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Microsoft Defender XDR vs Morphisec 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
Morphisec
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
61st
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (59th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (47th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (29th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (36th), Threat Deception Platforms (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 2.2%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Morphisec is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.7%
Microsoft Defender XDR2.2%
Morphisec0.9%
Other93.2%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

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.
reviewer2812758 - PeerSpot reviewer
Infosec at a government with 10,001+ employees
Integrated defenses have unified threat hunting, phishing simulations, and identity investigations
I appreciate Microsoft Defender XDR's MDE, Microsoft Defender tool, which has Attack Simulator. Instead of doing a phishing campaign and getting a separate tool, Microsoft Defender XDR does it all. These features of Microsoft Defender XDR have helped us conduct a phishing campaign quarterly, which has been beneficial. I also appreciate the fact that it has Defender for Office integrated, Defender for Identity, and everything integrated together. I would describe the process of using Microsoft Defender XDR to prioritize incidents in my security operations as quite decent. I appreciate the automatic alerting system where any incidents or alerts we receive come directly to our email. From there, we can open the email, go directly to Microsoft Defender XDR, and start our investigations and remediations. I perceive the integration of security and identity access management in Microsoft Defender XDR as affecting my identity protection strategies very well because it is well integrated with Purview, integrated well with Entra ID, and integrated well with Exchange. I especially appreciate MDO, the Office product. If anything happens and I want to conduct an investigation, it takes me directly to Exchange, where I can also investigate any emails or phishing incidents. Instead of going to different portals, everything can be done from Microsoft Defender XDR. If necessary for further investigation, Microsoft Defender XDR then directs me to that environment. I would assess the integration of AI in guiding security actions within Microsoft Defender XDR as quite positive. Recently, Security Copilot went big, and it is beneficial that I can use that, especially to write KQL. I can do threat hunting features and intelligence all within using Microsoft's Security Copilot. It also has a nice AI feature for threat hunting. I know that all the Defender logs go to Sentinel, and I can pull it up from Microsoft Defender XDR or from Sentinel. The fact that I can actually do all that within Microsoft Defender XDR is a nice feature. In the top module, I can do threat lookups, and I can actually type KQLs in Microsoft Defender XDR and look up incidents. Predictive shielding has had a nice impact on my proactive security measures. It is beneficial that it has, similar to Entra ID, a secure score. For me to improve the product, the secure score helps me out. If I rate it from highest to lowest, I can see what things I can improve. Secure score helps me see what areas I can improve in Microsoft Defender XDR to increase my score and bring it to 80 or more. Knowing Microsoft Defender XDR from using it since 2019, before COVID days, I know that they have improved significantly. It is much more user-friendly and has a very nice vulnerability feature that I find handy and useful. The fact that this feature integrates into Intune is also very decent.
Rick Schibler - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of Information Technology at Kentucky Trailer
Offers in-memory protection at a lower price than competitors
Morphisec's in-memory protection is probably the most valuable feature because it stops malicious activity from occurring. If something tries to install or act as a sleeper agent, Morphisec will detect and stop it. Morphisec's Moving Target Defense is critical to hardening our attack surface. If it detects something, it indicates whether it's valid. That means you've got a breach requiring investigation. It detects anomalies but doesn't necessarily point to what caused them. You still need to do that work. The solution is reasonably easy to administer. They made some changes last year, adding a cloud-based monitoring solution that makes deploying and monitoring our endpoints easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cortex XDR can integrate the firewalls and determine the tendencies of the attacks. It's a new generation antivirus, with protection endpoints and detection response. It is very easy to use and everybody can operate the solution."
"The solution allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."
"Palo Alto Networks Traps improves our security posture and lowers risk by providing next-gen methods to combat against modern threats on all the major platforms."
"I generally believe that Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is probably the best in the market right now."
"Palo Alto is the core of the security infrastructure in the environment."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning."
"Its ability to react to cyber data attacks is awesome."
"The most valuable feature is that you can select remote access of any machine for sandboxing."
"Defender XDR enables you to scan a system remotely and get a complete inventory of its assets. You can gather more information from the asset inventory and apply threat intelligence using Office 365 or something."
"365 Defender saves us a lot of money because we don't have to recover data or hire outside lawyers to help us with legal trouble."
