Microsoft 365 Defender combines SIEM and XDR capabilities for Microsoft 365 environments, encompassing threat detection, post-breach detection, automated investigation, and response for endpoints. Additionally, it protects cloud apps, emails and documents, and employee identities.
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Sophos Intercept X
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Sophos Endpoint Protection (Sophos EPP) with Intercept X is an endpoint security product providing an antivirus / antimalware solution that when upgraded with Intercept X or Intercept X Advanced provides advanced threat detection and EDR capabilities.
$28
per year per user
Pricing
Microsoft Defender XDR
Sophos Intercept X
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Intercept X Advanced
$28
per year per user
Intercept X Advanced with XDR
$48
per year per user
Sophos Managed Threat Response
$79
per year per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Defender XDR
Sophos Intercept X
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Pricing is for a 3-year commitment. Government and Education pricing available.
Microsoft Defender XDR is more seamless than Sophos Intercept X as it is better integrated into the Microsoft 365 suite. Sophos Intercept X is a little bit cheaper per year than Microsoft Defender XDR though, and definitely worth looking into if you are looking for a security …
We use Microsoft products and have a large group of users. It works easily with our system. There is a great deal of knowledge base out there, often a little overwhelming. But we feel it's the best tool for our network to use parallel to the rest of our back-end.
We selected the Microsoft 365 Defender as we using Microsoft environment and integration with Microsoft 365 Services. Also its provide single dashboard from where we can manage and monitor security across different services, Which streamlines our security operations and …
We've compared the solution to probably 5-10 others having selected just a handful of the more recent ones. Using this with one other, we feel like we've covered most areas as possible. The integration with the Microsoft stack cannot be beaten and it just feels natural to use …
We liked the deep device integration and active threat monitoring for Sophos but ultimately we went with Microsoft 365 Defender integrated into our Microsoft 365 tenant because we could negotiate favorable pricing along with our 365 licensing. The additional expense of Sophos …
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
