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Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint 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

Microsoft Defender External...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
33rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Attack Surface Management (ASM) (14th)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (3rd), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 7.5%, down from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint7.5%
Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management0.8%
Other91.7%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

AndyChan3 - PeerSpot reviewer
General manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Enhanced visibility and exposes vulnerabilities but needs more integration
I am currently in the pilot stage of implementing Microsoft External Attack Surface Management (EASM). My organization is transitioning to a comprehensive track of Microsoft solutions, and we will move to full-scale production in another year, maybe Microsoft External Attack Surface Management…
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 seems to be better at protecting from cyberattacks."
"Microsoft External Attack Surface Management helps improve the visibility of my exposed vulnerabilities and provides an overview of my security posture across the globe."
"Microsoft External Attack Surface Management helps improve the visibility of my exposed vulnerabilities and provides an overview of my security posture across the globe."
"Overall, I recommend Microsoft Defender for Endpoint due to its features and capabilities, which cover more loopholes than other EDR solutions."
"Web filtering is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint because it effectively maintains security for website access."
"Its real-time security is the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is its ability to bring together all the data, providing more information than just antivirus hits."
"This software is easy to use."
"I like the fact that it has the ransomware solution in there. I'm glad that the ransomware solution is built into it. That's probably the biggest thing that I see in Microsoft Defender."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has helped free up my SOC team to work on other projects and tasks, and the automated reporting and dashboarding has saved them a lot of time, amounting to several man-hours."
"The integration with all variations of Microsoft Defender, for Endpoint, 365, and Cloud is valuable."
 

Cons

"With Microsoft, support is always crazy, it's not easy to get support."
"The integration is not as seamless compared to competitors like Palo Alto."
"Further integration across different Microsoft products would be an improvement."
"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."
"From an audit point of view, our auditors would like to have more reports on how things are used, if things go wrong, and how they went wrong. For example, if something got a warning, "Why?" So, we would like more versatility for tracing and reporting. That would improve the product, as long as the user interface doesn't get bogged down."
"I would like to have a dashboard that shows an overview of the results for the enterprise."
"I would like to see integrations with other products, such as Spunk and other CM solutions. That would create possibilities for me, and for a SOC, to consolidate all events in an older console, not one provided by Microsoft but provided by a third party, and use it to create more insights."
"I would like to see improvements made to how it secures activities on web pages."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is not as robust, and you cannot customize it much, so that's a challenge."
"I would like the solution to be able to prevent unauthorized programs from installing and to block unauthorised URLs which is similar to web filtering product."
"There could be an increase in security for the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable and fair."
"This solution is part of Windows and comes included with it."
"It is free."
"The solution comes as part of Microsoft Windows."
"The price is higher than others because it is doing more than what the others are doing."
"The base price for an E5 license, which includes Enterprise Mobility + Security E5, is $57 per user per month."
"Everybody would like to see a lower price on everything. The Slovenian market is basically an SME market with clients having up to 100 seat licenses, comprising 90% of the company. They're very price sensitive. So, the price could be cheaper."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comes with Windows 10, and it's free. But for you to be able to manage it in the cloud and use the console, you need to have either an Office 365 E5 subscription or a Microsoft M365 subscription. You need to buy an extra license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise92
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management?
Further integration across different Microsoft products would be an improvement. Introduction of more AI automation into the products would also be beneficial. The integration is not as seamless co...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management?
I am currently in the pilot stage of implementing Microsoft External Attack Surface Management (EASM). My organization is transitioning to a comprehensive track of Microsoft solutions, and we will ...
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

No data available
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 Defender External Attack Surface Management vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.