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Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender External...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Attack Surface Management (ASM) (10th)
Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (17th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (21st), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

SF
Better at protecting from cyberattacks and haven't had any problems with the scalability of this solution
With Microsoft, support is always crazy, it's not easy to get support. That's their weakness. They need to improve their support. Microsoft will always give good support to their big customers or partners, but we're not a big company. If you had a thousand employees and were a big customer, maybe they'd offer better support. But in my 35 years of IT experience, it's always been the same with Microsoft. They transfer us to Europe because we speak French, but when we want to speak in English, they transfer us to people who don't know the product. Most of the time, we find a solution before they call us back.
Abdulrahman Muhammadi - PeerSpot reviewer
Good vulnerability notifications and versatile while offering improved security
I handle security, and Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management assesses our systems, applications, virtual machines, laptops, operating systems, Linux, Unix, and network devices 24/7. It checks if packages and applications are up to date and notifies us of vulnerabilities Microsoft Defender…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It seems to be better at protecting from cyberattacks."
"The solution is up-to-date and helps prevent zero-day attacks."
"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is versatile and assesses vulnerabilities, providing detailed information on CVEs, their categories, and exploit statuses."
"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is versatile and assesses vulnerabilities, providing detailed information on CVEs, their categories, and exploit statuses."
"A valuable feature is the ease of management and integration with Microsoft products."
"The recommendations, scores, and steps to remediate actions are highly useful."
"The solution is highly scalable."
"The most valuable aspect is the kind of assessment results I get, and the recommendations provided in Microsoft products really help in taking care of the resources."
"The solution helps identify threats and vulnerabilities."
 

Cons

"With Microsoft, support is always crazy, it's not easy to get support."
"It is expensive."
"The constant changes in the product configuration or the console setup can sometimes be challenging."
"It is challenging to extract and customize reports from the system."
"The product is not stable; it is very resource-intensive, consuming a lot of memory and CPU, which makes it slow."
"The worst aspect is the refresh rate of the dashboard. A vulnerability I patch within 15 minutes takes 24 additional hours for an update."
"Probably my only criticism would be the cost. It is expensive."
"The general support could be improved."
"The technical support takes too much time to resolve tickets."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The tool is a bit costly."
"The licensing costs are reasonable."
"The licensing model follows a per-user per-month structure."
"The product’s pricing is medium."
"I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Retailer
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management?
I don't see a big difference in pricing compared to its competitors. With "intelligent" or "smart" antivirus, people are willing to pay a little more for something that could make a difference for ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management?
With Microsoft, support is always crazy, it's not easy to get support. That's their weakness. They need to improve their support. Microsoft will always give good support to their big customers or p...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management?
The kind of companies using it typically have one hundred or more users and are in various sectors, like manufacturing and insurance. We use it to protect against cyberattacks.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
We are aware of the pricing for some parts that we are using. Microsoft documentation helps figure out pricing and other aspects. Overall, every organization wishes for cheaper options, but we look...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
The automated remediations can be more specific. However, the score and recommendation aspects are good. Currently, I do not see any significant challenges.
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft and others in Microsoft Security Suite. Updated: January 2025.
832,723 professionals have used our research since 2012.