Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Reviews

I am the IT director for my organization, a small municipality with a population of 20,000 located in New Mexico. We employ 250 staff members. Our cybersecurity measures encompass a wide range, including endpoint management and the utilization of Windows Defender for Office 365. This software is internally deployed and primarily focuses on monitoring our email systems. This is where the most intricate configuration is applied. It examines our email traffic, aiming to prevent a significant amount of spam and numerous phishing attempts, although it cannot catch everything due to inherent limitations, it effectively performs tasks such as antivirus and antimalware functions within our email communication.

I would rate the visibility into threats eight out of ten.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 assists to some extent in prioritizing threats across our enterprise, but it is not our primary tool for this purpose. I would rate the significance of this capability in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 a five out of ten.

I also utilize Windows Defender for both our desktops and mobile devices running on iOS and Android. Additionally, we employ Azure AD for authentication. All of these solutions have been seamlessly integrated into a unified dashboard. This integration process is highly straightforward and occurs automatically during the setup phase.

Our integrated solutions all work natively together to deliver coordinated threat responses.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 assists in automating routine tasks and identifying high-value alerts. This has led to a 100 percent improvement in our security operations, as we had not implemented anything prior to the adoption of Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has aided in decreasing the number of dashboards we need to monitor, although it does not eliminate all of them. As a cybersecurity practitioner, I still require external vulnerability management for certain third-party risk assessments; Microsoft Defender for Office 365 does not cover those aspects. Consequently, I utilize a separate product for that purpose.

It currently lacks built-in security awareness features. However, efforts are being made to develop such features. The initial stages of the security awareness program can already be observed in the Microsoft platform. Defender for Office 365 provides us with a tool called Safe Links, which enables us to analyze attachments, including both files and data. If someone attempts to access content that is later identified as malicious, we receive a notification. This allows us to identify users who may have interacted with harmful content to some extent, addressing active and potentially harmful interactions. If an individual receives a suspicious link, Safe Links examines the link for potential phishing characteristics. Although the link's malicious nature might not be immediately apparent, it is delivered within a protective Safe Links wrapper. Consequently, if the recipient clicks on the link, this action is logged within the Microsoft environment. Later, if the link is identified as part of a credential phishing attack, appropriate measures are taken. This includes deleting the associated email and notifying the user who clicked on the link. Subsequent actions may involve remediation, such as password changes if deemed necessary. This integration works seamlessly and proves to be highly effective.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has helped our organization save around 20 hours of work time.

It saves our organization money. No one would accuse the Microsoft product of being cheap or inexpensive. However, the reality is that most of the security functionality is included in the licensing that I need to purchase to support my operation. In other words, I'm not buying these security products separately; I'm obtaining them as part of my Microsoft 365 licensing. It's not an add-on; they are required components of the government cloud licensing that I have purchased. Therefore, I must acquire Microsoft 365 to access applications such as Office, SharePoint, OneDrive, Exchange, and others. The security features are all integrated within this package; I don't need to source them from elsewhere. Additionally, I would have had to pay for the performance products regardless.

There are several features that I consider valuable. These include anti-malware and anti-phishing capabilities, along with certain remediation abilities for addressing issues once identified. Moreover, the system allows for easy reporting of problems. In the event of a phishing attack, we can conveniently initiate a comprehensive search to identify all related elements of the campaign and remove them from users' mailboxes.

Additionally, the platform offers anti-spoofing measures targeting well-known high-value targets. This proactive approach helps in mitigating business email compromise by designating our high-value personnel. Consequently, any communication purporting to originate from these individuals undergoes a more rigorous verification process to ascertain its authenticity and whether it genuinely stems from a valid account associated with the respective individual.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 lacks proactivity in assisting us with preparing for potential threats before they occur. While they employ a substantial amount of threat intelligence to preemptively prevent incidents, their effectiveness diminishes when it comes to delivering proactive threat intelligence alerts from Microsoft. Their focus primarily revolves around managing the internal environment. On the other hand, my other vendor, Check Point, along with my membership in MS-ISAC, supplements me with this type of information. 

