KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
KnowBe4 is a security awareness and compliance training and simulated social engineering product. It is used by organizations worldwide to strengthen their security culture and reduce human risk. The product includes a comprehensive suite of awareness and compliance training, real-time user coaching, AI-powered simulated social engineering, crowdsourced anti-phishing defense and an AI suite that enhances human risk management through personalized training and automation. With…
$0.95
per month (billed annually) per seat
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Score 8.9 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
KnowBe4 Security Awareness TrainingMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Editions & Modules
Silver
$0.95
per month (billed annually) per seat
Gold
$1.10
per month (billed annually) per seat
Platinum
$1.25
per month (billed annually) per seat
Diamond
$1.70
per month (billed annually) per seat
Academic
$2.50
per user/per month
Standalone
$5.20
per user/per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
KnowBe4 Security Awareness TrainingMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
KnowBe4 Security Awareness TrainingMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Considered Both Products
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Chose KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
KnowBe4 has the most diverse feature set compared to the others. I also chose KnowBe4 over others due to the PhishER capabilities.
Chose KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
I had used KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training previously and therefore knew that it's intuitive, easy to use, quick to customize where I'm able to and works well for reporting. I did like Cofense's ability to customize training modules but ultimately went for KnowBe4 Security …
Chose KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
We explored using Terranova before deciding on KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training. The integration between M365 and KnowBe4 was ultimately what sold us. You're easily able to set up groups and SAML authentication with KnowBe4 that allows seamless onboarding into the system. …
Chose KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
Training materials and testing campaigns are leaps and bounds ahead of Defender.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

