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Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Palo Alto Networks WildFire comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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
5.8
Microsoft Defender is essential and affordable for users, offering cost advantages over AWS, despite unclear individual financial benefits.
Sentiment score
7.5
Palo Alto Networks WildFire efficiently prevents threats, reduces costs significantly, and integrates seamlessly for comprehensive real-time security.
As a Microsoft partner, we receive significant discounts, making the solution affordable for us.
The service generates a low rate of false positives, reducing the overhead of managing false positive events.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender's support is reliable yet inconsistent in communication and timeliness, praised for skills but needs improvement.
Sentiment score
7.3
Palo Alto Networks WildFire support excels for large companies, with varied quality and responsiveness for others, depending on region.
They are sometimes responsive, however, often issues cannot be reproduced on their end, making it challenging.
My team raised multiple support tickets for the product, and we were able to get responses from Microsoft support team.
Their response time and skill set are both good.
There is a lack of SLA adherence, and third-party partners do not provide prompt responses.
The support is quite difficult to access promptly.
The service response times are aligned with standards, responding within a few hours based on the problem's criticality.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Microsoft Defender is praised for its scalability and integration, efficiently managing vulnerabilities across various sectors and servers.
Sentiment score
8.2
Palo Alto Networks WildFire excels in adaptability, scalability, and seamless integration, meeting diverse organizational demands and high-performance standards.
It is scalable; I evaluated the product and decided to use Defender on over 700 of our company servers.
Wildfire is highly scalable.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable, and I give it a nine for scalability.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is stable and reliable, though it has minor compatibility issues and can be resource-intensive.
Sentiment score
8.4
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is highly reliable, stable, and efficient, excelling in large-scale deployments and seamless cloud integration.
It is very resource-intensive, consuming a lot of memory and CPU.
There are compatibility issues occasionally arising with false positives when other security tools are not whitelisted in Microsoft Defender.
I would rate the overall stability as an eight.
 

Room For Improvement

Improve efficiency by reducing false positives and enhancing integration, stability, and AI capabilities while considering cost and resource demands.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire needs improvements in cost, user interface, ease of deployment, integration, detection capabilities, and support efficiency.
A vulnerability I patch within 15 minutes takes 24 additional hours for an update.
The product is not stable; it often uses excessive memory and CPU, which makes it slow.
The automated remediations can be more specific.
The dashboard should provide better visibility, especially in showing how many files are sent to Wildfire and their findings.
The support could be improved, as it takes a while to get assistance from the vendors.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management has competitive pricing, requiring a license upgrade for additional features, often included in packages.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is valued for advanced security despite high costs, preferred by enterprises but challenging for smaller firms.
For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
Overall, every organization wishes for cheaper options, but we look at the security side as well, so we are good for now.
The pricing is reasonable, and it's included in the whole Microsoft E5 bundle, so it's all-inclusive.
I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of affordability.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management enhances security and efficiency through integration, accurate assessments, risk analysis, and management features.
WildFire offers sandboxing, App-ID, and automation, excelling in threat detection with real-time updates and seamless integration.
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management provides regular advisories and recommendations that help improve our security posture.
The recommendations, scores, and steps to remediate actions are highly useful.
The integration with Sentinel has been one of the most valuable features for my organization.
Integrating Palo Alto Networks WildFire with various security protocols similar to a firewall has significantly improved the overall threat detection capabilities in our organization.
The most valuable feature of Wildfire is its sandboxing capability for examining suspicious files or locations.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (14th), Microsoft Security Suite (22nd), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (5th)
Palo Alto Networks WildFire
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks WildFire is 12.3%, up from 12.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

TakayukiUmehara - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of management and integration supports operations, but has high resource consumption
A valuable feature is the ease of management and integration with Microsoft products. I appreciate that I can click on a server in the Defender Console, notice a risk, and retrieve all necessary information. Speed is a key feature as it is very quick to administer and allows for manual configuration from the portal.
AjayKumar17 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced cybersecurity with advanced sandboxing and effective in controlling DNS issues
Improvements are needed in the UI part. The dashboard should provide better visibility, especially in showing how many files are sent to Wildfire and their findings. This information should be integrated with the Dashboard so that system admins can see what is happening. Furthermore, technical support needs a lot of improvement, particularly in terms of responsiveness and adhering to service level agreements.
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Comparison Review

it_user206346 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 11, 2015
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto Networks
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto: Management Goodies You often have comparisons of both firewalls concerning security components. Of course, a firewall must block attacks, scan for viruses, build VPNs, etc. However, in this post I am discussing the advantages and disadvantages from both vendors concerning…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
I would rate the price as a three for us due to the partnership discounts. For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
For our current usage, we do not have any complaints, but a potential improvement could be the introduction of a more advanced AI agent, possibly a large language model with better performance than...
How does Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks Wildfire?
The Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is a very powerful and very complex piece of anti-viral software. When one considers that fact, it is all the more impressive that the setup is a fairly straightf...
Which is better - Wildfire or FortiGate?
FortiGate has a lot going for it and I consider it to be the best, most user-friendly firewall out there. What I like the most about it is that it has an attractive web dashboard with very easy nav...
How does Cisco ASA Firewall compare with Palo Alto's WildFire?
When looking to change our ASA Firewall, we looked into Palo Alto’s WildFire. It works especially in preventing advanced malware and zero-day exploits with real-time intelligence. The sandbox featu...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Novamedia, Nexon Asia Pacific, Lenovo, Samsonite, IOOF, Sinogrid, SanDisk Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Palo Alto Networks WildFire and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.