Microsoft Defender for Business Reviews

I use the solution in my company, and we have already been using it for our laptop security. We have been using the tool from Microsoft to protect our laptops from viruses.

The tool's most valuable feature is that it runs behind the scenes, and you don't have to worry about virus protection.

I like the Defender for Business because it is a known entity. It is good quality software. Bug fixes and enhancements continue to be made. It has a good suite of products,

The tool's support is an area of concern where improvements are needed. I have had issues trying to get support or even trying to get to somebody. I often give up chasing the support and end up going to Google because I can't get any help from the support team. Microsoft's intent may be to push Google to users so that they end up searching on Google about the issues and see whether anyone else has had such problems before.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Business for a couple of years.

I haven't had any problems with the tool's stability. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It is a good and scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

There are about 15 people in my company who benefit from the use of the tool.

We are an IT company developing software and working with universities, farms, and manufacturing businesses.

I rate the technical support a two out of ten.

Negative

I have ten years of experience with Microsoft SQL Server. My team uses Azure Cosmos DB, but I don't have much access to Azure. Our company uses third-party tools on our Azure Cloud.

My company uses Microsoft Master Data Services Overview (MDS).

My company has had experience with some other tools in the past. The difference between the past tools and Microsoft Defender for Business stems from the latter being from Microsoft, and it was nice to have all the products we used bundled under the same vendor.

The product's initial setup phase wasn't too bad. The product's installation phase wasn't terrible, but it could have been good to club the things in the process, especially for the ones who are doing it for the first time, and it would be good if Microsoft offered users, someone, to talk to who knows the product. You will be gambling if you use Google for the tool because who knows if it really knows what Microsoft Defender for Business is all about.

On a scale of one to ten, if ten is the easiest, I rate the setup phase as an eight out of ten. The setup phase was straightforward.

As the tool was needed in a small shop, the solution's deployment was done in a couple of days.

The solution was deployed in my company with the help of a small team of ten people. I had my head of IT help me in rolling it out in our company.

With Microsoft Defender for Business, it would be hard to get an ROI. The tool offers assurance to its users. You know that the tool helps some problems and stops some of the issues from occurring, and you won't even know that.

The tool's cost has been a little high, but I do not think it was terrible.

The tool doesn't require any maintenance; we check it all every now and then, but other than that, we don't do anything with the solution in our company.

I recommend the tool to others.

The tool doesn't help with AI initiatives.

I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

I use Microsoft Defender for Business to protect our company assets.

Regarding use cases, there are not so many I have, but two months ago, I had one case where Microsoft Defender for Business detected a cyber attack from the log file. Each Linux system keeps track of logging failed activity on their server, and Microsoft Defender for Business detected that cyber attack and stopped that activity, which is a very good thing.

What I appreciate about Microsoft Defender for Business is that it is from a trusted vendor, Microsoft.

Using Microsoft Defender for Business is beneficial for my company. Although security itself is tough to calculate in terms of cost savings and return on investment, we basically spend money to keep the security.

There are many aspects I do not appreciate about Microsoft Defender for Business. One important thing is that Microsoft is a Windows vendor, and they're a bit far from Linux, which mainly uses Red Hat. Microsoft is not good at managing the Linux platform.

I find Microsoft Defender for Business not stable.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Business for almost half a year.

I find Microsoft Defender for Business not stable.

I would rate the stability of Microsoft Defender for Business with a three out of ten, where one is very bad.

In terms of scalability, I would rate Microsoft Defender for Business a ten, as I tell customers that Microsoft Defender for Business is already running on their Linux boxes.

The technical support from Microsoft is very poor. I would rate it a one, as their technical staff are very junior and take a long time to respond to simple questions.

Negative

Installing Microsoft Defender for Business itself is very easy.

It took less than 10 minutes to install Microsoft Defender for Business. It was very quick.

Installing Microsoft Defender for Business is very easy, so myself and another technical person are able to handle it.

Using Microsoft Defender for Business is beneficial for my company. Although security itself is tough to calculate in terms of cost savings and return on investment, we basically spend money to keep the security.