The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement. It is adequate, but it doesn't match the quality of Proofpoint or Mimecast. However, it comes close in effectiveness. Plus, if we're obtaining it for free, investing in the other products seems impractical.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for around seven years.

Obtaining technical services is challenging.

Negative

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Office 365 eight out of ten.

I would rate the comprehensiveness of our integrated Microsoft products for threat protection a six out of ten.

We replaced one earlier antivirus because earlier whatever was there, yeah.

Actually earlier, I used to have full controls with Trend Micro. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is now part of a centralized tenant for my entire group. I don't have control on that, as another team is maintaining it. Since I don't have full visibility of the features, I cannot make significant comments.

The main area for improvement is simplifying the implementation and rollout process. There are many conditions to be met, making it challenging to ensure every system is protected. Troubleshooting is difficult, especially at the endpoint level.

I have been using this solution for about one year.

I am not sure about stability.

Scalability-wise, I do not think there are any issues so far.

I am not aware of Microsoft support because I don't have access to the admin consoles. Therefore, I do not connect to technical support.

Negative

We were using Trend Micro before switching to Microsoft Defender for Office 365. Trend Micro was more cost-effective and manageable.

The initial setup is a bit challenging due to multiple dependencies, such as on SCCM and Intune, and the need for co-managed services.

Money-wise, it is a part of the Office 365 suite, making it slightly more expensive compared to Trend Micro. Although Defender is free, you have to pay separately for EDR.

The visibility into threats is not up to the mark, as I do not have control. I rate my experience with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 as six out of ten due to troubleshooting and pricing concerns. Overall product rating: 6

NA

We use Microsoft Defender for Office 365 as part of Microsoft XDR solution. It offers native integration within Microsoft Ecosystem and provides proactive recommendations that help enhance our organization's security. Additionally, it is used to protect on-premises mail flow by redirecting it to Defender EOP.

The solution saves time due to its easy policy configuration and licensing process. It integrates naturally with Sentinel, which simplifies IT and technical configuration tasks with minimal clicks, offering flexibility and efficiency.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 provides natively integrated cybersecurity tools that are part of Microsoft Ecosystem. It offers proactive recommendation tasks to enhance organizational security. It provides end-to-end visibility on email threats such as phishing, extending beyond Exchange Online Protection. The scalability is managed by Microsoft as a cloud-hosted tool, relieving us of those concerns.

Microsoft could improve by offering recommendations for domain spoofing attacks, especially scenarios where DNS records like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are not properly published. It's essential to enhance awareness about these issues within organizations.

I have experience in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for the past three years.

Deployment is straightforward due to a comprehensive guide provided by Microsoft. It's easy to deploy, and anyone with a security background can apply it without difficulty.

The solution is stable, as we have been using it for the past two years. Sometimes it generates false positive alerts, but adjusting policies resolves these issues. Security products occasionally provide false positives, so alignment of configuration is necessary.

As a cloud-hosted tool, scalability is great. We have never faced scalability problems, and Microsoft manages it effectively. We only need to focus on configuring policies.

I would rate customer service at a five out of five. Over the past two years, there have been no critical problems. Any issues are addressed quickly by Microsoft's support.

Positive

Microsoft offers an affordable and feature-rich security solution compared to third-party email security tools like Trend Micro.

The initial setup is easy due to Microsoft's deployment guide.

Microsoft is quite affordable with a lot of features available for any size organization.

Overall, I would rate Microsoft Defender for Office 365 at a ten. My experience with the visibility into threats is positive; Microsoft provides transparency and regularly improves its products. Most of the customers using Microsoft Defender for Office 365 in our region belong to the financial sector.

Public Cloud

Other

We use Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for our endpoint security.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365's visibility is good.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps prioritize threats across our enterprise by using an endpoint.

