Palo Alto Networks WildFire and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are leaders in cybersecurity solutions. WildFire's comprehensive threat protection gives it an edge with its advanced features.
Features: Palo Alto Networks WildFire includes dynamic malware analysis, and integrated sandboxing with NGFW, and benefits from App-ID and User-ID capabilities. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is valued for integration within the Microsoft ecosystem, with behavioral analysis and a cloud-based platform for adaptability.
Room for Improvement: Palo Alto WildFire could improve with expanded protocol inspections, more intuitive user management, and competitive pricing. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint would benefit from enhanced threat intelligence, faster alert response times, and improved integration with non-Microsoft systems.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: WildFire is typically deployed on-premises, integrating well with existing Palo Alto infrastructure, and provides robust customer support, albeit with some concerns over resolution times. Microsoft Defender offers hybrid deployment options via Microsoft cloud services, though users have mixed reviews on the integration and effectiveness of its technical support.
Pricing and ROI: Palo Alto WildFire is seen as premium, with its advanced threat prevention justifying the cost, especially where Palo Alto infrastructure exists. Microsoft Defender is cost-effective, particularly when bundled with Microsoft 365, despite some clients finding the licensing model complex.
The return on investment is primarily in time savings and better observability of what's happening.
The service generates a low rate of false positives, reducing the overhead of managing false positive events.
I rate Microsoft support 10 out of 10.
Due to our size, we don't have access to direct technical support, but the knowledge base, Microsoft Learn, and the articles available are really good.
The level-one support seems disconnected from subject matter experts.
There is a lack of SLA adherence, and third-party partners do not provide prompt responses.
The service response times are aligned with standards, responding within a few hours based on the problem's criticality.
We managed to scale it out in a short amount of time, with two months of planning and three months of implementation on 10,000 computers.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is scalable enough to handle various devices across environments, whether they are laptops, Android devices, or operating in hybrid environments.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is scalable.
Wildfire is highly scalable.
Defender for Endpoint is extremely stable.
I rate Defender 10 out of 10 for stability.
After setting appropriate exclusions, everything seemed to work fine.
Repeated interactions are necessary due to Level One's lack of tools and knowledge, hindering efficient problem-solving and negatively impacting our experience with Microsoft support.
It would also be beneficial if policies could be configured without relying on Microsoft Entra ID, allowing for better integration with local directories.
We have multiple endpoints, and we want to look for signals across tenants.
The dashboard should provide better visibility, especially in showing how many files are sent to Wildfire and their findings.
Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs.
Additional add-ons are priced at $5.
The pricing, setup, and licensing were very easy and simple.
I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of affordability.
Automated Investigation and Remediation features are vital for advanced threat protection and beneficial for device protection.
Defender for Endpoint's coverage across different platforms in our environment is pretty good. We have devices running Linux, Mac OS, Windows, iOS, and Android. It covers all of them.
Attack surface reduction and limiting attack surface vectors are valuable features.
The most valuable feature of Wildfire is its sandboxing capability for examining suspicious files or locations.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for organizations. It offers real-time protection against various types of cyber threats, including malware, viruses, ransomware, and phishing attacks.
With its powerful machine-learning capabilities, it can detect and block sophisticated attacks before they can cause any harm. The solution also includes endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities, allowing organizations to quickly investigate and respond to security incidents. It provides detailed insights into the attack timeline, enabling security teams to understand the scope and impact of an incident.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint also offers proactive threat hunting, allowing organizations to proactively search for and identify potential threats within their network. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft security solutions, such as Microsoft Defender XDR, to provide a unified and holistic security approach. With its centralized management console, organizations can easily deploy, configure, and monitor the security solution across their entire network.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a robust and scalable security solution that helps organizations protect their endpoints and data from evolving cyber threats.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a highly effective cloud-based advanced threat protection (ATP) solution that organizations in a wide variety of fields trust to help them keep safe from digital threats. It is designed to enable businesses to confront even the most evasive threats and resolve them. It combines many techniques to maximize the level of threat protection available to users.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire Benefits
Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy WildFire include:
Proactive real-time threat prevention. Organizations that utilize WildFire can take a proactive approach to their network security. Wildfire’s security scanning software is supported by powerful automation that enables it to run 180 times faster than other similar solutions. It also leverages machine learning to spot and address two times more malware monthly than its competitors. Users can solve issues as they arise, which prevents them from suffering severe harm.
A holistic approach to security. WildFire leverages many of the security features and characteristics that can be found in some of the most effective security solutions in a way that provides users with a powerful protective blanket. It combines such things as machine learning, dynamic and static analysis, and a custom-built analysis environment, and enables users to cover many different potential avenues of attack. In this way, organizations can easily detect and prevent even the most sophisticated threats from harming them.
Reduce overhead costs. Using WildFire cuts the expenses that a business incurs. Its architecture is based in the cloud and, as a result, users do not have to purchase hardware to run it. Additionally, those users do not have to pay anything more than a product subscription fee. They can scale it up as they wish and incur no additional costs.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire Features
Some of the many features WildFire offers include:
Third-party integrations. WildFire gives users access to integrations that can enable them to combine Wildfire’s security suite with outside tools. If an organization thinks that they are missing something, they can easily use Wildfire’s third-party integrations to bolster their capabilities. These integrations can connect to many different types of tools, like security information or event management systems.
URL filtering. Organizations can use a URL filtering feature to safeguard themselves against known threats. When this feature is active, it will scan for traffic coming from specific URLs that are known to be malicious. This keeps them one step ahead of those threats that they know about.
Deep analytics. Wildfire comes with the ability to provide users with a detailed analysis of any threat that it finds across all of their network environments. It gives users insight into everything from their natures to the actions that they have performed.
Reviews from Real Users
WildFire is a solution that stands out when compared to its primary competitors. Two major advantages that it offers are the high speeds at which it can analyze network traffic for threats and the accuracy with which it can pick out genuine threats from false positives.
Ahmad Z., the principal consultant at Securelytics, writes, “The analysis is very fast. The intermittent is a millisecond and has a speedy response time.”
Christopher B., the senior systems administrator at a government agency, says, “It gives a more accurate assessment of a virus in terms of whether it's truly a virus, malware, or a false positive. We have some legacy software that could pop up as being something that is malware. WildFire goes through and inspects it, and then it comes back and lets us know if it's a false positive. Usually, when it finds out that it's not a virus, it lets us know that it's benign, and it can exclude it from that scan, which means I don't even have to worry about that one popping up anymore.”
We monitor all Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.