Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Reviews

We combine Microsoft Defender with Advanced Threat Protection to manage, isolate, and scan our laptops and workstations for security threats. We have a dashboard that is embedded into Office 365 and it allows us to remotely scan for viruses and malware, so we don’t have to have the laptop present.

Using this product helps with device inventory. This is not an inventory solution, but it helps you take count of how many workstations you have, as well as what software is installed on each of them. It is important because any software installed on a workstation may be vulnerable to parts of the internet.

Microsoft Defender has features that have helped to add layers to our security posture. The most important of these features is visibility and the provision of detailed alerts. It correlates the data and using this information, I can identify a threat and see if any other workstation in the environment has been affected by it.

Using this product has not negatively affected our user experience. It is just like using Windows 10.

The GUI is very nice.

The reporting capabilities are fantastic.

In the future, I would like to have the ability to patch using this product. Specifically, in an enterprise environment, it would be very good if you could patch the workstations remotely.

The alerting is something that needs to be improved. Alerts need to be sent immediately because as it is now, you see some of them without delay and others arrive perhaps 30 minutes later, and it leaves important gaps in terms of information gathering.

I have been working with Microsoft Defender Antivirus since it first came out, at least seven or eight years ago.

With respect to the stability of the product line, Microsoft has many products that do almost the same thing. The question becomes which one you want to use. This is a good product but at the same time, after a while, you don't know if it is the next one that Microsoft is going to stop releasing because of other products that practically do the same thing.

Microsoft Defender is very scalable and there is a lot of room to expand and add extra layers. We have 2,500 endpoints and we plan to expand; however, we are thinking about using the Microsoft Endpoint Manager in place of it.

Once the decision is made to stay with this product or instead adopt Endpoint Manager, we will expand to cover 6,000 endpoints.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

Prior to Microsoft Defender, we tried quite a few different products from vendors such as Kaspersky and McAfee. One of the major reasons that we adopted Defender is because of the advantage that Microsoft owns the platform, Windows 10. As they have developed the operating system, it is believed that they understand how to guard it much better against a third party. An attacker has to learn a lot about Windows 10.

Another reason we selected Defender is the frequency of updates. Every other time that Windows is updated, Defender is updated. Again, this is because it is owned by Microsoft and exists on its platform.

We also use Microsoft ATP and we are currently looking at Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

The initial setup is straightforward. Basically, once you have the competency with the product, it is straightforward and there are no surprises. It is not rocket science.

This product is built into the Windows 10 image that we install. As you roll out Windows 10, it is already set up and pre-configured, so there is no additional work required.

We saw a return on our investment within the first two years.

If I quantify the effort used for the setup and compare it with the pricing of the previous solution, value for the money was realized during the second year.

We have an enterprise agreement so from my perspective, this is a product that ships with Windows and it is not priced standalone. It comes together with the other Microsoft products that we buy.

When we evaluated Kaspersky and McAfee, we found the scalability was better for Microsoft. You can do in-place upgrades of the endpoints with Defender but for the others, you would have to re-install the upgraded agents on the workstation. This takes a lot of time and it is not productive.

We are currently evaluating Microsoft Endpoint Manager by comparing the differences between it and Microsoft Defender. This is being done in advance of expanding our usage.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to first analyze their critical assets to have an understanding of what they are. Then, decide if they want a scalable solution. New threats are coming in every month and the way this is going, Microsoft is learning lessons from networks that have been compromised. With this information, they give updates and patches to everybody. In support of this product, you have to consider the patching, consider the visibility that it gives, and then consider the critical assets it is protecting.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We are using it only for EDR, but we have a plan to extend it to Microsoft email as well as to the cloud.

Within one month of using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, we could achieve great insights.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a perfect solution. We have used several EDR products, and Microsoft Defender is the best one that I have worked with. It provides great visibility. It is very transparent. We can get so many details about a particular endpoint. It is a great product. I would rate it a five out of five in terms of visibility.

It helps us to identify process-based threats in our environment, not only the signature-based ones. We are able to identify some of the threats that were not detected previously.

We get severity levels from the solution itself. Based on them, we have developed our action plan to act upon any category of incident. It helps to achieve a better SLA to attend to incidents.

