Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Reviews

Our primary use case centers around blocking viruses on my personal laptop.

I'm working as a private contractor. In this regard, you can say this tool ensures I'm working with a product that gets updated regularly without me having to remember to do it. Since it's a Microsoft product, I'm confident that it requires a low use of system resources. The benefit of that being that my computer isn't constantly being drained.

One of the most valuable features of this product is the ability to "set it and forget it." I don't go in and make any changes to the settings. Another value add is the size of the user base, which is fairly large because it's a free MS product. I would imagine that it would be quite competitive since a blacklisting solution such as this is only as good as the threat intelligence it receives. I'm pretty sure that if the tool discovers something foreign and malicious it will upload that information back to Microsoft. The value of the tool is inherent within the size of the user base, which is fairly large because it's a free product by a trusted company.

I'm sure the premium product has extra features, like listing questionable websites. Defender is just an antivirus product. It would be nice to have a paid upgrade that would provide additional screening of the day-to-day activities.

Three to five years.

I haven't had any noticeable issues with it. It's quite stable.

It's very easy to set up. With admin rights, it really is very straightforward. All you need to do is install the tool and then download the definitions. 

Deployment was just basically downloading from Microsoft. It was very straightforward.

I'm currently evaluating the performance of Defender against third-party antivirus software products to see if I should continue with third-party products or just use Windows Defender.

My additional advice would be to create a test user group, deploy the software to those test users and then monitor those users as part of a log management operations center and run comparisons over several months. Comparing those users, against other users perhaps using a third-party product, like Symantec, would allow for calculation of performance and progress metrics. Based on that, a decision can be made as to whether to deploy the software across the organization or not.

I'd give this tool a rating of 8 out of 10. It's got good detection rates, low on system resources, doesn't interfere or hamper workflows, and it's easy to use.

Defender is an antivirus program available at a lower price than other products, like Symantec, McAfee, etc. Recently, Defender has now been integrated with Kaspersky Labs. There are two variants available for this product, Home basic edition and Pro. It has features that all other antivirus programs have like anti-spam, URL syntax checking, Firewall, Anti-spyware, etc. Defender has one surprise feature though called Secret Surf, which leaves no trail of your browsing history. There is feature, like free update of Anti-spyware database, that most other common Anti-virus programs don't provide.

The most problematic part of this program is the difficult customer service. Upgrading the software may cause a little bit of trouble. Your computer may lock down soon after your first reboot. There have also been some problems with the connectivity and with the internet, soon after the installation of the program. Trouble-shooting by Customer Support Engineer may take some time to figure out the problem and fix it. You may find your computer slowing down after installing the program.

Defender Pro or Home Basic antivirus provides some sort of security against the latest internet threats, but going for the reputed Anti-virus software like Symantec Endpoint, Quick Heal, etc. would be a wiser choice. The price of this program may be a bit lower, but safety of you and your computer is of greater importance.