ConnectWise SIEM vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

ConnectWise SIEM vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

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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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ConnectWise SIEM is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.6%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint	5.6%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks	3.7%
ConnectWise SIEM	0.8%
Other	89.9%

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH

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.

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reviewer2711757

Cyber Security Software Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Automated alerting and reporting excel while cost and feature limitations remain

I find automation to be one of the best and most valuable features of the product. Machine learning is incorporated into the solution, though AI is a broader term that I wouldn't apply here. I haven't personally explored AI yet, but I will investigate it. Machine learning functions more as automation in my experience, as there's no training involved yet. I want to conduct R&D on another project with Wazuh to determine how to capture usage, for example, tracking user logins and time spent. This is where I need to implement machine learning. Additionally, the extraction of GeoIP adds complexity. The solution is effectively reducing incident response times in operations.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Palo Alto Networks Traps improves our security posture and lowers risk by providing next-gen methods to combat against modern threats on all the major platforms."

"It'll not slow down your system when compared to others."

"I recommend this solution to others because it is easy to manage, reliable, and overall good to use."

"The initial setup is pretty easy."

"The policy configuration is great, the granularity of policies that are available is very helpful, it is straightforward to set up, and it has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has helped lighten the load of our security analysts because it was the major tool that we were using and the one we utilized most."

"Cortex XDR is a very capable solution for protecting large networks and a lot of endpoints. It's very useful because the automation is very high, and if you combine it with the features on Palo Alto firewalls, it provides very strong protection."

"Cortex XDR features advanced threat detection capabilities."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pros

"The integration capabilities of ConnectWise SIEM are off the shelf, making it easy to buy and use; you just unpack it and use it."

"We have found the solution has great functionality and it is easy to use."

"One valuable feature of ConnectWise Fortify is the ability to add other teams and receive notifications when customers make changes or remove multi-factor authentication in Microsoft or SAP environments."

"This is a really good product, it's user-friendly and offers us safety and security."

"It performs well. The stability is seamless."

"The main features of this solution are that it handles everything by itself and is well integrated."

"It has a good return on investment, especially since we are used to paying for antivirus, and now it is part of the Windows purchase."

"The features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint that I prefer most are the detections. It just works."

"The ransomware and malware protection is the most valuable feature."

"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been leading the field in EDR, and there are so many benefits to how that is managed versus the traditional products; that's huge."

"This software is easy to use."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint pros

Cons

"It automatically detects security issues. It should be able to protect our network devices while operating autonomously."

"Based on our experience so far, its implementation is quite complex."

"We would also like to have advanced tech protection and email scanning."

"Limited remote connection."

"I would like to see them include NDR (Network Detection Response). Then it would work well with SIEM Response."

"It is not very strong in terms of endpoint management. It should have additional features like DLP, encryption, or advanced device control. Currently, Cortex is good in terms of the security of the endpoints, but it is not as good as other vendors in terms of the management of the endpoint."

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a very good product, but financially, it is very expensive, so the company should look into that area."

"The deployment is pretty hard."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks cons

"ConnectWise SIEM is primarily focused on notifications and is limited in that aspect, while Wazuh can automate the elimination process."

"ConnectWise Fortify could work on covering more areas, like phishing messages, which have become more complicated to detect."

"The manage portion of the solution is complicated and should be simplified by having different versions to meet the needs of different size companies."

"Integration with third-party vendors could be better. It would be better if it integrates with other protection solutions or other products outside of Microsoft. Nowadays, anti-virus protection doesn't really have to be planned as overall protection for your environment in terms of security. There are really different avenues that bad actors can take to wreak havoc on your machine."

"I don't think it's scalable at this moment. It is doing what it's supposed to do, but Microsoft Defender for Endpoint isn't there yet."

"Windows Firewall is integrated with Windows Defender. Over the last few days, I have had a problem with defining a wildcard on Windows Firewall. For example, I wanted to pull out the connection of my program and install a software package with a lot of executable files. I wanted to prevent it from accessing the internet. I could not select executables by using a wildcard. I had to select a single executable with its full name."

"I think Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a solution which needs a little bit more resources on the CPU side, as we detected that on some virtual machines in Azure, with the activation of Defender, the CPU utilization increases about ten percent."

"With increase of cyber threats and cybersecurity issues, I would recommend that the product be developed like an AI product with more features which can counter any threat in the coming eras."

"The most problematic part of this program is the difficult customer service."

"I wish they would extend the use of the Security Central portal, even for the free option of Defender. Because, as companies grow, it is labor intensive to manage the AV and detection part of it. For companies already subscribed to Office 365, I think this would be a good enhancement."

"If a threat actor comes in, and creates a global administrative account, they can gain access to everything and whitelist then block everything else. Having everything, including Defender, under one brand is like having all of your eggs in one basket."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."

"The cost depends on your chosen license type, like Pro or other licenses."

"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."

"I feel it is fairly priced."

"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 has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."

"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."

"The price was fine."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

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

"The solution is an open source version and was free with a paid version of Windows 10."

"Licensing fees are paid annually through a partner."

"I pay for it through the Windows Professional or Standard license. It is a one-time cost for me, and I use the same license."

"This is an expensive product and licensing for all Microsoft products is a big issue."

"We went for Microsoft Defender once we were informed that it would be part of our Office 365 package. So, we combined the licensing for the OS with Office 365. Yeah. We thought it was a good bargain."

"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is an expensive solution."

"It came with Windows."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions are best for your needs.

