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Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence [EOL] vs Symantec Advanced Threat Protection comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 16, 2025

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 Threat I...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Symantec Advanced Threat Pr...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (24th)
 

Featured Reviews

Charles Mokoena - PeerSpot reviewer
Mobility & IT Project Manager at Voicevine Pty Ltd
Has strengthened our ability to detect threats in real time and improved internal security decision-making
The features that I find most valuable in Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence include the Sentinel part of it. There are several features we've looked at, including Sentinel as well as extended Defender, which is XDR. I've used those two, and that's what I've found quite useful for us, especially in the hardening and analysis part of the whole threat analysis. We use the real-time threat detection features in Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence. If it wasn't for that real-time threat detection on the vulnerability, I think we would not have survived the attack. The integration capabilities of Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence with other Microsoft security tools have benefited our organization's threat management process by initially being quite a challenge, especially coming from other security tools such as Fortinet and Check Point. However, once you've gotten used to it, it's quite easy and user-friendly. The dashboard, especially the threat analysis dashboard, is quite detailed in terms of providing a view of which areas in our environment need attention, making it quite useful.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber SecOps Principal at Dotcom Security
Provides end-to-end antivirus protection and has good stability
Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control. It can integrate with other Broadcom solutions, such as Symantec Messaging Gateway and Symantec DLP. If you want to send an email, it gets scanned through endpoint protection and DLP. We get all Symantec functionality in a single pane.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Defender exceeds expectations, especially for someone who's flipping from CrowdStrike or Falcon XR; this is night and day."
"The product is useful when the end user downloads malware files."
"The tool can proactively detect potential incidents."
"They have a very transparent roadmap for the product."
"The user interface is pretty user-friendly."
"The global review and remediation of malicious code is probably the most valuable feature."
"They seem to be pretty up to date with the latest threats in the world."
"One of the best features is that it provides a certain level of customization, allowing us to set our spam confidence levels."
"The product integrates well with our systems, and we have not encountered any problems."
"The great advantage in using this product is it creates multiple services."
"They manage to solve detection quite nicely, with rather elaborate detection compared to other providers, and Symantec also provides a useful set of information linked to each of the attacked computers."
"What I like most about Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is its notification capability."
"Their integrations are pretty good as are their Sandbox solutions, their proxies, and their LTAs with API or ICAP protocols."
"It has certainly helped out our audit efforts because we each stay compliant in terms of various security standards."
"Currently we have 800-plus nodes connected with this solution, without any issues. The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable feature is NetFlow threat protection."
 

Cons

"I would like for there to be extra confirmation that there aren't viruses. Even if the virus detection software is always running there could be hidden applications that are using the computer."
"A stable licensing model is absent"
"It's a bit complicated to manage because you have many dependencies of servers, many dependencies in queue, and so on. Entries or different endpoints, and you make different configuration topics for each one. So that's a major problem."
"We encounter problems connecting the product deployed on the user endpoints with the servers."
"The price of the solution is an area of concern where improvements are required. In general, the solution's price needs to be reduced."
"It would be beneficial to enhance the pricing structure and make it more affordable."
"I would like to see more AI features and capabilities."
"Technical support could be a bit better."
"Solutions like CrowdStrike, ESET, and SentinelOne have really jumped ahead on behavioral and algorithm-based detection capabilities. Symantec is trying to catch up, but they still have some limitations of being an old-school AV protection program and adding AI and behavioral learning and detection algorithm."
"It should be able to collect information if the agent is disabled."
"Symantec appliances need improvement. The whole appliance environment is a robust system and it needs a massive amount of storage space. If you have to increase or speed up the background storage it's a pretty complicated process. The scalability and sizing is critical, and if you do it wrong you run into issues pretty quickly."
"The support for new OSs and older OSs could be a little tighter. They need to be more upfront about what protection services they're going to provide on new OSs. I haven't seen the Windows 11 version out yet. It is either already released in Beta, or the Beta will be released soon. There could be a little bit more advanced updates on what they're doing to help protect Windows 11 environments. They can let us know in advance so that we know it is going to be protected. We can't roll out the new OS without putting end-point protection on it. So, they should tell us what is their support model for that, and what are they doing to protect Windows 11. They're not telling me, and that's a criticism. The same issue is applicable to all the other antivirus tools. It is not just Symantec; all of them have this problem."
"Scalability could be better."
"There are some ‎features that would add value to this product. One of them would be a graphical presentation of threats that the system has encountered."
"One area for improvement could be the pricing model."
"It also needs network-based threat protection for shared folders and files."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is relatively expensive; however, our status as a gold partner provides us with several complimentary licenses, which offsets the cost."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product."
"They offer two license plans: Microsoft Defender for endpoints and Microsoft Defender for businesses."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six or seven out of ten."
"The solution's pricing is reasonable and not very expensive."
"The solution can be licensed, but most users would already have it in their Office 365 license."
"It is an expensive product."
"The product’s pricing is worth it."
"The pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
"The price is quite expensive."
"Pricing is good. It is nice to have a great product at a fair price."
"Symantec Advanced Threat Protection's pricing is comparable."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection has an average price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
8%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence?
From the telemetry data standpoint, I would prefer Defender data to be more open in future updates.
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence?
We have tried Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence. I have expertise with Microsoft Defender products. I am not familiar with Microsoft Defender for IoT because we did not use that in our environ...
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence?
I will recommend Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence because it is a complete automation solution for threat production detection and an end-to-end solution for client security. Unfortunately, s...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Trellix, Microsoft and others in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.