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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Purview Insider Risk 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
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd)
Microsoft Purview Insider R...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
28th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Insider Risk Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 7.1%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management is 2.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint7.1%
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management2.5%
Other90.4%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Karthik Ekambaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Scybers
Have consistently built secure internal environments while implementing compliance tools for diverse customer needs
The customizable alerts system needs improvement. The detection rules are not extensive enough. There should be more possibilities for creating alerts based on additional criteria. While rules can be customized, the available criteria for creating detection rules should be expanded. Microsoft's pricing is very expensive. The Business Premium offering should be extended to enterprise customers, as it's currently limited to 300 users. There should be a tier below E5 that includes Microsoft Purview and other features. Currently, E5 licensing costs approximately 6,000 INR per user per month including taxes. Competitive solutions offer similar functionality at about 50% of Microsoft's cost. Email DLP is included in Business Premium or P1 licenses, while P2 licenses cover endpoint DLP and additional channels. Microsoft should introduce an intermediate tier below E5 that covers all P1 licenses, as customers often need coverage across the entire M365 suite.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Defender for Endpoint is a good competitor for those looking for an EDR solution, and for those looking for a complete security suite, it's one of the better choices."
"The protection that it provides is quite good."
"The solution's latest features for threat analysis are updated to provide us with future protection against the latest threats worldwide."
"It's an enterprise solution that provides a centralized console and it supports all the platforms that we use, including Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, and Android."
"We used CrowdStrike but we switched to Microsoft because of the price."
"Web filtering is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint because it effectively maintains security for website access."
"Technical support has been great."
"In terms of the installation, ease of use, and user interface, Defender has been great so far."
"Insider Risk Management's graphing is highly specific and useful. You can see the last six months of data for the Microsoft tenant. You can easily find what you need. For example, you can filter for alerts about devices, emails, etc."
"The best thing about Purview is that it's easy to integrate with our day-to-day environment. We have Active Directory, and Word and Excel. Using a third-party vendor and trying to integrate with our existing environment would be much more challenging."
"An example of how these features from Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management have benefited my organization is that we recently discovered a foreign actor, someone from North Korea took a job at our company and was pretending to be an employee, and with Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management, they notified us of that problem and we were able to remediate the fact that we had a North Korean spy working for us."
"Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management was helpful in performing investigations after alerts were received."
"The scoring mechanism is exceptional because it eliminates the need to reinvent criteria for identifying risks, misconfigurations, or vulnerabilities."
"Instead of having multiple vendors' solutions, I can install Purview, or I can enhance the features in Purview to make my life easier, and it can be managed through a single portal."
 

Cons

"Additional security would be beneficial."
"The management console is something that can be improved."
"In terms of improvement, they update the platform it seems quite a bit. Every month something is in a new spot or something changed somewhere; there should be less of that."
"It could be easier when it comes to managing exceptions."
"There's scanning going on that occasionally topples the memory, causing everything to freeze. This should be fixed."
"I have accounts for administrators and corporate employees, but I also have accounts for students. I can't split these types of accounts."
"It is using a large space in your memory all the time."
"In the next release, I would like to see better management reporting."
"The user interface also isn't user-friendly. When we introduce Insider Risk Management to our clients, they often find it difficult to understand. There is too much information, and the UI is not scalable. Also, entry-level IT technicians are not always interested in learning something new. It should be clearer and easier to understand."
"Microsoft's pricing is very expensive. The Business Premium offering should be extended to enterprise customers, as it's currently limited to 300 users."
"The reporting capabilities sometimes leave a little to be desired. It could be improved in terms of producing reports to provide information to the C-suite or others."
"My experience with the deployment of Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management was a fifty-fifty situation because we have a very diverse network, and not all of it is on Microsoft products."
"For certain things, you need to install an agent. I understand it's for integrity, but if there could be a clientless solution for certain aspects, it would make life easier."
"For certain things, you need to install an agent; installing an agent on the client workstation is a headache and whenever a new client comes in, you need to install an agent on it, which is an added task for IT."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We sell this product as part of Office 365 and it is not expensive."
"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 is included with a Microsoft E5 license."
"We have seen ROI. Most of the other competing alternatives will cost up to around $30 per user device. We average 400 devices. Therefore, the amount that we save each year is 400 times $30."
"Compared to ESET, the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is on the higher side."
"The price is fair for the features Microsoft delivers. If you want tailor-made features, you have to mix different licenses. It isn't straightforward."
"Even if you are not registered as a not-for-profit, the offering that they have is definitely worth consideration. This is in the sense that the E5 stack just gives you so many benefits. You get your entire productivity suite through Microsoft 365 apps. You get all your security and identity protection. You get the Defender for Endpoint and Defender for Identity. You get the cloud access security broker as well. You get Azure Active Directory Premium P2, which gives you so many good things that you can configure and deploy. You don't have to configure them on day one, but you have access to so many different tools that will protect your data, security, endpoints, and identities that you could build out a security strategy 18 months long, and slowly work your way through it, based on what you have available to you through your license."
"There are different licenses, such as E3 and E5."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise95
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 needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management?
I feel Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management can be improved by being able to identify patterns and practices of users to determine whether or not they fit the normal use case of a developer, a...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management?
My main use cases involve identifying issues related to problems with the current software deployments and whether or not it is being utilized correctly.
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management?
My advice to another organization that is considering using Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management is to make sure they plan out their deployment very carefully because the biggest sticking poin...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
Microsoft Insider Risk Management
 

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 Insider Risk Management and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.