Integrating with other Microsoft solutions is generally straightforward, as everything can be managed from a single console. However, there are some cases where the integration process can be complex, such as when it requires accessing a different dashboard. Overall, the benefits of managing multiple Microsoft solutions from a single place outweigh the occasional complexity of integration.

Our solutions work together natively to provide coordinated detection and response across our entire environment. This coordinated detection provides high-quality results because it is easy to check emails and endpoints for threats. We chose to bundle the solutions because of their ability to integrate.

Coordination and integration are essential in cybersecurity because there are many resources to monitor. The ability to coordinate and integrate from a single source makes it easier and helps to eliminate the need for multiple products.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved our security posture, especially around email. It integrates easily with our other Microsoft solutions and provides good visibility into our systems.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps automate routine tasks.

Automation allows us to focus our resources on critical issues instead of the standard security tasks that can be automated.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 saved our organization time.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 increased our productivity, which resulted in cost savings.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helped decrease our time for detection and response. 

Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance.

The ransomware protection is good.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a comprehensive security solution, but it could be improved. Compared to other solutions, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's security reports are not as detailed and the visibility into our network coverage could be better.

The IOC scanning has room for improvement.

The XDR dashboard has room for improvement. The dashboard needs more of a single pane of glass because currently, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 does not give me any options to scan an email thread or attachment for IOCs on my endpoint. I need to manually download the file from the email and then scan it with Microsoft Defender for Office 365. I think Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should be able to scan email threads and attachments directly, without the need for manual intervention.

Secondly, the Data Loss Prevention functionality in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is very limited. It can only scan for certain types of data. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 should be able to scan for a wider variety of data types, such as customer lists and intellectual property.

Attack process management and breach attack simulation should be included in Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for six years.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is stable.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is scalable.

Technical support is generally helpful, but we often need to escalate tickets to resolve issues.

Neutral

I previously used Kaspersky Security for Mail Server, Trend Micro Email Security, CrowdStrike, and Mandiant. However, my organization now uses Microsoft Defender for Office 365. This is because we are a Microsoft customer and it makes sense in terms of cost and integration.

We have seen a return on investment using Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

Compared to other brands, Microsoft Defender for Office 365's pricing is competitive.

I give Microsoft Defender for Office 365 an eight out of ten.

The maintenance is seamless.

A single-vendor approach is better than a best-of-breed approach because it provides a more integrated and seamless solution. This means that there is no need to worry about compatibility issues or data silos and the overall security posture is better.

Microsoft works hard to provide customers with a single pane of glass so they can easily manage, scale, and maintain their solutions. I recommend Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

Public Cloud

Microsoft Azure

Over 4,000 employees across my organization use all of the products under Office 365, as it is super pervasive. Everybody uses them every day in my organization. My organization is a manufacturing company, where Office 365 has become a daily necessity.

I am a little biased towards Microsoft Teams because it is what I use and helps me pay my bills. In Microsoft Teams, file-sharing options and ease of collaboration or meetings allow for quick collaborations and chats.

I work in my company's IT department, so I use all of the products under Office 365 daily, including Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams, and all the other components in the product. My company can't make it through a day or go by without using the products offered under Office 365. Some of our manufacturing workers may use Office 365 a lot less, but it is still necessary for things like Microsoft Outlook and Exchange.

I found Microsoft Teams to be the most valuable feature of the solution, along with all of the products and features offered under Office 365. My organization has remote workers, and we can't run the company without meetings organized with the help of Microsoft Teams.

It seems like Microsoft has begun to roll out products before they are fully baked. Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization. I would say that Microsoft should release or launch better or fully baked products before going ahead with the GA phase.

I use Office 365 in my company as we have an enterprise contract with Microsoft from 2020 that ends in 2025, but it may get extended.

It is tough to speak about the stability-related area of the solution, especially considering that the newly released Microsoft Teams is not so great. The classic version of Microsoft Teams was relatively stable compared to its new version, but in our company, we faced some challenges with network performance. I don't know if there were any network performance issues at our end, with the ISPs, or at Microsoft's end, making it tough to pin it down.