No answer on this topic

Features
KnowBe4 Security Awareness TrainingMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
9.0
332 Ratings
4% above category average
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
-
Ratings
Single sign-on capability9.3295 Ratings00 Ratings
Role-based user permissions8.6321 Ratings00 Ratings
Security Awareness Training
Comparison of Security Awareness Training features of Product A and Product B
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
8.1
363 Ratings
5% below category average
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
-
Ratings
Training Content Library8.4360 Ratings00 Ratings
Multilingual Training Content8.1203 Ratings00 Ratings
Training Gamification7.9302 Ratings00 Ratings
Industry-Specific Security Training7.0318 Ratings00 Ratings
Individualized Security Training Plans7.7306 Ratings00 Ratings
Phishing Simulations9.4358 Ratings00 Ratings
Security Reporting8.4349 Ratings00 Ratings
Integration with Security Tech Stack8.2207 Ratings00 Ratings
Endpoint Security
Comparison of Endpoint Security features of Product A and Product B
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
-
Ratings
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
8.7
76 Ratings
3% above category average
Anti-Exploit Technology00 Ratings8.873 Ratings
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)00 Ratings9.175 Ratings
Centralized Management00 Ratings8.875 Ratings
Hybrid Deployment Support00 Ratings7.310 Ratings
Infection Remediation00 Ratings9.073 Ratings
Vulnerability Management00 Ratings8.770 Ratings
Malware Detection00 Ratings9.174 Ratings
Best Alternatives
KnowBe4 Security Awareness TrainingMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Small Businesses
Barracuda Email Protection
Barracuda Email Protection
Score 8.7 out of 10
ThreatLocker
ThreatLocker
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Hoxhunt
Hoxhunt
Score 9.3 out of 10
BlackBerry Protect (CylancePROTECT)
BlackBerry Protect (CylancePROTECT)
Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Hoxhunt
Hoxhunt
Score 9.3 out of 10
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
BeyondTrust Endpoint Privilege Management
Score 9.9 out of 10
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User Ratings
KnowBe4 Security Awareness TrainingMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(708 ratings)
8.8
(136 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.9
(56 ratings)
8.4
(10 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(196 ratings)
8.7
(11 ratings)
Availability
9.5
(20 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.5
(21 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(260 ratings)
9.0
(7 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.8
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.4
(17 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.2
(24 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Configurability
8.8
(16 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.1
(39 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.8
(8 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.4
(21 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
8.9
(12 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.5
(17 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.4
(16 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
KnowBe4 Security Awareness TrainingMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
Likelihood to Recommend
KnowBe4
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Trainings are suited for every company. We have tested really a lot of those platforms out there and we can say that there are other platforms that are better at the one or the other feature, but as it is always in life nothing is perfect. However, having tested all those platforms, we can with great certainty say the KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training platform is overall the best one there is out there at this time!
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Microsoft
I think it's well suited as a drop-in EDR, really an XDR, I guess if you want to go there. A platform for most organizations. I think it lacks some of the granularity in off-the-shelf rule sets that I want for defense Industrial base or financial services clients. For heavily targeted organizations, I think it requires a lot more customization than some of the competitor products off the shelf. So if you get there, it's not there day one.
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Pros
KnowBe4
  • Phish tests can be set to various difficulty levels as staff becomes more knowledgeable in catching phish emails.
  • Automated phish tests and training save a lot of admin time. The product can also test for phone and USB stick practices.
  • The phish alert button in Outlook, along with PhishER and PhishFlip allow easy managing and response to actual phishing emails.
  • The interactive training is well designed to cover all types of phishing and safe email and phone behavior.
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Microsoft
  • It integrates perfectly with Azure Sentinel. I mean, that's great. We can have a single pane of class with other platforms, like Defender for Cloud, Defender for endpoints, and Defender for servers, which is awesome as well. The ease of deployment is because Microsoft made sure around a year ago that every single workstation with Microsoft Windows came with Defender for Endpoints embedded.
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Cons
KnowBe4
  • Campaign settings are overwhelming and non-intuitive
  • While the domains available for sending phishing emails are numerous, they are still often obviously fake
  • Certain features are locked away behind paid addons, when they should be incorporated in the base tool/licence, e.g. PhishER. It's fine that, for example, Compliance+ is an added feature, but PhishER is practically integral to the task KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training performs
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Microsoft
  • While it's a very good product for auditing, it has a very hard time to distinguish what is malicious and is an attack, what is not. Very rarely we get indication of a real malicious attack. We got lots of hours for off the shelf malware that it cleans up automatically. So basically we never get to look at it, which is a positive thing, but threats are detected by the third party endpoint, so it will not be enough by itself.
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Likelihood to Renew
KnowBe4
Between the ease of use, cost effectiveness, functionality and continued improvements Knowbe4 continues to make it would be pretty hard to find another competitive product that wraps it all up like KnowBe4 has. Not saying it couldn't happen, but haven't seen anything that competes at this point.
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Microsoft
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
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Usability
KnowBe4
KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training is simple to use, simple to administer, effective, with quality content. It is easy to take the training and we have the reminders set so that the longer a user puts the training off, the more frequently they will receive reminder emails. Eventually they get emailed every day until they take the training. But with a simple click, they can get into the training content.
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Microsoft
Because in terms of the usability is easy to understand, it's easy to manage, obviously you need to have specific skills to do that, but I would say that even the console and the product is walking through the flow that you are looking for on this console.
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Reliability and Availability
KnowBe4
There have only been a handful of outages in the 2 years we have had the product. Even during those instances, parts of the system were still operational
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Performance
KnowBe4
Pages load quickly, filter/sort quickly, and don't slow down or freeze. Everything is smooth and very easy to use. There are a places in the UI where you can forget how to get there, but other than that everything is great. We have had no issues using any part of the website.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
KnowBe4
Tech prod support is great! I did have to ask for a new customer success rep, needed a more experienced person to match my 12 years of experience running Cybersec training programs. Would suggest that more matching of rep level of knowledge to client level knowledge would help.
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Microsoft
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
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In-Person Training
KnowBe4
Helpful and knowledgeable account managers have helped us navigate and use the system to our full potential
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Online Training
KnowBe4
confusing question. I inherited this application so I didnt get any formal training other than the person who was leaving. The CSM provided some later on when I asked in a zoom call
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
KnowBe4
The implementation went really well and KnowBe4 was there the whole time on setup to make sure things were setup correctly. The only thing we had to figure out on our own was to script users automatically being added to security groups. So that when they sync to knowBe4 from AD they are placed into the same/correct groups.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
KnowBe4
Initially we were using Mimecast Awareness Training. Mimecast was totally different from KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training. They do not have a proper setup for the awareness training. The training video quality and category was very poor. In Mimecast, you will get only human based training, no animated training is available for the users. They do not have proper topics to train the users. They do not have a phishing campaign category to test the users understanding. They do not have a proper setup of training campaigns as well. you cannot launch the same training to more than one groups until you do not delete the first training from the other group.
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Microsoft
I would say not to name specific company names, because I'm a partner with one of them and that's the account that I work with. But I use some competing solutions that I would say are pretty heavy from an overhead perspective with the agent that has to be installed in the machine. It can be too restrictive for permissions where it gets in the way of an employee doing their job and the ability for Defender to be secure in that, but still allow an employee to go about their day and do what they need to do is certainly a change maker there. But yeah, from the other products perspective across the years, whether it be business or personal, some other products I can name are other endpoint protections from Vera Avast, McAfee, of course as folks remember that. And some of the other major players too that I would say a large networking company that doubles in security as well. I'll name them that way.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
KnowBe4
I was not involved in the pricing, billing or contract terms.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Scalability
KnowBe4
The product scales greatly. As long as you upgrade the license to support the number of users you are needing, adding in those new users is easy. Also getting those users set up with trainings/campaigns is very easy as well
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Professional Services
KnowBe4
The team was great to work with and took their time to ensure that we knew what we were doing with the product and that it was set up to meet the specific needs of our organization. This wasn't just a cookie-cutter deployment, but rather they focused specifically on our needs.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
KnowBe4
  • We are able to prepare new hires more efficiently and consistently
  • We have seen a dramatic decrease in how prone our users are to phishing attacks
  • We better meet external risk assessment requirements because of the training programs we have set up in KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training
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Microsoft
  • 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.
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ScreenShots

KnowBe4 Security Awareness Training Screenshots

Screenshot of the Phishing Dashboard. This displays how end users are doing at-a-glance and in comparison to peers across industries with Industry Benchmarking.Screenshot of the Virtual Risk Officer functionality, which helps identify risk to support data-driven decisions about a security awareness plan.Screenshot of KnowBe4's partners, including The Security Awareness Company, Popcorn Training, exploqii, Twist & Shout, El Pescador, CLTRe, Saya University, and MediaPRO. Together, they create security awareness training content available in the ModStore.Screenshot of a security training quiz question showing "Security Moments Series: Spot the Bad Link" asking what Lisa should do when receiving an unexpected email with an HTML attachment, with three answer options and Submit/Cancel buttons.Screenshot of the AIDA Phishing Template Generator interface, which displays a customizable phishing simulation tool with template setup options on the left and a preview of a generated "Annual Bonus Announcement" email featuring a QR code attack vector on the right.Screenshot of the AIDA Configure Training interface, which displays settings for personalized remedial phishing training, including user enrollment options, completion timeframes, knowledge refresher schedules, and notification preferences, with an "Activate Remedial Training" button to implement the configuration.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Screenshots

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