I don't handle the pricing of Microsoft Defender for Business as a technical person. However, we manage the costs of updating, installing, and managing Microsoft Defender for Business.

Aside from Microsoft, I am focusing on security and using another security product from Proofpoint.

I would recommend Microsoft Defender for Business to companies that use Microsoft products. However, for companies focused on technology, I recommend CrowdStrike, which is in very high demand and has a strong technology preview.

I am doing maintenance for Microsoft Defender for Business, and I'm currently working with it.

We don't need to use the latest version of Microsoft Defender for Business. We still use the latest virus definition file that Microsoft Defender for Business has automatically updated. We implement a basic update mechanism.

Our compliance division manages how many servers and PCs we have and whether those servers have antivirus solutions.

I am not certain about how Microsoft Defender for Business helps with AI-driven security strategies. I just use it normally and don't know if it uses AI technology.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Business a six out of ten.

On-premises

Other

We use Windows 11 Enterprise in our organization.

We utilize Microsoft Defender for Business primarily for firewall and total security, including threat detection and malware protection. The system is overall good.

We face a licensing issue with Windows 11 Enterprise not reflecting in our portal, which affects activation. Microsoft's support did not resolve this issue, even after sharing remote desktop and screen details.

We have been using Microsoft Defender for several years.

Everything is stable. There have been no technical errors or stability issues.

Microsoft's remote support through remote desktops did not resolve our issue, and I would rate their service three or four out of ten.

Neutral

We have a campus agreement, and licensing is managed through the VLSC portal. We experience issues with Windows 11 Enterprise edition and license keys not showing.

I advise ensuring that licenses are correctly reflected in your portal. Overall, I would rate Microsoft Defender for Business as seven out of ten.

On-premises

I use the solution in my company to protect computers with Windows 10 and Windows 11 Professional in Active Directory. I don't really like the tool, but our head of service has chosen it in our company.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its central console.

Our company cannot take action remotely with Microsoft Defender for Business. If I know a computer has opened a compromised email, it is very difficult to take action from Microsoft Defender's console. The tool is mainly informative, but we cannot do updates remotely. We cannot do almost anything remotely from Microsoft Defender's console. For economic reasons, our head of service has chosen the tool because we already have Office 365.

In the tool, it should be made easier to take actions from the console to the workstations. With the tool, being able to do updates, not just from Microsoft products on workstations, but also other programs should be made possible while including third-party products like Firefox, 7-Zip, and Java.

In the next release, I want the tool to quarantine computers and remotely manage our workstation's Windows Firewall from the console. Workstations and computers should be able to see each other to make managing Windows Firewall easy. The tool should offer better integration with Linux servers.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Business for a year. I am a customer of the solution.

I have no complaints about the tool's stability. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It is an easily scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

There are 150 users of the tool in my company. Some of the tool's users are engineers, while some are psychologists, so we have a broad range of users. I work in the government sector.

It does not depend on my opinion whether the organization I work for wants to increase the tool's usage or not.

Talking with the tool's technician about any problem is very complicated. The problem is to reach out to a technician by phone because the product's team redirects you to someone else, and it gets complicated. There are no straightforward emails that can be sent to Microsoft to raise tickets. I rate the technical support a four out of ten.

Neutral

I have worked with Kaspersky and found it to be better than Microsoft Defender for Business because you can do updates from Kaspersky's console and not from the central console. The console was useful for updating the workstations.

The product's initial setup phase is difficult because we have to make a script. In short, I rate the setup phase a three out of ten.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in two days.

The tool is cheap, while some other solutions are more expensive. I remember the tool cost about five euros for a workstation or for a user on a monthly basis.

Against Microsoft Defender for Business, we have looked at Sophos because its deployment was more straightforward.

I really don't know about the threat detection capabilities of Microsoft Defender for Business because I have been using it only for a year and it hasn't detected anything yet. Microsoft Defender for Business has a good detection rate because it hasn't detected anything associated with viruses, malware, and other normal issues in programs over a span of one year, during which we had 150 computers in our company.

