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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
4.6
Cortex XDR offers high ROI with reduced costs, improved efficiency, affordable pricing, and enhanced security features compared to competitors.
Sentiment score
6.9
Organizations report financial and operational benefits from Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, including improved security, automation, and cost reduction.
Sentiment score
6.6
Mimecast's solution improves security and efficiency, saving time, reducing data leaks, and automating manual tasks into workflows.
They appreciate the rich telemetry data from the solution, as it provides in-depth threat identification.
Cyber Security Manager at Welab bank
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks helps to reduce my total cost of ownership significantly.
Detection and Response Consultant at Inovasys
In Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, most of the remediation is automated and the accuracy is quite good.
Network Security Engineer at Cyberwell Solution
Without detection and protection measures, organizations would face substantial payments and reputational damage, including the necessity to inform customers about data breaches, potentially leading to loss of business.
Consultant at ACT4SERVICES
We have seen a return on investment when using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it saves labor by reducing the need for staff to focus on it.
IT CONSULTANT at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
The biggest return on investment for me when using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is the time saving.
Lead security engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection eases the workload through automation, through policies and rules that are pre-configured to handle complex tasks that would take hours and days for a team to initiate.
Senior Service Desk Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
With Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection, our investigation time for high-risk incidents has been cut in half, and overall management now takes us less than four hours a week.
Security Managed Services Specialist at Accenture
There have been scenarios where we have stopped users from sharing data, and that data has been successfully protected from leaving the premises, adding tremendous value for us.
Security Engineer at Comcast
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Cortex XDR is praised for technical support and responsiveness, despite occasional delays and varying regional support quality.
Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, but varies in quality; documentation and complex issue resolution need improvement.
Sentiment score
8.3
Mimecast provides reliable, effective customer support with knowledgeable staff, useful resources, and multiple support channels, despite occasional delays.
The technical support from Palo Alto deserves a mark of ten because they reach out within an hour whenever assistance is needed.
Head of data centers at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees
There is no back and forth, and they know what we are asking for and come up with the best resolution for a solution.
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
If any of these services are missed, it becomes a problem in terms of support tickets, follow-up, or special configuration that needs to be done in the system.
Chief of IT Architecture at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
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.'
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
The level-one support seems disconnected from subject matter experts.
Office 365 Subject Expert at a government with 10,001+ employees
I rate Microsoft support 10 out of 10.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
I would rate the customer support a perfect 10.
Iam Analyst at a renewables & environment company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have never had any problems with the customer support, and they are very responsive.
Cyber Security Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
They resolve issues according to their established SLA.
technical specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Cortex XDR scales well for different organizations, but may be costly for small enterprises despite its cloud-based efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is scalable, seamlessly accommodating large environments with flexible deployment and integration with Microsoft's ecosystem.
Sentiment score
7.6
Mimecast efficiently scales with cloud-native architecture, offering customization, flexible deployment, and seamless data handling for growing organizations.
You can onboard 10,000 endpoints in just hours, which demonstrates the excellent scalability of this product.
Assistant Security Architect at Cloudnomics
Activating the newly purchased licenses is instantaneous, allowing installations without adjustments since it's cloud-based.
Junior Security Analyst at ITSEC Asia
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can be expanded anytime by purchasing another license without any issues related to scalability.
Head of data centers at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees
We managed to scale it out in a short amount of time, with two months of planning and three months of implementation on 10,000 computers.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is scalable enough to handle various devices across environments, whether they are laptops, Android devices, or operating in hybrid environments.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Compatibility is its main feature.
IT CONSULTANT at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
The tool effectively detected both malware and spam, ensuring that only a few emails categorized as malware reached user mailboxes.
Network Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate the scalability of Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection around 9.5, as it is highly scalable and widely used by many organizations, including large enterprises.
