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Digital Guardian vs MetaDefender comparison

 

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

Digital Guardian
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
32nd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (24th), Endpoint Encryption (14th), Mobile Data Protection (6th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (61st)
MetaDefender
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
37th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (37th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (38th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Digital Guardian is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MetaDefender is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Digital Guardian1.4%
MetaDefender0.9%
Other97.7%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Mubeen - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Enterprise data protection has supported regulatory compliance and integrates with classification tools
In terms of functionality, many features are valuable in Digital Guardian, as the first thing for most customers is that they are using solutions such as Boldon James and Titus, which fall under the classification side, and Digital Guardian can easily integrate with this data classification solution and has a very granular level of configuration and policy tuning. Digital Guardian's data protection policies are indeed useful for my clients. Regarding Digital Guardian, I find it to be a very good solution, and in fact, it is an enterprise-level solution that has very tight integration with most of the products, with Fortra but also with others.
Eido Ben Noun - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Architect at Diffiesec
Multi‑engine detection has significantly improved secure file transfers and threat prevention
Some feedback indicated that it takes too much time to configure certain policies because there are many options. Some people appreciate this because you can configure anything, but I believe MetaDefender should have a wizard or general policies that can be used for 80 percent of customers. I use the expanded file type and archive coverage feature sometimes, especially for customers who try to scan large archives with the deep scan capabilities of OPSWAT and Deep CDR. This provides full protection because it scans every single file, but sometimes it takes too long. When discussing CAB files or archives for patching or server updates and BIOS updates and operating system updates, the scanning process takes too long, and it was difficult for customers who sometimes decided not to scan because the scanning time was excessive. I use the reporting and audit visibility features. Some capabilities are lacking in reporting because we do not have full statistics that are easy for users to understand. If something requires checking and then referring to documentation to understand it, that is too much for most users. When looking at one of the statistics, you can see how many files have been scanned and then you see a number out of 500 or a different number if you change it. It is not a number of files or scan processes; it is a number of files inside a file. When you scan a PowerPoint presentation file, for example, it counts as forty different files because of all the sub-files. I understand from customers that when they look at the visualization data or statistics, they do not understand what is happening there. Most customers I see do not use the file-based vulnerability assessment feature. It has some good results about vulnerabilities, but I am not certain if it is that helpful because many organizations, when they deploy a file and see that there are vulnerabilities, still deploy it because it is part of the code. It can produce results, but those results do not cause any action. Many products have something more advanced than vulnerabilities and static scoring. They have tools that can inform you about a vulnerability, whether the vulnerability is exploitable, if it is weaponized, and if someone can use this vulnerability in your environment. The file-based vulnerability feature works, but for most people, they do not take any action based on the results or block files because of file-based vulnerabilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has been scalable."
"The feature we call desktop recording is the most valuable aspect of the solution. Not only can we collect data from the user's usage, but we also capture his screenshots when he is trying to steal the data."
"It can scale from 100 to 10,000. There's no problem with the scalability."
"Regarding Digital Guardian, I find it to be a very good solution, and in fact, it is an enterprise-level solution that has very tight integration with most of the products, with Fortra but also with others."
"I like the solution's adaptive inspection and container inspection."
"In Digital Guardian, they have the cloud correlation servers that give you visibility work like EBR and the correlation server works very well for security analysis."
"The technical support is really terrific."
"The most valuable feature of Digital Guardian is its reputation. They have scored high on the Gartner Magic Quadrant."
"OPSWAT is the best alternative."
"I like the simplicity, the way it works out of the box. It's pretty easy to run and configure. The integration of the network devices with the ICAP server was easily done."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the workflow, to get all the rules and policies set up, be less complicated."
"Some features on Mac and Linux are not complete currently. For example, some device control features haven't been transferred over to the other systems. If they could have their Windows features also available on Mac and Linux, that would be perfect. Some of our customers have a Mac environment for their RD environment. Having the solution fully capable of handling everything in a Mac environment is crucial."
"The solution has complexities around policy creation and deployment."
"The room for improvement with Digital Guardian is that it will be better with the Linux agent because it is the only DLP solution for Linux workstations. It still needs to upgrade the agents to the latest version for the Linux kernel."
"When considering potential areas for improvement, it may be beneficial for Digital Guardian to optimize its processes and reduce the computational demands on the system, particularly with regard to high CPU usage. Although Digital Guardian offers numerous benefits, it can consume a substantial amount of RAM and CPU power."
"Digital Guardian is an excellent solution but our experience with the partner has been the most horrible experience we have ever had with any partner."
"If the client uses Windows 10 or 11 and Microsoft updates the operating system's version, Digital Guardian must update their product to match compatibility."
"There are a lot of issues with the current version of the Endpoint agent. It's not stable, it's resource-consuming, and there are some performance issues. If they could improve the stability of the agent it would be great."
"Some capabilities are lacking in reporting because we do not have full statistics that are easy for users to understand."
"The documentation is not well written, and I often need to talk with support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If I compare Digital Guardian with Symantec, the license cost is lower, but McAfee can be cheaper than Digital Guardian. It depends on how many licenses you plan to buy and how big the project is. The cost is not so high as Symantec, but not as cheap as McAfee. They can easily sell the solution for price."
"Digital Guardian has both, subscription and perpetual licenses, but I think when everything (all technologies) will go to the cloud they will only offer subscriptions."
"I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten because Digital Guardian is expensive."
"The price of Digital Guardian is on the higher end compared to other vendors."
"The cost was around $300,000."
"The price of Digital Guardian is expensive."
"We bought a three-year license, and that was pretty expensive. We agreed that it was really worth buying. It could be cheaper, but we understand that quality comes at a price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Healthcare Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Large Enterprise3
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Digital Guardian?
Regarding points for improvement, from a technical aspect, I do not see any suggestions that have come to my notice, but it is an enterprise-level product, and the issue is that it works only with ...
What is your primary use case for Digital Guardian?
The main use case for Digital Guardian is for endpoint DLP, as it is the product for endpoint-level DLP and is one of the core requirements for many enterprises that have to follow compliance, so t...
What advice do you have for others considering Digital Guardian?
I would recommend Digital Guardian to other users, as I mentioned, we have to see the client's existing environment, and since we are not bound to sell Digital Guardian, we are open to selling even...
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Also Known As

No data available
OPSWAT MetaDefender, MetaDefender Core
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

The Fifth Avenue Theatre, Jabil Circuit
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Proofpoint and others in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.