BitLocker Drive Encryption vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
BitLocker
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's BitLocker is an endpoint encryption option.
$100
One Time Fee
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (formerly Microsoft Defender ATP) is a holistic, cloud delivered endpoint security solution that includes risk-based vulnerability management and assessment, attack surface reduction, behavioral based and cloud-powered next generation protection, endpoint detection and response (EDR), automatic investigation and remediation, managed hunting services, rich APIs, and unified security management.
$2.50
per user/per month
Pricing
BitLocker Drive EncryptionMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Editions & Modules
Windows 10 Home
$100.00
One Time Fee
Academic
$2.50
per user/per month
Standalone
$5.20
per user/per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BitLockerMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BitLocker Drive EncryptionMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Considered Both Products
BitLocker
Chose BitLocker
BitLocker is a lot easier to enable. It's a simple flick of the switch inside Intune.
Chose BitLocker
BitLocker Drive Encryption is much more reliable. We used McAfee drive encryption prior to moving to BitLocker Drive Encryption. While McAfee was useful, it's required pre-boot environment always fell out of sync with AD passwords, causing users difficulty to sign into their …
Chose BitLocker
BitLocker Drive Encryption solution offering is cheaper than the one that McAfee offers, it will help you with specific business concerns like "how many encrypted assets do I have?" it's easy to maintain, easy to deploy, and easy to track. It's best suited for companies that …
Chose BitLocker
This was formerly called Symantec PGP encryption. We selected BitLocker since this is what the University has deployed and is currently supporting. BitLocker has many advantages over Symantec PGP, as BitLocker is built-into all Windows computers. With PGP, this was a …
Chose BitLocker
I can't think of any alternative that I know of.
Chose BitLocker
Previously used TrueCrypt until vulnerabilities were discovered. Overall performance improved when going from TrueCrypt to BitLocker.
Chose BitLocker
Most other whole drive encryption tools are really not that easy to manage and come with big performance when compared to Bitlocker. Also, a lot of them don't use TPM which in my opinion gives you better protection.

As for Truecrypt which was what we were using before, it is not …
Chose BitLocker
There is not much alternative to Bitlocker, you may want to try self-encrypted disk, but for a business perspective, it is not as easy as Bitlocker to manage. Self-encrypted may be faster, but recovering data for a system administrator is a disaster.

There was more alternative …
Chose BitLocker
There really is no competition with disk encryption at least on a Windows platform. Most Microsoft OS's have bitlocker encryption available to them.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
I've used Sophos, Bitdefender, SentinelOne, and, of course, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. We chose this at the time because we were such a Microsoft shop that it just seemed to integrate well with all the other things that we had set up with Microsoft.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Previously, we've used Sophos. We've used, way back when, McAfee, Norton, Symantec, all those. And we finally settled on Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. We're a Microsoft technology stack shop. So obviously it was natural. It's built into Windows, so we're not adding …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
When building up policies, being independent is much easier compared to CrowdStrike, I would say.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Say licensing and cost primarily. And from our evaluation and our use cases, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint did relatively the same thing.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Unless you have a dedicated Security Operations Center working twenty four hours a day seven days a week that is able to constantly monitor Cylance and make the necessary changes for your users, it is not worth the trouble. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint does what it needs to …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint consistently showed better user experiences during scans due to the reduced amount of resources used on each system compared to our previous endpoint protection solutions. However, the main reason we chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers strong integration with Microsoft 365 and Azure services, which provide a unified security experience. While McAfee Trellix is known for solid antivirus, Microsoft Defender excels in integration in the ecosystem.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Defender is far easier to deploy and manage than Sophos and tends to work without as many issues. The threat assessment portal provides an in-depth view of the organization's security posture, whereas Sophos only shows the patching status of the PCs. We did need Intune to get …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
As Microsoft Defender for Endpoint easily integrated with our Office 365 setup, it was more beneficial as compared to other products
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Cylance's policy is to block everything and requires an active person to monitor and unblock legitimate processes. As updates and software continue to evolve, it is a full-time job to be a Cylance administrator. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a set-and-forget solution that …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is the most cost effective solution considering our Microsoft 365 licensing status. While many 3rd party solutions are great and have been used over the years, in the non-profit world, cost is a huge driving factor of items. Coupled with …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is on par or exceeds the competitor products and provides an enterprise grade EDR solution. Based on the savings by bundling Microsoft products under the E5 license and the benefits it provides; it is an excellent choice for customers looking for …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
