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
Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Cortex XDR (formerly Traps) replaces traditional antivirus with multi-method prevention, a proprietary combination of malware and exploit prevention methods that protect users and endpoints from known and unknown threats.
We have reviewed/used ESET and find Defender much better for Endpoints. We have also used McAfee on Servers and have since migrated to Defender on Servers.
Associate Director - Practice Lead, Network and Systems Engineering
Chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
Enterprise Endpoint Protection: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is well suited for large organizations with numerous endpoints, such as desktops, laptops, and servers, as it provides centralized management and monitoring of security across the entire network. Microsoft …
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has the best integration for us in our (mostly) Windows environment. Also we are using M365 E3 so this already included Microsoft Defender for Endpoint P1. The extra cost for Defender for Endpoint P2 is definitely worth it. You need to see these …
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.
Malware that doesn’t leave files behind has become widely available. Anyone who can afford to reverse this trend should purchase technology. Application whitelisting isn’t for everyone, and Palo Alto Networks Traps can help. Enterprises looking for a low-affected, next-generation solution with high protection should consider it. PAN Traps is a great product at a reasonable price, and I highly recommend it.
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.
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.
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
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.
Cortex XDR does a very good job of blocking suspicious and threatening items. However, as with all software of this nature, it will sometimes block known-good items. The difficulty is in manually whitelisting these known-good items. The interface to whitelist is confusing even for a seasoned IT professional and has been the single most frustrating experience of using Cortex XDR
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
The support we receive from Palo Alto is one of the best aspects of Traps. It is very easy to recommend their support. It seems much easier to connect directly with someone with a deep understanding of the product rather than other companies where you basically have to make an airtight case that it is some kind of non-standard issue that can't be solved with existing documentation. Palo Alto digs deep and helps with advanced troubleshooting to get things working.
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.
Traps is the slickest interface, easy to use and intuitive rule making, and the rest just didn't quite stack up to the performance level of Traps. McAfee and Kaspersky just hog processor and RAM power. I didn't like the interface and functionality of SentinelOne as much as Traps. Palo Alto really put a lot of time into the development of this software, and had some of the founding fathers of IT Security heading the development process. Can't beat that.
