Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL] vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

The compared Cisco and Microsoft solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #2 in EPP , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 7.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytic...

Read 7 Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL] reviews

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Defender for Endp...

Read 210 Microsoft Defender for Endpoint reviews

33,374 Views
17,688 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytic...

Microsoft Defender for Endp...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL] and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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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 Secure Cloud Analytic...

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Defender for Endp...

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

210

Ranking in other categories

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)

Featured Reviews

Sudhanshu Pandey

Security Analyst at Orange España

Efficiently generates alerts for suspicious activities and scales easily

There are two areas of improvement. Firstly, extend the log retrieval limit to at least three months. For example, there is a limit on the number of log messages that can be received. So, I would like to expand the log retrieval limit. And another thing, if we migrate these things to an event or send us an email if there is any critical event, I would like to configure these things on the initial launch. Because if a system is compromised, there will be a lot of data movement from one post to another post to the outside. Then, we should also get an alert on email as well. We have since we have integrated these things. But a direct email for critical alerts should be there. So, I would like to enhance the critical event configuration. If a new user wants to learn how it should work, how policies work, and where we can configure policies, there should be some learning material for this product.

Read full review

Robert Arbuckle

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is scalable because it is on the cloud."

"It tells you if there is any communication going to command and control servers, or if there is any traffic that violates your internal policy, or if any data hoarding is happening where data is being dumped from your machine to outside of the environment. It provides all such meaningful reports to help you understand what's happening."

"The logs in Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud are very good when doing the API integration in the team. It is able to give you important information for the correlations."

"When it comes to scalability, there's no size limit. It varies based on licenses and requirements."

"The tool's best feature is its ability to monitor network traffic. It will also inform users whether the traffic generated by a network is legitimate. The tool helps to capture and analyze the network traffic."

"Monitoring the traffic, making sure you have the visibility."

"The product helps me to see malware."

"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive and scalable solution for protecting on-premises and hybrid infrastructure."

"The installation is straightforward."

"We apply the DLP policies across a range of endpoints and it is very accurate when reporting vulnerabilities, including those in email attachments."

"The best feature is the fact that for certain mobiles you can control your corporate profiles versus your personal profiles. That is amazingly important. Apple just supported the separation of corporate and personal profiles, whereas Android has been doing that for quite some time... Because Android supports that, if an Android phone is lost or stolen, I can wipe out all the corporate-related information from that phone and not touch the personal side. I can separate the apps and I can separate the ability to cut and paste between apps."

"The whole bundle of the product, which is similar to other Microsoft products, is valuable. Ten years ago, you had third-party stuff for different things. You had one solution for email archiving and another third-party one for something else. Nowadays, Microsoft Office covers all the stuff that was formerly covered by third-party solutions. It is the same with antivirus. The functionality is just basic. You have the scanning, and then you also have a kind of cloud-based protection and reporting about your environment. With Microsoft Security Center, you have a complete overview of your environment. You know the software inventory, and you have security recommendations. You can not only see that the antivirus is up to date; you can also see where are the vulnerabilities in your system. Microsoft Security Center tells you where you have old, deprecated software and what kind of CVEs are addressed. It's really cool stuff."

"Defender for Endpoint has significantly reduced our SOC team's workload by automating threat detection and response, allowing them to focus on other critical projects."

"Defender is a part of Windows; you just need to enable it. There is no need to install anything."

"The performance of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been a valuable feature."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint pros

Cons

"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud could improve the graphical user interface. It could be a more user-friendly graphical user interface. so that. Not everybody's a cyber security professional, most of the customers that I deal with are not very skilled. The terms that they use in the solution are quite understandable for a normal CIO."

"When I used to work on it, I just didn't see anything new happening for about a year and a half. Providing newer data and newer reports constantly would help. There should be more classifications and more interesting data."

"If we migrate these things to an event or send us an email if there is any critical event, I would like to configure these things on the initial launch. Because if a system is compromised, there will be a lot of data movement from one post to another post to the outside. Then, we should also get an alert on email as well. We have since we have integrated these things. But a direct email for critical alerts should be there. So, I would like to enhance the critical event configuration."

"The initial setup of Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is complex."

"The initial setup is a bit complex in terms of deployment and configuration"

"The product needs to improve its user-friendliness. It is very tricky and you need to study it before using the standard functionalities."

"The product's price is high."

"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could provide us with a more holistic approach, such as collaboration. They can provide us with an environment from where we can manage all the endpoints from one central location, such as overall management."

"The log searches for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are pretty difficult to navigate. It needs a better UI or more intuitive search and filter mechanisms to make it easy to get through and filter through all the data logs."

"Where we stand right now, compared to other products that are there in the market, they still have to work on their threat intelligence and the overall maturity of detecting the malware."

