Microsoft Forefront [EOL] vs Symantec Endpoint Security comparison

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Microsoft and Broadcom are both solutions in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) category. Additionally, 85% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Forefront [EOL] and Symantec Endpoint Security based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about SentinelOne, Microsoft, CrowdStrike and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP).

To learn more, read our detailed Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Report (Updated: October 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)

October 2026

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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...

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH

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.

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it_user772620

Systems Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

There is simplicity in the management of the product compared to its competitors

Web proxy services along with the integrated firewall VPN Intrusion prevention Malware inspection URL filtering The simplicity of managing the product compared to its competitors, like BIG-IP F5 and Citrix NetScaler The ease of deploying mobile functionality through the web proxy has…

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Abhimanyu Das

Senior Cybersecurity Engineer at Kyndryl

Behavioral protection has blocked ransomware and now saves extensive recovery and audit time

The best feature of Symantec Endpoint Security is its effectiveness in malware protection. Its malware protection capabilities stand out due to their ease of management. Although multiple tools assist in this process, managing them all can sometimes be challenging. In terms of malware protection, Symantec Endpoint Security performs well, and its mechanisms, tactics, and techniques are effective. Symantec Endpoint Security offers robust features such as advanced reporting capabilities with a customizable dashboard that integrates EDR timelines, threat maps, and compliance metrics into a single view. Additionally, reports can be exported to PDF or CSV formats, making reporting one of its strong points. It also provides comprehensive device control features, which block unauthorized USB devices and support whitelisting. This helps prevent data exfiltration and phishing scenarios without disrupting user workflows.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The anti-exploit is impenetrable."

"The solution is a new generation XDR that has a lot of artificial intelligence modules."

"Cortex is the best tool for endpoint detection, and I have used it to verify hashes or domains to identify malicious activity, trigger playbooks that automate and gather endpoint logs, block malicious processes, and update incident tickets, showcasing end-to-end processes with automation in investigation and reducing the analysis workflow."

"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."

"The solution allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."

"Since using Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, our MTTR has reduced, which means the mean time to resolve any ticket has been reduced."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to rapidly detect certain hardware files."

"I can highlight that we have not faced any security incidents with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, and even though our environment is quite dynamic, we have not faced any security incident with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks until now."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pros

"It has automated the entire user and group management process, thus reducing manual work and help desk cost to a great extent."

"Performance wise, it's one of the most effective anti-virus solutions we have ever used."

"The snort engine, which is the muscle behind the Sourcefire IPS technology, has always been a joy for me to work with."

"Our ROI is that we can provision users accounts within 30 minutes of them being put into the system."

"The simplicity of managing the product compared to its competitors, like BIG-IP F5 and Citrix NetScaler, is a valuable feature."

"It cost us approx. US$250k to set up and is roughly US$200 day to day."

"Product has been enough for our customers’ requirements."

"To date we have not had a virus infecting a desktop with Forefront installed - this is the main reason why we will not use another anti-virus solution."

"It is very easy to managing everything in relation to the implementation and processing. The initial setup is very easy."

"Protecting the company data is key. This solution gives a clearer picture of your endpoint, security, and network."

"The solution can be scaled to handle different threats."

"Before choosing Symantec, I tried Apex One from Trend Micro; Symantec is better because it is more up to date with viruses and malware signatures."

"This handles not just anti-virus, but a wide collection of other protective features including device and application control, network-based intrusions, and phishing attacks."

"Overall, we're pretty happy with the product."

"Device control is most valuable. Symantec is providing all such features in the basic plan, whereas when we last checked, such a feature was not available in the basic plan of Malwarebytes."

"I like that the solution can be scaled to deal with different threats, and the same agent will be integrated into different Symantec products, which obviates the need to deploy multiple agents and keeps things very small and effective."

More Symantec Endpoint Security pros

Cons

"The solution lacks real-time, on-demand antivirus."

"A potential area of improvement for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the cost."

"Traps doesn't work with McAfee. You need to remove McAfee to install Traps. This is very common, and its nothing that should be an issue. Some antivirus engines recognize Traps as an threat component, so maybe they need to shake hands somewhere."

"I would like to see them include NDR (Network Detection Response). Then it would work well with SIEM Response."

"I have faced some issues with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks; there is room for improvement in the sense that certain options prevent us from seeing and segregating data."

"This product has not improved my organization - in fact, we are in the process of moving back to another product as a result of Cortex's horrible impact on system performance."

"Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth."

"When it comes to core analysis, and security analysis, Cortex needs to provide more information."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks cons

"More out of box connectors and conducting awareness of the product along with more marketing."

"Web user interface from 1990s. Users laugh at it."

"I’d personally like to see some additional customization capabilities in the reporting section."

"When using Forefront in a domain network, it is quite difficult to create the group policies needed for definition/engine updates using WSUS."

"Pretty awful. A large initial investment with something that could have been done by one person full time over six years with less hassle."

"The product has unfortunately reach its End-Of-Life (EOL) at Microsoft and is now replaced by several products."

"Without a local Windows Update Server, the client seems to update very slowly and may take a lot of time."

"One of the biggest pain points was that username changes were not automated and caused problems."

"There is room for improvement in the zero-day threat detection system."

"I would like things to be cheaper in the next release, although I cannot say which specific function I am referencing."

"Symantec has not properly promoted Symantec Endpoint Security in the market. In my opinion, the product should be properly promoted."

"I would like to see fileless attack protection."

"About four years back, Symantec's signature was very heavy and their signature patch was around 200MB or 300MB files."

"It would be great if the solution could match up with the competition's offerings - for example, making sure they are keeping up with, for example, CrowdStrike and other offerings."

