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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management 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 for Endp...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
197
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd)
Microsoft Purview Data Life...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
34th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 8.7%, up from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

John Rallo - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers excellent visibility into vulnerabilities and the attack surface itself
Attack surface reduction and limiting attack surface vectors are valuable features. It's helpful to isolate specific devices and get super granular with the features they offer. The visibility into the attack surface is good. It gets highly granular. I don't work on that side, but the people who do tell me they get more visibility.
Al Mcpherson - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides clear visibility into our entire information estate, reduces our time to action, and saves us time
The integration across Azure is straightforward. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management has been a game-changer for our data governance. We now have clear visibility into our entire information estate, allowing us to pinpoint data location and implement effective classification. Even though real-time compliance isn't a current need, Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management offers that capability for future requirements. Purview Data Lifecycle Management has reduced our time to action – since we previously lacked such a tool, it's effectively cut our response time in half. Purview Data Lifecycle Management has saved us one working day per month.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has an easy-to-use interface, is always updated, and is user-friendly."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been secure and there is zero maintenance required because it updates with Microsoft Windows."
"The fact that it's from Microsoft, you don't have many false positives, unlike products from other vendors might have."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is free and part of the licensing stack of other Microsoft products."
"Defender is a part of Windows; you just need to enable it. There is no need to install anything."
"The solution's main antivirus capabilities are okay. So far, they have kept us safe."
"Defender has very little impact on the end-user and the agent works quite well with a minimal impact on the client and server."
"Automatic scanning and cleaning of viruses is the best and most valuable feature helping this tool to thrive. If any viruses are found, they are cleaned automatically."
"The automatic data labeling is compelling, and we are investigating its use."
"Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process."
"The UI is the most valuable feature."
"The system is stable; I haven't encountered any worldwide stability issues unlike other office products."
 

Cons

"Right now, the solution provides some recommendations on the dashboard but we don't have any priorities. It's a mix of all the vulnerabilities and all the security recommendations. I would like to see some priority or categorization of high, medium, and low so that we can fix the high ones first."
"They can improve it on the online protection front since people nowadays are moving online and working from home."
"The reporting in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should improve. The solution has limited features."
"We encountered some misbehavior between Microsoft Office Suite and Defender. We had issues of old macros being blocked and some stuff going around the usage of Win32 APIs. There is some improvement between the Office products and Defender, and there is a bunch of stuff that you can configure in your antivirus solutions, but you have several baselines, such as security baselines for Edge, security baselines for Defender, and security baselines for MDM. You have configuration profiles as well. So, there a lot of parts where we can configure our antivirus solution, and we're getting conflicting configurations. This is the major part with which we're struggling in this solution. We are having calls and calls with Microsoft for getting rid of all configuration conflicts that we have. That's really the part that needs to be improved."
"Sometimes, there are difficulties in downloading a file considered as malicious."
"The user interface could use some improvement."
"Lowering the price would be an improvement."
"The only issue I would say is our mobile endpoints do not have Defender installed for part of them. An additional feature that could be included in the next release is free Copilot."
"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
"Microsoft's Purview Data Lifecycle Management preview features can be unreliable, hindering their usefulness."
"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
"The time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If we are acquiring everything in a single place, the front end becomes cost-effective."
"Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs."
"It's all pretty easy. For some clients, it's an easier sell because it's just an add-on to their existing Microsoft licensing and Office 365 licensing."
"We have been using the free version."
"The solution is included with Microsoft Windows."
"The license for Microsoft Windows covers Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."
"I don't know the standalone costs. It is my understanding that the M365 E5 is $56 a month or something close to that pricing. That would be for the full suite. Just Defender might be $8 a month. I can't say for sure."
"The pricing is competitive."
"The service operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, charging an extra one cent per field of metadata scanned in our data."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
We opted for Purview Data Lifecycle Management due to its significant cost advantage over competitors. At a 95 percent price reduction, it was a clear winner. The service operates on a pay-as-you-g...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
One of the requirements is to have data leak policies and data access policies. This is very critical to enforce data governance standards, which relate to data classification, access control, data...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
I am a customer and user of the tools. We are a big shop, and both the companies I work for are Microsoft Office 365 customers with over eighty thousand seats. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Mana...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
Microsoft Information Governance
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.