We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender For Endpoint and Sophos Intercept X based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Sophos Intercept X comes out on top. While the Microsoft Defender For Endpoint solution is good, it lacks in certain areas that Sophos Intercept X don’t have to worry about. Overall, users of Sophos Intercept X have mainly positive feedback on the product, agreeing that its set of features is excellent.
"NGAV and EDR features are outstanding."
"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."
"Fortinet has helped free up around 20 percent of our staff's time to help us out."
"Ability to get forensics details and also memory exfiltration."
"It notifies us if there's any suspicious file on any PC. If any execution or similar kind of thing is happening, it just alerts us. It doesn't only alert. It also blocks the execution until we allow it. We check whether the execution is legitimate or not, and then approve it or keep it blocked. This gives us a little bit of control over this mechanism. Fortinet FortiEDR is also very straightforward and easy to maintain."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The main thing is that I feel safe. Because the processes that have been used to get a handle on the attackers are much better than other competitors"
"The solution was relatively easy to deploy."
"We have found the pricing to be reasonable."
"The thing that I like about it is the synchronized security. You can tie endpoint protection and firewalls and a whole range of other services and products. You can get your servers taken in under this."
"I find the security heartbeat feature with synchronized security very useful. It's a very nice feature that allows you to basically switch off an endpoint. When an endpoint has got a virus or something like that, or it's infected or compromised, you can isolate it from the network, but only if you've got an XG Firewall as well. It also provides ease of use. It is the only antivirus that can recognize 25 out of the 36 ransomware and virus techniques that have been often used in terms of the behavior base using heuristics. It's beautiful, utterly amazing. No other antivirus can do that."
"A valuable feature offered by Sophos is called Naked Security, and it entails the control managed by the firewall on the site regarding the desktop client interfacing with our cloud client."
"The patches on offer are very helpful."
"What I have found the most valuable about Sophos Intercept X is the ease of use with management administration and the solution's ability to stop exploits and ransomware."
"The most valuable feature is that it literally works. We have reduced a lot of complaints after switching to Sophos."
"Very stable solution."
"It integrates very well with all Windows workstations or other Microsoft Endpoint products. It also works quite well. So far, I have not had any issue that hasn't been sorted out. It doesn't use too many resources, so you don't have to install different things."
"The most important feature is the way it monitors the threats and blocks them. About 10 days ago, we were implementing SOC for a particular client. The SOC was not yet implemented, but they had Microsoft Defender. That organization was hit by some ransomware, but the hacker could not succeed. Because of the EDR, the hacker could not install the hacking tools. They were trying to do that, but Microsoft Defender completely blocked that. The hacker could log into the system, but they could not install anything."
"The stability keeps getting better and better."
"Its threat intelligence feature is beneficial. This solution smoothly integrates with SIEM."
"It's pretty easy to scale."
"Technical support is good."
"It's absolutely free to use."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's WCS function, a content filtering solution, has proven to be the most useful, stable, and reliable option for our current needs."
"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."
"The solution is not stable."
"Once, we had an event that was locked and blocked, but information about it came to us two or three days later."
"The amount of usage, the number of details we get, or the number of options that can be tweaked is limited in comparison to that with other EDR solutions"
"FortiEDR could add a separate scanning dashboard. In incident management, we prefer to remove the endpoint system from the environment and scan the system. We typically use Symantec for that, but if we want to use FortiEDR for that, then we need a scanning tab to clarify things."
"The solution should address emerging threats like SQL injection."
"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."
"We'd like to see more one-to-one product presentations for the distribution channels."
"From the management side, we receive detailed information. Sophos has many features, such as Threat Hunting but that comes with the XDR version of the solution. There's Sophos Intercept X and then there's Sophos Intercept X with XDR technology. We bought the XDR and then now the MTR, Managed Threat Response version available too. They have different packages for clients which gives them different options to pick from. If Sophos could combine more features into one package it would be beneficial."
"The cloud management console could be a little more user-friendly."
"When there is an event generated by either the firewall or Intercept X, and the originating IP address is the same, these should be merged into a single event rather than two."
"The main real-time scanning takes most of the processing power of my notebook."
"Intercept X Endpoint is a very heavy solution that consumes a lot of RAM and should be made lighter."
"They should keep doing what they're doing. Both of them have entered the EDR/MDR space, and they're keeping up with their competitors. I have a hard time understanding why their capabilities aren't garnering more attention."
"The after sales service and support could be improved."
"The endpoint detection and response (EDR) technology has room for improvement because the information that it gives us to resolve our problems is poor nowadays."
"The central management console should be improved because it provides limited options to configure Windows Defender."
"They can improve it on the online protection front since people nowadays are moving online and working from home."
"Microsoft Windows Defender doesn't have a game mode."
"In active mode, it's great that it gives you so much information, but it does record every keystroke so you have a lot of logs... that amount of data logging started to add up in the cost."
"It can be more secure."
"Defender could be more secure and stable."
"The end-user also cannot do some advanced actions on it. It's a little bit complicated for our end-user, so it needs to be simplified."
"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."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
Intercept X Endpoint is ranked 7th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 100 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. Intercept X Endpoint is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Intercept X Endpoint writes "A standard offering with good threat analysis but reduces machine performance". On the other hand, 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". Intercept X Endpoint is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, Fortinet FortiClient and Seqrite Endpoint Security, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet FortiClient. See our Intercept X Endpoint vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors and best Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vendors.
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