"The common and advanced security policies for threat hunting and blocking attacks are valuable."
"Within advanced threat hunting, the tables that have already been defined by Microsoft are helpful. In the advanced threat hunting tab, there were different tables, and one of the tables was related to device info, device alert, and device events. That was very helpful. Another feature that I liked but didn't have access to was deep analysis."
"Having a single pane of glass for all Microsoft security services makes everything much easier. A security analyst can go to a single portal and see everything in one view. The integration of everything into one portal is a huge benefit."
"As a reseller and partner, the advantages of Microsoft Defender XDR are numerous; I have stopped many threats for many organizations using Defender alone, and I have saved significant IT management time by avoiding manual updates and manual work."
"Another noteworthy feature that I find appealing in Microsoft Defender is the credit-backed simulation. This feature enables organizations to train their users on effectively responding to phishing emails through a simulated training environment."
"The ability to isolate and address viruses is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender XDR."
"Morphisec is quite an important tool for us in terms of security and InfoSec because of the malware protection."
"In a month, we are saving the effort of four to five days, and earlier we used to have a dedicated person and now we don't need a dedicated resource, which has reduced our security spending and we are saving approximately $600 a month."
"Morphisec has enabled us to become a lot less paranoid when it comes to staff clicking on things or accessing things that they shouldn't that could infect the whole system. Our original ransomware attack that happened came from someone's Google drive and then just filtered on through that. It has put our minds at ease a lot more in running it. It's also another layer of security that has been proven to be effective for us."
"It also provides full visibility into security events from Microsoft Defender and Morphisec in one dashboard. We've always had that capability with Morphisec. The more recent version appears to do that even a little bit more natively and it's given us visibility that we didn't have otherwise."
"All the alerts are on the dashboard, which is quite simple and useful for us. You can easily check all the alerts that are being blocked or allowed, or whatever the action is. You can easily see that and you can take the necessary actions. You can add a PowerShell extension or any activities for blocking at your network level or for endpoints."
"The product has absolutely worked flawlessly; we have had basically no issues, either with the product or with any type of virus or zero-day attacks, ransomware, nothing, as it has caught everything."
"If you have the ability to get Morphisec into their environment, it's going to be a hundred percent return on investment."
"We don't have to do anything as a user or as an admin. It does everything by default with its coding and inbuilt AI-based intelligence. We don't have to instruct it about what to do. It automatically takes corrective actions and quarantines or deletes a virus, malware, etc. That is the best part that I like about it."
 

Cons

"Although I would say this product is highly-rated, it could probably do more because nothing does everything that you want."
"Whenever the tool releases a new version when deploying the product across the organization, I feel like there are some disturbances in the CPU usage after upgrading the tool to the latest version."
"It is a complex solution to implement."
"In an upcoming release, the solution could improve by proving hard disk encryption. If it could support this it would be a complete solution."
"It's not an ideal choice for smaller businesses, as you need a minimum of 200 endpoints to even use the solution at all."
"One thing that was missing was the integration part. Currently, they don't have out-of-box integration with IBM QRadar, or if they have the integration, the integration doesn't work well."
"The negative aspect I see is the economic model used by Palo Alto."
"The encryption is not up to the mark."
"The automation response being slow is the main concern; when an incident occurs or if I run a remediation, it takes significant time to complete the remediation."
"Offboarding latency should be reduced. Even after a device has been successfully offboarded using a particular offboarding script, it still shows up as onboarded."
"Advanced attacks could use an improvement."
"There are a few technical issues with Defender XDR that can be improved. Sometimes, the endpoint devices are not reporting properly to the Defender 365 portal. When you're getting all the information from the Microsoft portal, the devices are sometimes not in sync. We have hundreds of endpoint devices, some needing to be onboarded again."
"Support is hit or miss. Microsoft wants you to buy premium support contracts. Though they call themselves professional support, it's almost like throwing questions into a black hole. You get an answer, but it's never helpful."
"There could be a way to proactively monitor unusual activity ."
"There is definitely scope for improvement in the automation area. Because the solution is a SaaS platform, we don't have the overall ability to automate stuff.... There is no direct way to go ahead because it's a SaaS platform."
"Defender XDR could provide recommendations for threat-hunting queries. Some people do not know how to write an advanced threat query, so we need to spend time training them."