MDE integrates much more into our M365 ecosystem than any other MDR possibly could. Bitdefender may have provided a similar level of endpoint protection but the reporting, vulnerability reporting and other incident tracking and correlation are critical in today's business …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Crowdstrike is the more feature complete product but licensing model and cost does not work well with the small business model. ESET Protect is considerably more complicated from a licensing perspective but once operational is a fine product.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is far more robust and easy to use than NinjaOne's RMM tools. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint allows us to easily manage our endpoints, from an almost single pane of glass, whereas Ninja has multiple settings, policies, etc. that are harder to …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
We use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint along with Crowdstrike on some of our critical systems as it enhances the protection we have for our environment.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
It's very convenient and very well integrated with our environment.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Majorly because our suite is Microsoft, so make totally sense to have this in the company and the price. It is Microsoft is better than CrowdStrike.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Sophos. Because of the integration with Microsoft ecosystem, we selected Defender.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
We have not used anything else other than Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Maybe we've used other antivirus software like Sophos and things like that. They're just not all encompassing and that's why we moved to use this product.
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
I have been working with customers that they are transitioning from Sentinel One, CrowdStrike to Defender for Endpoint, right? So I think it's because they see the value in the product and also they see how much they can save in terms of the cost for companies because they …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
We previously used CrowdStrike on our servers. However, the seamless integration of Microsoft Defender (MD) with XDR and the entire Microsoft ecosystem led us to choose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE).
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
What we love more about this product is the way this pro gets integrated into the other family of solutions, especially Defender for Identity or the XDR solutions. We think that the market, the customers are full of unattended consults coming out from different vendors and that …
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
The technical features, usability and the support was nice as compared to the other products.
Features
BitLocker Drive EncryptionMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Endpoint Security
Comparison of Endpoint Security features of Product A and Product B
BitLocker Drive Encryption
-
Ratings
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
8.7
Ratings
2% above category average
Anti-Exploit Technology00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Centralized Management00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Hybrid Deployment Support00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Infection Remediation00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Vulnerability Management00 Ratings8.70 Ratings
Malware Detection00 Ratings9.20 Ratings
Best Alternatives
BitLocker Drive EncryptionMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Small Businesses
Bitdefender GravityZone
Bitdefender GravityZone
Score 8.0 out of 10
ThreatLocker
ThreatLocker
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Symantec Encryption
Symantec Encryption
Score 9.9 out of 10
CrowdStrike Falcon
CrowdStrike Falcon
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Trellix Complete Data Protection
Trellix Complete Data Protection
Score 8.0 out of 10
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
BitLocker Drive EncryptionMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Likelihood to Recommend
8.1
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.4
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(0 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
BitLocker Drive EncryptionMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Likelihood to Recommend
It can be used if you are already familiar with other Microsoft System Center tools, it will provide integration and it will be easy to use from an Administrator's perspective. However, if you want more detailed information related to the troubleshooting, specific fields, or data, it will not be that granular.
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I can definitely tell you where it’s more suited, because we haven’t come across any less appropriate scenarios. But definitely in regard to how we centrally manage our user space and our endpoints, it’s been beneficial from an API perspective and is really transferable, with strong collaboration with our Azure stack. It works very well.
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Pros
  • It is fairly easy to use, from both a technician and users point of view. The install itself is pretty simple, and setup of the software is also fairly simple. For users, it is easy to use the software to encrypt the computer.
  • It doesn't seem to use a whole lot of system resources when the encryption is enabled on the computer. You shouldn't experience any slowness of the computer, other than the time it takes to first encrypt the computer.
