Malwarebytes vs. Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Sophos Intercept X

Now, I gave it that rating because it's a handy tool for diagnosing issues. Quarantining them, and most of the time, it does fix the problem. Though with rootkits, it's been hit or miss, and sometimes perfectly valid software gets flagged erroneously. However, once you've run it, it tends to run continuously, consuming far too many resources and being a real pain to uninstall, sometimes even causing issues.

Incentivized

Microsoft Defender XDR is well suited for organizations already invested in the Microsoft Ecosystem - including Microsoft 365, Azure Ad and INTune. For example, in scenarios where you need to correlament the fishing attacks with the closing point behavior and identity agreement, Microsoft Defender XDR does a big task of sewing the timeline of a full attack simultaneously and even automatically removing.
This hybrid function is also ideal for the environment, where safety visibility in distance tools, cloud apps and email is important. Microsoft Defender XDR provides centralized insight and response in all these domains without the requirement of many devices.
However, it is less suitable in the atmosphere with diverse or non-microsoft infrastructure, such as an organization running a mixture of Linux server, Google work area or third-party EDR tools. Cross-platform support is still developing, and integration of the microsoft ecosystem often requires additional configurations or third-party connectors. For companies of that situation, Microsoft Defender XDR cannot give its full value from the XDR box.

Incentivized

To be frank, this product is fairly expensive. So I would recommend this to companies that are mid-sized or larger to condone the cost of the purchase. It does save me a significant amount of time in my day - being able to glance at the dashboard and see if there are any outstanding issues that require my attention, as not much digging must be done to accomplish this. So for our company, with a short-staffed IT department, it's incredibly helpful to us. We also qualify for Educational pricing which brings the cost down - which helps tremendously

Incentivized

• Low system resources, it does not slow down the whole computer when scanning or when real-time protection is enabled
• Quick and frequent updates, usually people hate updating, but for malware/viruses, you want to be updated as possible. It takes less than 15 seconds and usually does it automatically. They usually send a few updates a day as they find more.
• Protection features actually work when visiting known bad websites. The page will be blocked and nothing will be downloaded. It may not be what the user wants, but it's what the user needs (as the user can't know every bad website)

Incentivized

• The software uses advanced AI and machine learning algorithms to monitor activities and detect any anomalies immediately, protecting our financial data.
• Automated responses to known threats reduce the impact of possible incidents and improve our security posture.
• Microsoft 365 Defender easily combines with other Microsoft 365 services and external security solutions, providing a complete and unified security solution.

Incentivized

• Sophos Intercept X is great at preventing malware infections and rolling back their effects. I have seen this happen hundreds of times since we installed it
• When combined with Sophos Central, you have an easy to use dashboard where you can manage all installations from a single pane of glass.
• It's easy to deploy on machines and stays updated.
• Good reporting features including alerts sent to the admin if there's ever something wrong with it.

Incentivized

• One of the main things that malwarebytes is missing as a company, is phone support for its clients. All support questions has to go thru email only. This is not acceptable for issues that needs to be resolved quickly.
• There is an issue when installing the client on a machine, it has a set amount of time where the software can register with the management server. The issue with this is, with machines that are over a wide area network, slow connection speeds can cause the software not to register. When that happens, it never re attempts to register in the future.

Incentivized

• Enhanced False Positive Mitigation:
• Improved algorithms to minimize false positives in threat detection, reducing the impact on security teams and preventing unnecessary investigations into non-threatening incidents.
• Advanced User-Friendly Interface:
• Streamlined and intuitive user interface for the centralized dashboard, making it more accessible for security professionals with varying levels of expertise.
• Greater Third-Party Integration:
• Increased compatibility and integration capabilities with a broader range of third-party security tools

Incentivized

• Sophos OOTB policies are very strict and they don't offer anything less strict without you creating new custom policies. I'm sure this is deliberate because the product starts you out in the safest way possible but it means that you will have lots of calls to your tech support desk when you first deploy it unless you do somewhat extensive testing beforehand.
• Sophos Intercept X is currently broken (at least the DLP component) by having secure boot turned on in the UEFI/BIOS. If any user wants to be able to write data to a USB drive or floppy from their PC (yes we still have a couple users who need to use floppies) we have to turn off secure boot on their PC, even if the DLP policy for that user/PC combination specifies that the user and PC are allowed to write to USB/floppy. This would be a very serious problem if it weren't for the fact that we have very few users who need to write files to USB. For us it's OK but I bet it would be a deal-breaker for others.
• I don't see a whole lot of evidence that Intercept X is any different than any other anti-virus, so maybe their admin alerts just don't clearly identify when they have identified a zero-day threat or maybe we just haven't had any zero-day threats.

Incentivized

The last time we renewed Malwarebytes, we renewed for a 3 year renewal. That should describe the confidence we have in the product. Plus the cost savings impact year after year.

Incentivized

We are pleased with the product and have no plans to look for alternatives. We are deeply invested in Microsoft ecosystem and Defender XDR provides seamless integration to other Microsoft products. For academic institution pricing is also quite affordable. In the contrary, we hope to extend the scope of the product for our entire environment.