The product's scalability is good.

Microsoft's support was great during the rollout period, especially since it was the product's operational phase. Microsoft's support team has scaled back, so my company has Microsoft365DSC for Microsoft Teams specifically. My company sometimes struggles with getting direct answers and real insights from Microsoft's support team, especially when we need a higher level of insight while no super technical questions need to be answered, leading to some frustrations.

I rate the technical support a seven out of ten.

Neutral

I was involved in the deployment of Microsoft Teams but not the rest of Office 365. Nowadays, everything is complex, but the deployment of Microsoft Teams was pretty straightforward since my company got a lot of help from Microsoft directly.

My company received direct help from Microsoft during our organization's deployment phase of Microsoft Teams.

I have seen a return on investment from the use of the product. With the product in place, my company no longer needs to rely on paper and pen in many ways, which has helped us save time, energy, effort, and money while ensuring an increase in productivity.

I know that the product is incredibly expensive. I know that my company has high expectations from Microsoft because of the high cost. I also know that Microsoft delivers tremendous value for our company in terms of productivity and collaboration. With Copilot coming along, the value Microsoft provides to my company will be even higher than what it was previously, owing to the productivity gain and the reformulation of how we work because of AI.

I believe that my organization will get ready to start looking into other solutions in the market because our contract with Microsoft will come to an end in 2025. I think that the evaluation process will be something that is on the horizon next year. My company may evaluate all of the available options in the market against Microsoft.

Unfortunately, I can't speak much about the visibility into threats that Microsoft's security solution provides.

I am unsure if the solution helps our organization prioritize threats across our enterprise, but I think it does. I get to leave the security part to be handled by the smart security personnel in my company.

I believe that Microsoft's security solution helps automate routine tasks and routine finding of high-value alerts. It is not my area of expertise, but the security team in my company seems to be pretty happy with the vendor.

I think the solution's threat intelligence helps my company prepare for potential threats before they hit us and helps us take some active steps.

I know that my company's security team is very aware of what Microsoft does, especially with Microsoft Defender and its related products. My company's security team is better equipped to stay at the front of any curve. My company's security team had approached me to speak about Microsoft Teams and asked me to tweak certain settings based on industry standards and the developments Microsoft has been coming forward with lately. The aforementioned aspects explain how threat intelligence affected my company's security operations.

Microsoft's security solution has helped my company save a lot of time, as we believe in being more proactive than cleaning up the mess at a later stage.

I am sure that the product helps my company save money, especially since it aids us in finding threats before they actually become a reality. Probably, my company saves millions in terms of money since we don't have to clean up any mess as the product has already prevented it.

I believe that the solution has helped my organization decrease the time to detect and respond to threats, but I can't explain how or how much.

I would suggest that others who plan to use it just find the right contact within Microsoft, work very closely with them, and lean on them as much as needed.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

We are using Microsoft Defender for Office 365 primarily for security purposes.

The integration with Office 365 is seamless, and we don't need a large IT team to manage it. It helps in maintaining the basic security functions without additional complexity.

Since we are using the basic version, we find that it covers most of our requirements without needing additional configurations. It’s easy to handle integrations, and we don't need a lot of people in our IT team.

Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities. We also need alerting features for abnormal actions like unusual logins or abnormal activities in the mailbox.

We have been using Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for seven to eight years.

Stability is generally good; I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Scalability is also quite good. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Technical support from Microsoft is reliable and meets our expectations. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Positive

We chose Microsoft Defender as it integrates easily with our existing Office 365 setup, and we do not need to pay extra for security functions.

The setup was easy and not time-consuming. We didn’t need to set up much as it was integrated with Office 365.

The installation was handled by two engineers in our team.

Since we are using the basic functions, we don't need to invest a lot of money. It does help in cost reduction.

The pricing is reasonable since it comes integrated with our Office 365 license.

In our current situation, we are not considering other vendors for this purpose.

