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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Sangfor Endpoint Secure comparison

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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)
7th
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) (6th), 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
215
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (6th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
Sangfor Endpoint Secure
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
28th
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 April 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.4%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 6.2%, down from 10.9% 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 Endpoint6.2%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.4%
Sangfor Endpoint Secure0.8%
Other89.6%
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.
Kalpesh Pawar - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Head Cloud Services at Softcell Technologies Limited
Unified threat visibility has reduced incident impact and streamlines response across our endpoints
From a customer or SOC perspective, the best features Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers are the EDR with deep telemetry, which helps us with continuous behavioral monitoring. The automated investigation and remediation feature includes auto-isolation, file quarantine, and incident-level correlation. The advanced hunting KQL-based feature along with Attack Surface Reduction and vulnerability management proactively hardens exposures and provides visibility to reduce attack paths before exploitation. The advanced hunting and vulnerability management features in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint help my team day to day by allowing us to utilize Advanced hunting KQL for proactive threat hunting and validation of alerts, querying process trees, lateral movement, and IOC swipes across all endpoints in seconds. The vulnerability management feature gives us a real-time exposure view with risk-based prioritization. We align it with patching cycles and use security recommendations to reduce attack surface before exploitation. Device isolation and live response provide real operational value. This capability allows a SOC to instantly isolate compromised hosts and run remote forensics or commands without user impact, which is critical during active incidents.
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

"The multi-layered approach to the product gives you confidence that it will stop exploits, ransomware, worms, or viruses from compromising endpoints, essentially providing peace of mind."
"Once you become familiar with it, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a more powerful tool and I would say that I prefer it over MDE because it is a stronger tool for me."
"It is easy to use."
"The behavior-based detection feature is valuable."
"Best solution for avoiding security breaches, malware attacks, and other kinds of security issues."
"The interface is easy to use and it is more up to date than our previous solution."
"The most valuable aspect of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks for me is its integration with AI detection, where we get to know the behavioral detection based on users, traffic patterns, and different services that we consume."
"Stability is one of the features we like the most."
"Defender for Endpoint has significantly improved our security posture."
"The visibility into threats that the solution provides is pretty awesome... This is something that makes me think, "Wow, okay. If I had my own organization, I would probably get this too." It stops the threat before an employee gets phished or something gets downloaded to their computer."
"It is a straightforward setup."
"The stability is great. I haven't seen any outages with Microsoft."
"Defender is an antivirus program available at a lower price than other products, like Symantec, McAfee, etc."
"The solution provides good security features, and the key valuable feature for me is that you can view it in the central console."
"I like the fact that it has the ransomware solution in there. I'm glad that the ransomware solution is built into it. That's probably the biggest thing that I see in Microsoft Defender."
"The feature I like the most about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that it's built into Microsoft; the ASR rules have really secured our endpoints."
"The real-time monitoring feature of Sangfor Endpoint Secure is truly real-time, with no delay compared to other solutions."
"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 tool's AI feature is helpful in endpoint security."
"What stands out to me is the dual-end user interface they provide."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure has some good policy certificates."
"It has a quick response time, threat intelligence, cybersecurity features, quick report generation, behavior analysis, dynamic detection, and quarantine features."
"The tool's most valuable features are control access, endpoint security, and load balancing of ISPs."
"The product's initial setup phase was straightforward."
 