"The dashboard is the area that requires the most improvement."
"Overall, I don't know 100% if it's increasing our security posture, but it does give us a nice peace of mind."
"It would be useful for them if they had some kind of network discovery."
"Automating reports needs improvement. I would like to have better reporting capabilities within it or automated reporting to be a little bit more dynamic. That's something I know they're working on. We literally are in the process. We started the process a week and a half ago of going to their latest version, so I've not seen their latest one up and running yet."
"I haven't been able to get the cloud deployment to work."
"We wanted to have multi-tenants in their cloud platform, so every entity can look into their own systems and not see other systems in other entities. I have a beta version on that now. I would like them to incorporate that in the cloud solution."
"It might be a bit much to ask, but we are now beginning to use Morphisec Scout, which provides vulnerability information. At this time, it's recognizing vulnerabilities and reporting them to us, but it's not necessarily resolving them. There's still a separate manual process to resolve those vulnerabilities, primarily through upgrades. We have to do that outside of Morphisec. If Morphisec could somehow have that capability built into it, that would be very effective."
"If anything, tech support might be their weakest link. The process of getting someone involved sometimes takes a little time. It seems to me that they should have all the data they need to let me know whether an alert is legitimate or not, but they tend to need a lot of information from me to get to the bottom of something. It usually takes a little longer than I would expect."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"The price was fine."
"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward."
"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is priced high."
"Microsoft Defender XDR's licensing is complicated."
"It has consistently offered highly appealing academic pricing, with distinct rates for higher education and general educational purposes."
"The solution is affordable, and we haven't been hit with any hidden costs. The subscription model is straightforward, and it's easy to understand how much additional features cost. If we need to cancel a license or feature, we do that well in advance to avoid being charged for it, but overall, the pricing and licensing are simple and easy."
"The most valuable licensing option is expensive, so pricing could be improved. Licensing options for this solution also need to be consolidated, because they frequently change."
"The pricing of Microsoft 365 Defender is definitely on the costly side, but with the features and services that Microsoft provides, such as the seamless integration of all the Defender tools, while the price is on the higher side, there is no alternative."
"Its licensing and pricing are handled by someone else. My role is limited to incidents or issues with the portal, but you get what you pay for. It is worth the cost."
"While the standalone price of Defender XDR might seem high, its value becomes clear when considering the ease of implementation and smooth integration with our existing Microsoft infrastructure, especially when bundled with other Microsoft products."
"It is a little bit more expensive than other security products that we use, but it does provide us good protection. So, it is a trade-off."
"The pricing is definitely fair for what it does."
"It is priced correctly for what it does. They end up doing a good deal of discounting, but I think it is priced appropriately."
"We are still using a separate tool. I know for our 600 or I think we're actually licensed for up to 700 users, it runs me 23 or $24,000 a year. When you're talking to that many users plus servers being protected, that's well worth the investment for that dollar amount."
"It does not have multi-tenants. If South Africa wants to show only the machines that they have, they need their own cloud incidence. It is not possible to have that in a single cloud incidence with multiple tenants in it, instead you need to have multiple cloud incidences. Then, if you have that, it will be more expensive. However, they are going to change that, which is good."
"Price-wise, it's on the higher side. A traditional antivirus solution is cheaper, but in terms of security and manageability, its ROI is better than a traditional antivirus. I would recommend it to anybody evaluating or considering an antivirus solution. If your system gets compromised, the cost of ransom would be a lot more. This way, it saves a lot of cost."
"Licenses are per endpoint, and that's true for the cloud version as well. The only difference is that there is a little extra charge for the cloud version."
"Morphisec is reasonably priced because our parent company's other subsidiaries use different products like CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is four or five times more expensive than Morphisec. The competitive pricing saves us money in our overall security stack."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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 Business46
Midsize Enterprise28
Large Enterprise41
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise8
 

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,...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender XDR is that we are on an E5 license,...
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
From my perspective, Microsoft Defender XDR can be improved with better visibility in certain areas where I can trigg...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft 365 Defender?
My main use cases for Microsoft Defender XDR are telemetry, advanced hunting, and the ability to perform host isolati...
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Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
Morphisec, Morphisec Moving Target Defense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Lenovo/Motorola, TruGreen, Covenant Health, Citizens Medical Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Morphisec and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.