We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender For Endpoint and Symantec End User Endpoint Security 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, users of Microsoft Defender For Endpoint were happier with the solution and gave it slightly higher ratings than users of Symantec End User Endpoint Security. It seems that users of Symantec End User Endpoint Security see a lot of room for improvement with the solution, and are disappointed with the lack of features as well.
"If somebody has been compromised, the question always is: How has it affected other devices in the network? Cisco AMP gives you a very neat view of that."
"Another of my favorite features is called the Device Trajectory, where it shows everything that's going on, on a computer. It shows the point in time when a virus is downloaded, so you can see if the user was surfing the internet or had a program open. It shows every running process and file access on the computer and saves it like a snapshot when it detects something malicious. It also has a File Trajectory, so you can even see if that file has been found on any of your other computers that have AMP."
"One of the best features of AMP is its cloud feature. It doesn't matter where the device is in regards to whether it's inside or outside of your network environment, especially right now when everybody's remote and taken their laptops home. You don't have to be VPNed into the environment for AMP to work. AMP will work anywhere in the world, as long as it has an Internet connection. You get protection and reporting with it. No matter where the device is, AMP has still got coverage on it and is protecting it. You still have the ability to manage and remediate things. The cloud feature is the magic bullet. This is what makes the solution a valuable tool as far as I'm concerned."
"The ability to detonate a particular problem in a sandbox environment and understand what the effects are, is helpful. We're trying, for example, to determine, when people send information in, if an attachment is legitimate or not. You just have to open it. If you can do that in a secure sandbox environment, that's an invaluable feature. What you would do otherwise would be very risky and tedious."
"The visibility and insight this solution gives you into threats is pretty granular. It has constant monitoring. You can get onto the device trajectory to look at a threat, but you can also see what happened prior to the threat. You can see what happened after the threat. You can see what other applications were incorporated into the execution of the threat. For example, you have the event, but you see that the event was launched by Google Chrome, which was launched by something else. Then, after the event, something else was launched by whatever the threat was. Therefore, it gives you great detail, a timeline, and continuity of events leading up to whatever the incident is, and then, after. This helps you understand and nail down what the threat is and how to fix it."
"The threat Grid with the ability to observe the sandboxing, analyze, and perform investigations of different malicious files has been great."
"The most valuable feature is signature-based malware detection."
"Any alert that we get is an actionable alert. Immediately, there is information that we can just click through, see the point in time, what happened, what caused it, and what automatic actions were taken. We can then choose to take any manual actions, if we want, or start our investigation. We're no longer looking at digging into information or wading through hundreds of incidents. There's a list which says where the status is assigned, e.g., under investigation or investigation finished. That is all in the console. It has taken away a lot of the administration, which we would normally be doing, and integrated it into the console for us."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been secure and there is zero maintenance required because it updates with Microsoft Windows."
"In terms of the installation, ease of use, and user interface, Defender has been great so far."
"Technical support has been great."
"The solution is highly scalable."
"The patch management is very easy, as it can be done automatically or added to a schedule."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender is always running. It is doing its job, so it is fine. I don't have any issues with the way it was implemented or how we are running it. We have been upgrading IT throughout the years, but there have been no issues."
"We have just started to implement it. It is useful for protection from malware and ransomware."
"It's good at detecting signature-based stuff and stopping that."
"It's good for large organizations. It's able to handle a lot of users."
"It is good for detecting signature-based viruses, and it is user friendly."
"The performance of Symantec End-User Endpoint Security is very good. It does not slow down the computer like other solutions."
"The single-pane management is the solution's most valuable feature. It makes administrative control very easy."
"Great security and very user friendly."
"Stability-wise, it is very good and we have had no trouble."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The one challenge that I see is the use of multiple endpoint protection platforms. For instance, we have AMP, but we also have Microsoft Windows Defender, System Center Endpoint Protection, and Microsoft Malware Protection Engine deployed. So, we have a bunch of different things that do the same thing. What winds up happening is, e.g., if I get an alert for a potential incident or malware and want to pull the file, I'll go to fetch the file to analyze it. But, one of these other programs has already gotten it, so the file has already been quarantined by another endpoint protection system. AMP doesn't realize that and the file fetch fails, then you're left wondering what's going on."
