ESET PROTECT vs. ThreatDown, powered by Malwarebytes vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Fits well in
our Medium sized organization, we still host a lot on prem with various Windows
/ Linux VM’s, ESET PROTECT supports all operating systems we currently use, Pricing is
very aggressive compared to its other EU security offerings.

The endpoint
is lightweight, we’ve never had any performance issue, it has many features for
the value and can also generate logs/reports for compliance.



The EDR
plugin may be overkill for a small business and requires extra IT resources to manage,
also there is currently no XDR capability if you need that in your business.

Incentivized

I think Malwarebytes is the best anti-malware company. I think it is well-suited for any situation and any device. I think Malwarebytes does the best on Windows and on MacOS. Also, Malwarebytes is always improving, and you can tell they are a company that stays on top of cybersecurity trends. If you have a tight budget or looking for the cheapest solution, then Malwarebytes may not be the solution for you. To clarify, I don't think Malwarebytes is that much more expensive compared to its closest competitors.

Incentivized

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.

• ESET provides comprehensive, transparent protection for my MacOS devices without interfering with the efficiency of my operating system.
• It's easy to install, configure (default settings are great for just about everyone), and update.
• ESET's customer communications, including a very detailed knowledge base online, make it clear I've chosen the right antivirus solution!

Incentivized

• Protects against malware - No matter how much training you give end users on social hacking, there is always a breach at some point.
• Protects against ransomware - Ransomware could spell disaster for a company...it could literally shut the doors for good.
• Centralized administration - Without a terrific centralized method to manage all the systems being protected, it would require an extra position just to maintain all endpoints.

Incentivized

• Definitely on the threat action and response. We didn't have a stress-response option before, but the dependent brand point provided it instantly. Also, it's doing UVA and machine learning, which we didn't have before. So it's definitely providing more sophisticated threat-detection capabilities than we had before.

Incentivized

• If the system administrator has functions such as pop-up notification and alert mail transmission, I believe that countermeasures can be taken faster
• It often gets in the way of the network system.
• Communication between PCs under the same network may be hindered, which may be an obstacle to verification.

Incentivized

• poor customer service
• dashboard says product is working EVEN THOUGH IT WAS NOT!
• slow response to concerns that should be easy to remedy
• creates baggage which caused certain computers and the network to run more slowly
• caused 3 computers on our network top have windows errors and network issues

• The only thing is sometimes, because Microsoft has so many platforms, it gets a little confusing, like am I in the security platform? Am I in Purview? Where am I at right now? Because there's so many sites that are kind of doing a lot of the same thing, and so that does get a little confusing from time to time, but outside of that, it's a pretty good product.

Incentivized

I'm giving it a 10, because I would totally have no reservations about staying on with eSet for another 3 years once our contract comes up for renewal. We are looking to transfer to a different product in January, however. This is due to a special pricing contract with the state of Ohio that made a normally much more expensive product very affordable and was cheaper than our coming eSet renewal cost. This is a very special case only available to government and educational organizations, but had that not been offered, we would have gladly stayed with eSet.

Incentivized

When I first used the tool in my home systems MANY years ago, I wished for a Business version. I was once at a focus group for a major antivirus company, and one attendee’s feedback to “what could we do better?” was “buy out MalwareBytes and add it to your tool”. I’ve used the Business version since it first became available, and have continued to be a dedicated user through the many iterations and improvements

Incentivized

Cost add-ons for Security features is nickel and diming the process to keep pace with cybercrime. Limited Education budgets require us to be more pro-active in finding cost-effective measures to protect our devices, staff and students. Defender is a strong, well-featured product that is pricing itself out of the education market

Incentivized

Provide execllent security agains malware, ransomware, and phishing. Easy to use and monitoring multiple devices and managing security settings remotely. Software firewall ability to secure network traffic and blocking websites and application at software level its gives very easy to configure .Zero-day threats as some other security products is missing with more advanced machine learning and behavioral analysis capabilities.

Incentivized

It simply works. It doesn't require the hand-holding and monitoring that some other solutions do. It's simple to deploy and maintain, and adding custom content such as Exceptions require minimal effort. I’ve had to add a few exceptions for internal-use, in-house-developed tools, but it’s quite simple to do so within the online interface

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy on memory and resources on clients.

Incentivized

Excellent support from ESET and when we had questions regarding the initial deployment they were there. The questions we put forth were answered immediately with great detail. Any of the items we put forth, scenarios, were given a good solution from ESET to fit our needs. This company stands by their product and are happy to step up when needed.

Incentivized

As I mentioned, we have only email support. Their phone support was very expensive. If we ever have any issues, we have to email them and wait for their response. In most cases, I have figured out the issue on my own. The software is very stable so we haven't used their support much.

Incentivized

The first time I tried to onboard my macOS endpoints to MDE I struggled for quite a bit. I had to reach out to Microsoft's MDE support team. The tech was very helpful in walking me through the steps during a screen share session

Incentivized

Do the full scan at the beginning and be prepared to wait until it is done. It will find things you did not know were there. You can leave on the Apple firewall as well as the ESET firewall. There have been no conflicts. Remember to remove emails from being backed up, so you do not have spam on your backup! This was the mistake I made.

Incentivized

I first implemented this more than 10 years ago, when it required an in-site setup with SQL Server (or SQL Express), and even that was pretty easy. With the move to centralized web management some treats ago, it’s become even easier to deploy

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

Choosing ESET PROTECT rather than McAfee Security or other secuty softwares helps me more evaluate specific security requirements of the company. Considering the scalability of solution it provides, the ease of use of its interface, the level of support provided by the vendors, and the availability of reports makes it a top choice for me.

It's no contest. Cisco AMP, Umbrella and Endpoint use vast amounts of resources and provide little protection when compared with Malwarebytes. One client recently replaced Cisco with MWB and found over 7,300 vulnerabilities on 352 endpoints, including 120 listed as Critical and 7,180 listed as High, with CVE's dating back to 2008.

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 additional agents. Some of the other vendors and their agents, for a while, would compete with CPU usage. And so it actually slowed down the machines. Because Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is built into the Windows product, Microsoft is going to ensure that it does not affect the other productivity tools that a user may use.

Incentivized

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easily scaled from small orgs to giant enterprises.

Incentivized

• ESET maintains the security of our machines, files, reports, etc., an invasion or infection could result in a catastrophe, loss of important data, expenses with specialized support, hours or days of work stopped until the solution is found, without ESET prevention we could have big expenses at any time.

Incentivized

• The ease of remediation has saved our IT team a number of hours manually installing, for example, the free version of Malwarebytes to remove infections, and then cleaning the machine up. Being able to centrally send commands to clean the device is much more efficient.
• The centralised management has also alerted us to infections on machines that we might not otherwise have known about, as the existing AV had not detected them, saving us potential data loss, or system damage.

Incentivized

• Reduced incidents of security breaches lead to lower remediation costs and avoid potential financial losses and reputational damage.
• Reduces the need for additional third-party security solutions and training, thereby lowering overall security management costs.
• Increased efficiency and productivity of IT staff lead to better allocation of resources and cost savings.
• Reduces the risk of fines and sanctions associated with non-compliance, ensuring business continuity and protecting revenue.

Incentivized