Cisco Secure Endpoint vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Aug 2, 2022

We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Endpoint vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of Cisco Secure Endpoint say that the deployment is straightforward. Users of Microsoft Defender For Endpoint share mixed reviews. Some consider it to be easy while others say it is complex.
  • Features: Users of both solutions are happy with the products’ stability and scalability.

    Users of Cisco Secure Endpoint like the solution’s Device Trajectory, its central management console, and its actionable alerts. They would like to see improvements made to the dashboard, fewer false positives, and more data provided by the endpoint agent.

    Users of Microsoft Defender For Endpoint like the solution’s data leak prevention, its attack surface reduction controls, and its Automated Investigation and Response feature. Users would like to see more customization when it comes to integration, a better GUI, and improved monitoring.
  • Pricing: Users of both solutions say the pricing is reasonable.
  • Service and Support: Users of Cisco Secure Endpoint are satisfied with the technical support they receive. Users of Microsoft Defender For Endpoint feel that service and support are just average.
  • ROI: Users of both solutions report an ROI.

Comparison Results: Cisco Secure Endpoint received more favorable ratings in every comparison category.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Endpoint vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Report (Updated: March 2023).
688,618 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The integration with other Cisco products seemed to be really effective. We had Umbrella in place and we were using AnyConnect as well as Firepower. Once a threat was detected, being able to do the threat lookups and the live tracking was really useful.""Definitely, the best feature for Cisco Secure Endpoint is the integration with Talos. On the backend, Talos checks all the signatures, all the malware, and for any attacks going on around the world... Because Secure Endpoint has a connection to it, we get protected by it right then and there.""It is extensive in terms of providing visibility and insights into threats. It allows for research into a threat, and you can chart your progress on how you're resolving it.""The threat Grid with the ability to observe the sandboxing, analyze, and perform investigations of different malicious files has been great.""It's quite simple, and the advantage I see is that I get the trajectory of what happened inside the network, how a file has been transmitted to the workstation, and which files have got corrupted.""The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is that there is a lot more malware slipping through my email filters than I expected.""Another of my favorite features is called the Device Trajectory, where it shows everything that's going on, on a computer. It shows the point in time when a virus is downloaded, so you can see if the user was surfing the internet or had a program open. It shows every running process and file access on the computer and saves it like a snapshot when it detects something malicious. It also has a File Trajectory, so you can even see if that file has been found on any of your other computers that have AMP.""The most valuable feature is its threat protection and data privacy, including its cyber attack and data protection, as we need to cover and protect data on user devices."

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"It comes included with the Windows license.""Defender for Endpoint provides good visibility into threats and has favorable threat intelligence.""The attack surface reduction rules are the most valuable. We're able to have unattended remediation actions when the solution works side by side with a local antivirus like Microsoft Defender or Kaspersky. The attack surface reduction rules help us to proactively block and stop threats.""This solution definitely increases our security posture. When you are reviewing your existing fleet or endpoints and based on the configuration that you put out of your Defender for Endpoint, you then receive a security score from Microsoft. Depending on what rules you have configured, what policies you have deployed, and what attack surface reduction rules that you have set up and deployed, it is almost gamifying information security in the sense that you are always trying to achieve a higher score. The more hardening you perform on your endpoints, the better score you receive. This generally tends to give you a better peace of mind, but also makes you secure at the same time.""The technical support from Microsoft is very good. We are part of the Microsoft Suite, and from being part of this we have consistent news regarding Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.""Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's most valuable feature is its ease of use.""Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a robust platform.""The solution provides protections and reports about strange behavior and automatically blocks some of it. I love the way that statuses are represented."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pros →

