No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Sangfor Endpoint Secure comparison

Sponsored
 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
Sangfor Endpoint Secure
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
32nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.0%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor Endpoint Secure is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.0%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
Sangfor Endpoint Secure0.8%
Other89.8%
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
Robert Arbuckle - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Analyst III at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Automatically isolates threats and integrates with logging to reduce response time
Overall, I would evaluate the Microsoft support level that I receive at probably about a seven, but that depends on the day. It has been spotty. We have had issues where the urgency level of the Microsoft support is not as high as ours, especially during a data breach or potential data breach situation. We have had issues with some of the offshore support being lackluster. One specific thing that comes to mind is we were on a support call with our CISO on the call, and the Microsoft agent, who did not actually work for Microsoft, is one of the vendors that Microsoft uses for support, said, "Just to set expectations, my lunch break is in an hour and I am going to go away then." For us, it was already ten o'clock at night and we had been working on this for a couple of hours, trying to get a security engineer on with us. For him to tell us that he was going to go away and have lunch, it was, "Okay, but go find somebody else if you need to." It was just the lackluster approach, and it seemed like he did not really care. We seem to get a lot of this when we get non-Microsoft support. I can identify areas for improvement with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, as it is kind of a convoluted mess to try to take care of false positives. Especially when they have been identified as false positives but they keep going off over and over again. It is great for my pocketbook because it generates a lot of on-call action, but I would really prefer more sleep at two o'clock in the morning than dealing with false positives. I would say that the unified portal for managing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is suitable for both teams as they are all in there. It would be great if they would stop moving things around and renaming things, which makes sense. The new XDR portal is pretty nice. Being able to have it central again inside of the regular Security Center without having to open up two windows is helpful. Overall, I think it is pretty good. There is always going to be something that could be improved, such as alerting and the ability to modify alerts would be a little bit helpful to have. Being able to add more data into the alerts and turn off alerts that are not as useful would be beneficial. It is hard to say what the quantitative impact the security exposure management feature has had on our company's security, because a lot of it is kind of subjective. I think we are sitting at around a fifty percent score still, and a lot of it is just kind of unusual circumstances that we cannot really implement without breaking the organization.
OA
Coordinator Associate at National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases
Quick threat response and behavior analysis while enhancing network security
The main use case is usually related to security. It deals with attacks that come day-to-day such as zero-day attacks and APT attacks. Our main task is to secure the network infrastructure in the hospital where I work It facilitates the departments of IT and other departments to procure and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have found in our test Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks to be a very good tool."
"The policy configuration is great, the granularity of policies that are available is very helpful, it is straightforward to set up, and it has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"The ability to kind of stitch everything together and see the actual complete picture is very useful. I guess you'd call it a playbook. Some people call it the forensics analysis of what was happening on particular endpoints when they detected some malicious behavior, and what transpired before that to cause that. It is also very user friendly. The way they have done everything and integrated all the solutions that they've purchased over the years to make it a very seamless, effective product is very good. One thing about Palo Alto is that they take the products or services that they purchase and make them seamless for the end user as compared to some companies that purchase other companies and then just kind of have their products off to the side or keep different interfaces. Palo Alto doesn't do that."
"On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks a nine."
"My advice for anybody who is considering Cortex XDR is that it is a complete solution, and has very good features."
"Cortex XDR can integrate the firewalls and determine the tendencies of the attacks. It's a new generation antivirus, with protection endpoints and detection response. It is very easy to use and everybody can operate the solution."
"Palo Alto is the core of the security infrastructure in the environment."
"When the pandemic started, Palo Alto came up with many solutions, which helped with the quick shift from on-premises to the cloud."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has improved a lot over the years and it is a lot better now."
"This is a stable solution that has matured over the years."
"User-friendly, offering safety and security."
"DFE organizational security posture has been a positive experience. We're a Microsoft house. It works. Once it's deployed and once it's configured, it works and our clients tend to be happy with it. I haven't really experienced anyone who has been so unsatisfied with the platform that they wanted to go a couple of different directions, that has never happened to me."
"For the most of it, it seems like Defender is well truly up there with the other best players in the market."
"I find the layer protection and real-time protection very useful because when I launch a program, I always have a notification and an alarm."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ransomware and malware protection. The solution detects malware live and whenever it detects suspicious activity, it quarantines it."
"It's one of the best antiviruses on the market."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure has some good policy certificates."
"I like the tool's honeypot feature. Some features include having a honeypot to detect attacks in a certain area. Additionally, there is RDP protection, which means that when we remote into our server or any endpoint, we must enter a password as a second layer of security. It can also integrate with next-generation firewalls."
"It has a quick response time, threat intelligence, cybersecurity features, quick report generation, behavior analysis, dynamic detection, and quarantine features."
"What stands out to me is the dual-end user interface they provide."
"The real-time monitoring feature of Sangfor Endpoint Secure is truly real-time, with no delay compared to other solutions."
"The most valuable feature I have found in the system is its comprehensive end-to-end protection."
"The user-friendliness of Sangfor Endpoint Secure is particularly impressive. Even with basic technical knowledge, users can easily navigate the system, make changes, and implement updates."
"The product's initial setup phase was straightforward."
 

