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

Microsoft Defender for Business vs Morphisec comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
12th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (15th)
Morphisec
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
47th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (59th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (29th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (61st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (36th), Threat Deception Platforms (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.9%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 1.4%, down from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Morphisec is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.9%
Microsoft Defender for Business1.4%
Morphisec1.0%
Other93.7%
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.
Paritosh Jani - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate VP (Managed Information Technology Services) at Dev Information Tech Pvt Ltd
Has delivered automated threat response and streamlined integration with advanced tools
The best features of Microsoft Defender for Business include it coming as an XDR solution which provides automated investigations, remediations, and endpoint detection and response. Moreover, it can be tightly integrated with vulnerability management or detecting vulnerabilities and pushing them to the SIEM solution. I utilize the advanced threat hunting feature of Microsoft Defender for Business and find it helpful; it's good and improving with every update. Microsoft Defender for Business integrates effectively with the Microsoft ecosystem as with Azure Sentinel, and it has a two-way natural integration. Apart from that, it also integrates with industry SIEM solutions such as Splunk.
Rick Schibler - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of Information Technology at Kentucky Trailer
Offers in-memory protection at a lower price than competitors
Morphisec's in-memory protection is probably the most valuable feature because it stops malicious activity from occurring. If something tries to install or act as a sleeper agent, Morphisec will detect and stop it. Morphisec's Moving Target Defense is critical to hardening our attack surface. If it detects something, it indicates whether it's valid. That means you've got a breach requiring investigation. It detects anomalies but doesn't necessarily point to what caused them. You still need to do that work. The solution is reasonably easy to administer. They made some changes last year, adding a cloud-based monitoring solution that makes deploying and monitoring our endpoints easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is easy to use and does not consume a lot of hardware resources."
"If any application performs suspicious activities, such as changing registries or modifying other applications, Cortex XDR detects and blocks the entire application."
"If you are looking to deploy a security solution as a whole, this is a good option."
"The good thing about the product is that it's always scanning."
"Cortex XDR alerts us on the dashboard when there's a threat, which allows us to restrict that user and helps secure our infrastructure."
"The product is mostly automated, and we do not have to make decisions, because all the decisions are made by the product itself and we are not required to create any custom policies since the policies that are created are well defined in the product itself."
"We can visualize and control the activities in the environment from anywhere."
"Cortex XDR features advanced threat detection capabilities."
"I rate Microsoft Defender for Business a 10 out of 10."
"A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is going on. We have a footprint across all of North America, Canada, and Mexico, so we want to make sure that all our endpoints are protected and we are able to look for any anomalous activity."
"Microsoft Defender for Business works well with the Microsoft Azure Security ecosystem, including Defender for Endpoint and Office 365 Cloud."
"I haven't had any problems with the tool's stability."
"The solution includes attack-savvy service and risk protection, part of data center management, and offers an effective single-dashboard view with Microsoft 365."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its central console."
"The solution provides good scalability."
"Everything is stable. There have been no technical errors or stability issues."
"I really like the integration with Microsoft Defender. In addition to having third-party endpoint protection, we're also enabling Defender... I like the reporting that we get from Defender, when it comes in. I like that it's one console showing both Morphisec and Defender where it provides me with full visibility into security events from Defender and Morphisec."
"The product has absolutely worked flawlessly; we have had basically no issues, either with the product or with any type of virus or zero-day attacks, ransomware, nothing, as it has caught everything."
"Morphisec as the last line of defense is as good as you can get."
"Morphisec makes use of deterministic attack prevention that doesn’t require investigation of security alerts. It changes the memory locations of where certain applications run. If you think of Excel, opening a PDF, running an Excel macro, or opening a webpage and clicking on a link, all of those actions run in a certain area of memory. Morphisec changes the memory locations of where those run."
"It provides full visibility into security events and from both solutions in one dashboard. I'm not a big security guy, if I have a threat that looks like there's a problem, I will ask Morphisec to dissect it for me, and tell me what might be happening. Because it tends to be all hash codes, so I can tell what's going on. They've been pretty good with that."
"Morphisec has been a real lifesaver."
"Morphisec has enabled us to become a lot less paranoid when it comes to staff clicking on things or accessing things that they shouldn't that could infect the whole system. Our original ransomware attack that happened came from someone's Google drive and then just filtered on through that. It has put our minds at ease a lot more in running it. It's also another layer of security that has been proven to be effective for us."
"Since we started using Morphisec, that hasn't happened even once."
 

