance and technical support along with great protection to endpoint devices
The vendor from Cisco takes care of the maintenance. We need three people to take care of the tool in case of crashes. From the dashboard, we come to know about everything related to the endpoint. You can take action unless it is not the physical hardware to which something wrong has happened, especially if something wrong happens to the operating system. I would definitely recommend the solution to those planning to use it. To provide endpoint protection, I feel the product should be speedy enough to detect malicious programs and trojans. There are a lot of tools that are not acting as signature-based but as behavior-based antivirus. Cisco Secure Endpoint is required, especially if the customers don't have a sandbox. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.
Sudhen Swami - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to update with good protection and a useful cloud portal
We've mainly used it for endpoints. However, we've also used it for DLP as well. We're also in the process of implementing it for cloud and identity as well. However, it's very good for endpoints, and that's our main focus. The malware protection is good. The visibility it provides is very useful. We can combine visibility with wider security features and alerts around malware, misconfiguration, or any other kinds of threats. The cloud portal is quite good. From there, we are able to see alerts and have colleagues review issues and monitor to see if any patterns arise. It's serving us quite well overall. It allows us to look at other items, like application and browser control. It helps us prioritize threats. We have a process in place now where we can review issues and remediate them effectively. We have been able to integrate a variety of Microsoft security products together. We use Azure AD, for example, and we've begun to implement DLP, among other items. We're looking at labeling and tagging and will expand into that soon. Defender has more stringent system requirements than, for example, Check Point. So when we implemented the Check Point Endpoint agent, that solution didn't mind what version of Windows you were using. When we moved to Defender, Defender had certain system prerequisites that had to be met. So we had to make sure that we're on a minimum version of Windows when we're utilizing Office, and Office has to be a particular version as well. It has more stringent system requirements that have to be met before you can implement it. It works natively together with other Microsoft solutions. Once you get more and more of those different components across the environment, then you start to get better visibility. So, rather than having lots of different solutions, you have fewer solutions and a single vendor solution. That way, you start getting into a position where you get better visibility and integration as well. The standardization is good. It's important. It's helping me with monitoring and learning. Updates and upgrades are quite smooth and seamless. Defender helps us automate routine tasks. Quite a lot of Microsoft is straightforward for us now. Previously, we didn't have enough resources and were unable to look at the alerts. Having this in place makes things a lot more straightforward for us. We have both the technology and the people in place now, alongside the process. We do see the benefits in that, and that's why we're continuing our adoption across the estate in terms of client and server as well. It's helping us avoid looking at multiple dashboards and centralized monitoring. We're not fully there yet. We're getting there. While we haven't witnessed time saving yet, once it's fully deployed, it will. By then, we'll have standardized processes across a single solution. We have saved money, however, as we continue to reduce non-Mircosft systems. Since we won't be using various competing technologies, we can save on licensing costs. We've likely so far saved 15%. While it's hard to estimate exactly how much, the solution has helped us decrease time to detection and time to respond.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Endpoint?
The product's initial setup phase was very simple.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Endpoint?
Cisco is aggressive in pricing, making it competitive and sometimes even cheaper than other good products like CrowdStrike, Microsoft Defender, or SentinelOne.
What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Endpoint?
Cisco Secure Endpoint lacks features like DLP which other vendors offer. XDR is new, so integration capabilities with third-party tools need improvement. The forensic capabilities need enhancement,...
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, applies behavioral-based endpoint protection and response, and includes risk-ba...
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 solution. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security s...
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 push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
 

Also Known As

Cisco AMP for Endpoints
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Heritage Bank, Mobile County Schools, NHL University, Thunder Bay Regional, Yokogawa Electric, Sam Houston State University, First Financial Bank
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Endpoint vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.