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HP Wolf Security vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
HP Wolf Security
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
20th
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
42nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
3.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
2nd
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (6th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Agentic Endpoint Security (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HP Wolf Security is 2.9%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.4%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.4%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.8%
HP Wolf Security2.9%
Other86.9%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
BH
Owner at Stoneridge Engineering, LLC
Adds a layer of safety, especially for laptops operating in various environments
The tool's deployment is easy. HP Wolf Security's deployment was a swift process since it was initially compatible with Windows 10, the operating system on both machines. However, when I transitioned to Windows 11, I encountered minor issues that prompted me to delve deeper into Wolf Security to fine-tune security settings according to my preferences. While I mostly used default settings, there was an initial adjustment where I disabled the AI function related to malware. Currently, the system is running smoothly with no reported issues. Adjusting some settings raised concerns about compatibility between HP Wolf Security and Norton 360. Specifically, aspects of HP Wolf Security, such as the virtual machine component, intrigued me, but I hesitated due to potential conflicts. During my investigation, Windows 11 raised a flag, questioning the system's security settings with Norton 360 and HP Wolf Security. However, it seems that they coexist well without causing issues.
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 product's most valuable features are massive user and feature intelligence exploit detection."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning."
"Automation and playbooks have helped me significantly, as Cortex Xnor's playbooks predefine the workflow of the automation, such as response processes, alert triggering, and enriching the context, efficiently detecting and blocking malicious attacks with firewalls while eliminating workload and speeding responses for next-generation operations."
"The main benefit of using Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks while employing Palo Alto Firewall at the internet edge is that it improves security on our endpoint devices, integrating seamlessly with Palo Alto Firewalls to deliver comprehensive network, analyst, and security details all in a single dashboard, which allows us to manage everything from our network devices."
"Stability-wise, it is good; I did not hear about any issues in terms of stability, and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can be trusted completely."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"Palo Alto Networks Traps improves our security posture and lowers risk by providing next-gen methods to combat against modern threats on all the major platforms."
"It has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"Bromium allows us to safely view images and quickly and safely surf our network so that we can take proper care of our patients efficiently, effectively, and expeditiously."
"I use HP Wolf Security to add a layer of safety, especially for laptops operating in various environments."
"Our security posture has improved; it has definitely contained and prevented some malicious attacks from happening."
"The isolation feature is the most important because it prevents attacks."
"It has prevented thousands of potential threats by encapsulating them within its own vSentry container, thus providing overall protection and integrity of the operating system."
"The feature that stands out the most is that when someone clicks on a link in an email... [if] that link is malicious and it has some malware or keylogger attached to it, when it opens up in that Bromium virtualized browser, there's no chance of it actually being on the machine and running, because as soon as they click that "X" in the upper right-hand side of the browser, everything just vanishes. That is an added plus."
"Now, instead of us having to go through that analysis, they actually give us a monthly report that shows us: "Here's what you got hit with, here's what would have happened, here are the forensics behind the attack," and, obviously, Bromium stopped it."
"Our overall security posture has absolutely improved as a result of adding Bromium to our security stack. We continue to have less user impact through a significantly reduced amount of malware infections. It's become a non-event."
"Microsoft Defender Antivirus is easy to install."
"The scalability is good."
"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."
"I find the layer protection and real-time protection very useful because when I launch a program, I always have a notification and an alarm."
"I would highly recommend Microsoft Defender Antivirus for an individual looking to protect their endpoints."
"The most valuable aspect lies in its automation capabilities, particularly within security automation."
"It has a good return on investment, especially since we are used to paying for antivirus, and now it is part of the Windows purchase."
"Defender provides useful alerts and groups them. It sends an alert to your portal if it detects any malicious activity, and you can group multiple alerts to form an incident."
 

Cons

"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."
"Impact on system performance is horrible, adding a lot of delays for users."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is not only pricey; it is extremely expensive."
"For working with the solution, you only really need a web browser, however, we've found that working on Chrome, for example, is horrible."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks could improve by adding a sandbox feature to better compete with their competitors which have it."
"The only issues that we have are, one the cost, two the dashboard is not very intuitive, even though you can drill down within the dashboard, we usually have to gather information from other sources to determine locations and if its a false positive."
"I recommend adding a data loss prevention (DLP) solution to Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. The inclusion of this feature would allow the application of DLP policies alongside antivirus policies via a single agent and console, making it more competitive as other OEMs often offer DLP solutions as part of their antivirus products."
"It's very time-consuming to log support issues and the people that answer the tickets aren't very knowledgeable."
"They need to improve the compatibility with other applications and its stability. It works well with attacks, but it doesn't work well with all software on the clients. There is a lot of troubleshooting and a lot of things that need to be tuned to make it work and not break things."
"Initial setup was complex. There were many configurations that needed to be worked out with the vendor. The setup required hands-on assistance from Bromium."
"The tool behaves differently when I ported to Windows 11."
"After a major release, there's always a lot of "dust settling." You have to work through all those issues and then you're fine for a while. The problem is, it's stable, it's fine, until the next major release comes out. Then you go back into the cycle again of uncertainty, instability, working through issues until they have patched and remediated all the problems that you're having. It's not unlike any other vendor though"
"When you deploy, not only is the user asked to reboot their computer, they are also asked to wait for 20 minutes while it sits there and initializes. It definitely impacts the end-user. It takes time away from their day."
"Reporting is one of the shortcomings of the product. We do mine the data that's in there from a forensics perspective... It becomes very difficult because you have to spend a lot of time digging through the volumes of data. Reporting is absolutely the biggest shortcoming."
"Room for improvement would be keeping up with the rate of change, specifically on Windows platforms. There are a lot of updates that come out for Microsoft Windows operating systems and the Bromium product needs to be able to keep up quickly with those updates and all the browser updates that are coming out. It's hard to do, but that's really where they need to be more responsive because we end up with problems and then we have to call support to get patches, etc."
"They need to improve the compatibility with other applications and its stability."
"The technical support isn't too bad but their responsiveness needs to be improved."
"The time to generate certain alerts on our dashboard can take between 45 minutes to an hour, and I am unsure of the factors that influence this duration."
"I think the solution needs to be more on par with other antivirus products in the market."
"Microsoft Windows Defender doesn't have a game mode."
"Auto recovery is the most important feature that we would need from this solution. For decryption, similar to Malwarebytes, there should be something to be able to recover the data up to the last normal status. Its ability to recover data to the last normal copy must not exceed 5 to 10 minutes."
"I would appreciate agentic protection as an additional feature in the next release to protect the agents that the business creates."
"Sometimes, you may find yourself buying Defender for Endpoint thinking that it matches CrowdStrike, but then you find that Microsoft really needs to sell you something else."
"If they integrate with the EDR then it will benefit this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I feel it is fairly priced."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The price was fine."
"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"The tool's price is moderate."
"When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward."
"The pricing is very fair compared to the competition. The licensing is straightforward."
"The product's pricing is a good value. We only run it on our internet-facing workstations, we don't run it on everything in our environment. We are very selective. Some organizations may want to consider doing something like that to reduce their license count."
"Pricing is reasonable."
"I think the pricing is a good value. All of these security products are always going to be very expensive, but I don't think Bromium is unreasonable. I think Bromium is decently priced. It’s a tiered licensing platform. The more you buy, the cheaper gets per unit, and I think their tiers are very well defined. I think they're fair."
"The product came as a bundle with the machine."
"This solution is part of Windows and comes included with it."
"AV solutions are pretty expensive because they are necessary, not just for protection, but many businesses need them to comply with regulatory bodies and receive accreditation. We recently purchased an E5 license, which gives us access to the entire Microsoft suite. I would say the pricing is competitive; most tools of this kind are similarly priced. There are minor differences between the competitors, but they aren't spectacularly different. Defender for Endpoint makes sense because all our solutions are in the same place, paid for with a single license. The subscription price is around £50 per user per month, though it may have increased slightly."
"Microsoft Defender ATP is expensive."
"The solution is free with Windows."
"Even if you are not registered as a not-for-profit, the offering that they have is definitely worth consideration. This is in the sense that the E5 stack just gives you so many benefits. You get your entire productivity suite through Microsoft 365 apps. You get all your security and identity protection. You get the Defender for Endpoint and Defender for Identity. You get the cloud access security broker as well. You get Azure Active Directory Premium P2, which gives you so many good things that you can configure and deploy. You don't have to configure them on day one, but you have access to so many different tools that will protect your data, security, endpoints, and identities that you could build out a security strategy 18 months long, and slowly work your way through it, based on what you have available to you through your license."
"It's included with the Windows Operating System, I don't pay for any licensing fees."
"The product is free of charge and comes integrated into Windows."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Retailer
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
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise97
 

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,...
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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?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Bromium vSentry
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Valspar
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Find out what your peers are saying about HP Wolf Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: October 2026.
921,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.