  • It serves its main purpose very well, and that is to protect computers from intrusions/data breaches. It is particularly good for protecting computers that are accessing/storing sensitive/confidential data.
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  • It really protects our endpoints. We've used other antivirus programs in the past, and they haven't had that full confidence in those products compared to what Microsoft Defender for Endpoint does for us.
  • Another pro is that it's easy to manage the management console through Intune to see Microsoft Defender for Endpoint up in the cloud and see the state of our devices.
  • Another pro is we haven't had an incident since we installed it.
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Cons
  • Even if it's the best we tested, I think write performance could be improved. Maybe with dedicated hardware inside the TPM?
  • No integration with OS password is a shame as most others have it and it is Microsoft on Microsoft so they can probably do it better then anyone else and safer.
  • I wish they would support multiple passwords like FileVault on macOS. If it's a shared computer, you have to give the only password to Bitlocker to both users.
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  • It would be good to continue to minimize the amount of resources needed during a scan
  • Provide more integration with Outlook to scan attachments with a notification that everything is good
  • Provide a Click to Fix option when listing issues or high-risk problems on systems
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
Microsoft Defender is closely catching -up in market with existing competitors they have added DLP endpoint & DLP Network and Cloud DLP solution last year with OCR capabilities. I would say Microsoft Defender is not legacy Vendor in end point security, the need to learn from other vendors in market and focus on new XDR technologies, which is going to be new battle for all vendors
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Usability
Very easy to enable.
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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a great EDR to have that works quickly and silently in the background and it integrates well with other Microsoft services. As an IT manager, I can appreciate that I do not get bombarded by alerts for every small detail. On the flipside, the management site can use some work in being more clear and should be more streamlined so I'm not clicking through multiple pages to figure out what happened
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint chugs along just fine no matter what we throw at it and what systems it's running on. It doesn't take up a lot of resources either, so that's welcomed.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy on memory and resources on clients.
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Support Rating
Not good nor bad, BitLocker encryption is a symptom of our era, we need to protect ourselves and our data, BitLocker is a tool, as an IT we have to deal with it but it doesn't bring any benefit to my daily operations.
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Overall support is really good for this product. Since it's a Microsoft product, you will get good support from a number of different resources, including knowledgebase articles on the web, support from Microsoft technicians, and documentation (which tends to very thorough). Also, there is a vast user support community for this product, so user support forums would also be another valuable channel to get help if needed. I don't envision too many people will have issues/problems with the product, as it tends to run good overall.
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Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Deployment was handled by our team here and everything went pretty smoothly. We did have a few hiccups in our test group, but that only took a bit to get ironed out.
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Alternatives Considered
This was formerly called Symantec PGP encryption. We selected BitLocker since this is what the University has deployed and is currently supporting. BitLocker has many advantages over Symantec PGP, as BitLocker is built-into all Windows computers. With PGP, this was a commercial product that had to be installed on each machine. That product also was not as easy or intuitive to use as BitLocker, and there were also more issues/problems that occasionally occurred with PGP.
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I've used Sophos, Bitdefender, SentinelOne, and, of course, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. We chose this at the time because we were such a Microsoft shop that it just seemed to integrate well with all the other things that we had set up with Microsoft.
Read full review
Scalability
No answers on this topic
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easily scaled from small orgs to giant enterprises.
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Return on Investment
  • Protects against data loss and theft, which can be very expensive if PII, SPI, PHI is involved. Fines for this type of loss can be very high, along with the costs of notification, and discovery.
  • Cost is included in Windows O/S, without needing additional licensing costs.
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  • Another positive impact is that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is built into the Windows OS. So naturally, it is much easier to load it out and manage it, rather than acquiring it through party ER, deploying it, and managing it separately. So that's definitely on the positive side that we observe there's a byproduct of changing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.
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ScreenShots

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Screenshots

Screenshot of blocked activitiesScreenshot of Detects & respondsScreenshot of discovers vulnerabilityScreenshot of Eliminates blind spotsScreenshot of Risk management