Integration with Office 365 is one of the strongest points. I recommend it for easy handling and less need for additional IT resources.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

On-premises

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is used to protect our organization from attacks.

Our deployment is a hybrid model with 80 percent being on the cloud.

The visibility into threats is excellent. A dashboard provides real-time information on emails, blocked emails, blocked files, and blocked URLs.

We integrated Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Intune with Microsoft Defender for Office 365. Integrating Intune was a little difficult but we managed.

The solutions work natively together to provide coordinated detection and response across our environment. This is important.

The integrated Microsoft solutions provide comprehensive insights into threat issues through threat analytics.

Microsoft Sentinel allows us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. This is important because it provides us with a vital security feature that allows our organization to monitor and respond to alerts and threats detected in our enterprise via Sentinel. We have configured custom alerts and triggers in Sentinel, which gives us a better understanding of the threats in our organization.

Microsoft provides a comprehensive view of alerts to help investigate issues and address malicious emails. We can investigate and share feedback in our message tracking log and the threat explorer in Defender to mitigate and resolve the root cause of the issues.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 saves us time with our investigations.

We now use the cloud to maintain our email as a gateway which has saved us money by not requiring on-prem hardware.

Our time to detect and respond to malicious emails was decreased. The solution provides the CPU resources needed to scan emails for malicious content, and it also makes it easy to track the number of administrative emails sent to users.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable features are safe attachments and safe links.

The GUI is sometimes slow to fetch the device report and could be improved.

It would be great if Microsoft Defender for Office 365 were priced at the tenant level, rather than the user level. This is because the feature is used by all users in the tenant, not just individual users.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for two years.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is stable.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is scalable.

Technical support is often unsatisfactory. When I open a ticket, the initial engineer I speak to often has no hands-on experience and needs to escalate the issue to someone else. This can take a long time, as the engineer needs to check with the internal team before they can provide any assistance. In the end, the issue is eventually resolved.

Neutral

We previously used Barracuda Email Security Gateway, but it did not sandbox emails. After careful consideration, we decided to switch to Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

The initial setup was straightforward. We just follow Microsoft's documentation and fine-tune the default custom policies as well as new days on custom policies for data management and checking. Two people were required for the deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment.

The license is expensive because the cost is based on the number of users. The more users there are, the higher the cost.

I give Microsoft Defender for Office 365 a nine out of ten.

We have four people that directly access the solution.

There is no maintenance required from our end.

Before using Microsoft Defender for Office 365, organizations must ensure that the policies are configured correctly to fit their specific needs.

It is better to choose a single vendor with high expertise in a specific area, rather than a best-of-breed strategy.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

365 Defender is a critical tool for mitigating attacks and preventing threats. We use it for email filtering and blocking phishing attacks throughout the entire enterprise. We have around 1,500 users. 

365 Defender has improved our security across multiple categories. It's effective against advanced attacks like phishing and ransomware. Defender's attack disruption works well if you have a strong policy configuration. It will automatically block threats and filter them in most cases without the need to investigate. It will remedy the threat immediately. 

The automated response reduces the manual work, saving our security team time. I would estimate it saves about six hours per day. 

Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable. It's a unified solution that doesn't just cover Microsoft products. We're a multi-cloud shop, and having that coverage is critical. It also includes the latest IAM features like two-factor and multifactor authentication, giving us the most robust solution.

You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers. 

I have used 365 Defender for almost six years

I rate Microsoft 365 Defender nine out of 10 for stability.

I rate Microsoft 365 Defender nine out of 10 for scalability.

I rate Microsoft support nine out of 10. Their support is excellent. 

Positive

We migrated to 365 Defender from a McAfee solution.

365 Defender is a cloud-based solution deployed on Azure. You can set it up in two days with some help from Microsoft support using two people.

365 Defender is worth what we paid for it. 

I rate Microsoft 365 Defender nine out of 10. It's the most economical product you can buy, offering a range of features for safeguarding your enterprise. 

Public Cloud