The tool is well-integrated, at least in the area of threat detection. It is not well integrated with Windows updates. The tool cannot be used to trigger updates remotely.

I am not aware of any AI feature in the tool.

The advantage of the tool is that once it is deployed, you don't even notice that there is an additional product planning on the orchestrations because it is a part of Windows. The tool is very transparent to manage, and it feels like there isn't any third-party product required to use it. The product also integrates with Office 365 and Windows. In addition, as the provider is the same, you don't have to indulge in paperwork.

I don't recommend the tool to others since I don't have much feedback about its scanning ability or detection. With Microsoft Defender for Business, I don't feel I have as much control over the workstations as I do with other products.

I rate the tool a four out of ten.

On-premises

We predominantly use it to protect our desktops and laptops. It is used across our endpoint ecosystem. We use it for every device. We have more than 20,000 devices, and we deployed Defender about two years ago. It essentially protects all our endpoints.

Microsoft Defender for Business has made us a lot quicker to respond to these threats. In the past, what used to take sometimes days and weeks is now a matter of hours, so it gives us much quicker response times. Overall, it has improved our security posture, so some of these do not even become incidents because it does a good job of protecting our endpoints. In the past, what would have made its way further into our ecosystem gets blocked at the edge. These are a few benefits.

Alerting has helped to improve our security. We also get quarterly updates and monthly updates on the big trends that are happening, which also helps us. The combination of the alerting on the endpoint and the briefings and updates we get are helpful for our security.

Microsoft Defender for Business has affected our security posture. We are definitely better than where we were. We are happy with our decision. All my feedback was to make it better and be happy with the product as a whole.

Microsoft Defender for Business saves us time and money. It does make my team more productive. There is about 15% to 20% productivity improvement for my security teams. Those are the folks who typically work on these issues, so there is definitely improvement there. 

It also reduces the nuisance alerts, which we used to get with our previous software. It does help the end users as well. They do not get distracted by a lot of noise and just focus on their jobs. 

A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is going on. We have a footprint across all of North America, Canada, and Mexico, so we want to make sure that all our endpoints are protected and we are able to look for any anomalous activity. It provides alerts not only to the end users but also to my team to track that so that we can quickly isolate a security threat and lock the bad guys out.

The biggest one is that Defender needs to be more proactive to the emerging threats. There can be tighter integration with email, especially how it integrates with our email system, which is the Microsoft Outlook suite. There should be the ability to react a lot quicker to emerging threats because sometimes, it takes a few days before some of these new threats are fully identified, and we need that to be a few hours.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Business for two years.

I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of stability.

I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of scalability. It is deployed at multiple locations on all of our endpoints, such as laptops and desktops. We have about 20,000 endpoints.

It is excellent. I would rate their support a nine out of ten.

Positive

There were a few different ones we used. Norton was one, and then there were a few others. The biggest thing was that we had a lot of false alerts on the previous tools, which we do not get here. The responses to emerging threats were far slower with the other tools as well. The Microsoft tool is definitely faster.

My team was involved in its initial setup, but I was not personally involved in it.

In terms of its deployment model, we have our own data center, and we have the public cloud, so we use both. We have Azure Cloud.

On our side, we have seen an ROI. The biggest thing is the productivity of our end users and the productivity of my team. That is the biggest ROI we see.

It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors.

It has been a while. I do not recall. I am sure we did evaluate other options, but I do not remember the names.

Do a free trial that Microsoft offers and kick the tires on this. You will be happy with what you get to see.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Business an eight out of ten. 

In our hybrid enterprise environment, which consists of on-prem AD and cloud AD, Azure AD, I use Microsoft Defender for Business since we've got the Business Basic License.

Some of the use cases with Microsoft Defender for Business involve monitoring the machines, updating the machines, and troubleshooting threats and things of that nature.

The security features in Microsoft Defender for Business that have been most effective for our company include the way it's built-in and intertwined into all the operating systems, giving us a good opportunity to holistically block things for the organization using that tenant.