Cons
"Logging could be better in terms of sending more logs to Cisco Firepower or Cisco ASA. That's an area where it could be made better.""In Orbital, there are tons of prebuilt queries, but there is not a lot of information in lay terms. There isn't enough information to help us with what we're looking for and why we are looking for it with this query. There are probably a dozen queries in there that really focus on what I need to focus on, but they are not always easy to find the first time through.""The Linux agent is a simple offline classic agent, and it doesn't support Secure Boot, which is important to have on a Linux machine. The Linux agent has conflicts with other solutions, including the Exploit Prevention system found in Windows servers. We didn't find a fix during troubleshooting, and Cisco couldn't offer one either. Eventually, we had to shut down the Exploit Prevention system. We didn't like that as we always want a solution that can fit smoothly into the setup without causing problems, especially where security is concerned. The tool also caused CPU spikes on our production machine, and we were seriously considering moving to another product.""An easier way to do deduplication of machines, or be alerted to the fact that there's more than one instance of a machine, would be useful... That way you could get a more accurate device count, so you're not having an inflated number.""We don't have issues. We think that Cisco covers all of the security aspects on the market. They continue to innovate in the right way.""The GUI needs improvement, it's not good.""This product has issues with the number of false positives that it reports.""It could be improved in connection with artificial intelligence and IoT."

More Cisco Secure Endpoint Cons →

"They can improve it on the online protection front since people nowadays are moving online and working from home.""The solution can be more user-friendly.""Additional security would be beneficial.""With the XDR dashboard, when you're doing an investigation and you're drilling down to obtain further details it tends to open many different tabs that take you away from your main tabs. You can end up having 10 tabs open for one investigation. This is another area for improvement because you can end up getting lost in the multiple tabs. Therefore, the central console can be improved so that it does not take you to several different pages for each investigation.""A concern is ransomware, whether people can penetrate and encrypt my data or steal my credit card/banking information.""They should bring back the feature of a dedicated proxy device for communication to the cloud. As of now, all the agents are required to send the logs directly to the cloud. There should be a solution where you can put a proxy and all the logs are consolidated, like a forwarder.""The reporting in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should improve. The solution has limited features.""Phishing and Malware detection could be better."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Licensing fees are on a yearly basis and I am happy with the pricing."
  • "We have a license for 3,000 users and if we get up to 3,100 users, it doesn't stop working, but on the next renewal date you're supposed to go in there and add that extra 100 licenses. It's really good that they let you grow and expand and then pay for it. Sometimes, with other products, you overuse a license and they just don't work."
  • "Cisco Secure Endpoint is not too expensive and it's not cheap. It's quite fair."
  • "The price is very fair to the customer."
  • "...the licensing needs to be improved. All the product features we need are there. It's just a matter of the complexity and the different offerings and trying to figure things out."
  • "The pricing and licensing fees are okay."
  • "Because we do see the value of what it's bringing, I think they have priced it well."
  • "The solution is highly affordable; I believe we pay $2 or $3 per endpoint. It's significantly cheaper than the competitors on the market."
  • More Cisco Secure Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We have a bundle where the price includes all Microsoft products."
  • "The solution comes as a part of Windows 10 and it is covered under its license."
  • "For most people, the price of the license is not something that they have to worry about."
  • "It is free. It is included in Windows 10."
  • "There is no license needed, the solution comes with Microsoft Windows."
  • "There is not a license required for this particular solution."
  • "Microsoft Defender is an expensive product in my country."
  • "The normal, standalone model, is not expensive, but the enterprise model that includes the bundle with email and some web protection, is a bit more expensive."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature is signature-based malware detection.
    Top Answer:Licensing fees are on a yearly basis and I am happy with the pricing.
    Top Answer:The GUI needs improvement, it's not good. There are false positives in emails. At times, the emails are blocked and detected as malware when they are not. They should work on some of the signatures… more »
    Top Answer: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-based… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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 but… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    19,712
    Comparisons
    11,210
    Reviews
    13
    Average Words per Review
    1,069
    Rating
    8.6
    Views
    77,794
    Comparisons
    61,656
    Reviews
    116
    Average Words per Review
    768
    Rating
    8.1
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cisco AMP for Endpoints
    Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
    Learn More
    Overview

    Cisco Secure Endpoint is a cloud-managed endpoint security solution that provides advanced protection against viruses, malware, and other cyber threats by detecting, preventing, and responding to threats. Cisco Secure Endpoint is managed online via a web-based management console and can be deployed on a variety of platforms. It protects endpoints, networks, emails, and web traffic.