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909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

13%

Construction Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	46
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	54

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	82
Midsize Enterprise	45
Large Enterprise	96

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 ConnectWise Fortify?

I haven't utilized the advanced threat intelligence capabilities with ConnectWise SIEM. Advanced threat intelligence ...

What is your primary use case for ConnectWise Fortify?

I do not have experience with ConnectWise SIEM for RMM, as I mostly work on Wazuh, and I have a team that handles Con...

What advice do you have for others considering ConnectWise Fortify?

The review can be made anonymous if just my name and not the company name is used. I would assess the real-time visib...

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...

SentinelOne Singularity Endpoint vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

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Symantec Endpoint Security vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

HP Wolf Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Compared 3% of the time

Symantec Endpoint Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Download Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks product report

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Download ConnectWise SIEM product report

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Download Microsoft Defender for Endpoint product report

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps

ConnectWise Security Management, ConnectWise Fortify, Continuum Fortify, ConnectWise SIEM, ConnectWise SASE

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Palo Alto Networks

Demo not available

ConnectWise

Microsoft

Overview

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks provides advanced threat detection with AI-driven endpoint protection and seamless integration, ensuring multi-layered security and automatic threat response.

Cortex XDR is designed to safeguard endpoints against malware and suspicious activities. It offers advanced threat detection and response capabilities using behavioral analysis, AI, and machine learning. It seamlessly integrates with security infrastructures, providing endpoint security, firewall integration, and enhanced visibility in both cloud-based and on-premises environments.

What are the key features of Cortex XDR?

Advanced Threat Detection: Uses AI and machine learning for proactive threat identification.
Multi-layered Security: Combines various security measures for comprehensive protection.
Endpoint Protection: Safeguards against malware and exploits.
Behavioral Analysis: Monitors suspicious activity for early detection.
Automatic Threat Response: Automates responses to neutralize threats.

What benefits should users expect?

Ease of Use: Simplifies security management with intuitive design.
Resource Efficiency: Minimizes impact on system resources.
Integration Capabilities: Works well with existing security setups.
Reduced Analyst Workload: Automates processes to decrease manual intervention.

Organizations in diverse sectors deploy Cortex XDR to protect against malware, leveraging its advanced threat detection capabilities. Its integration with existing security infrastructures appeals to those seeking comprehensive protection in both cloud and on-premises environments, providing enhanced visibility and threat intelligence.

Palo Alto Networks

ConnectWise SIEM is a cybersecurity platform designed to enhance threat detection and response capabilities, integrating seamlessly into sophisticated IT infrastructures.

Developed to address complex cybersecurity challenges, ConnectWise SIEM offers robust monitoring and analytics, enabling businesses to detect threats faster and with greater accuracy. It combines security information and event management with advanced intelligence to create a comprehensive security solution that supports real-time analysis and immediate action.

What are the most important features of ConnectWise SIEM?

Advanced Threat Detection: Leverages machine learning to identify potential threats quickly.
Real-Time Alerts: Provides instant notifications to ensure swift response to incidents.
Comprehensive Reporting: Delivers detailed insights to inform decision-making.
Scalability: Adapts to the growing needs of any organization.
Seamless Integration: Connects effortlessly with existing IT tools and platforms.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Reduced Downtime: Minimizes disruptions with proactive threat management.
Cost Efficiency: Lowers overall security expenditure through strategic resource allocation.
Improved Compliance: Assists in meeting industry regulations with comprehensive logs and reports.
Enhanced Security Posture: Strengthens defenses with continuous monitoring and analysis.

ConnectWise SIEM is widely implemented in industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail, where data security is crucial. These sectors benefit from its capability to handle large volumes of data while maintaining regulatory compliance. Its flexibility allows customization to meet specific industry requirements, providing targeted security solutions to protect sensitive information.

ConnectWise

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides comprehensive threat protection that integrates well with current systems, offering proactive threat detection and automatic updates while reducing manual efforts.

The platform is designed for seamless integration with Microsoft products, facilitating efficient management and use. It offers proactive ransomware protection and valuable threat intelligence, crucial for timely response and increased visibility across devices. Users highlight its ability to secure endpoints from viruses and malware, integrating with Windows and Office 365 to enhance real-time detection capabilities in diverse environments, including hybrid and on-premises setups. However, enhancements are needed in Linux integration, detection accuracy, and policy implementations.

What are the key features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?

Seamless Integration: Works smoothly with existing systems and Microsoft products for easy management.
Proactive Threat Detection: Advanced monitoring to identify and mitigate threats swiftly.
Ransomware Protection: Built-in features to protect against ransomware attacks automatically.
Centralized Management: Unified platform for better device visibility and collaboration.
Threat Intelligence: Provides critical data for rapid threat response.

What benefits should be evaluated in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?

Cost-Effectiveness: Part of Windows bundles, offering comprehensive security at competitive pricing.
Time Efficiency: Reduces manual oversight with automatic updates and management ease.
Real-Time Detection: Enhanced security through seamless Office 365 and Windows integration.
Device Coverage: Supports hybrid and on-premises environments for varied digital infrastructures.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is implemented across industries for securing endpoints, relying on its deep integration with Windows and Office 365 to protect against malware and viruses. Organizations benefit from its real-time detection and comprehensive management capabilities, particularly in hybrid environments where diverse digital infrastructures need safeguarding.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank

Techvera, Syrex, Clark Integrated Technologies

Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health

ConnectWise SIEM vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint