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LevelBlue USM Anywhere vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    LevelBlue USM Anywhere

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AThe LevelBlue USM Anywhere XDR platform (replacing the former AlienVault USM) delivers threat detection, incident response, and compliance management.

    $1,075

    per month

    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft 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
    LevelBlue USM AnywhereMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
    Editions & Modules
    Essentials
    $1,075
    per month
    Standard
    $1,695
    per month
    Premium
    $2,595
    per month
    Academic
    $2.50
    per user/per month
    Standalone
    $5.20
    per user/per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    LevelBlue USM AnywhereMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    LevelBlue USM AnywhereMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
    Considered Both Products
    LevelBlue
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    86%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    96%
    Would buy again
    157 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    146 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    155 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    130 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    86%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    140 Answers
    Features
    LevelBlue USM AnywhereMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
    Endpoint Security
    Comparison of Endpoint Security features of LevelBlue USM Anywhere and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
    Feature
    LevelBlue USM Anywhere
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
    8.7
    79 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Anti-Exploit Technology00 Ratings9.075 Ratings
    Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)00 Ratings9.179 Ratings
    Centralized Management00 Ratings8.679 Ratings
    Hybrid Deployment Support00 Ratings7.110 Ratings
    Infection Remediation00 Ratings9.077 Ratings
    Vulnerability Management00 Ratings8.774 Ratings
    Malware Detection00 Ratings9.278 Ratings
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    LevelBlue USM AnywhereMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
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    Score8.7 out of 10
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    Score8.6 out of 10
    BlackBerry Protect (CylancePROTECT)
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Microsoft Defender XDR
    Score8.7 out of 10
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    Score8.8 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    LevelBlue USM AnywhereMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.8
    (390 ratings)
    8.9
    (169 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.2
    (18 ratings)
    8.4
    (10 ratings)
    Usability
    6.7
    (34 ratings)
    8.6
    (40 ratings)
    Availability
    6.4
    (3 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.3
    (25 ratings)
    9.0
    (7 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.3
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    6.4
    (38 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.3
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    6.3
    (3 ratings)
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    7.6
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    LevelBlue USM AnywhereMicrosoft Defender for Endpoint
    Likelihood to Recommend
    LevelBlue
    At this point I'm saying a 4. While the marketing material make it appear to be easy to use and it was relatively easy to set up, as previously mentioned, each event description is based upon the individual asset making it nearly impossible for the administrator to be a SME for each asset. For example, if one of the assets reporting is a router, the administrator monitoring alerts would need to know what the various events are that can be triggered as an event for the particular router; however, if the asset is a workstation, the administrator would need to know the various events that are triggered for workstations.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    If you have multiple endpoints in your environment, if you're looking to understand what your environment looks like, if you're trying to identify the health of your environment, or identify any risks or vulnerabilities in your environment pertaining to your endpoints and devices.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    LevelBlue
    • AlienVault USM is simple and easy to deploy. Sensors can be deployed in as little as 15 minutes through the setup wizard.
    • The USM UI is easy to understand. I've trained multiple analysts who are able to perform their duties on their first day, in part because of USM Anywhere's ease of use.
    • Top-notch built-in compliance templates and reporting features.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • The big thing for us is on endpoint, it kind of integrates with everything else that we already have because we use Microsoft completely. And so that helps us with being able to integrate, and send things over to Azure Sentinel as we need to as well.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    LevelBlue
    • Personally, I've wished I could purchase a service that would configure AV for my environment. I get a lot of traffic on a daily basis and I almost need to hire an analyst that just works on AV.
    • Some of the filters when looking for a specific alert aren't that easy to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • I'd say building out summaries and log reviews for analysts reviewing incidents. So, pivoting from the alerts themselves to actually getting the detail underneath. Trying to understand what caused an alert, where they went from there, et cetera, et cetera. And then trying to get into deeper log review to take that investigation further can be a pain point.
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    LevelBlue
    The centralized logging and retention for PCI compliance was our main driver, and it is meeting that need. Otherwise there has been enough frustration with the lack of documentation and the need to customize through the CLI that I would be open to alternatives.
    Incentivized
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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