I am quite interested in the vulnerability dashboard. It provides vulnerability data according to the CVE database, which helps us to prioritize vulnerabilities in our environment and address them.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint works with Windows and Linux, so we could cover them all. It is suitable for servers as well, not only for endpoints, so we could implement it on most devices in the organization. It has probably saved us 20% of the time. 

It has Kusto Query Language (KQL), so we can use our own queries to find anything.

We can get real-time updates. It is not just signature-based. It provides results based on behavior and successors. It analyzes the behavior and the process. With that, we can achieve greater results that other products do not offer.

We need better support to learn about the product. Documentation is available, but we need some kind of training program so that we can get a better understanding of the product.

We switched to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint about one month ago.

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

It is highly scalable. We have around 5,000 users. I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of scalability.

Previously, we were using a separate EDR product in our environment. We were using Sophos. Our organization moved into Microsoft 365, so we switched to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. 

We heard that it is one of the best products in the industry. We thought that we would get better results with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. That is why we moved to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, and we were able to achieve better results with it.

It is a cloud deployment. It took us a few months to make the switch.

It does not require any maintenance from our end.

Overall, I would rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint a nine out of ten.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides visibility into our workstations at SOC. 

We can react to threats faster and stop them from spreading from one machine to another. It protects from suspicious email attachment downloads. It will lock down the SOC and the workstations. 

It is an EDR product that offers much more information into what's happening at our workstations. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's licensing is confusing. It has conflicting information on the website. We also faced integration issues with other systems. It makes laptops slower than traditional antivirus systems. 

I have been working with the product for a year. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is stable. 

The tool's scalability is good, but we must consider the cost. 

We get good ROI with the product's use. 

The product's threat intelligence prepares us for potential threats and helps us take proactive steps. Its vulnerability management feature is important to us. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has improved our security posture by giving visibility to our endpoints and vulnerabilities. 

The tool helps us save months per year. It also helps us save money in manhours.

 Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has reduced our time to respond and time to detect by a large margin. 

We chose the product because we already use Microsoft products, and it better integrates with them. 

I rate it an eight out of ten. 

Our use case is for financial groups and we use it to control malware, as well as for antivirus. Our focus is on using it as an endpoint solution, but we cover the older servers too.

Of course, we integrate Defender with Microsoft Defender Security Center and the Microsoft compliance score. We use these tools to check the maturity and to guide our clients in using the solution better. The result is that we see growth in security maturity.

When we need to create a new server, we follow certain steps. One step is activating the extension from within the server and using that to check and monitor, in a centralized console, the health of the server. Defender also provides additional information about vulnerabilities and opportunities to increase the overall security.

For example, it will tell us if a library being used has any vulnerabilities. This information is very important for us and for our clients. They use this information to go back to their developers and request fixes. Or it may identify a problem with something in a client's application, where they need another version to mitigate it. And again, when they apply the new version, we can check it using Defender to see if the vulnerability has been resolved.

The anti-malware feature is mandatory for us.

Also, we use policies to mitigate vulnerabilities, but the final compliance score from Microsoft shows us what level the client is at and what level is needed to achieve better results and increase security policy maturity. The integration of Defender, Security Center, and the Microsoft compliance score, is the feature we use most to share the results with our clients and to create a roadmap together.

I would like to see integrations with other products, such as Spunk and other CM solutions. That would create possibilities for me, and for a SOC, to consolidate all events in an older console, not one provided by Microsoft but provided by a third party, and use it to create more insights. Examples of such insights might be the need to create a new policy or the need to mitigate an attack happening now. This type of ability would create a new business case, one that doesn't only use Microsoft solutions.

I've been using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for two years.

The scalability is amazing. Using Azure, the sky is the limit. You just need to understand the business case.

In some cases our clients have small environments, but in other cases they have big environments. Large clients may have 1,000 agents running. But as a consulting company, we work with many types of businesses and many environments of different sizes.

As I mentioned, if the client requests an integration with some third-party tool, we may need to use another tool or develop something to make this possible. But in most cases, you don't need to do so. You just activate it and check if your policy will apply or has already been applied to the server.

We have no problems with Microsoft's technical support. My team resolves level-one and level-two problems, but when we need to check something directly with Microsoft, when it's a level-three issue, we open a ticket and talk with the engineers.

