Desktop Central from ManageEngine is a client desktop management with patching, remote control, and configuration.
$795
per year per user
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Score 8.8 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.
The tool excels at managing a large number of devices across multiple locations, providing a single pane of glass for IT administrators. This is particularly beneficial for organizations like us with branch offices or remote employees. And it offers hardware and software inventory, remote access, and configuration management, making it suitable for organizations that need to maintain detailed oversight of their IT assets.
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.
product support - the technicians at ManageEngine Endpoint Central are very knowledgeable when it comes to the system- I have never had an issue not fixed promptly by them
The OS deployment tool saves us a significant amount of time and man hours in deploying machines- from manual setups taking 1-2 hours to complete per device, to 6 minutes each, is all the proof you need
Being able to remotely and silently install packages of software e.g Foxit PDF viewer, means we can instantly give hundreds or even thousands of machines a piece of software that before using EC, would have taken weeks to do, even with multiple technicians
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.
More granular access level controls for technicians (restrictions for juniors) on the Mobile Device Management add-on
Monitoring mobile data usage on mobile devices, this has been in the product pipeline for 5 years, but not yet implemented
Ability to remotely support company-owned mobile devices with no end-user permission. End-user needs to allow the remote session, when sometimes that's what we don't want since we're doing an investigation.
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.
ManageEngine is considered an excellent product due to its comprehensive suite of solutions for IT management, with ManageEngine Endpoint Central specifically excelling in endpoint management. The platform stands out for its user-friendly interface, robust features, and versatility in addressing diverse IT needs. It offers organizations a centralized solution for endpoint security, patch management, software deployment, and asset management
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
This is a big piece of software and it does take some time to work out how to use it, but there are things like 'software templates' which is software that is ready to deploy to clients. You can use it to find out almost any information from a client, if you get stuck the support team are happy to help.
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.
The local distributor of the product is always available, however most support is received within an hour from India. We've had complex requirements and the support team went so far as to customize their mobile application to suit our unique needs. We honestly can't complain about any support we've received and it's always been very quick.
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
In my organization I used Atera previously, which is similar to ManageEngine Endpoint Central but Atera is a cloud-based IT management tool ideal for small IT teams where ManageEngine Endpoint Central can provide more users control and has better features. Mainly ManageEngine Endpoint Central is better for enterprise level.
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.
Our security posture is easy to see and act upon as you have a single place to look at all machines vulnerabilities. This helps us when it comes to security audits as we are able to demonstrate the value of the application.
Remote support is inbuilt and easy to use as you can just hop onto any agented machine and control it directly without asking for codes or getting people to visit a specific website.
We were able to mass install various applications to client machines over the years and the time and cost saved by not having to visit remote machines in different countries has proved invaluable.