"My main issue with the tool is that there are too many menus. This causes a steep learning curve for those without training or unfamiliar with Defender for Endpoint. From an end-user perspective, the solution is there on the machine and does its job; it works seamlessly. However, as a security professional dealing with it behind the scenes, the learning curve can be steep, but not too steep. Still, it has taken some of my analysts up to a month to get familiar with the product."

"What I think can be improved on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that the whitelisting abilities are pitiful, and the understanding of how you go about doing that by the support techs that you speak with is really bad, so that I think is an area where Microsoft Defender for Endpoint needs improvement; the understanding and support of that and what actually works is pretty buggy."

"The detection of viruses could be a little bit better."

"The system can always be simplified and have a better integration check. More detailed reports would be good. When it does the integrated check, it just shows if the system is okay but I want to know what happened."

"Defender for Endpoint is complex, and the documentation is detailed. At the same time, it's hard to navigate sometimes."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is an expensive enterprise solution."

"The solution is quite expensive."

"The price of Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud is expensive."

"The license for Microsoft Windows covers Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."

"Even if you are not registered as a not-for-profit, the offering that they have is definitely worth consideration. This is in the sense that the E5 stack just gives you so many benefits. You get your entire productivity suite through Microsoft 365 apps. You get all your security and identity protection. You get the Defender for Endpoint and Defender for Identity. You get the cloud access security broker as well. You get Azure Active Directory Premium P2, which gives you so many good things that you can configure and deploy. You don't have to configure them on day one, but you have access to so many different tools that will protect your data, security, endpoints, and identities that you could build out a security strategy 18 months long, and slowly work your way through it, based on what you have available to you through your license."

"I'm not too familiar with costs as I'm an architect, though I know about online pricing, as I help two teams with online purchasing and procurement. Nowadays, everyone has an enterprise agreement, such as an E3 license, which we provide to our customers."

"The license for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is included in the license for the Microsoft Windows operating system."

"We mostly use Microsoft products. We use Office 365, and we use Azure. We're also a Microsoft partner. So, the licensing was much cheaper for us, and at the same time, a lot of the features that we were looking for were included in Defender."

"We have the E5 security license, and the solution comes with that."

"The E5 license is the one that I recommend because it comes with Cloud App Security, which is a good thing to have on top of Microsoft Defender."

"The price was a problem for me three years ago, but they improved their E3, E5, and a la carte licensing. In other words, you have to get all of E5. That used to be a problem because you had E3, Defender, and guardrails, but you needed an E5 license to get the management suite and the analytics. It's more flexible now. You can switch from a la carte to the entire suite when it starts to make sense. It's becoming more economically competitive to go that route."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

University

10%

Performing Arts

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	1
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	80
Midsize Enterprise	40
Large Enterprise	92

Questions from the Community

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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...

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

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Comparisons

Splunk User Behavior Analytics vs Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL]

Compared 17% of the time

Palo Alto Networks Advanced Threat Prevention vs Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

Vectra AI vs Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

VMware Carbon Black Endpoint vs Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL]

Compared 12% of the time

Darktrace vs Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

More Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL] Competitors

HP Wolf Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Compared 4% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Compared 4% of the time

Symantec Endpoint Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Compared 4% of the time

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Compared 4% of the time

F-Secure Total vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL]

March 2026

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL] report

Download Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

February 2026

Download Microsoft Defender for Endpoint product report

Also Known As

Cisco Stealthwatch Cloud, Observable Networks

Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Cisco

Microsoft

Overview

Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics is a cloud-based security solution that provides visibility and threat detection for cloud environments. It offers software mapping and automation for incident response, forensic analysis, and segmentation of IT architecture. The solution can be used on-premise or on the cloud and is used in various sectors such as insurance and government.

The logs in Cisco Secure Cloud Analytics are valuable for API integration in a team as they provide important information for correlations. The solution also offers automated incident response and integration with next-generation firewalls and antivirus solutions."

Cisco

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for organizations. It offers real-time protection against various types of cyber threats, including malware, viruses, ransomware, and phishing attacks.

With its powerful machine-learning capabilities, it can detect and block sophisticated attacks before they can cause any harm. The solution also includes endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities, allowing organizations to quickly investigate and respond to security incidents. It provides detailed insights into the attack timeline, enabling security teams to understand the scope and impact of an incident.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint also offers proactive threat hunting, allowing organizations to proactively search for and identify potential threats within their network. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft security solutions, such as Microsoft Defender XDR, to provide a unified and holistic security approach. With its centralized management console, organizations can easily deploy, configure, and monitor the security solution across their entire network.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a robust and scalable security solution that helps organizations protect their endpoints and data from evolving cyber threats.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Options, Schneider Electric, Washington University in St Louis, Gotcha, Kraft Kennedy, PartnerRe, Sumologic, Veterans United, AFGE, Agraform, Artesys, Dynamic Ideas Financials, Department of Agriculture and Commerce

Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health

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February 2026

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