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CrowdStrike Falcon Guardian (AIDR) vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

CrowdStrike Falcon Guardian...
Ranking in Agentic Endpoint Security
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Generative AI Security (6th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Agentic Endpoint Security
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), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2894985 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Gained AI visibility and now control sensitive data and shadow usage across our organization
The best features CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR) offers are that it tells us the token usage and provides us the capability to protect it, such as any PII data, we can mask it, block it. We can do all that within the product. The most valuable feature for my team has been the PII data because sensitive data leaving our company to the GenAIs is probably not acceptable. It gives us control. CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR) has positively impacted my organization by providing insight into all types of AI usage, LLMs, and everything under shadow AI, which allows us to protect our data and govern our policy. It has improved compliance because we can now put controls around our company policy.
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

"CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR) has positively impacted my organization by providing insight into all types of AI usage, LLMs, and everything under shadow AI, which allows us to protect our data and govern our policy."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Guardian (AIDR) has positively impacted my organization by enabling the use of AI within the company and making it much easier to allow new technologies and provide a wider range of solutions we can include within our company use."
"We really like the visibility that CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR) provides us, and I believe that in our scenario, this will add great value, both in terms of security and in terms of reliability of our customers' data."
"It is very valuable to secure AI activity through the same platform I use for endpoint, identity, cloud, and data security."
"CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR) has given us the ability to help our management team and other business stakeholders understand how AI is used."
"CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR) has positively impacted my organization by giving us visibility, and the functionalities of the features are also working as intended."
"It shows us the risky sign-ins, and if a user's password has been compromised."
"Microsoft is more integrated, more comprehensive, and Defender is part of the Microsoft operating system."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has changed significantly for the better."
"The most valuable feature is that it comes with the package, so there is no additional installation of third-party software, and it's also easy to use."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has improved a lot over the years and it is a lot better now."
"Defender for Endpoint has significantly improved our security posture."
"What I found most valuable in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is its vulnerability dashboard; it's fantastic for my clients and I."
"This solution definitely increases our security posture. When you are reviewing your existing fleet or endpoints and based on the configuration that you put out of your Defender for Endpoint, you then receive a security score from Microsoft. Depending on what rules you have configured, what policies you have deployed, and what attack surface reduction rules that you have set up and deployed, it is almost gamifying information security in the sense that you are always trying to achieve a higher score. The more hardening you perform on your endpoints, the better score you receive. This generally tends to give you a better peace of mind, but also makes you secure at the same time."
 

Cons

"Some competitors are working in different areas, covering different risks, and the product is not yet compatible with Mac OS devices, which is disappointing."
"Data visualizations are a little lacking right now with CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR)."
"CrowdStrike looks to be the market leader, but it is too early for us to say."
"Regarding improvements for CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR), the UI is not that great and is a little slower."
"I have not seen a return on investment yet as we are only two months into it."
"Its user interface (UI) can be improved. Currently, in the console, you have to dig down for certain things. They've got many different layers to get to things instead of having it all on the surface. You have to go three folds lower to get to specific functionality or click a particular option. It would be good if we can manage the console through menus and instead of three clicks, we can do things in one click. They need to change the UI and work on it in terms of a better user experience."
"If the solution could be integrated more with Defender for Cloud, to be more unified, that would help. It is good now, but even more integration could be done with Defender for Cloud. We see two different portals. If Defender for Endpoint could be ported to the CSPM, Defender for Cloud, that would make things even easier for us."
"In active mode, it's great that it gives you so much information, but it does record every keystroke so you have a lot of logs... that amount of data logging started to add up in the cost."
"The most problematic part of this program is the difficult customer service."
"A challenge is that it is not a multi-tenant solution. Microsoft's tenant is a licensed tenant. I'm an MSSP. So, I have multiple customers. In Microsoft's world, that means that I can't just buy an E5 license and give that out to all my customers. That won't work because all of the customer data resides within a single tenant in Microsoft's world. Other products—such as SentinelOne, Palo Alto Cortex, CrowdStrike, et cetera—are multi-tenant. So, I can have it at the top of the pyramid for my analyst to look into it and see all the customers, but each customer's data is separate. If the customer wants to look at what we see, they would only see their data, whereas in the Microsoft world, if I've got multiple customers connected to the same Microsoft tenant, they would see everybody else's data, which is a privacy problem in Europe. It is not possible to share the data, and it is a breach of privacy."
"We would like more customization, actually."
"It is using a large space in your memory all the time. While an antivirus will use some of your memory, if they could reduce the load of the antivirus to some extent that would be good."
"There are some areas in the proactive threats that are just overwhelming the SOC, so we've had to turn those off until we can figure out how to filter out the false positives."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comes with Windows 10, and it's free. But for you to be able to manage it in the cloud and use the console, you need to have either an Office 365 E5 subscription or a Microsoft M365 subscription. You need to buy an extra license."
"When customers haven't deployed the solution and don't have licenses, it can be expensive to start from scratch."
"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.""
"Most people don't realize M365/E5 licenses are an amazing deal. They think "Oh, it's expensive," and I'll ask, "Compared to what?" If you don't have it you will have to buy licenses for multiple products to fill the same security space that you would have gotten with the Microsoft product. Go figure out how much it costs you per product, per user, and then come back and tell me how things add up financially."
"It is free. It is included in Windows 10."
"Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs."
"We have seen ROI. Most of the other competing alternatives will cost up to around $30 per user device. We average 400 devices. Therefore, the amount that we save each year is 400 times $30."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

Company Size

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

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR)?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is an expensive proposition, but it is something that I definitely look forward to expanding on and seeing the value.
What needs improvement with CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR)?
Regarding improvements for CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR), the UI is not that great and is a little slower. ID Automate, Data Protection, and exposure management have AI sprink...
What is your primary use case for CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR)?
My main use case for CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR) is visibility and the ability to block prompt injection. One specific example of how I use it for visibility or blocking pro...
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...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

CrowdStrike Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR)
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike Falcon Guardian (AIDR) vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
920,223 professionals have used our research since 2012.