Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection (TAP)

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy to deployed across the entire organization. Having a cloud based solution with a single pane of glass to manage all assets is a real no-brainer. Being able to receive immediate alerts when suspicious activity occurs is extremely helpful in keeping risks at a minimum. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint management is also smart enough to not send several alerts when an attack could be hitting multiple targets within a certain time frame or when it's the same attack multiple times. However, be prepared to click through multiple pages all over the site to figure out what happened when an attack occurs.

Incentivized

Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection is a great security application for notifying our team about when our users click on malicious links. It provides a good explanation of the attack scenario, including the Sender, Subject, as well as other users that this attack has been sent to. It is also very useful in helping provide metrics on what types of attacks have been sent to the organization historically.

Incentivized

• One, it's crazy lightweight, so compared to some of the competitors that we also have used with our security services, it's really lightweight and so I don't have a lot of overhead on the system that it's running on.
• It does really fantastic PowerShell integration.

Incentivized

• Impostor email detection is a fantastic feature and works very well.
• The sandbox feature helps to ensure confidence that their evaluation of the email threat is valid.
• Easy to use (and understand) dashboard make identifying and managing email threats a breeze.

Incentivized

• It would be good to continue to minimize the amount of resources needed during a scan
• Provide more integration with Outlook to scan attachments with a notification that everything is good
• Provide a Click to Fix option when listing issues or high-risk problems on systems

Incentivized

• Their admin web GUI is cumbersome and unclear in many ways. The learning curve is steep so you have to stay up on things yourself whenever a new feature or service is added.
• They sometimes add a feature to their toolbox without informing their customers. This is true even when the feature added does not cost extra.

Incentivized

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

Not my decision, but I have made it very clear this product does not perform. I have emails from our users on how bad it is after switching to it.

Incentivized

It offers multiple security features and integrates well with Microsoft ecosystems. A workflow for threat detection, investigation, automated remediation, and a centralized dashboard is an added advantage. This application is mainly designed for experienced users; new users may feel challenged.

Incentivized

The interface is simple to use but still contains the information needed to conduct thorough investigations. If you own licenses for other Proofpoint tools, Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection is easily accessible from those applications. The ability to sandbox URLs within the TAP interface is a great feature as well. The overall performance of the GUI is seamless, especially if enabled with your organization's SSO.

Incentivized

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

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy on memory and resources on clients.

Incentivized

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

Generally have had good response and resolution time with knowledgeable technicians, and if needed the ticket is moved to someone with more expertise to better address the issue. Have used the ticketing portal, phone, as well as the beta chat feature (permanent please!)

Incentivized

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

Proofpoint managed the installation and made it very simple. We had a dedicated installation engineer who checked in on use periodically after go-live to ensure that there were no issue.

Incentivized

Defender is far easier to deploy and manage than Sophos and tends to work without as many issues. The threat assessment portal provides an in-depth view of the organization's security posture, whereas Sophos only shows the patching status of the PCs. We did need Intune to get many of the control features (disabling USB drives) that Sophos offered out of the box.

Incentivized

This is the first product of its kind that I've used personally. The last 3 companies that I worked for also used Proofpoint, which includes Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection, so I don't have a way to really compare it. I have seen that it is a leader in the industry.

Incentivized

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easily scaled from small orgs to giant enterprises.

Incentivized

• Reduced incidents of security breaches lead to lower remediation costs and avoid potential financial losses and reputational damage.
• Reduces the need for additional third-party security solutions and training, thereby lowering overall security management costs.
• Increased efficiency and productivity of IT staff lead to better allocation of resources and cost savings.
• Reduces the risk of fines and sanctions associated with non-compliance, ensuring business continuity and protecting revenue.

Incentivized

• Saves IT time when an attack is successful and isn't reported in a timely manner or at all until damages are done. IT has to spend less time and effort because we are able to stop it before it spreads.
• Protecting business resources and assets is a huge positive impact. TAP allows us to better protect our business and information within.
• The only negative thing is that it doesn't automatically handle these attacks - but that is what TRAP is for! I wish Proofpoint bundled TAP and TRAP.

Incentivized