Cons

"Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth."
"The deployment is pretty hard."
"It should support more mobile operating systems. That is one of the cons of their infrastructure right now."
"Cortex XDR should have a lightweight agent, and the agent size should not be heavy."
"It's not an ideal choice for smaller businesses, as you need a minimum of 200 endpoints to even use the solution at all."
"Product might have some bugs."
"There are a large number of false positives."
"It takes time to scan the servers and devices."
"Auto recovery is the most important feature that we would need from this solution. For decryption, similar to Malwarebytes, there should be something to be able to recover the data up to the last normal status. Its ability to recover data to the last normal copy must not exceed 5 to 10 minutes."
"In the next release, I would like to see better management reporting."
"In terms of improvement, they update the platform it seems quite a bit. Every month something is in a new spot or something changed somewhere; there should be less of that."
"I rate Microsoft support seven out of ten. I had some cases a while back and told an agent my issue, and when I called the next day, I had to explain everything again to a different person, so I found it annoying to repeat myself all over."
"Sometimes it's complicated. It's not intuitive in terms of installation and deployment."
"The most problematic part of this program is the difficult customer service."
"The solution can be more user-friendly."
"There are alternative solutions that offer a greater range of dashboard insights when compared to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."
"The interface has too many buttons, making it cluttered."
"When an issue occurs, the response time for first-level support and the time taken for meetings could be improved."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure should include healing capabilities."
"Currently, the tool lacks reporting functionalities."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure performs poorly."
"It is complicated to establish a tunnel due to technical issues in the VPN system."
"Sometimes, the VPN is not secure and doesn't work properly in Sangfor Endpoint Secure."
"I believe Sangfor Endpoint Secure could improve in terms of its user interface and management capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's price is moderate."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"Compared to CrowdStrike, Cortex XDR is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"It has a yearly renewal."
"The solution is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"We didn't have to pay any additional fee for the cloud instance. It just came with the renewal, which was nice."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."
"The solution is an open source version and was free with a paid version of Windows 10."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comes with Windows 10, and it's free. But for you to be able to manage it in the cloud and use the console, you need to have either an Office 365 E5 subscription or a Microsoft M365 subscription. You need to buy an extra license."
"This is an expensive product and licensing for all Microsoft products is a big issue."
"The license for Microsoft Windows covers Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."
"The licensing fee is a function of your Office 365 license. The feature set you get is a function of the license as well. There is probably an E2 version, an E3 version, and an E5 version. There are several versions, and not all features are the same. So, you might want to check what features you're expecting because you might get shocked. If you only have an E3 license, the capability isn't the same."
"The solutions price could be cheaper."
"It is within the same range as other products. It is not too expensive, and it is also not cheap. Its price can be better, but, well, it is Microsoft."
"Given our extensive Microsoft licensing, transitioning to Defender for Endpoint did not affect licensing costs."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure is not a cheap solution."
"The solution is cheap. It is cheaper than other products by 15-20 percent."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure's pricing is cheap. I rate it seven out of ten."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors."
"Its "pay as you grow" model offers cost-effectiveness compared to major cloud providers."
"Price-wise, Sangfor Endpoint Secure can be considered a competitively priced product in the market as it offers quite low prices compared to other solutions."
"We were using Hyper-V. So, we switched to Sangfor because of the pricing."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions are best for your needs.
892,943 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Media Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise48
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise95
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. SentinelOne SentinelOne offers very detailed specifics with regard to risks or attacks. ...
Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
Which offers better endpoint security - Symantec or Microsoft Defender?
We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior sol...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never pu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint?
We have been discussing pricing, setup cost, and licensing, and we are currently on an E3. We are discussing going to...
What needs improvement with Sangfor Endpoint Secure?
The interface has too many buttons, making it cluttered. It would be better if it were a simplified version with fewe...
What is your primary use case for Sangfor Endpoint Secure?
Sangfor Endpoint Secure is easy to handle with its user-friendly interface. The four engines it utilizes for endpoint...
What advice do you have for others considering Sangfor Endpoint Secure?
At first, people might not understand the interface, which is why it should be simplified. However, once they underst...
 

Also Known As

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
No data available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Sangfor Endpoint Secure and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,943 professionals have used our research since 2012.