The threat detection and response capability in Microsoft Defender for Business has helped improve our security posture, and I primarily use it intertwined with the quarantine feature to pull messages back and utilize threat intelligence for investigatory and response purposes.

Microsoft Defender for Business could improve by offering more of their offerings available in the basic tenants since not everyone has a budget for higher-level licenses, but everyone needs security in their environments.

I didn't configure Microsoft Defender for Business, but I know it's pretty straightforward. I've configured it in a couple of other environments.

For an SMB use case, it would probably take two or three of us to deploy Microsoft Defender for Business, and it wouldn't take much since we have less than 300 users.

I haven't used technical support for Microsoft Defender for Business. I have an open case for close to two months with no responses or updates, except for an email response, and I've made four or five phone calls regarding the Microsoft Interconnect for AD and cloud tenant.

Positive

We haven't seen a significant return on investment with Microsoft Defender for Business yet, as we have been using third-party products to fill the gaps and are awaiting some funding from the federal government to add a few more tools to our security stack.

Our thoughts on the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Business are that we wish it could be better. If the pricing was a little better, we would definitely increase what we currently have.

There are no issues with integrating those third-party products within the Microsoft suite or security, as they're pretty separate. I use command line tools and security scorecard to check for vulnerabilities that aren't cloud-based.

My experience is more with Microsoft Defender for Business products than Purview products. I work in local government while using Microsoft Defender for Business products.

I would recommend Microsoft Defender for Business to other SMBs because it's a good one-stop offering if you have primarily Microsoft products in your environment, providing good cloud sources, flexibility, and compatibility with a lot of common third-party vendor products.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Microsoft Defender for Business a nine.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

The solution provides good scalability.

The solution's AI is notorious for false positives, and the time you have to spend training it is ridiculous. I can't believe that Microsoft was using CrowdStrike, which is known for its poor execution protocols.

I do not like that Microsoft does not post the changes it will make beforehand. For example, when you log in to their security portal, they will change the blades on it without any pre-warning. They are terrible at pre-communication. It's like I have to relearn once a month how to use Microsoft every time I log in. They make many changes without warning anyone or communicating with them.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Business for four years.

Microsoft Defender for Business is a scalable solution. Around 2,000 users are using the solution in our organization.

Since Microsoft is a big company, you'll never get a personal MSP-type response from its support. You need to go in with your eyes wide open and know your expectations with Microsoft.

Neutral

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

It took us two months to deploy the solution from start to finish. Microsoft got us up and going pretty quickly, but we hired an MSP to come in and do security tests. They reviewed everything and told us about the changes we needed to make inside our tenant. You can lock everything down, but if you're truly supporting a business, you must ensure their needs are met first and then lock down what you can.

I think the solution's pricing is pretty much on point. Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool.

Microsoft does a good job. My big issue with it is that it has gotten so big that it has over 100 portals for administrative purposes. As a director, I spend more of my time going through the portals, doing my due diligence, and trying to ensure that my cloud tenant is in okay shape. I know we need to hire more people, but Microsoft is clunky.

I rate the solution's protection features a six or seven out of ten. The solution's AI is notorious for false positives, and the time you have to spend training it is ridiculous. I have three hours carved out every week just to go in and pull all the phishing emails that people flag, and I have to run it through and train the AI. Artificial intelligence should be automated, and I should not have to do it.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

We are managed service providers. We provide the solution to our clients.

We are quite happy with the product. The product provides us with stable protection. The interface is quite user-friendly.

We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac.

My organization has been using the solution for four months.

The product is quite stable.

We also use Deep Instinct. We are slowly moving away from the product because we faced a lot of trouble while using it. While it's a good tool, it's probably too good for its own benefit. It made our life very challenging. I had to devote a lot of technical teams and my end resources to figure out problems with the application. There was a financial cost associated with it.

The solution is easy to deploy. It is not as complicated as Deep Instinct.

We use the product in conjunction with a few other solutions. I'm the company's managing director, and I am not involved with the product’s rollout. The complication with Deep Instinct wasn't just in installation. The product hasn't really been used extensively in our organization yet. We are doing gradual implementations. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.