"The solution could be more secure and scalable."

"This solution is resource-heavy."

More Symantec Endpoint Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."

"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."

"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."

"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."

"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."

"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."

"This is an expensive solution."

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"It is cheap. It is especially cheaper than Malwarebytes, which is three times higher than this. It is also cheaper than Cisco. Its price is almost similar to Bitdefender, Gravity, and CloudZone."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"The pricing was one of the factors that led us to choose this product."

"It is normal. If you are an educational institute, they give you a very good discount. If you are coming from the banking side, they may or may not give you a discount. I'm working with seven companies, and normally, they get a 65% to 70% discount on everything."

"Its price is fair."

"Compared to other products and brands here in Mexico, the price is okay, somewhere in the middle. Our solution is unique in that it can adapt to a variety of pricing and licensing constraints considering we have the corporate, government, and academic mandates. The"

"Symantec Endpoint Security is an expensive solution."

"The prices fluctuate, but this year I think it was maybe around $12,000."

More Symantec Endpoint Security pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

14%

Outsourcing Company

12%

Construction Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

No data available

Outsourcing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	49
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	57

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	2

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	69
Midsize Enterprise	32
Large Enterprise	63

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. ...

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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...

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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,...

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Which is better - Cortex XDR or Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?

Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...

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Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?

We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior sol...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec End-User Endpoint Security?

Symantec Endpoint Security's pricing is better than most offerings based on my research. It seems to be half the cost...

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Comparisons

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 16% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Endpoint vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

Cortex XSIAM vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 3% of the time

Trellix Endpoint Security Platform vs Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 3% of the time

More Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks Competitors

ESET Endpoint Protection Platform vs Microsoft Forefront [EOL]

Compared 61% of the time

VMware Carbon Black Endpoint vs Microsoft Forefront [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

More Microsoft Forefront [EOL] Competitors

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 7% of the time

Morphisec vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 5% of the time

Trellix Endpoint Security Platform vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 5% of the time

Kaspersky Next XDR Optimum vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 4% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Symantec Endpoint Security

Compared 4% of the time

More Symantec Endpoint Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks

October 2026

Download Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks product report

Buyer's Guide

Universal Access Gateways

October 2026

Download Microsoft Forefront [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

Symantec Endpoint Security

October 2026

Download Symantec Endpoint Security product report

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps

MS Forefront [EOL]

Symantec EPP, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP)

Overview

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks provides advanced threat detection with AI-driven endpoint protection and seamless integration, ensuring multi-layered security and automatic threat response.

Cortex XDR is designed to safeguard endpoints against malware and suspicious activities. It offers advanced threat detection and response capabilities using behavioral analysis, AI, and machine learning. It seamlessly integrates with security infrastructures, providing endpoint security, firewall integration, and enhanced visibility in both cloud-based and on-premises environments.

What are the key features of Cortex XDR?

Advanced Threat Detection: Uses AI and machine learning for proactive threat identification.
Multi-layered Security: Combines various security measures for comprehensive protection.
Endpoint Protection: Safeguards against malware and exploits.
Behavioral Analysis: Monitors suspicious activity for early detection.
Automatic Threat Response: Automates responses to neutralize threats.

What benefits should users expect?

Ease of Use: Simplifies security management with intuitive design.
Resource Efficiency: Minimizes impact on system resources.
Integration Capabilities: Works well with existing security setups.
Reduced Analyst Workload: Automates processes to decrease manual intervention.

Organizations in diverse sectors deploy Cortex XDR to protect against malware, leveraging its advanced threat detection capabilities. Its integration with existing security infrastructures appeals to those seeking comprehensive protection in both cloud and on-premises environments, providing enhanced visibility and threat intelligence.

Palo Alto Networks

Our agile methodology and our integration expertise brings you the best catalyst to craft solutions of exceptional quality and distinctive success.

Microsoft

Symantec Endpoint Security is a comprehensive protection tool designed for antimalware and antivirus defense. Providing centralized management and smooth deployment, it effectively secures environments from small businesses to extensive networks.

Symantec Endpoint Security serves organizations by offering robust protection with features like rapid deployment and centralized management, critical for securing workstations and servers. While appreciated for efficient resource utilization and stable operation, some users report issues with virus detection and cumbersome updates. Pricing is often considered high. It is a popular choice among IT consultants, academic institutions, and service providers for its ability to manage broad and varied security needs efficiently.

What are the key features of Symantec Endpoint Security?

Centralized Management: Streamlines security operations for ease of handling across networks.
Malware and Antivirus Protection: Provides real-time threat detection and EDR capabilities.
Application and Device Control: Manages access and control policies effectively.
SONAR and IPS: Enhances proactive malware scanning and intrusion prevention.
Active Directory Integration: Supports seamless integration with existing systems.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Symantec Endpoint Security?

Reliable Support: Offers assistance which, while helpful, can vary in effectiveness.
Advanced Reporting: Enables detailed security analysis, though customization is limited.
Efficient Resource Usage: Provides stable performance across platforms with minimal impact.
Proactive Scanning: Ensures threats are detected early, enhancing security measures.

In industries like academia and IT consulting, Symantec Endpoint Security fulfills specific needs for robust endpoint protection. Its centralized management and application control make it suitable for educational institutions managing large network systems, while service providers benefit from its flexible deployment options.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank

EUROVIA CS, a. s., King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Public Education Devel, Bank Alfalah Ltd., CLEAResult, St. Lucie County Public Schools, Wiltshire Council

Audio Visual Dynamics, Red Deer Advocate, Asia Pacific Telecom Co. Ltd., Kibbutz Ein Gedi, and AMETEK, Inc.

Buyer's Guide

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)

October 2026

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