Cons

"There is a severe gap in functionality between Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For example all folder restriction settings are Windows only. Traps 5.0+ does not have SAML / LDAP integration."
"The solution should offer more dashboards and they should be better customized."
"It's not an ideal choice for smaller businesses, as you need a minimum of 200 endpoints to even use the solution at all."
"If you compare it to SentinelOne, which has more functionalities and detection capabilities on an open platform, the pricing on SentinelOne is far more reasonable and cheaper than Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks."
"There are some third-party solutions that are difficult to integrate with, which is something that can be improved."
"While using Cortex, I noticed some aspects that could be improved, such as increasing the synchronization speed between XDR and Xnor."
"This is a very costly product."
"Cortex does not offer an on-premises solution. However, some customers would prefer not to be on the cloud. It would be ideal if it could offer something on-prem as well."
"Talking with the tool's technician about any problem is very complicated."
"The threat detection capabilities require significant customization for multistage threat detection."
"The user interface has a lot of features which can make it complex and hard to adapt to for some users."
"The pricing of Microsoft Defender for Business has a long way to go since people are still preferring solutions such as CrowdStrike and Palo Alto."
"If I need logs and don't have local storage bundled with Defender, I need to add workspace and log analytics, which is costly for storing logs of 2 GB, 5 GB, 10 GB."
"Threat protection could be improved even though it is already a built-in feature."
"The solution's AI is notorious for false positives, and the time you have to spend training it is ridiculous."
"We face a licensing issue with Windows 11 Enterprise not reflecting in our portal, which affects activation. Microsoft's support did not resolve this issue, even after sharing remote desktop and screen details."
"It might be a bit much to ask, but we are now beginning to use Morphisec Scout, which provides vulnerability information. At this time, it's recognizing vulnerabilities and reporting them to us, but it's not necessarily resolving them. There's still a separate manual process to resolve those vulnerabilities, primarily through upgrades. We have to do that outside of Morphisec. If Morphisec could somehow have that capability built into it, that would be very effective."
"Some of the filters for the console need improvement. There are alerts that show up and just being able to acknowledge that we've seen those and not turn them off, but dismiss them, would be a huge benefit."
"Automating reports needs improvement. I would like to have better reporting capabilities within it or automated reporting to be a little bit more dynamic. That's something I know they're working on. We literally are in the process. We started the process a week and a half ago of going to their latest version, so I've not seen their latest one up and running yet."
"I haven't been able to get the cloud deployment to work."
"We wanted to have multi-tenants in their cloud platform, so every entity can look into their own systems and not see other systems in other entities. I have a beta version on that now. I would like them to incorporate that in the cloud solution."
"If anything, tech support might be their weakest link."
"The only area that really needs improvement is the reporting functionality. Gathering the detailed information that is in the system for an executive, or for me as a director, could be better. Some of the interface and reporting aspects are a little bit dated. They're working on it."
"It would be useful for them if they had some kind of network discovery."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an expensive solution."
"I feel it is fairly priced."
"Every customer has to pay for a license because it doesn't work with what you get from a managed services provider."
"The price was fine."
"Our license will require renewal in August, after which the maintenance will continue as usual."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. I have customers that have voiced that the solution is good for the value but if I want to sell more of the solution the price reduction would help."
"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."
"The tool's cost has been a little high, but I do not think it was terrible."
"Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."
"It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors."
"The tool is cheap, while some other solutions are more expensive. I remember the tool cost about five euros for a workstation or for a user on a monthly basis."
"Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool."
"Our licensing is tied into our contract. Because we have a long-term contract, our pricing is a little bit lower. It is per year, so we don't get charged per endpoint, but we do have a cap. Our cap is 80 endpoints. If we were to go over 80, when we renewed our contract, which is not until three years are over. Then, they would reevaluate, and say, "Well, you have more than 80 devices active right now. This is going to be the price change." They know that we are installing and replacing computers, so the numbers will be all over the place depending on whether you archive or don't archive, which is the reason why we just have to keep up on that stuff."
"Licenses are per endpoint, and that's true for the cloud version as well. The only difference is that there is a little extra charge for the cloud version."
"Morphisec is reasonably priced because our parent company's other subsidiaries use different products like CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is four or five times more expensive than Morphisec. The competitive pricing saves us money in our overall security stack."
"The pricing is definitely fair for what it does."
"Price-wise, it's on the higher side. A traditional antivirus solution is cheaper, but in terms of security and manageability, its ROI is better than a traditional antivirus. I would recommend it to anybody evaluating or considering an antivirus solution. If your system gets compromised, the cost of ransom would be a lot more. This way, it saves a lot of cost."
"It does not have multi-tenants. If South Africa wants to show only the machines that they have, they need their own cloud incidence. It is not possible to have that in a single cloud incidence with multiple tenants in it, instead you need to have multiple cloud incidences. Then, if you have that, it will be more expensive. However, they are going to change that, which is good."
"We are still using a separate tool. I know for our 600 or I think we're actually licensed for up to 700 users, it runs me 23 or $24,000 a year. When you're talking to that many users plus servers being protected, that's well worth the investment for that dollar amount."
"It is a little bit more expensive than other security products that we use, but it does provide us good protection. So, it is a trade-off."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) solutions are best for your needs.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise8
 

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,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Business?
Our thoughts on the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Business are that we wish it could be better. If the pricing w...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?
I see room for improvement in Microsoft Defender for Business, particularly regarding the consolidation of all securi...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
Morphisec, Morphisec Moving Target Defense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Information Not Available
Lenovo/Motorola, TruGreen, Covenant Health, Citizens Medical Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Morphisec and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.