Incentivized

We have gotten a great product for the price. Easy to maintain and set up on new devices. Support is great and easy to work with and understand.

Incentivized

Usability-wise, it's pretty good, and it gets the job done. But once that's finished, the nags, the pop-ups, and the fact that it slows older systems down recklessly really cost it rating points. It becomes a clutter, and one of the first things we check when we receive reports that a PC is slow is whether it's running malware. Once we uninstall it, the PC is usually easily 40-50% faster. That's too much in the way of resources for something that wants to always run in the background.

Incentivized

Overall the UI is modern and OK to use. Attack story is quite nice visual of incident. Advanced hunting supports autocomplete so that helps doing KQL-queries efficiently. The product is quite comprehensive and one can get lost in the vast UI. Learning curve is quite high and navigation is complex. As product also continues to evolve the UI might change somewhat.

Incentivized

The usability has never been a problem. Sophos Intercept X is a program you can install and let protect your company without much intervention. Apart from a few policies, Sophos will keep you protected better than most any product on the market. Sophos Intercept X works quite well when you are looking to "tighten your grip" on user's access to websites, programs, and add-ons.

In our experience there has been very little downtime for Microsot Defender XDR. For us there hasn’t been any single incident where we needed the product and it was not available.

Incentivized

Most of the time the product is as responsive as you might expect from cloud product. Occasionly the product is little slugish, this has been at most a slight irritation. Reports generate quickly ennough for our needs. We also not have found that Defender XDR slows down systems that it is integrated with

Incentivized

The Malwarebytes customer support team is awesome! They really go above and beyond to help you with whatever issue you may experience. It is not that we need to contact their support team often, but the few times we did, we would speak to someone who knew what they were talking about and able to solve our problem. It is a comfort knowing that aside from a great product, you are getting a reliable support structure.

Incentivized

Their support throughout our onboarding of the product was fabulous. They not only took the time to carefully explain to teams not as well equipped with the lingo but explained to the tech team how to teach the other teams to be successful. They never once seemed impatient or annoyed with basic questions and didn’t pretend to know something when they needed to research an answer

Incentivized

Most of the support reps are fantastic. There have been a few though that have had to be escalated via Account Manager when they haven't followed up but this is a rare instance, and often followed up by the Support Manager for APAC.

Incentivized

Good and hard to find someonme who can explain everything for you beside Microsoft they provide you everything you need.

Incentivized

Microsoft Provides a good training for the Microsoft 365 Defender and has a good learning paths to learn and take the exams and get your Certifications.

Incentivized

seemless and almost transparent. can be deployed by script if needed so every endpoint on our system get's it. if you have intune it gets dumped on the the endpoint by policy so nothing escapes it

Incentivized

Best thing was the help pushing out via group policy and was able to get instructions for that on sophos site

Incentivized

Avast and Norton's products were part of the testing for us but the cost was very high for them and the products were not light on the machine. They took up a lot of memory and slowed the computers down. Malwarebytes although may lack some feature, is a very light software.

Incentivized

Our product in that area, for instance as a security platform and for us it is for the moment really bad point. We started to move in that direction that there is that disconnect from the client management. So if there is some action that needs to be executed detected by security team, there is not an easy way to make that available to the team that is responsible for managing the identities as users, as the devices

Incentivized

Webroot Endpoint Protection is not even in the same league as Sophos Intercept-X. I have tested and compared both sides by side, run simulations and it's not even close. Plus the Sophos central management is so much better. Easier to view user activities and apply policies and remediate threats. Sophos is the clear winner between these two products.

Incentivized

Azure cloud provides techical power to scale the product for whole organization. From organizational point of view scaling Defender XDR for various IT teams needs good collaboration and clear norms that all teams must agree to and follow.

Incentivized

• Positive Impact: Have not had to remediate malware/virus infections since installed.
• Positive impact: As far as browsing goes, we can boldly go where no man has gone before. No, really, I am confident when I am clicking on search engine results that if something get past my trained eye, Malwarebytes will pick of the slack.

Incentivized

• Security incident cannot be measured, once you down you down, hence the security applications like this is just a must have
• The subscription model will be cheaper and can be a good point if you want to free resources within the IT Team
• The SaaS model, if measured correctly can and will reduce long term cost in Infrastructure and Man Power

Incentivized

• Once our technical and commercial areas got certified, the ROI over the time spent, is great. Actual customers, and/or new ones with other tools, feel safe and advised, once they get in touch with us.
• When Sophos EndPoint is being compared against Web Management Tools (competitors), we have failed to deliver, nevertheless, there is a version of Sophos Central (Cloud) which achieves this requirement at 100% and more, since is Cloud Based (on AWS).
• We are grateful to be on Sophos "Radar" as a Platinum Partner, and "The Americas" valued partner, we have seen our business grow, thanks to this kind of technology, throughout the years.

Incentivized