"We had a lot of noise at the beginning, and we had to turn it down based on exclusions, application whitelisting, and excluding unknown benign applications. Cisco should understand the need for continuous updates on the custom Cisco exclusions and the custom applications that come out-of-the-box with the AMP for Endpoints."
"The room for improvement would be on event notifications. I have mine tuned fairly well. I do feel that if you subscribe to all the event notification types out-of-the-box, or don't really go through and take the time to filter out events, the notifications can become overwhelming with information. Sometimes, when you're overwhelmed with information, you just say, "I'm not going to look at anything because I'm receiving so much." I recommend the vendor come up with a white paper on the best practices for event notifications."
"I would like to see integration with Cisco Analytics."
"We don't have issues. We think that Cisco covers all of the security aspects on the market. They continue to innovate in the right way."
"We have had some problems with updates not playing nice with our environment. This is important, because if there is a new version, we need to test it thoroughly before it goes into production. We cannot just say, "There's a new version. It's not going to give us any problems." With the complexity of the solution using multiple engines for multiple tasks, it can sometimes cause performance issues on our endpoints. Therefore, we need to test it before we deploy. That takes one to three days before we can be certain that the new version plays nice with our environment."
"The connector updates are very easily done now, and that's improving. Previously, the connector had an issue, where almost every time it needed to be updated, it required a machine reboot. This was always a bit of an inconvenience and a bug. Because with a lot of software now, you don't need to do that and shouldn't need to be rebooting all the time."
"Maybe there is room for improvement in some of the automated remediation. We have other tools in place that AMP feeds into that allow for that to happen, so I look at it as one seamless solution. But if you're buying AMP all by itself, I don't know if it can remove malicious software after the fact or if it requires the other tools that we use to do some of that."
"We encountered some issues when we were trying to enable automatic updates from our group policy."
"Phishing and Malware detection could be better."
"I wish they would extend the use of the Security Central portal, even for the free option of Defender. Because, as companies grow, it is labor intensive to manage the AV and detection part of it. For companies already subscribed to Office 365, I think this would be a good enhancement."
"With regards to the interface, a challenge I found was that there was not enough documentation on how to tune it. I had to read multiple sources on the internet to learn how to configure the tool appropriately."
"The frequency of the patching, and the frequency of the updates, are not included with the free version."
"From an audit point of view, our auditors would like to have more reports on how things are used, if things go wrong, and how they went wrong. For example, if something got a warning, "Why?" So, we would like more versatility for tracing and reporting. That would improve the product, as long as the user interface doesn't get bogged down."
"I think Microsoft needs to improve some of the security aspects of Defender. The email part, in particular, needs to be improved in terms of security effectiveness."
"Microsoft support could be more knowledgeable."
"The solution could improve by having a better graphical interface."
"The monitoring capabilities could be further developed."
"They lack the visibility you get in a heuristical, artificial, AI type of product, like a next-gen antivirus."
"Is not a full anti-ransomware solution."
"There are limitations because everyone these days has hybrid working; however, the endpoint does not work for us unless we are connected to a VPN, which is a major limitation."
"It would be perfect if it is capable of detecting or checking ransomware."
"The reporting could be improved."
"The solution is very difficult to uninstall. There isn't really a way to uninstall the product at all, which is quite a headache."
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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 3rd in Endpoint Protection for Business (EPP) with 113 reviews while Symantec Endpoint Security is ranked 13th in Endpoint Protection for Business (EPP) with 61 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0, while Symantec Endpoint Security is rated 7.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint writes "Enables ingestion of events directly into your SIEM/SOAR, but requires integration with all Defender products to work optimally". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Endpoint Security writes "Lacks next-generation behaviour-based detection, offers terrible technical support, and not as robust as competitors". Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Sophos Intercept X, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, SentinelOne and Malwarebytes, whereas Symantec Endpoint Security is most compared with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike Falcon, Trend Micro Deep Security, Trellix Endpoint Security and Fortinet FortiEDR. See our Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Symantec Endpoint Security report.
See our list of best Endpoint Protection for Business (EPP) vendors.
We monitor all Endpoint Protection for Business (EPP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
