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Elastic Security vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Elastic Security's community support is praised, but technical support experiences vary, with mixed reviews on responsiveness and service quality.
Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Defender XDR's customer support is mixed; user satisfaction varies by support package and representative expertise.
Providing necessary assistance efficiently.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
4.2
Elastic Security needs better authentication, user interface, AI features, documentation, integrations, marketing, and improved scalability for user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
5.0
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scans, better AI, UI simplicity, improved integrations, clearer visibility, and enhanced threat intelligence.
CrowdStrike and Defender have more established threat intelligence integration due to having a larger client base.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Microsoft could improve on threat hunting and build more on threat detection and handling.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Elastic Security scales well across environments, needing planning but suiting diverse business sizes and cloud infrastructure scalability.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for scalability, efficiently managing global endpoints with its cloud-first architecture, despite minor challenges.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
6.9
Elastic Security is cost-effective with open-source options, offering flexible plans but may incur costs for advanced features.
Sentiment score
5.4
Enterprise users find Microsoft Defender XDR pricing reasonable for its features, valuing integration with Microsoft products despite some additional costs.
The pricing is reasonable, especially for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), making it a viable option for businesses building their security infrastructure.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Elastic Security is reliable and stable, with configuration-dependent performance; careful planning ensures stability despite occasional upgrade issues.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender XDR is highly reliable and stable, with occasional issues resolved promptly for a smooth user experience.
In terms of stability, I would rate Elastic a solid eight out of ten.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.1
Elastic Security offers rapid searching, scalability, visualization, machine learning, and seamless integration, making it user-friendly and cost-effective.
Sentiment score
8.6
Microsoft Defender XDR integrates across platforms, offering threat detection, management, and automation, valued for ease of use and security.
Elastic Security is as flexible and configurable as Microsoft Sentinel.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
From an attack chain perspective, Defender XDR handles phishing and spam emails easily, while Defender for Endpoint manages endpoints effectively.
It's because endpoint management is my primary focus, and this feature integrates well with my other skills.
 

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Security
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
16th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (5th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (6th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Gajewski Marek - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good anomaly detection and connectivity reporting
We previously used Splunk but switched to Elastic Security because Splunk was more expensive. Feature-wise, both tools are pretty much the same. They have almost the same functions. Elastic Security has a much better AI assistant that allows you to ask questions like a normal person. With Elastic Security, I can also predict the price and how much it will cost. Splunks's pricing depends on how much data we use and the different add-ons I have to add. The pricing is much better with Elastic Security.
Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
10%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
What do you like most about Elastic Security?
Elastic provides the capability to index quickly due to the reverse indexes it offers. This data is crucial as it contains critical information. The reverse index allows fast data indexing because ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Security?
Elastic Security is cost-effective compared to Defender and CrowdStrike. The pricing is reasonable, especially for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), making it a viable option for businesses building...
What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
The pricing is a little high, however, it is on par with other competitive tools in the market.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft could improve on threat hunting and build more on threat detection and handling. The cybersecurity and cloud security posture features are a bit lesser than standard security products.
 

Also Known As

Elastic SIEM, ELK Logstash
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Texas A&M, U.S. Air Force, NuScale Power, Martin's Point Health Care
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Security vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.