Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) 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 March 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is 1.5%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.9%, down from 11.0% 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	6.9%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks	3.4%
Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)	1.5%
Other	88.2%

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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reviewer2406663

Director at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Effective risk response, easy deployment, and enhanced security

They use Datto EDR as part of the solutions that we supply Datto EDR has helped reduce overall security incident costs by fifteen percent. The ease of deployment has been good, and the responsiveness of the application to risks has been quite effective. The inclusion of web filtering would be…

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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 is the core of the security infrastructure in the environment."

"The anti-exploit is impenetrable. We chose Traps because it is the only product that we were not able to get anything past."

"What I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is that it is a comprehensive solution that contains everything the organization may need when using endpoints."

"If you are looking for security, mainly for advanced threat prevention from ransomware and malware attacks, I would recommend Cortex."

"Palo Alto is constantly adding new features."

"Stability is a primary factor, and then there's the ease of distribution and policy management; Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very easy to work with, and we're quite happy with them."

"One thing that I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, it is detecting all the suspicious or malicious binaries, and it has integration with Palo Alto Firewall."

"It is easy to use."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pros

"Datto Endpoint Detection and Response is a perfect product for endpoint security."

"The insight that the solution provides is the most valuable aspect. The security scanning they do is excellent."

"The insight that the solution provides is the most valuable aspect."

"The ease of deployment has been good."

"The most valuable feature of Datto EDR is the visibility of the endpoints."

"The EDR feature is most valuable."

"The most valuable feature is that it comes with the package, so there is no additional installation of third-party software. It's also easy to use."

"The stability keeps getting better and better."

"We have very good visibility on our endpoints. The level of information it throws back is helpful."

"The detection features are valuable, as is the fact that it is easier to port these logs into Sentinel. That is also useful for us. It is more comprehensive."

"My advice for anybody who is looking into using this product is that it's a good and easy way to secure your PC."

"The most important feature is the way it monitors the threats and blocks them. About 10 days ago, we were implementing SOC for a particular client. The SOC was not yet implemented, but they had Microsoft Defender. That organization was hit by some ransomware, but the hacker could not succeed. Because of the EDR, the hacker could not install the hacking tools. They were trying to do that, but Microsoft Defender completely blocked that. The hacker could log into the system, but they could not install anything."

"It automatically detects intrusion and malware."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint pros

Cons

"The onboarding process could be better."

"The dashboard is the area that needs to improve so that we can have the ability to drill down without having to go elsewhere to verify results."

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

"There's room for improvement with Mac device installations, which can be challenging."

"However, if you do not have Palo Alto in your environment, you are paying these additional services just for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, so it is not a cost-effective solution."

"There are some false positives. What our guys would have liked is that it would have been easier to manipulate as soon as they found a false positive that they knew was a false positive. How to do so was not obvious. Some people complained about it. The interface, the ESM, is not user-friendly."

"One thing that was missing was the integration part. Currently, they don't have out-of-box integration with IBM QRadar, or if they have the integration, the integration doesn't work well."

"The dashboard could use some significant improvement, just making it more useful with more information. It has a limited amount of information right now. It is customizable, but I'd love to see a better out-of-box dashboard."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks cons

"The inclusion of web filtering would be good."

"The deployment of the solution right now is terrible. We find it to be very bad. It could be improved enormously."

"The deployment of the solution right now is terrible. We find it to be very bad."

"The solution should allow the automation of playbooks."

"The solution could improve by having more deployment methods."

"The interface isn't necessarily intuitive to a nontechnical person. You can get stuck in the little endpoint security portal. Sometimes, if you uninstall a competitive product, the end user doesn't always know if it's running or if they're protected even though it's silently running. There could be a notification, widget, or something that's resident on the screen for at least a bit, especially if you're doing remote support. You want to talk them through it, but sometimes, we're not allowed to look at the PCs we support."

"I would like to see integrations with other products, such as Spunk and other CM solutions."

"Sometimes it is a little lacking, but for the most part, they are able to provide exactly what I need."

"The central management console should be improved because it provides limited options to configure Windows Defender."

"More integration with different platforms is an area for improvement for this product, and should be included in its next release."

"The product development team makes frequent changes that affect the stability of the solution."

"I would like the solution to be able to prevent unauthorized programs from installing and to block unauthorised URLs which is similar to web filtering product."

"Right now, the solution provides some recommendations on the dashboard but we don't have any priorities; it's a mix of all the vulnerabilities and all the security recommendations, and I would like to see some priority or categorization of high, medium, and low so that we can fix the high ones first."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Very costly product."

"This is an expensive solution."

"Every customer has to pay for a license because it doesn't work with what you get from a managed services provider."

"Cortex XDR is a costly solution."

"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."

"This is an expensive solution."

"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."

"It's way too expensive, but security is expensive. You pay for your licensing, and then you pay for someone to monitor the stuff."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

"There is an annual license to use this solution. The price of the solution can be expensive depending on the company."

"Datto Endpoint Detection and Response is not an expensive solution."

"They are now doing it on an endpoint basis. It is based on the number of endpoints, which is good."

"Currently, for us, Windows Defender is free with the purchase of Windows Server. Pricing is an important point for us when we are looking at the competitors of this solution. If we choose to go with another vendor, we will have to pay some license fees."

"The solution comes free with Microsoft Windows 10."

"As we operate in the educational sector, we are eligible for an educational discount."

"I recently switched from education to private business, and all I can say is that private business licensing from Microsoft is not cheap until you hit certain quantities or scale. That does not mean that it is not comparable to other industries. It is similar pricing, but it is still crazy to me how much you pay for a client. I feel it is high, but it is in line with other vendors."

"The licensing costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are reasonable."

"The solutions price could be cheaper."

"There is no licensing fee."

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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884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

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	44
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	47

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	81
Midsize Enterprise	40
Large Enterprise	95

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Infocyte HUNT?

The price is quite low. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it a four, meaning it is quite cheap.

What needs improvement with Infocyte HUNT?

The inclusion of web filtering would be good.

What is your primary use case for Infocyte HUNT?

They use Datto EDR as part of the solutions that we supply.

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?

I'm not too familiar with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint; it wasn't some...

SentinelOne Singularity Complete 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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Trellix Endpoint Security Platform vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Symantec Endpoint Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

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F-Secure Total vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

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Product Reports

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Download Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks product report

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)

Download Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) product report

Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) report

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Download Microsoft Defender for Endpoint product report

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps

Infocyte HUNT

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

datto

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

With Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) you can detect and respond to advanced threats. Datto EDR is an easy to use cloud based EDR solution that's designed for Managed Service Providers (MSPs).

datto

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

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank

Check Point Software, PwC, Grant Thornton, AT&T, DHL, U.S. Department of Defense

Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health

Datto Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint