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Mandiant Advantage vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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

Mandiant Advantage
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
28th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Attack Surface Management (ASM) (7th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Mandiant Advantage is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 6.9%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

SameepAgarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
In-depth traffic analysis and proactive support reduce investigation time
The live IOC feed identifies the type, technique, and tactics used. This becomes handy since then I know what to refer to from the playbook. For instance, if I take a use case of someone with Mimikatz installed on their system, knowing the nature beforehand reduces investigation time. I can quickly apply the playbook to resolve incidents in less time.
Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have never faced stability issues."
"The feature I have found most valuable is directory monitoring. We experienced an instance of threat actors trying to ensure a complex and massive attack against our customer's infrastructure on the forum. That is, they were animating people on a formum. The solution alerted us to this two days ahead of the attack, which gave us plenty of time to prepare for it."
"The scalability of Mandiant Advantage deserves a ten out of ten."
"Mandiant Advantage is excellent at providing the full context and all the information, where the information was found, and the full data, including the raw data that was uploaded onto the Internet."
"The advantage of the solution is being able to go look up threat actors and get a lot of detailed information about different attacks and different tactics and general information about threats."
"It is so valuable to have someone performing these functions outside of our business hours when we don't have staff in the building. We've seen a lot of solid metrics on the amount of malware that it's detecting and resolving. We're pleased with it so far."
"The live IOC feed identifies the type, technique, and tactics used."
"Microsoft 365 Defender's most valuable feature is the ability to control the shadow IP."
"The common and advanced security policies for threat hunting and blocking attacks are valuable."
"The advantage of Microsoft Defender XDR has over other XDRs in the market is that it's easy to use. You can quickly differentiate between alerts, incidents, devices, software, etc. It's easier to investigate an incident, and you have so many options. You can automate investigations and use playbooks. There's also the live response session, which is something you can't find in any other XDR."
"The ability to integrate and observe a more cohesive narrative across the products is crucial."
"For me, the advanced hunting capabilities have been really great. It allowed querying the dataset with their own language, which is KQL or Kusto Query Language. That has allowed me to get much more insight into the events that have occurred. The whole power of 365 Defender is that you can get the whole story. It allows you to query an email-based activity and then correlate it with an endpoint-based activity."
"The biggest return on investment when using Microsoft Defender XDR for me is saving time for the most part."
"The visibility into threats is also very impressive because Microsoft helps you predict things and provides analytics to help you really improve your security. And all of this technology works across the domain, so it is pretty helpful in terms of threat analytics."
"The EDR features are valuable. By getting the EDR features, we have more control over the device. We have information about events in real-time and more protection against zero-day threats and zero-day vulnerabilities. We can monitor every event or action that a device is going through. We can get an idea if it is something malicious or if we have to take any actions."
 

Cons

"Sometimes Mandiant Advantage becomes noisy when dealing with widely recognized companies due to false positives."
"Mandiant's on-prem client is too processor-intensive, so it's putting a strain on the local device's CPU. When a scan is running on the device, the other processing tasks slow to a crawl. We're still trying to figure out the correct settings for the client."
"I have already given them feedback that their UI needs improvement since sometimes there is a lag. The side-by-side depiction of request response and action clogs the screen."
"Sometimes Mandiant Advantage becomes noisy when dealing with widely recognized companies due to false positives."
"They could have better support. Now that they've merged, they are moving towards a portal system, which isn't very helpful."
"I think that the data query that is used for data cloud language should be improved. It's really hard to query actual data from the platform."
"Collaboration of data in my view becomes a bit clogged, requiring effort to understand visually."
"There are other SIEM solutions that are easier to use, mainly based on the creation of rules, use cases, and groups."
"Just like in any solution, the price can always be cheaper."
"At times, when we have an incident email and we click on the link for that incident, it opens a pop-up, but there is nothing. It has happened a couple of times."
"The licensing process needs improvement and clarification, as it is currently difficult to understand which features are licensed to which users."
"When discussing the secure score, which includes overviews and recommended actions, some of these recommended actions are not applicable to us, particularly those related to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which we do not use in any of our environments."
"The interface could be improved. For example, if you want to do a phishing simulation for your employees, it can take a while to figure out what to do. The interface is a bit messy and could be updated. It isn't too bad, but doing some things can be a long process."
"The data recovery and backup could be improved."
"What could be improved in Microsoft 365 Defender is its licensing, e.g. it should be more consolidated and would be good if it has some optimizations. Improving the alerts and notifications, in terms of adding more details, would also be good for this solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Microsoft Defender XDR is included in our license."
"The solution is affordable, and we haven't been hit with any hidden costs. The subscription model is straightforward, and it's easy to understand how much additional features cost. If we need to cancel a license or feature, we do that well in advance to avoid being charged for it, but overall, the pricing and licensing are simple and easy."
"I believe the pricing is fair and acceptable. I consider it to be reasonable and satisfactory."
"The most valuable licensing option is expensive, so pricing could be improved. Licensing options for this solution also need to be consolidated, because they frequently change."
"The price of the solution is high compared to others and we have lost some customers because of it."
"All I can say again is the E5 gives you all the capabilities that it offers. It also gives Office 365 and one terabyte of storage. All in all, the E5 license model makes sense. There are some people who say it's quite costly, but rather than paying different vendors, it makes sense to go all in with Microsoft if you've got that licensing. From that perspective, it's cost-effective, but I can't comment much on that."
"The solutions price is fair for what they offer."
"I find the pricing to be quite competitive, especially considering its inclusion in our E5 subscription, which provides a comprehensive set of functionalities."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Mandiant Advantage?
Sometimes Mandiant Advantage becomes noisy when dealing with widely recognized companies due to false positives. More fine-tuning is required to handle famous company names. It also handles alerts ...
What is your primary use case for Mandiant Advantage?
I use it for cyber threat intelligence. I gather information about newly created domains around the Internet that can be related to my managed company. I monitor these domains for any phishing acti...
What advice do you have for others considering Mandiant Advantage?
I would advise exploring multiple functions because there are many different capabilities of Mandiant Advantage. For small organizations, try every feature included in the package. Use known source...
What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
The pricing for Microsoft Sentinel operates on a pay-as-you-go model based on data ingestion. I recall that Defender XDR pricing is based on the number of endpoints.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
For Microsoft Defender XDR ( /categories/extended-detection-and-response-xdr ), there is currently no ability to reset passwords for on-premises accounts, which is a key challenge. Incident managem...
 

Also Known As

Mandiant Threat Intelligence
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Stater Bros. Markets, Rush Copley, Blackboat, CapWealth
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Mandiant Advantage vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
852,098 professionals have used our research since 2012.