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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Sangfor Endpoint Secure comparison

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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)
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
120
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), 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
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (4th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Agentic Endpoint Security (1st)
Sangfor Endpoint Secure
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
27th
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 October 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.7%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.4%, down from 9.8% 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 Endpoint5.4%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.7%
Sangfor Endpoint Secure0.8%
Other90.1%
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.
HD
Cloud Engineer at REDtone Digital Services
Robust security with features like antivirus protection and centralized management, but it may have limitations in supporting migrations from public clouds
While it excels in migrating VMs from on-premises and local infrastructure, it does not provide support for public cloud migrations. Attempting to migrate from public clouds like AWS encountered challenges, and Sangfor's support team clarified that they don't offer assistance for migrations from public cloud environments. It would be much more convenient if the migration tool could be installed directly on the customer's VMs, enabling a smoother migration process to the new infrastructure, with potential restrictions addressed accordingly.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable for us is the correlation feature."
"The biggest positive impact I see from Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a significant reduction in the number of people required to manage it."
"The initial setup is easy."
"We can visualize and control the activities in the environment from anywhere."
"Stability-wise, it is good; I did not hear about any issues in terms of stability, and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks can be trusted completely."
"Palo Alto is constantly adding new features."
"The solution allows us to make investigations. Other XDR solutions also provide similar capabilities but for investigation, Cortex XDR is better."
"The most valuable feature of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is the low consumption of system resources. The solution uses a lot of AI and machine learning."
"Defender is a part of Windows; you just need to enable it. There is no need to install anything."
"The product can be used for organizations that use Microsoft as their primary security defender and need zero-day threat protection."
"The solution's threat protection is mostly AI and machine-learning based. That is the most important feature of the product. It also offers centralized management so I can remotely manage devices."
"Endpoint's most valuable feature is deep analysis."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is quite good. We haven't really experienced any issues with it."
"Microsoft Defender has saved us hours and hours; it has probably paid for itself many times over, and I estimate it probably saved us the equivalent of two people working full-time."
"We had Norton Antivirus before, and with Norton, we didn't have a way to centrally manage a lot of features. Defender allowed us to deploy it from our Office 365 admin console. That is probably the biggest thing that made us go with Defender."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint are the ease of use and it was available within the operating system."
"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."
"The real-time monitoring feature of Sangfor Endpoint Secure is truly real-time, with no delay compared to other solutions."
"The product's initial setup phase was straightforward."
"The tool's most valuable features are control access, endpoint security, and load balancing of ISPs."
"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."
"What stands out to me is the dual-end user interface they provide."
"The tool's AI feature is helpful in endpoint security."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure has some good policy certificates."
 

Cons

"Being able to filter the events to see those that are related to the actual alert would save time spent by the engineer."
"It'll help if customization was easier."
"I would rate it an 8 rather than a 10 mainly because there is still room to improve the user experience around complex investigations, including alert tuning and third-party integration."
"This product has not improved my organization - in fact, we are in the process of moving back to another product as a result of Cortex's horrible impact on system performance."
"However, if you do not have Palo Alto in your environment, you are paying these additional services just for Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, so it is not a cost-effective solution."
"Cortex does not offer an on-premises solution. However, some customers would prefer not to be on the cloud. It would be ideal if it could offer something on-prem as well."
"There are some limitations on the Traps agents."
"A little bit more automation would be nice."
"With increase of cyber threats and cybersecurity issues, I would recommend that the product be developed like an AI product with more features which can counter any threat in the coming eras."
"It's a good product but it is limited in some cases."
"It would be nice to have a paid upgrade that would provide additional screening of the day-to-day activities."
"The biggest issue I had with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint was the antivirus and ransomware. I wanted central visibility over all the machines that we operate."
"The onboarding and deployment could be more user-friendly, and there is room to grow in some of the reports. I don't want them to be oversimplified or overly complex, but there is room for improvement in the reporting it can do. It's relatively minor."
"In India at least, it seems to be a bit more expensive than other options."
"The central management console should be improved because it provides limited options to configure Windows Defender."
"Features like device inventory continue to lack essential workstation drill-downs showing the entire device information with the least effort."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure performs poorly."
"It would be much more convenient if the migration tool could be installed directly on the customer's VMs, enabling a smoother migration process to the new infrastructure, with potential restrictions addressed accordingly."
"I face issues while migrating from Kaspersky to Sangfor Endpoint Secure."
"The interface has too many buttons, making it cluttered."
"There are a few areas for improvement. We have encountered licensing issues on occasion, and sometimes updates don't apply properly."
"Currently, the tool lacks reporting functionalities."
"Sometimes, the VPN is not secure and doesn't work properly in Sangfor Endpoint Secure."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure should include healing capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"The return on investment is from the user side because we have seen the performance of it increase the delivery time of the product if we are using too many web-based and on-premise applications. In indirect ways, we saw the return of investment in terms of performance and user satisfaction increase."
"The pricing is a little bit on the expensive side."
"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"If one wishes to work with another team or large number of users at a future point, he must purchase a license for them."
"It's the most expensive solution, but features-wise, it's quite strong. It's very good for protection, so the results are very good in the case of protection. I would rate it a two out of ten in terms of pricing."
"It is present, but when compared to other competitive products, I would say it is not less expensive; however, when all of the other added values are considered, the price is reasonable."
"The pricing is a little high. It is per user per year."
"The solution comes as part of Microsoft Windows."
"The price of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as ClowdStrike."
"It is built into Windows 10. If our clients are using Microsoft Defender, the cost goes away for them."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable and fair."
"I don't know the standalone costs. It is my understanding that the M365 E5 is $56 a month or something close to that pricing. That would be for the full suite. Just Defender might be $8 a month. I can't say for sure."
"The price was a problem for me three years ago, but they improved their E3, E5, and a la carte licensing. In other words, you have to get all of E5. That used to be a problem because you had E3, Defender, and guardrails, but you needed an E5 license to get the management suite and the analytics. It's more flexible now. You can switch from a la carte to the entire suite when it starts to make sense. It's becoming more economically competitive to go that route."
"The normal, standalone model, is not expensive, but the enterprise model that includes the bundle with email and some web protection, is a bit more expensive."
"We have an enterprise agreement so from my perspective, this is a product that ships with Windows and it is not priced standalone."
"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."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors."
"We were using Hyper-V. So, we switched to Sangfor because of the pricing."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Media Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business48
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise44
Large Enterprise97
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: September 2026.
916,240 professionals have used our research since 2012.