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Forescout Platform vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
8.3
Forescout Platform is valued for enhancing security, automating remediation, saving costs, and improving network reliability and privacy.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR offers cost savings, enhanced security, and efficiency by consolidating measures, reducing cyberattack losses, and streamlining processes.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Forescout Platform's customer service is responsive and helpful, but varies in response time, knowledge, and consistency.
Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Defender XDR support varies; larger organizations benefit more, with issues in responsiveness and knowledge sharing for smaller companies.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Forescout Platform scales efficiently with seamless appliance additions, despite potential cost concerns, proving reliable in large deployments.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR offers scalable solutions for diverse organizations, with strengths in cloud setups and dashboard management despite some challenges.
Scalability can be costly since a physical box needs to be installed for every site.
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.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Forescout Platform is praised for its stability and reliability, with minor issues that do not overshadow its performance.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for stability and reliability, with minor issues quickly resolved and high user satisfaction.
I would rate its stability as 9.5 out of ten.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
 

Room For Improvement

Forescout Platform struggles with usability, integration, false positives, high costs, needing improved analytics, support, scalability, and simplified licensing.
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scanning, better integration, simpler licensing, and improved automation for user-friendly threat management.
The console is a fat client, and a web interface would be preferable.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
It would be better if much of that information were immediately visible, especially when looking at endpoints or users.
 

Setup Cost

Forescout Platform is costly but offers flexible licensing and comprehensive features, competing well with Cisco ISE.
Microsoft Defender XDR is cost-effective with an E5 bundle but costly separately, influenced by complex licensing and geographic factors.
Installing a physical box on each site can be expensive.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
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.
 

Valuable Features

Forescout Platform offers excellent device visibility, network control, and integration, praised for agentless operation, flexibility, and real-time alerts.
Microsoft Defender XDR offers seamless integration, advanced threat hunting, and AI protection, streamlining operations and reducing costs.
The platform enables automated policy enforcement, allowing us to simulate and test policies before enforcement, streamlining our security operations.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
The Email Explorer feature has proven invaluable, offering a broader perspective than automated alerts and incidents alone.
The email protection feature is the most valuable because our risks primarily lie there, and it seems to be the most popular target.
 

Categories and Ranking

Forescout Platform
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Network Access Control (NAC) (4th), IoT Security (1st), Endpoint Compliance (5th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Forescout Platform is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 9.6%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Odai Halawani - PeerSpot reviewer
It's an easy and effective solution, especially for device profiling without agents
Forescout Platform's most valuable aspect is its excellent device profiling for devices without agents, which is crucial for our work due to challenges with agent-based devices. Its isolation and blocking actions are particularly effective for network security. The device compliance feature helps us ensure device compliance through immediate actions like updating antivirus software. We have already integrated Forescout with antivirus and vulnerability assessment tools, allowing it to monitor vulnerability scores and automatically isolate devices if critical vulnerabilities are detected.
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
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
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

What advice do you have for others considering Forescout Platform?
Forescout is a very powerful NAC product that does not rely on port level configuration. It can detect and block unauthorized devices very quickly. But it has a lot of capabilities and really would...
What advice do you have for others considering Forescout Platform?
I would rate the Forescout Device and Visibility Control Platform at a six out of ten.
What advice do you have for others considering Forescout Platform?
I recommend doing a compression demo. If people use it, they will buy it. So they have to see the product in place. That's the main recommendation is to do a proof of concept. If they do, they will...
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?
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.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
It would be beneficial to reduce the number of clicks required to navigate between blades, as the current navigation and breadcrumb system can be a bit confusing. Some inconsistencies exist between...
 

Also Known As

Forescout Platform, CounterACT for Endpoint Compliance, ForeScout CounterACT
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NHS Sussex, SAP, SEGA, Vistaprint, Miami Children's Hospital, Pioneer Investments, New York Law School, OmnicomGroup, Meritrust
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Forescout Platform vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.