Positive

It's so easy. All activity is in the cloud, for deploying the agents and policies. It's not complex.

You just click, one-two-three, and it's working. In some cases, the deployment takes minutes. If the client needs a particular window or has a critical application running on their machine, it takes more time because of that machine's situation. But in general, it just takes a few minutes.

The harder part, following this, is you need time, like with other tools, to check the events. The tool will provide some insights, but you need to understand them, and after that, share them with the client or with those responsible for taking action.

In addition to Azure, we have partnerships with AWS and Google. We focus on security and use Kaspersky as well. It's all according to the business case. We take the time to understand the business case and then build a draft solution, check it with the client, and after that, we choose the best tool, given the budget available from the client. We create one, two, or three options and the client selects what is best for them.

The main difference between Defender and Kaspersky is the scalability and the installation and deployment process which, with Defender, is so easy.

My advice regarding Defender is the same for any other security solution: Check what you need, what types of logs and whether you will consolidate these logs in another tool. What type of knowledge will you bring from those tools to create and apply new policies and anticipate security problems?

Always check your needs with the business case. Aligning them will help determine what you need to buy. Check inside Defender to see what you need to activate. Every new feature you activate inside the cloud is billed and you need to understand if you really need each feature.

Defender has some effect on the endpoint itself but it does not change the user's work processes. It is a single tool on the endpoint to monitor the activities that happen there, but it does not affect the end-user.

But you need to understand the limitations. There are some limitations with Defender when it comes to non-Microsoft solutions. But that's not unique to Defender. It's the same with every tool. You need to understand its limitations.

Normally, we use the solution for our workstations.

The solution is quite stable.

You get online privacy. It also protects the machines from malware and trojans.

It's a scalable product.

It is a straightforward setup.

There is always room for improvement. They can improve it on the online protection front since people nowadays are moving online and working from home. That would be a good thing to focus on. 

I've been using the solution for one year. It hasn't been that long just yet.

The product is very stable and quite reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance has been good. 

The product can scale well.

Around 15 people are using it in our organization. 

We may increase it in the future. 

I can't recall ever contacting support.

I'm also familiar with Kaspersky. We were previously using ESET.

The initial setup is quite simple and quite straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

The deployment is fast. It only takes a minute or so.

You only need one person - an engineer - to manage the product once it is up and running. 

We handled the initial setup on our own. We did not need any consultant or integrator help.

We pay annually for a license. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

It's an antivirus product, so its main use is to protect us.

This is a really good product, it's user-friendly and offers us safety and security. 

The technical support could be improved. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The solution is stable. 

In terms of scalability, we went from 10 pilot machines to 35,000 devices.

The technical support isn't too bad but their responsiveness needs to be improved. I'd say it's their biggest issue. 

The initial setup is very easy, probably one of the easiest onboarding processes I've done. Implementation was done in-house and takes a few minutes per device; click it and go. I deal with anything related to antivirus patching and encryption and we have four cyber analysts that look after whatever comes out of ATP or Defender for Endpoint. 

My advice would be to plan carefully and make sure you take notice of what's coming out because it pushes out a lot of very useful information. It's a matter of having sufficient staff because the amount of information it gives you is phenomenal. If a company doesn't have sufficient resources then any other antivirus might work, but this thing produces so much useful information that if you're implementing this solution it's worthwhile having the staff to deal with it. 

I rate this product 10 out of 10. 

The stability has been good so far. 

If I compare its features to the other solutions in the market, it has some good features. It's comparable to others.

The solution can scale as needed. 

In India at least, it seems to be a bit more expensive than other options. 

I've just recently been introduced to the product. I haven't used it for very long. 

The stability has been fine. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability has been great. If you need to expand, you can.

I have never needed to contact technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

The pricing is a bit high for the Indian market.

We are a partner and we consult clients on security solutions. It's one of the solutions we take to our clients.

For companies that are Microsoft shops, I would recommend the product. It saves a lot of integration requirements as compared to other solutions. It's a good product that does what it says it will do. 

I would rate the product a seven out of ten. There are improvement opportunities in terms of the overall tech and commercial aspects of the product. It needs to be more competitive and technical. 