Iam Analyst at a renewables & environment company with 1,001-5,000 employees
As the organization grows, Mimecast scales its cloud resources to handle increased demand.
Cybersecurity analyst at Infosys
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is highly stable, resolving early issues and delivering consistent, reliable performance with minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is reliable and efficient, with minor update issues, praised for integration and performance.
Sentiment score
8.0
Mimecast Insider Risk Management is stable and reliable, with minimal issues, quick resolutions, and seamless updates in diverse environments.
Cortex remains fast and responsive, even with increasing data and alerts.
Final Year Student at Gitam University
The thresholds we've seen on our firewall boxes at some instances reached 80% to 85%, but even at that level of utilization, we don't observe any latency or any issues reported with respect to accessing the application.
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can be trusted completely.
Soc Analyst at Softcell Technologies Limited
I haven't seen any outages with Microsoft.
IT Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
I rate Defender 10 out of 10 for stability.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Defender for Endpoint is extremely stable.
Systems engineers at Delta Dental of Colorado
Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection is stable in my experience.
Cyber Security Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection is definitely stable without fail based on my experience.
Network Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Cortex XDR needs better integration, user interface, automation, and competitive pricing, along with reduced performance issues and clearer features.
Microsoft Defender users seek better AI integration, customer support, UI, security, customization, visibility, threat response, and simpler pricing.
Mimecast could enhance reporting, integration, and analytics, improve UI performance, and support additional devices for better risk management.
Improving reporting and dashboard customization, along with the addition of real-time and exportable reports, would help SOC teams greatly.
Final Year Student at Gitam University
The inclusion of this feature would allow the application of DLP policies alongside antivirus policies via a single agent and console, making it more competitive as other OEMs often offer DLP solutions as part of their antivirus products.
Pre Sales Architect at network techlab
If the per GB data could be provided at a certain level free of cost or at the same cost which the customer is taking for the entire bundle, that would be better.
Cyber Security Information Security Specialist at MHM Holding GmbH
Repeated interactions are necessary due to Level One's lack of tools and knowledge, hindering efficient problem-solving and negatively impacting our experience with Microsoft support.
Office 365 Subject Expert at a government with 10,001+ employees
In contrast, competing products offer reduced pricing for long-term commitments, which makes it difficult for us in that environment.
Solution Consultant at BIM Group of Companies
We use Microsoft partners to help govern the platform, and as part of an alliance, we want to gather data from each tenant and combine them for a complete view.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
If Mimecast could provide more information about how they store the data and whether the agents are local agents or cloud-hosted agents, that would be of great help for the organizations to consider its AI capabilities while adhering to the compliance needs of a particular organization.
Security Engineer at Comcast
Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection should incorporate features to detect if a URL is malicious or generated by AI, especially since many attackers use scripts to bypass mail gateways.
technical specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The policies are solid, they work effectively, the implementation time is not very long, integrations with SIEM are quite easy, and the Glassbreak account is something I have tested.
Network Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Cortex XDR's pricing is seen as reasonable for its advanced capabilities, though setup costs can be perceived as high.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers flexible licensing, integrating with Microsoft 365, providing cost-effective, feature-rich enterprise security solutions.
Mimecast's pricing is reasonable with valuable support, scalable user licenses, and potential discounts for larger or long-term deployments.
The pricing on SentinelOne is far more reasonable and cheaper than Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks.
Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would say it is definitely not a cheap product, considering how mature it is and how scalable all Palo Alto products are together.
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Compared to CrowdStrike, which is very costly, and SentinelOne, which is also very costly, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a medium cost-efficient solution.
Soc Analyst at Softcell Technologies Limited
That has been the trend we have seen with Microsoft lately—it is just getting more and more expensive.
Assistant Director, Hybrid Infrastructure & Operations at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
It costs $15 per VM for the P2 plan, which is seen as affordable for customers.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
The setup cost is a one-time investment that will stay with us forever.
Security Engineer at Comcast
After migrating, the cost is almost a 50% discount.
Infrastructure Contractor at a real estate/law firm with 11-50 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates that pricing is always very expensive.
Senior Service Desk Engineer at a comms service provider with 201-500 employees
 