Cons

"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."
"They are charging for Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA) services, so if the per GB data could be provided at a certain level free of cost or at the same cost which the customer is taking for the entire bundle, that would be better."
"It tends to do 99.9% of things. The only thing I'd like is single sign-on authentication into their cloud platform so that my users can be properly authenticated against it."
"The installation should be easier and the Palo Alto pre-sales and sales teams should have more information on the product because they don't know what they are selling."
"The downsides of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks are that in many incidents, when I enter the causality chain, there are numerous logs."
"The configuration could be simplified. I would like to see better protection, specifically to protect email applications."
"I have seen lagging with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. There was one time when we faced a threat actor trying to gain access to our system. When our team utilized the tool, we were all on the same dashboard and we faced a lag issue at that time of around five minutes, which was quite significant."
"It is a complex solution to implement."
"I would like to see the next generation of the tool improved to work with other operating systems, like Linux."
"Microsoft Defender in the basic form is not very useful for managing the security environment. The free version is not capable of covering the needs of centralized management, EDR, and behavioral analysis. If you don't have the commercial version, you can't have centralized management and set up the policies and other things. Each client is a standalone installation, which is not useful for security in an enterprise model."
"Defender for Endpoint is complex, and the documentation is detailed. At the same time, it's hard to navigate sometimes."
"We are having calls and calls with Microsoft for getting rid of all configuration conflicts that we have."
"It takes some time to understand how this solution works. A few things are unclear at the beginning, such as whether it actually restricts the virus or spam at the initial stage, or when there is a security update, how will we come to know and how will it get synchronized."
"What I've heard from the customers is that the anti-malware engine is not up to date, so sometimes it may not detect such threats."
"There are some areas in the proactive threats that are just overwhelming the SOC, so we've had to turn those off until we can figure out how to filter out the false positives."
"It needs to improve the cybersecurity for lateral movements. For example, when a hacker tries to enter a machine, they try to get the password by doing a lateral movement."
"It is complicated to establish a tunnel due to technical issues in the VPN system."
"When an issue occurs, the response time for first-level support and the time taken for meetings could be improved."
"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."
"Currently, the tool lacks reporting functionalities."
"I face issues while migrating from Kaspersky to Sangfor Endpoint Secure."
"Sometimes, the VPN is not secure and doesn't work properly in Sangfor Endpoint Secure."
"The interface has too many buttons, making it cluttered."
"I believe Sangfor Endpoint Secure could improve in terms of its user interface and management capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of the cost Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very expensive because we are a Mexican company and when you translate dollars to pesos the cost is very high. The solution is very expensive for Mexican companies. I understand that they have international prices, but I do not think it offsets the price enough for many companies in countries, such as Mexico. The amount it is reduced is not a massive percentage."
"The price of the solution could be reduced. I have customers that have voiced that the solution is good for the value but if I want to sell more of the solution the price reduction would help."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is an expensive solution."
"The price of the solution is high for the license and in general."
"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"The solution is expensive. It's pricing is on a yearly-basis."
"It has a higher cost than other solutions, like CrowdStrike or Microsoft’s EDR tools, but it reduces the cost of our operations because it’s a new generation antivirus tool."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"AV solutions are pretty expensive because they are necessary, not just for protection, but many businesses need them to comply with regulatory bodies and receive accreditation. We recently purchased an E5 license, which gives us access to the entire Microsoft suite. I would say the pricing is competitive; most tools of this kind are similarly priced. There are minor differences between the competitors, but they aren't spectacularly different. Defender for Endpoint makes sense because all our solutions are in the same place, paid for with a single license. The subscription price is around £50 per user per month, though it may have increased slightly."
"We have a bundle where the price includes all Microsoft products."
"It is free."
"The solution is an open source version and was free with a paid version of Windows 10."
"Compared to ESET, the pricing for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is on the higher side."
"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."
"The cost is high, compared to other products in the market, if you look at it as a separate product. If you look at the cost where it is part of a bundle, the cost is okay."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is cost-effective because there's one unified license, and with this unified license, you get the capabilities for your cloud applications, servers, and endpoints as well. Therefore, it saves us a lot of money because the cost with other solutions is for just one piece of OS or maybe an urban environment. The licensing process is not complex as well."
"The solution is cheap. It is cheaper than other products by 15-20 percent."
"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."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure's pricing is cheap. I rate it seven out of ten."
"We were using Hyper-V. So, we switched to Sangfor because of the pricing."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure is not a cheap solution."
"Its "pay as you grow" model offers cost-effectiveness compared to major cloud providers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
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%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise20
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.
892,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.