Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Tenable Vulnerability Management

Microsoft Defender for Business is well suited for small and medium businesses that are running on a smaller budget, with little to no IT department and require a quick and effective setup to manage and protect their endpoints. It can be deployed and managed very quickly, and the person doing it can have little to no experience as long as they follow directions.

Incentivized

I've been using this product since it began as an open source product, I really like it and for the money, I think it's probably the best choice for most companies who need a product like this. Over the years I've seen the interface change quite a bit and sometimes I think it's a bit unclear how to do certain things and the different packages can be confusing, these are the only reasons I'm giving it a 9 instead of a 10.

Incentivized

• Already integrated with Windows
• Allows for folder and executable-specific exceptions when combined with Intune.
• Incident response and analytics are fantastic.

Incentivized

• Setup of the internal scanner was fairly simple and straight forward.
• An update came out for the internal scanner that allows you to add an Internal Certificate Authority for lookup.
• Has automated reporting to keep executives and compliance departments informed.
• Internal scanner can be configured to auto-update itself.
• "Recast Rules" allows your organization to redefine a vulnerabilities' classification, if it is not applicable or your disagree.
• External PCI scans allow you to remediate before submitting to Tenable.io for review.
• Tenable.io staff was very patient and helpful. They provided some limited guidance with remediation.
• Internal and External scans can be automated. schedule for the automated scans is very granular.

Incentivized

• Confusion between the different Defender products
• Ease of setup and configuration
• Reporting and Alerts

Incentivized

• Expensive - You do pay a slight premium for the best product in the space.
• Asset management is difficult to work with if you have a lot of asset turnover, the license can be ''held'' for 3-6 months after the asset is gone from your environment.

Incentivized

So far we have found no alternative that would overall offer us more than we are getting from Microsoft Defender for Business!

Incentivized

We like to renew tenable each year we have had it so far.

Incentivized

Microsoft Defender for Business is a solid tool for smaller businesses looking to manage their endpoints and devices, while staying on budget. The setup is minimal compared to the full-blown InTune and EMS suite, and the product can be included in some Small Business SKUs that they may already have.

Incentivized

Overall it is good, it took a little while to understand it and figure things out but once you have a good grasp on it then, it is very good.

Incentivized

Support is usually really great at walking you through any steps you need to take when you get stuck on something. There are a few false positives and errors that have come up over the years that required their help to get through. Unfortunately, the steps required to diagnose some problems are more tedious than I think should be necessary. (IE: SQL instances can throw errors that clog up your logs because one plugin affects it in a certain way. The process to diagnose this is to watch timestamps of plugins in a log while monitoring the SQL logs at the same time and using your best guess as to what is causing it.)

Incentivized

Microsoft Defender for Business has better reporting and incident response. There is limited client rollout due to being integrated with Windows. Microsoft Defender for Business is much better at identifying asset risks and giving a broad security overview. Because we moved to Microsoft 365 to access the Office applications and Exchange online, Microsoft Defender for Business was essentially cost free to us. Where Microsoft Defender for Business falls short in comparison to Sophos is that it requires integration with Intune to enforce many of the physical controls that Sophos offers in their client.

Incentivized

Tenable.io has a comparable set of features, with excellent support and a competitive price. After less than desirable experiences with another company, we moved to Tenable and haven't looked back since.

Incentivized

• Improved cybersecurity
• Learning curve
• Resource consumption

Incentivized

• Since this is a requirement for our PCI compliance and the cost is relatively low, the ROI isn't really something we need to think too much about, Tenable's pricing is fair and affordable.

Incentivized