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Microsoft Forefront [EOL] vs VMware Carbon Black Endpoint comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
121
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Forefront [EOL]
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (26th), Security Incident Response (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (28th), Ransomware Protection (8th)
 

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.
it_user772620 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
PM
CTO at Microsoft
Improved incident investigation has supported response while core protection still needs progress
VMware Carbon Black Endpoint does not have easy integration, as there are many complexities with the Ribitava API, which is very deep. I rate this solution overall as a five or six on a scale from one to ten. I have integrated VMware Carbon Black Endpoint with other tools that are helpful. I think this solution should be targeted at small clients, because adoption will grow more with small businesses tomorrow.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Palo Alto is the best security solution in the market."
"The dashboard is customizable."
"It's a nice product that's stable and scalable."
"In one single alert, we are getting the network telemetry, endpoint telemetry, email security telemetry, and proxy telemetry all in one single ticket, making it very easy."
"The live terminal is probably the best thing ever. It gives you the access to get straight onto any machine."
"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 product is mostly automated, and we do not have to make decisions, because all the decisions are made by the product itself and we are not required to create any custom policies since the policies that are created are well defined in the product itself."
"I've found the solution to be highly scalable for enterprises."
"It has automated the entire user and group management process, thus reducing manual work and help desk cost to a great extent."
"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."
"Product has been enough for our customers’ requirements."
"The simplicity of managing the product compared to its competitors, like BIG-IP F5 and Citrix NetScaler, is a valuable feature."
"Performance wise, it's one of the most effective anti-virus solutions we have ever used."
"It cost us approx. US$250k to set up and is roughly US$200 day to day."
"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 solution is very useful and easy to handle. You don't need much intervention with this product."
"The cost/benefit factor has great relevance in Cb Defense implementations."
"The triage feature that shows you the whole chain of the malware is useful."
"The new feature that we're deploying, the new offering from Carbon Black, is MDR, which stands for manage, detect, and response. It's the most valuable feature because Carbon Black will be continuously checking the logs, and they will be advising us on how to improve some of the policies as well as review the logs. If there are any nefarious agents or things happening on the end points, they will know."
"The solution has a very nice API on the back end for remoting into a system and executing scripts or utilizing self automation."
"Since March of 2018, we have not had a malicious intrusion success."
"This product has the capability of uploading scripts to the tool and this is a very comprehensive feature."
"The impact on performance and the ability to have greater visibility were pluses in my book."
 

Cons

"Technology evolves every day, so it would be nice if it gets more secure. It can also have more integration with other platforms."
"I think sometimes Cortex XDR agent automatically stops event capturing from the device, and then even the dashboard does not get any notifications from the agent."
"Cortex XDR should have a lightweight agent, and the agent size should not be heavy."
"In some cases, there are too many options for me, and it is a bit too hard to find some settings which I really need to implement."
"The solution should enhance the ADR and reporting."
"It tends to do 99.9% of things. The only thing I'd like is single sign-on authentication into their cloud platform so that my users can be properly authenticated against it."
"The solution lags to the real-time scenarios here and there."
"The connection to the internet has not performed as expected."
"Pretty awful. A large initial investment with something that could have been done by one person full time over six years with less hassle."
"When using Forefront in a domain network, it is quite difficult to create the group policies needed for definition/engine updates using WSUS."
"More out of box connectors and conducting awareness of the product along with more marketing."
"I’d personally like to see some additional customization capabilities in the reporting section."
"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."
"The product has unfortunately reach its End-Of-Life (EOL) at Microsoft and is now replaced by several products."
"Web user interface from 1990s. Users laugh at it."
"There is room for improvement in the support and service team."
"It would be nice to have additional forensic tools that you can build into the back end."
"The local technical support is very poor, but the support from headquarters is very nice."
"I'm not sure as to the logic of how we've decided to customize it. We've only really used it since February and therefore there may be more to do on that front. That's why it's hard to say if something is missing or if we just aren't utilizing it."
"I'm not happy with the way they are treating existing customers for adding licenses."
"In our company, we also wanted to have network detection, like a host-based IDS on VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, but we did not get it."
"The Mac support needs improvement, as it had next to none."
"The feature set for the firewall needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't like that they have different types of licenses."
"In terms of the cost Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very expensive because we are a Mexican company and when you translate dollars to pesos the cost is very high. The solution is very expensive for Mexican companies. I understand that they have international prices, but I do not think it offsets the price enough for many companies in countries, such as Mexico. The amount it is reduced is not a massive percentage."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The price of the product is not very economical."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
Information not available
"In terms of licensing costs, Carbon Black CB Defense was all associated with CROW and the services my company is using with them, so it came all-inclusive."
"The pricing is annually based and operates through another department than mine."
"The pricing [is] more or less the same as other similar solutions."
"The product is quite reasonable."
"It is more expensive, but it's worth it. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee."
"This is a really expensive product and we pay licensing fees on a yearly basis."
"The price for the solution is completely at government level, meaning one which is very high."
"Price-wise, VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is a highly-priced solution. Regarding the licensing cost of the solution, one needs to opt for an annual subscription."
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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
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business49
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise33
 

Questions from the Community

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Ask a question
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What to choose: an endpoint antivirus, an EDR solution or both?
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What's the difference between Carbon Black CB Response and Carbon Black CB Defense?
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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Carbon Black CB Defense?
My rating for the pricing of VMware Carbon Black Endpoint is that it is not cheap, but it is also not as inexpensive ...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
MS Forefront [EOL]
Carbon Black CB Defense, Bit9, Confer
 

Overview

 

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
Netflix, Progress Residential, Indeed, Hologic, Gentle Giant, Samsung Research America
Find out what your peers are saying about SentinelOne, Microsoft, CrowdStrike and others in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP). Updated: October 2026.
920,043 professionals have used our research since 2012.