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Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Business 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Defender for Business improves ROI with enhanced security, faster incident responses, cost-effectiveness, and easy IT integration.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR offers cost savings, enhanced security, and efficiency by consolidating measures, reducing cyberattack losses, and streamlining processes.
It is pretty good because it offers various features such as Exchange, OfficeSuite, OneDrive, and SharePoint.
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
5.9
Microsoft Defender for Business support is praised for quick responses but criticized for delayed resolutions and poor phone communication.
Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Defender XDR support varies; larger organizations benefit more, with issues in responsiveness and knowledge sharing for smaller companies.
It is rated ten out of ten for its quality and assistance.
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.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Business effectively supports diverse sectors with high scalability, despite potential configuration challenges for 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.
The cloud-based nature of the solution ensures high scalability.
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
9.0
Microsoft Defender for Business is praised for its stable, reliable performance with no reported issues over two years.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for stability and reliability, with minor issues quickly resolved and high user satisfaction.
No customer complaints about its functionality or reliability.
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.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Business needs improved reporting, integration, threat detection, support, management, and more favorable pricing policies.
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scanning, better integration, simpler licensing, and improved automation for user-friendly threat management.
Microsoft should provide batch management solutions with the application, integrating pass management with roles.
It is not quick to make exclusions or specific configurations compared to other antiviruses on the market.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Business offers competitive security as part of Office 365 Premium, with varied pricing for different organizations.
Microsoft Defender XDR is cost-effective with an E5 bundle but costly separately, influenced by complex licensing and geographic factors.
Single-year pricing remains good.
The package with Business Premium is good for what you get for the price.
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.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Business offers scalable security, integrating with tools, advanced threat intelligence, and cost-effective intrusion alerts for SMBs.
Microsoft Defender XDR offers seamless integration, advanced threat hunting, and AI protection, streamlining operations and reducing costs.
The security features are valuable because they come with more capabilities that other licenses do not have, including the enterprise license like E3.
Its vulnerability management is regarded as one of the best in the industry.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
The email protection feature is the most valuable because our risks primarily lie there, and it seems to be the most popular target.
Vulnerability assessment and just-in-time access are some valuable features of Defender for server plans.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Busi...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
18th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (38th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Business is 2.9%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 5.0%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Tim_Howard - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good protection against viruses but support needs improvement
The product's initial setup phase wasn't too bad. The product's installation phase wasn't terrible, but it could have been good to club the things in the process, especially for the ones who are doing it for the first time, and it would be good if Microsoft offered users, someone, to talk to who knows the product. You will be gambling if you use Google for the tool because who knows if it really knows what Microsoft Defender for Business is all about. On a scale of one to ten, if ten is the easiest, I rate the setup phase as an eight out of ten. The setup phase was straightforward. As the tool was needed in a small shop, the solution's deployment was done in a couple of days. The solution was deployed in my company with the help of a small team of ten people. I had my head of IT help me in rolling it out in our company.
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%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Business?
A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is goin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Business?
The pricing of Microsoft Defender for Business is competitive compared to its peers, though some competitors offer more favorable terms on multi-year contracts. However, single-year pricing remains...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?
Microsoft should provide batch management solutions with the application, integrating pass management with roles. Right now, Intune has limitations. Additionally, the pricing policy poses a challen...
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

No data available
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Microsoft Defender for Business and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.