Valuable Features

Cortex XDR enhances security with AI-driven analytics, user-friendly management, cloud deployment, and comprehensive threat response features.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers seamless integration and advanced threat protection with centralized management and low resource usage for enterprises.
Mimecast enhances email security with AI-driven analysis, integrates with top security tools, and streamlines compliance and risk management.
It incorporates AI for normal behavior detection, distinguishing unusual operations.
Cyber Security Manager at Welab bank
The product provides automation responses in case of a threat attack, severity assessments, centralized manageability, and comprehensive compliance features, resulting in reduced costs.
Pre Sales Architect at network techlab
It includes machine learning to easily analyze data and detect complex threats across endpoints, networks, or clouds.
Final Year Student at Gitam University
Defender for Endpoint's coverage across different platforms in our environment is pretty good. We have devices running Linux, Mac OS, Windows, iOS, and Android. It covers all of them.
Team manager of it department at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides a unified management interface allowing customers to manage their on-premises and hybrid infrastructures from a single pane.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
One of the best features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is its database for identifying zero-day attacks or malware attacks.
Consultant at ACT4SERVICES
Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection has positively impacted our organization as it has helped us identify a lot of phishing emails and stopped many unauthorized disclosures or accidental disclosures of information.
Security Engineer at Payatu
The second thing is that the alert getting triggered is very fast. There is no latency issue that we have observed.
Security Engineer at Comcast
If you want to secure your communication through email, you have to deploy Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection in your network infrastructure.
technical specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
Mimecast Insider Risk Manag...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.7%
CrowdStrike Falcon5.8%
SentinelOne Singularity Endpoint4.6%
Other82.9%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection2.7%
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention6.1%
Forcepoint Data Loss Prevention4.6%
Other86.6%
Data Loss Prevention (DLP)
 

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.
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.
External Ganesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Engineer at Comcast
Insider threats have been detected faster and internal data exposure is now controlled
Regarding how Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection can be improved, sometimes the tool is slightly laggy, wherein it would take some time for us to fetch the related logs from the Mimecast portal, and that of course can be improved. There could also be a graph or a kind of a graph where, if the organization has a smaller number of employees, it is fine, but if it has a large number of employees and different departments, then in that case, Mimecast could give us an AI suggestion upon how to improvise the current security posture, how we stand and where we can go up to in terms of implementing or tweaking the policies. As the organization's size gets bigger, it would also be better if Mimecast could provide some solutions upon how to segregate the users into groups and what groups can have which policies. Those kinds of features can be added. Regarding Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection's AI capabilities, I think its governance and security could improve as I am not entirely sure how it works. It would be helpful if Mimecast could, as the AI capabilities are in place, maintain a strict governance policy upon the data that is being processed, especially for user personally identifiable information. As insider risk management sometimes also gets into the personal details of the user, organizations might be hesitant; even we are also hesitant to use the AI capabilities. If Mimecast could provide more information about how they store the data and whether the agents are local agents or cloud-hosted agents, that would be of great help for the organizations to consider its AI capabilities while adhering to the compliance needs of a particular organization.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

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 Business82
Midsize Enterprise45
Large Enterprise96
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise29
Large Enterprise44
 

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,...
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 sol...
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 pu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Code42 Next-Gen DLP?
I am unsure about Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection's pricing, setup costs, and licensing details....
What advice do you have for others considering Code42 Next-Gen DLP?
My advice for those looking at Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection is to compare your use case compr...
What needs improvement with Code42 Incydr?
A con to mention is that Mimecast Insider Risk Management and Data Protection, at times, may not capture everything. ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
Mimecast Incydr, Code42 Next-Gen DLP, Code42 Next-Gen Data Loss Protection, Code42 Forensic File Search, Code42 Backup + Restore
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Adobe, Okta, Samsung, Taylormade, Boston University, Lending Club, North Highland, Stanford University, Ping Identity, Qualcomm, Pandora.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, SentinelOne, CrowdStrike and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). Updated: August 2026.
909,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.