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Fortinet FortiSandbox vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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

Fortinet FortiSandbox
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Threat Deception Platforms (6th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiSandbox is 5.4%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.4%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.4%
Fortinet FortiSandbox5.4%
Other88.2%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Abdelhamid Saber - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Security & Infra Technology Systems Engineer at BARQ Systems
Enhanced network security with adaptable integration and really good support
We use FortiSandbox for scanning files and images that pass through our networks. It integrates with different devices, such as five adapters and other Fortinet devices It is time-saving and more secure. It saves us from a lot of antivirus and anti-malware issues. The adapter is beneficial as it…
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

"The solution is easy to manage."
"The most valuable features for me when it comes to Fortinet FortiSandbox are the integrity of the Sandbox and the power of the analyzing tool of the solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance it offers to users is good, making it useful for us in our company."
"FortiSandbox analyzes the behavior of processes in a sandbox environment, which is useful for threat hunting. The solution has an excellent standard configuration, and you can prioritize the types of files of VMs you want to analyze. It also integrates seamlessly with other Fortinet solutions, like FortiGate, FortiMail, and FortiEMS."
"The GUI makes administration tasks straightforward."
"The adapter is beneficial as it allows integration with various devices, not just Fortinet."
"Fortinet FortiSandbox is faster than other sandbox solutions."
"It is an easily scalable solution."
"We are able to productively integrate with existing on-prem, hybrid, or cloud applications."
"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."
"Real-time detection and cloud-based delivery of detections are highly efficient."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been secure and there is zero maintenance required because it updates with Microsoft Windows."
"This software is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that it is embedded into the Windows system. Additionally, the performance is good and simple to maintain."
"Coming from an organization where the EDR wasn't strong, it has always been a case of basically searching through the information you already have and looking for something. It was basically trying to find the needle in a haystack. What the Defender platform does is that it reduces the size of the haystack, and it'll say that the needle is over here. Minutes matter, and it certainly zeros you in on the events that are concerning. It also simplifies the effort of trying to get some kind of correlation of behaviors or actions you see in the environment and confirming if something is benign or a threat."
"Defender for Endpoint is a robust solution that works well out-of-the-box."
 

Cons

"Most people are confused about how to use the right integration of the right Fortinet product."
"The area I would like this solution to be improved in is the integrations for Sandbox with AI and big data ML mechanisms. I think this would be a practical improvement."
"Fortinet FortiSandbox should improve its performance and security accuracy to keep competitive with other solutions, such as IBM."
"The reporting tools could be improved in Fortinet FortiSandbox."
"Product could include a user interface and be made simpler for customers to configure."
"Sometimes, there are issues upgrading the version of the firewall or the SD-LAN box. After we upgrade to the latest version of the software, we still have the same box. I think it's the same for every vendor."
"The integration is limited. The solution needs to offer better integration with multiple vendors."
"At least once a week we have a false alarm. This needs to be adjusted so that we get fewer of these occurrences."
"The second major area for improvement involves enhanced capabilities for different operating systems or platforms. That is, even though we have coverage for different operating systems or platforms such as Linux, we don't get all of the controls and enhanced capabilities that are available with Windows devices."
"Alerts need to be sent immediately because as it is now, you see some of them without delay and others arrive perhaps 30 minutes later, and it leaves important gaps in terms of information gathering."
"Defender is free for one year. Once that year is over, we will switch to Kaspersky."
"The product itself does not necessarily need improvement, but the support and implementation of the product are the disaster cases."
"With regards to the interface, a challenge I found was that there was not enough documentation on how to tune it. I had to read multiple sources on the internet to learn how to configure the tool appropriately."
"They're in the process of pulling more things together. They can continue with the integrations and provide a better way of seeing the impact of security changes, especially on the endpoint side. Before we actually flip the switch, we should be able to see the impact of security changes on the business or business applications. It would prevent breaking any business applications."
"They can improve it on the online protection front since people nowadays are moving online and working from home."
"It is inexpensive but could be cheaper like anything else."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license for Fortinet FortiSandbox depends on the use case."
"There are additional costs, which isn't included in the licensing fee."
"Fortinet FortiSandbox is a nominally priced product, so I would not say that it is a very cheap tool."
"The price of Fortinet FortiSandbox is not expensive."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. We have an additional feature that is integrated with S5, which is working well."
"I rate the product's pricing a five or six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high."
"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."
"Altogether, it is about €10,000 for the Sandbox and Email Gateway."
"Microsoft Defender is an expensive product in my country."
"The subscription is part of Windows, so we don't have to pay anything extra for this product."
"The solution comes as a part of Windows 10 and it is covered under its license."
"It came with Windows."
"We have an enterprise agreement so from my perspective, this is a product that ships with Windows and it is not priced standalone."
"We are required to pay for the data we ingest, and increasing the data amount incurs additional expenses."
"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."
"If we are acquiring everything in a single place, the front end becomes cost-effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise92
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiSandbox?
The real-time analysis capability of FortiSandbox is beneficial for email analysis.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSandbox?
I think it's affordable. For the six to seven months of usage, the cost has been reasonable.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSandbox?
We sometimes face a delay in email scanning due to not having multiple virtual machines. Improvements could be made in dynamic scanning, scanning all email components such as URLs and attachments, ...
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

FortiSandbox
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiSandbox vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.