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ConnectWise SIEM vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

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

ConnectWise SIEM
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
32nd
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (29th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (20th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (21st)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
100
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of ConnectWise SIEM is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 3.2%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Giulio Valeri - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficiently monitoring and detecting suspicious activities
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. For instance, once we were connecting different parts in China, and we had to reserve resources for the blue source of the login of task no v. ConnectWise Fortify successfully mitigated the issue and monitored any suspicious activity in the Microsoft environment. Despite the inconvenience, the Microsoft environment is still active and susceptible to cyber threats. We do a lot of research and utilize ConnectWise Fortify to restart and restore the system. It's essential to have a solution like ConnectWise Fortify to protect against cyber threats.
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

"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."
"I like Defender XDR's reports and alerts. They give you updates about the latest hotfixes and zero-day vulnerabilities, which gives me all the information I need to maintain my servers."
"The best feature is probably the alert generation. When I do a security reset, the other session triggers instantly from the Defender console, and I can work on it. The policies are three times, but they are also ready to install it."
"Email protection is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender XDR."
"For technical support, I would definitely give a rating of nine out of ten."
"I like that Defender is easy to use and the alerts are all in one central location."
"My clients like Defender's file integrity monitoring. They're monitoring Windows and Linux system files."
"Microsoft 365 Defender is a stable solution."
"The integration, visibility, vulnerability management, and device identification are valuable."
 

Cons

"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."
"The message trace feature for investigating mail flow issues should add more detailed information to the summary report... if they could extend the summary report a little bit, make it more descriptive, ordinary administrators could understand what happened and that the emails failed at this or that point. That way they would know the location to go to try to correct it and to prevent it from occurring again."
"It would be beneficial to reduce the number of clicks required to navigate between blades, as the current navigation and breadcrumb system can be a bit confusing."
"When discussing the secure score, which includes overviews and recommended actions, some of these recommended actions are not applicable to us, particularly those related to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which we do not use in any of our environments."
"The tool gives inconsistent answers and crashes a lot."
"Stability could be improved by avoiding frequent changes to the interface."
"In the beginning, it's difficult to navigate the system because it is quite large. Just trying to find your way and understand how the system works can be hard. After spending quite a lot of time searching it's a lot easier, but I wish it were a bit more user-friendly when you're trying to find things."
"From a performance standpoint, improvements could be made."
"Sometimes, digging into the information and knowing where to go can be difficult. It would be better if much of that information were immediately visible, especially when looking at endpoints or users."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"It has consistently offered highly appealing academic pricing, with distinct rates for higher education and general educational purposes."
"The functionality is fantastic, but for medium and small-sized companies it's overpriced. It would be better if it were a little bit cheaper."
"We've managed to navigate it effectively through our enterprise agreement, and Microsoft's academic discounts have proven to be quite generous."
"I believe the pricing is fair and acceptable. I consider it to be reasonable and satisfactory."
"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."
"It is 15 dollars per server per month. It is worth it, but it can be costly. It depends on the company's size."
"Purchasing Microsoft Defender XDR as part of a Microsoft 365 bundle can be cost-effective, but acquiring it as a standalone product may be more expensive."
"Microsoft should provide lower-level licensing options. They should do it in such a way that even an individual could purchase a license, and it should be entirely flexible."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Wholesaler/Distributor
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

ConnectWise Security Management, ConnectWise Fortify, Continuum Fortify, ConnectWise SIEM, ConnectWise SASE
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Techvera, Syrex, Clark Integrated Technologies
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about ConnectWise SIEM vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.