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    LevelBlue
    Once you are able to navigate the different panels, finding what you need is quite easily. Before getting used it it can be a bit of challenge . Each panel is quite well laid out and the filtering search capabilities are quite strong.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    Because it's hard to find things sometimes. I can find things now because I know where they are. But you have to work with it a little while to figure out how. I'd basically say it was a security tool designed by developers. So you have to get that mindset to find things. So a new hire, a new person in the SOC would have a difficult time. I know that's sitting in here, or that screen is in here somewhere. So it's gotten better.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    LevelBlue
    We do have issues with maintenance on the AlienVault USM as the disk fills up from time to time with other data sources. Sources for scanning logs and net flow data isn't calculated in regular disk maintenance and can easily fill up our disk if we do not keep an eye on it with some custom Nagios plugins. The system does properly trim logging data from logging sources properly.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    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
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    Performance
    LevelBlue
    With the latest release of AlienVault USM overall performance has not been an issue. We have noticed single source events per second does not scale well with the overall system. 2,000eps on a vmware system with a single source produces delays of up to an hour for us. Pages, reporting and even raw log searches are rather quick though.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy on memory and resources on clients.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    LevelBlue
    The support we received from alienvault was excellent. They went above and beyond in making sure everything was working as it needed to be. They REALLY want their product implementation to be a success and our security goals be achieved. They are like a member of our security team.
    Incentivized
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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
    Incentivized
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    In-Person Training
    LevelBlue
    I did not have any experience with "in person" training directly. The free online classes offered for a half a day are based on the actual training offered. These little teasers are very good and well worth your time to learn a few quick and dirty ways of getting more information from your SIEM
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    LevelBlue
    It was very well organized and helpful in using the product to the fullest extent. The instructor allowed time for folks who were involved with managed services to receive tuning tips in order to better support their customers. In addition, the course materials were automatically updated when the new version came out.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    LevelBlue
    AlienVault USM was a very simple to implement and get up and running. We started with a trial version and had that up and going within an hour of receiving email instructions from the sales engineer. We never had to contact support to get the system up and going. It was extremely easy to convert over to a full license once we started with a paid version.
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    Microsoft
    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
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    Alternatives Considered
    LevelBlue
    Splunk's ES is a paid add-on on top of an already pricey product. Finding a MSSP that supports Splunk and isn't a 6 figure annual commitment seems unlikely. LogRhythm did not have a cloud-based solution when we were considering SIEMs. Fantastic product though and have a good MSSP base. Devo did not have a MSSP partner base when we looked. Their product is fantastic too. AlienVault USM has good partners to choose from as well as an affordable cloud model, that's why we chose it.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    Particularly, we're evaluating Symantec Endpoint Protection, the commercial version. We've looked at eSet, a couple of the others, and it's much too heavy or difficult to manage, things like that. Ease of use, ease of integration. It's already there. It's super easy to update it with the regular OS updates and everything. So we can manage it whether we're using SCCM or Intune or Dato, it's very easy to deploy updates and manage things.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    LevelBlue
    The AlienVault USM is not very scalable. Some scalability can be achieved by installing additional sensors, but this only offers 500eps per sensor and is still overall limited by the installation type of VM or physical. We have also noticed the EPS (events per second) is rated overall and not towards a single source. A single source on a very healthy VMware partition tops out at 2,000eps for us, no matter how we configure it. Maybe this is a problem of the 5.2 release?
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easily scaled from small orgs to giant enterprises.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    LevelBlue
    • Once you hit the 150 asset mark, you have to jump to their unlimited license. There is no middle ground. We were only 10 or so assets above the 150 so we had to chose to either not monitor those assets or pay the price of the upgrade.
    • AlienVault brings all the information to one place which makes it much quicker to track down problems.
    Incentivized
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    Microsoft
    • I think the positive impact overall is that we do a lot of sitting in front of assessors- federal assessors, government assessors. And it really comes down to when the assessor has to think about another product that you're bringing in that's not Microsoft, it creates a lot of confusion, more paperwork, more explanation. But the positive impact is that they know it, everybody kind of knows Microsoft. And so when you tell them you have this endpoint for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, they're like, okay. The questions go away, and it makes the overhead a lot less during an assessment.
    Incentivized
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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