We are using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint with advanced threat production. Microsoft's enterprise mobility and security suite fulfills a large number of security strategy requirements for our organization. We are going to use this solution for identity production and for endpoint security.

It's a hybrid setup. The advanced threat protection only comes from the cloud intelligence engine. That's something of a new experience for us, but the rest of the components will be on-prem. We are using Microsoft's cloud. 

The whole suite of security enhancement doesn't just include Microsoft Defender. It also covers many of the features that come with the Windows Enterprise version. With this option, we are actually upgrading to the Enterprise version as well and unlocking those security features which are not available in Windows Professional. Microsoft Defender is a whole suite, which is simply not comparable with a usual anti-virus, anti-malware product.

In terms of the architecture of the management infrastructure, we found that other technologies are more simple. Microsoft Defender could be simpler too. Plus, Microsoft's philosophy is that they leverage the technology they have already built in Windows or any other services within Windows. So, it is good from that standpoint, but it also becomes a bit cumbersome when it comes to the dependency. Having dependency on many things can be a weakness sometimes because you add up more points of failure to the services. Whereas the other vendors are doing the limited thing, and that's why they're not comparable in prices, but their solutions basically aren't dependent on Microsoft's other services or anything else. They're more dependent on their agent. With Microsoft, it is not just the agent. It is the operating systems that aren't working well. The technology won't give you the desired output.

So, that's something that Microsoft may need to improve: making services more independent wherever possible. That's something of their philosophy. When they build something on their OS layer, they add on technologies, and then there's something for the ISV. That's their strategy, but we keep arguing with them that they have to compare the dependence as other vendors are doing.

From the Microsoft end, the design working depends on the health of other services and other components of the operating system. Whereas if you compare it with the Symantec technology, just the agent health has to be there. That's the case with McAfee as well. They build up their products on developed agents only.

We did the POC around 18 months ago, and then we consolidated our findings. As per the organization procedure, we proposed to the committee and then got the recommendation to move on with the pilot and decide the future roadmap.

Microsoft Defender is just one part of the advanced risk protection and advanced malware protection functionality that comes with the Microsoft product. It came with a lot of security, advisories, reviews, and consultancy during the last couple of years. There was a stack of 15-20 requirements that we had to fulfill, like mobile device management and identity protection. We found that Windows Defender meets most of our requirements.

We have had good experience with tech support so far.

We have a direct support agreement with Microsoft. One of the major reasons for moving from the current endpoint security is the support. The quality is not up to the mark. That's something incomparable with the kind of support Microsoft provides.

I would give Microsoft's support a 5 out of 5.

In terms of the technical aspect, I'm the lead of the area, which actually takes care of endpoint management, and we have been using Symantec products for that purpose. We have evaluated Microsoft Defender and Microsoft security products, and we are going to switch over to that product. We found that  because the endpoint devices are based on Microsoft Windows devices and Windows Defender is integrated with the foundation and the core layer, it makes it more integrated and more agile in terms of responding to any security threats or changes or development, whereas compared to the other vendors who develop anything on top of that platform, they're always lagging behind.

Symantec support is very pathetic. They are very methodical. They're very slow. We seldom find them providing solutions to any incident or issue in a reasonable time. It can take from days to weeks. In the case of Microsoft, their resolution time is reasonably faster than Symantec. Even in the case of VMware and Redhead, Microsoft stands on top of all those vendors.

I wouldn't say the setup is easier than other solutions but it's not bad. It's almost equivalent to what we have been using currently, but the strength comes in what it does and how it secures that part. The setup is similar to the other competitors. For Symantec, we use their endpoint manager deployment and then a deployment across the sites and branches.

We are doing deployment with Microsoft's tech support. But for the implementations and rollout of technologies, we have seldom used Microsoft. We have our own technical team who are trained and who keep on updating on their skills, and we continue to inject new resources to the team as well. When a new technology comes in, then we do a combo, whereby the in-house team actually learns with the local authorized partner.

Microsoft Defender is not comparable to a single endpoint security product, like Trend Micro, Symantec, or McAfee. Because of that, the price is higher than others because it is doing more than what the others are doing.

I would rate this solution 7 out of 10.