    In a world of evolving threats, it’s necessary to put security above everything. Cisco Secure Endpoint provides you with the scope, scale, and capabilities to attain effective security with its integrated portfolio and industry-leading threat intelligence. Cisco Secure Endpoint continuously tracks and analyzes files and file activities across your systems - both remote and on premises - and compares these events to other events that occurred before or during past attacks. If a file exhibits malicious behavior, the tool sends an alert which enables you to stop a potential threat from succeeding.

    Key Capabilities of Cisco Secure Endpoint

    • Multi-layered protection: Cisco Secure Endpoint combines behavioral analytics, machine learning, and signature-based techniques to prevent threats from compromising your endpoints.

    • Powerful EDR capabilities: Reduce attack surface using advanced endpoint and extended detection and response, threat hunting, and endpoint isolation.

    • Dynamic malware analysis: Identify and block attacks in real time.

    • Simplified investigations: Advanced search capabilities help you get the information you need about your endpoints fast.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Cisco Secure Endpoint stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to enable developers to easily secure their endpoints with one single operation using its management console and its advanced alerting techniques.

    Tim C., an IT manager at Van Der Meer Consulting, writes, "The solution makes it possible to see a threat once and block it everywhere across all endpoints and the entire security platform. It has the ability to block right down to the file and application level across all devices based on policies, such as, blacklisting and whitelisting of software and applications. This is good. Its strength is the ability to identify threats very quickly, then lock them and the network down and block the threats across the organization and all devices, which is what you want. You don't want to be spending time working out how to block something. You want to block something very quickly, letting that flow through to all the devices and avoiding the same scenario on different operating systems."

    Wouter H., a technical team lead network & security at Missing Piece BV, notes, "Any alert that we get is an actionable alert. Immediately, there is information that we can just click through, see the point in time, what happened, what caused it, and what automatic actions were taken. We can then choose to take any manual actions, if we want, or start our investigation. We're no longer looking at digging into information or wading through hundreds of incidents. There's a list which says where the status is assigned, e.g., under investigation or investigation finished. That is all in the console. It has taken away a lot of the administration, which we would normally be doing, and integrated it into the console for us."

    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a complete endpoint security solution that delivers preventative protection, post-breach detection, automated investigation, and response. With Defender for Endpoint, you have: 

    Agentless, cloud powered - No additional deployment or infrastructure. No delays or update compatibility issues. Always up to date. 

    Unparalleled optics - Built on the industry’s deepest insight into Windows threats and shared signals across devices, identities, and information. 

    Automated security - Take your security to a new level by going from alert to remediation in minutes—at scale. 

    To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.
    Offer
    Learn more about Cisco Secure Endpoint
    Learn more about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
    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
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company14%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Government10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Government9%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Government9%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise46%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise55%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business40%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise43%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise56%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Secure Endpoint vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Endpoint vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    688,618 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Secure Endpoint is ranked 6th in EPP (Endpoint Protection for Business) with 13 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in EPP (Endpoint Protection for Business) with 118 reviews. Cisco Secure Endpoint is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Endpoint writes "Makes it possible to see a threat once and block it across all endpoints and your entire security platform". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint writes "Enables ingestion of events directly into your SIEM/SOAR, but requires integration with all Defender products to work optimally". Cisco Secure Endpoint is most compared with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, Carbon Black CB Defense and Symantec Endpoint Security, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Sophos Intercept X, Symantec Endpoint Security, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete and Fortinet FortiClient. See our Cisco Secure Endpoint vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.

    See our list of best EPP (Endpoint Protection for Business) vendors and best EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) vendors.

    We monitor all EPP (Endpoint Protection for Business) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.