We performed a comparison between Microsoft 365 Defender and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comes out ahead of Microsoft 365 Defender. While both products provide real-time visibility of emerging threats and have convenient interfaces, Microsoft 365 Defender’s lack of compatibility with third-party products, as well as uneven support leave room for improvement.
"Fortinet has helped free up around 20 percent of our staff's time to help us out."
"Fortinet FortiEDR's scalability is quite good, and you can add licenses to the solution."
"The ease of deployment and configuration is valuable. It's very easy compared to other vendors like Sophos. Sophos' configuration is complex. Fortinet is a lot easier to understand. You don't need a lot of admin knowledge to do the configuration."
"The most valuable feature is the analysis, because of the beta structure."
"It is very easy to set up. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, with ten being very easy to set up."
"The price is low and quite competitive with others."
"Fortinet FortiEDR made our clients feel secure and more at ease, knowing that they had an EDR solution that would close the gap in their security posture."
"Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance."
"The main features of this solution are that it handles everything by itself and is well integrated."
"I like that it's easy to deploy because it already comes with Windows 10. Overall, it has all the features that we need. Easy to deploy, comes with updates, and comes with Windows updates. You don't have to really manage or update the signature."
"The most important and the most relevant features of Defender for Endpoint are the malware and ransomware protection."
"The solution integrates very well with Windows applications and Microsoft endpoint products."
"The solution's main antivirus capabilities are okay. So far, they have kept us safe."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been secure and there is zero maintenance required because it updates with Microsoft Windows."
"Auto-remediation: When the product sees malware, it resolves the issue immediately. This protects the machine."
"Stable endpoint manager, antivirus, and antimalware, with fast technical support and a straightforward setup."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft 365 Defender are the combination of all the capabilities and centralized management."
"Having a single pane of glass for all Microsoft security services makes everything much easier. A security analyst can go to a single portal and see everything in one view. The integration of everything into one portal is a huge benefit."
"The integration, visibility, vulnerability management, and device identification are valuable."
"The timeline feature is excellent. I also like the phishing simulation. We have phishing campaigns to educate employees and warn them about these threats."
"The solution is well integrated with applications. It is easy to maintain and administer."
"We are able to consolidate licences and make use of many Microsoft products using this solution. If we have any Microsoft customers, we encourage them to use this solution for enterprise defence."
"Another noteworthy feature that I find appealing in Microsoft Defender is the credit-backed simulation. This feature enables organizations to train their users on effectively responding to phishing emails through a simulated training environment."
"Microsoft 365 Defender is simple to upgrade."
"They can include the automation for the realtime updates. We have a network infrastructure with remote sites. Whenever they send updates, they are not automated. We have to go into the console and push those updates. I wish it was more automated. The update file is currently around 31 MB. It could be smaller."
"The only minor concern is occasional interference with desired programs."
"The security should be strong for the cloud. Some applications are on-prem and some are on the cloud. Fortinet should also have strong security for the cloud. There should be more security for the cloud."
"We find the solution to be a bit expensive."
"Once, we had an event that was locked and blocked, but information about it came to us two or three days later."
"We'd like to see more one-to-one product presentations for the distribution channels."
"FortiEDR can be improved by providing more detailed reporting."
"The solution should address emerging threats like SQL injection."
"I would like Microsoft to have some kind of direct integration for USB controls. They have GPO and other controls to control the access of the USB drives on devices, but if there is something that can be directly implemented into the portal, it would be good. There should be a way to control via a cloud portal or something like that in a dynamic way. USB control for data exfiltration would be a good feature to implement. Currently, there are ways to do it, but it involves too many different things. You have to implement it via GPOs and other stuff, and then you move or copy those big files via Defender ATP. If there is a simple way of implementing those features, it would be great."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can improve by making the reporting faster. It takes some time to reflect back to the administration portal of what has been updated. For example, out of 100 Computers, approximately 90 computers received updates, but when you check the administration portal over one or two days, you will only see 75, even though 90 were updated."
"It's not easy to create special allowances for certain groups of users. It can be a little heavy-handed in some areas where Microsoft has decided to lock a feature out, meaning they make it hard to make an exception... One company we work with needed to use about 20 different thumb drives for about 20 users. To make that exception for them was very difficult. In fact, you can't really make an exception. But what you can do is allow them to use it and, while it will still alert, you can actually suppress those alerts."
"A challenge is that it is not a multi-tenant solution. Microsoft's tenant is a licensed tenant. I'm an MSSP. So, I have multiple customers. In Microsoft's world, that means that I can't just buy an E5 license and give that out to all my customers. That won't work because all of the customer data resides within a single tenant in Microsoft's world. Other products—such as SentinelOne, Palo Alto Cortex, CrowdStrike, et cetera—are multi-tenant. So, I can have it at the top of the pyramid for my analyst to look into it and see all the customers, but each customer's data is separate. If the customer wants to look at what we see, they would only see their data, whereas in the Microsoft world, if I've got multiple customers connected to the same Microsoft tenant, they would see everybody else's data, which is a privacy problem in Europe. It is not possible to share the data, and it is a breach of privacy."
"Microsoft Windows Defender doesn't have a game mode."
"The product itself does not necessarily need improvement, but the support and implementation of the product are the disaster cases."
"Lacks some additional integration."
"Its detection is not as quick. There should also be more frequent updates."
"The support team is not competent or responsive."
"Microsoft tends to provide too many features, which makes the solution prone to bugs."
"This solution could be improved if it included features such as those offered by Malwarebytes."
"Support is hit or miss. Microsoft wants you to buy premium support contracts. Though they call themselves professional support, it's almost like throwing questions into a black hole. You get an answer, but it's never helpful."
"Microsoft frequently changes the names of its products, sometimes even renaming entire portals or features."
"The management features could be improved, particularly in terms of better integration with Intune, Microsoft's cloud-based management solution."
"Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected."
"My client would like the solution to be more customizable without using code. You can only build on the default console, but we're not allowed to change it."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 6th in Microsoft Security Suite with 182 reviews while Microsoft Defender XDR is ranked 1st in Microsoft Security Suite with 76 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender XDR is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint writes "Eliminates the need to look at multiple dashboards by automatically providing one XDR dashboard to show the security score of each subscription". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender XDR writes "Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot". Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete and Fortinet FortiClient, whereas Microsoft Defender XDR is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, Wazuh and Secureworks Taegis XDR. See our Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
See our list of best Microsoft Security Suite vendors and best Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vendors.
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