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Cisco SecureX [EOL] vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Cisco SecureX [EOL]
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender XDR
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Alon K - PeerSpot reviewer
Gives our customers visibility and they don't have to go multiple management consoles anymore
One of the examples is related to forensics. The forensics are amazing because when you have enrichment, and the solutions talk with each other, when you need it, you have the ability to know everything in the organization: when, why, whatever. With just one click you have information from email, from the endpoint, from the web. Let's say that tomorrow morning, you have a ransom[ware] attack in your organization and you would like to know from which email it came, or where the customer saved the file, even though the incident didn't occur at the same moment. With SecureX, you have Cisco Threat Response inside. [With] one click, you get all of the flow. That's amazing value. That also releases resources for our customers. The customers don't have to connect many systems and try to register the event on each system, or to go to the SIEM and do a correlation. That's the one-stop shop for the customers, and that's amazing.
Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most beneficial feature of Cisco SecureX for cybersecurity efforts is its integration with other Cisco solutions and the environment. This sets it apart, as its APIs and overall integration capabilities are very strong. Additionally, its detection capabilities are commendable."
"I like that I don't have to jump around to five different products and log into five different places to view the data that it returns."
"It has evolved a lot, just that monitoring piece to the current Orchestrator piece. The additional analytics are there. They now have something called Insight, which can basically take data from Microsoft Azure AD and Intune to give us information about our endpoints. This is detailed information about the endpoints, from Secure Endpoint and all these different products. So, it is just constantly evolving. Every time that it evolves, we have more information with more visibility. There are more features that we have that just make everything so much easier, and it is in one place. I don't have to keep going back and forth. I don't have to go to Secure Endpoint and ISE to get the data. I don't have to go to Intune on Microsoft to get the information. It is all in one place."
"SecureX takes all the separate pieces of security within your company, adds in intelligence from different sites and services on the internet, and makes them work together."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to manage all the applications and visibility. For example, if there is malware, spam, or another component that wants to attack the company in my servers, network, or applications, then SecureX will react to the problem."
"The forensics are amazing because when you have enrichment, and the solutions talk with each other, when you need it, you have the ability to know everything in the organization: when, why, whatever."
"The automation and orchestration tools are the most valuable features."
"SecureX enables us to have all the threat intelligence and threat event data in one place."
"The integration with other Microsoft solutions is the most valuable feature."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is a complete package of different Defender solutions, including Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, Defender for Cloud, and Sentinel SIEM, among others."
"My clients like Defender's file integrity monitoring. They're monitoring Windows and Linux system files."
"The best feature is threat hunting. There are a lot of other features I like, such as the alert mechanism. The chain alert mechanism has a huge impact. It combines all the alerts into one incident and automatically correlates them with AI."
"I rate Microsoft Defender XDR 10 out of 10."
"Among the most valuable features are the alert timeline, the alert story, which is pretty detailed. It gives us complete insight into what exactly happened on the endpoint. It doesn't just say, "Malware detected." It tells us what caused that malware to be detected and how it was detected. It gives us a complete timeline from beginning to end."
"The Endpoint Manager is incredible; it has a very straightforward interface and is exceedingly easy to use. Pulling out and deploying different tags or resources is a simple task across various departments with different levels of security. The notifications are also simple and satisfying; it's great to see the bubble informing us which devices are compliant and which are waiting to update."
"The most valuable feature is the DLP because that's where we can have an added data protection layer and extend it not just to emails but to the documents that users are working on. We can make sure that sensitive data is tagged and flagged if unauthorized parties are using it."
 

Cons

"Enhancing automation capabilities could further improve the product."
"For us, the biggest sticking point is that the product is not being designed for multi-tenancy use at present, from an MSP perspective."
"The playbooks provided with the product are great, although I would appreciate having more playbooks available. Threats are constantly evolving, so having access to updated playbooks is crucial."
"The automation and orchestration could be simpler. It could be that all the other parts are that easy to use so that these stick out as a negative, but that's the trickiest part for us. The workflows within the orchestration are just a bit more difficult."
"I'm not sure that I would call it a bug, but sometimes the solution is a little slow."
"They could expand into more areas. The more third-parties that we have tied into it, the better. The capabilities are there. As they just continue to involve the product, the more things that you can look into, then the more analytics that you can get. Also, the more data that we can get, then the better off we will be."
"what's missing right now is the multi-tenant capability."
"The front-end work controls the new algorithm and the firewall rules. The search feature of these rules could be improved."
"I personally have not seen much evidence of how Defender can enhance the story of zero trust for enterprises."
"Offboarding latency should be reduced. Even after a device has been successfully offboarded using a particular offboarding script, it still shows up as onboarded."
"The licensing process needs improvement and clarification, as it is currently difficult to understand which features are licensed to which users."
"The data recovery and backup could be improved."
"Stability could be improved by avoiding frequent changes to the interface."
"The only problem I find is that the use cases are built-in. There is no template available that you can modify according to your organization's standards. What they give is very generic, the market standard, but that might not be applicable to every organization."
"The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow, to the point that I am considering not renewing my unified support contract."
"We should be able to use the product on devices like Apple, Linux, etc."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is free. It can't get any better than that."
"The pricing is competitive, especially for education institutions. Licensing can be a little bit difficult to navigate, especially with resellers with Cisco, but for us it has been pretty easy."
"It would be nice if they had a different pricing model. Most of our budget for projects goes towards Cisco."
"It comes free with all Cisco products. So, it is a good price."
"You can spend less money for another solution, but if you really want to have a good solution you have to pay. We are happy that we are getting such a good solution for what we are spending."
"For the value you get, the pricing of the solution is excellent."
"The pricing is the best part of this solution. It is free if you buy Umbrella or Duo Security. It is also a good solution."
"The product is absolutely free to any customer. As such, the only thing one must keep in mind is that as long as he already has one Cisco security product, irregardless of what that product is, SecureX is available for free."
"I believe that the pricing of the licensing is fair."
"It has consistently offered highly appealing academic pricing, with distinct rates for higher education and general educational purposes."
"Sometimes 365 Defender is expensive, but it can be moderate, depending on the organization's size and the license type. We're satisfied with the cost because it gives us a product that protects our entire environment with DLP. To compromise some cost, of course, we are to complete the most secure environment."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is expensive."
"Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft."
"All I can say again is the E5 gives you all the capabilities that it offers. It also gives Office 365 and one terabyte of storage. All in all, the E5 license model makes sense. There are some people who say it's quite costly, but rather than paying different vendors, it makes sense to go all in with Microsoft if you've got that licensing. From that perspective, it's cost-effective, but I can't comment much on that."
"Microsoft purposely makes its license combinations complex and includes combinations like Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 E5, Office 365 E3, Office 365 E5, and Office 365 E1, so you get confused. Microsoft tries to sell you a bundle of a lot of things together."
"The bundling of software makes it easier to manage our setup, but Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
36%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
There is nothing I can think of at the moment that needs improvement. I am a contractor and finishing up soon, so I haven't encountered any issues requiring enhancements.
 

Also Known As

Kenna.AppSec, Kenna.VI
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NHS, Rackspace, UNC Pembroke, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Missing Piece
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
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