No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

F-Secure Total vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

F-Secure Total
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
22nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Office 365 Protection (9th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Anti-Malware Tools
1st
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), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Agentic Endpoint Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Anti-Malware Tools category, the mindshare of F-Secure Total is 1.7%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.0%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Anti-Malware Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.0%
F-Secure Total1.7%
Other92.3%
Anti-Malware Tools
 

Featured Reviews

MS
Computer Scientist at Comune di Eraclea
Easy to setup and stable solution
It's a good product for us. The reports and notifications are very good for us.  There is room for improvement in pricing.  In future releases, I would like to see improvements in EDR protection.  So, the only thing that I would like to see in the future is EDR protection and a lower price for…
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

"It's a good product for us. The reports and notifications are very good for us."
"For securing access, USB security helps us block our USB ports and that ensures that users do not plug USB drives into their computers."
"The visibility into threats that the solution provides is pretty awesome... This is something that makes me think, "Wow, okay. If I had my own organization, I would probably get this too." It stops the threat before an employee gets phished or something gets downloaded to their computer."
"The main thing I like about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that you can integrate it with or deploy it with Intune, so it's really easy to deploy without needing to bring in any third-party solution."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ransomware and malware protection. The solution detects malware live and whenever it detects suspicious activity, it quarantines it."
"DFE organizational security posture has been a positive experience. We're a Microsoft house. It works. Once it's deployed and once it's configured, it works and our clients tend to be happy with it. I haven't really experienced anyone who has been so unsatisfied with the platform that they wanted to go a couple of different directions, that has never happened to me."
"We have very good visibility on our endpoints. The level of information it throws back is helpful."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive and scalable solution for protecting on-premises and hybrid infrastructure."
"The automatic attack disruption feature in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint works great."
 

Cons

"I would like to see in the future is EDR protection and a lower price for F-Secure Total."
"The frequency of the patching, and the frequency of the updates, are not included with the free version."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could improve by making the reporting better."
"There is a lot of information to take in, and the portals tend to change quickly due to the fast-paced nature of the industry."
"I would like MDE to have the ability to isolate a certain amount of time on the timeline."
"They should bring back the feature of a dedicated proxy device for communication to the cloud. As of now, all the agents are required to send the logs directly to the cloud. There should be a solution where you can put a proxy and all the logs are consolidated, like a forwarder."
"Their support is okay. We get support through Insight, which is also our CSP."
"There could be an increase in security for the solution."
"Microsoft Defender in the basic form is not very useful for managing the security environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We can easily scale and improve security, but the cost is high for us."
"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."
"The base price for an E5 license, which includes Enterprise Mobility + Security E5, is $57 per user per month."
"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."
"The solution is free and comes with Windows."
"We pay a yearly license for Microsoft Defender. We also have a support contract with them."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable and fair."
"The E5 license is the one that I recommend because it comes with Cloud App Security, which is a good thing to have on top of Microsoft Defender."
"The cost is competitive and reasonable because most of the expense is log analytics, storage, and data consumption and ingestion. These things can be throttled and controlled, so they are highly flexible. Defender has a lot of advantages over competing products."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Anti-Malware Tools solutions are best for your needs.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
28%
Computer Software Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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

F-Secure Elements for Microsoft 365
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 Microsoft, SentinelOne, OPSWAT and others in Anti-Malware Tools. Updated: October 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.