Jamf Protect vs. Microsoft Forefront (Discontinued Product)

Jamf Protect will always have day 1 support for new OS updates, which is an amazing feature. The reporting could use a bit more work and the actions it captures are far beyond anything we would need, but it does that really well too. There are plenty of scenarios where I will gladly recommend this to other institutions. There are not many where I wouldn't. Maybe only if you have a hybrid environment, where licensing another endpoint protection may be beneficial to the budget.

Incentivized

In large deployments, I have found Microsoft Forefront to be very effective at combating the majority of threats faced by our users. It provides the base platform for catching threats that would otherwise threaten our users and their data. If you have an environment that is under constant malware threat, then a secondary program may be needed as required.

Incentivized

• Security--it scans processes for 'bad stuff'
• Notifies admins of any issues or potential issues; entirely customizable and we create many custom notifications and groups.
• Integrates with Jamf Pro
• Monitor CIS benchmarks via a clean and nice looking dashboard

Incentivized

• SCEP is a light weight client which is minimally impactful on the user end.
• Forefront's management console provides excellent monitoring and reporting.
• Setup and configuration is very easy.

Incentivized

• The cloud GUI. It can be confusing at times.

Incentivized

• Malware detection is not quite 100%. We have to use a secondary program occasionally.
• On low ram and weak CPU systems scanning can freeze the machine.
• The same reporting tools that are on the console version, aren't on the client.

Incentivized

Jamf Protect is much lighter on system usage. It also has exclusive access to the threat protection baked into macOS. This lets Jamf Protect leverage the great work Apple is doing, and gives admins a way to extend that as well as view reports. Webroot was often missing things that were threats. SentinelOne was a bit more resource heavy. Solarwinds...err..."N-Able"...do I really need to say anything?

Incentivized

The biggest advantage that MSF and SCEP provide over Norton is: One: Far less client overhead required. Both Norton and McAfee are highly intensive client side when in use. Two: We've had far better luck using the Microsoft system with its detection capabilities, versus the others. Three: It is tied right into the Microsoft updating system, which provides central updating capabilities of av/mal/windows updates.

Incentivized

• Positive: It allowed us to deploy machines that were not deployable before due to compliance issues.
• Positive: Easy to implement in the shortest amount of time needed.
• Negative: Could be costly if you have a big environment

Incentivized

• Less turnaround on virus based issues.
• Helps reduce malware issues over time.
• Can breed overconfidence in the system, so people don't always try a second tool.

Incentivized