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Microsoft Defender for Business vs Morphisec comparison

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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
6.7
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
19th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (19th)
Morphisec
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
44th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (56th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (29th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (60th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (34th), Threat Deception Platforms (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.8%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 1.3%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Morphisec is 1.1%, 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 Networks3.8%
Microsoft Defender for Business1.3%
Morphisec1.1%
Other93.8%
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

"The integrations are out-of-the-box, as are the playbooks."
"The protection offered by this product is good, as is the endpoint reporting."
"After installing this solution, it identified, blocked, and provided the complete attack chain, which was very helpful."
"I recognize that Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is one of the best products in its category regarding capabilities."
"It is easy to use."
"The solution allows us to gain remote access without the user's knowledge and take the necessary actions on the device."
"I've found the solution to be highly scalable for enterprises."
"The scalability of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very good."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its central console."
"The solution is effective, continuously improving, and highly regarded, especially with Microsoft's leadership in the industry."
"Microsoft Defender for Business offers the best pricing option in the market and is very cost-effective."
"I would recommend Microsoft Defender for Business to others, rating it as ten out of ten."
"I haven't had any problems with the tool's stability."
"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."
"The most effective features of Microsoft Defender for Business include its threat detection and response capabilities in managing vulnerabilities and ransomware attacks."
"Microsoft Defender for Business is good for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers solid security flexibility and integration with tools like Microsoft Lighthouse and some other software. It takes some of the features of Defender for Endpoint EDR and provides those services for small and medium-sized business environments."
"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."
"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."
"Before we got Morphisec we evaluated solutions that claim to do similar things, and we have done additional evaluations since we started using it, but I don't think anything can truly touch what Morphisec does and the way it does it."
"In a month, we are saving the effort of four to five days, and earlier we used to have a dedicated person and now we don't need a dedicated resource, which has reduced our security spending and we are saving approximately $600 a month."
"If you have the ability to get Morphisec into their environment, it's going to be a hundred percent return on investment."
"Morphisec has absolutely helped save money on our security stack. The ransomware at the end of the day can cost organizations millions upon millions of dollars. Investing in tools like Morphisec is a great reduction in that cost. If I can spend $10,000 in a year to protect assets that could be ransomed for $20,000,000, that's definitely a bet that one should pursue. Morphisec absolutely it's worth the investment."
"All the alerts are on the dashboard, which is quite simple and useful for us. You can easily check all the alerts that are being blocked or allowed, or whatever the action is. You can easily see that and you can take the necessary actions. You can add a PowerShell extension or any activities for blocking at your network level or for endpoints."
"We haven't had any cybersecurity incidents on machines running Morphisec."
 

Cons

"The negative aspect I see is the economic model used by Palo Alto."
"Cortex XDR is trickier to configure than other Palo Alto products. This is one area where we are not so satisfied."
"The solution lacks real-time, on-demand antivirus."
"For working with the solution, you only really need a web browser, however, we've found that working on Chrome, for example, is horrible."
"Previously, the endpoint would leave the environment, not being on our VPN, essentially unable to interact with the server to upload files. It was unable to retrieve new file verdicts. It was using a thing called "local analysis" to determine if something was a malicious file or not. There was no dynamic analysis."
"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."
"Technology evolves every day, so it would be nice if it gets more secure. It can also have more integration with other platforms."
"The deployment is pretty hard."
"Threat protection could be improved even though it is already a built-in feature."
"The security could always be improved."
"We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac."
"Talking with the tool's technician about any problem is very complicated."
"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."
"I see room for improvement in Microsoft Defender for Business, particularly regarding the consolidation of all security solutions in one place and the integration of AI and data security into the same platform."
"The threat detection capabilities require significant customization for multistage threat detection."
"I have an open case for close to two months with no responses or updates, except for an email response, and I've made four or five phone calls regarding the Microsoft Interconnect for AD and cloud tenant."
"I haven't been able to get the cloud deployment to work. When there's an update, I'm supposed to be able to roll it out for the cloud solution, but right now I'm continuing to use our SCCM solution to update it."
"In the Windows Defender integration, they have put in a report of computers that need Windows Defender updates. If those updates could be kicked off directly from the dashboard, instead of having to go to another system entirely, that would be good."
"The dashboard is the area that requires the most improvement. We have about, I would say 5,500 computers currently, and searching through all of those takes some time to filter. So as soon as you apply the filter, it takes a few seconds. It crunches, it thinks, and then it brings up the clients that match."
"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."
"We have only had four attacks in the last year, "attacks" being some benign PDF from a vendor that, for some reason, were triggered. There were no actual attacks. They were just four false positives, or something lowly like adware. There have been false positives with both the on-premises solution and the cloud solution."
"We have discovered some bugs in the new releases that they've had to fix, so I would like to see more testing and QA on their side before they release."
"Having to have an on-prem server required a lot of administration."
"The only problem is that their support lives in Israel, so the time zones are a bit off, but I've never had any complaint beyond that."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"The solution has one subscription for endpoint protection and one subscription for detection and response. The two licenses combined give you the BRO version."
"Our customers have expressed that the price is high."
"The cost depends on your chosen license type, like Pro or other licenses."
"It's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"Very costly product."
"Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."
"The tool's cost has been a little high, but I do not think it was terrible."
"Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool."
"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."
"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."
"Compared to their competitors, the price of Morphisec is not that high. You can easily deploy it on a large-scale or small-scale network."
"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."
"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."
"It is priced correctly for what it does. They end up doing a good deal of discounting, but I think it is priced appropriately."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise55
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...
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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: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.