No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

Why PeerSpot?
Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 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 Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
36th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (35th), Vulnerability Management (48th), Application Control (10th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (12th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (17th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (6th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Agentic Endpoint Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.4%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint5.4%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber0.8%
Other90.0%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

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.
Gary Herbstman - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Byte Solutions Inc.
Experienced reduced alert fatigue with streamlined notifications
We use Blackpoint Cyber MDR for our higher-end clients who need a higher level of control over security We get a deeper look into security related events that are otherwise difficult find and analyze. Security operations does a good job of weeding out the noise. I appreciate that there are…
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

"We use it for malicious connections from malicious websites, to identify payloads that might be inside the traffic, to identify malicious processes or bugs that are running on the network, and any activities that tend to lead to data infiltration."
"It blocks malicious files, prevents attacks, and doesn't require many updates because it is a very light application."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning."
"The anti-exploit is impenetrable. We chose Traps because it is the only product that we were not able to get anything past."
"Cortex XDR is a simple platform that's easy for administrators and users. You have a lot of flexibility to change or customize the features."
"We switched because there were a lot of added features with Palo Alto that Check Point didn't have, and it was an upgrade for us."
"The most valuable aspect of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks for me is its integration with AI detection, where we get to know the behavioral detection based on users, traffic patterns, and different services that we consume."
"It can automatically correlate events and logs, which is very helpful for an IT administrator. It can correlate different kinds of malware activities over a network, agent, or host system. You do not need to do it manually. It is a good feature. It is also a user-friendly solution. We have deployed it on the cloud because our space does not provide any flexibility for on-premises deployment, but Palo Alto has added some flexibility to install it on-premises. It must be like the same Cortex XDR agent for all the VPN services, web filtering services, and everything else."
"The solution is all encompassing and can incorporate email monitoring."
"On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the overall solution as a ten."
"I appreciate that there are people behind the scenes sorting out valuable alerts from those that are not, so I only get alerts when they are real."
"On my end, the most valuable feature of this solution is that I can install it and forget about it. After that, their SOC team takes over and they only call me when there's a problem."
"The solution also watches over Microsoft 365 and keeps a copy of logs."
"Their SOC is phenomenal in not monitoring and responding and taking action."
"One feature I like the most is vulnerability management, which shows any vulnerable software or OS present in my environment. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides a complete overview and also recommends the steps to mitigate the vulnerabilities or threats. Most of the other antivirus or EDR solutions generally don't provide vulnerability management. It is an add-on that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides."
"Provides good vulnerability assessment."
"It provides peace of mind with really good pricing."
"The comprehensiveness of Microsoft threat-protection products is great."
"We like that it has a free version available."
"Microsoft Defender has been around for many years, and since Windows 10, they've really ramped it up, and it has gotten a lot better."
"The solution comes with SIEM-ingestion-ready features for extensive visibility, automation, and integration, including advanced hunting, threats and vulnerability management, embedded simulation for end-to-end testing, ransomware prevention (Controlled Folder Access), and Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rules."
"One of the best features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is called Threat and Vulnerability Management, TVM, which provides real-time visibility of vulnerabilities and misconfiguration at our endpoint level and helps prioritize and remediate based on risk information."
 

Cons

"Cortex does not offer an on-premises solution. However, some customers would prefer not to be on the cloud. It would be ideal if it could offer something on-prem as well."
"Additionally, I think the price is very high, and if it can be adjusted, I believe it will be a very good solution."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see more UI improvements. Their UI is a bit basic. When we are speaking about Palo Alto Networks they are the big company, so they can improve the UI a little bit. The UI, the reports, the log system can all be improved."
"There is a severe gap in functionality between Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For example all folder restriction settings are Windows only. Traps 5.0+ does not have SAML / LDAP integration."
"I have run into some detection issues with Cortex XDR. It needs to be better at detection of internal attacks."
"The solution eats memory of the computer, unlike anything I've ever seen."
"The product's pricing could be better."
"The solution does not tie into other EDR products like CyberArk or CrowdStrike but that might be more useful."
"While I am very satisfied with the service, supporting additional platforms, particularly Linux support, would be a beneficial improvement."
"The interface could be more intuitive. More transparency is needed in the interface as a lot of details are hidden behind the scenes, making them difficult or impossible to access."
"The feature we keep asking for is a vulnerability scan."
"Some texts seem to report items as normal too quickly."
"The interface could be more intuitive."
"The solution could use improvement on the interface."
"The scalability could be improved - I would rate it between a seven and an eight."
"It's not quite a mature solution just yet. It needs more time to grow and develop."
"The product should reduce updates since it is hard to keep up."
"Some executive reporting is inefficient, and we're looking into ways to improve it."
"The central management console should be improved because it provides limited options to configure Windows Defender."
"When you get the right person that knows what you are asking the first time, it is excellent. However, when you get someone who may be new or just switched into that role, it can be less effective."
"Microsoft has some creative accounting when they promise an SLA of 99.99%. But it is generally good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"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 is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"This is an expensive solution."
"When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"The pricing is in line with other products."
"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 solutions price could be cheaper."
"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."
"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.""
"AV solutions are pretty expensive because they are necessary, not just for protection, but many businesses need them to comply with regulatory bodies and receive accreditation. We recently purchased an E5 license, which gives us access to the entire Microsoft suite. I would say the pricing is competitive; most tools of this kind are similarly priced. There are minor differences between the competitors, but they aren't spectacularly different. Defender for Endpoint makes sense because all our solutions are in the same place, paid for with a single license. The subscription price is around £50 per user per month, though it may have increased slightly."
"Licenses depend upon what you are looking for and what kind of security do you want to implement. There are costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. When we used to buy Symantec, we used to spend on 100 licenses. We used to spend approximately $2,700 for those many licenses, and they came in packs. To add one more license, I had to buy a pack with a minimum of 10 licenses. I had to spend on nine extra licenses because I can't get a single license, whereas when we go for Microsoft, we can get as many licenses as we want. If I have 100 users today, and tomorrow, I have 90 users, I can release my 10 licenses next month. With any other software vendor, you buy licenses for one year, and you have to stick with that. If today you have 100 licenses, and tomorrow, you have 50, you have already paid for one year's license. You can't go back and tell them that I don't require these 50 licenses because I have lost my 50 users, but with Microsoft Defender, licensing is on a monthly basis. It gives you both options. You can go yearly and save on it, or you can go monthly. You will, again, save on it. It is very fair everywhere."
"When customers haven't deployed the solution and don't have licenses, it can be expensive to start from scratch."
"I got it with the Microsoft Windows license."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions are best for your needs.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise97
 

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 needs improvement with Blackpoint Cyber MDR?
While I am very satisfied with the service, supporting additional platforms, particularly Linux support, would be a b...
What is your primary use case for Blackpoint Cyber MDR?
The solution serves as a baseline security offering. We have implemented it for every client that we do business with.
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
Blackpoint Cyber Managed Detection + Response, Blackpoint Cyber Managed Detection and Response
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
CoreRecon, Peerless Tech Solutions, Lorien Health
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about CompassOne by Blackpoint Cyber vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.