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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)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), 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) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
Sangfor Endpoint Secure
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
35th
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 June 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.5%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.9%, down from 10.5% 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 Endpoint5.9%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.5%
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

"The solution helps find bugs, and it is safe to use to prevent attacks by hackers."
"Cortex XDR alerts us on the dashboard when there's a threat, which allows us to restrict that user and helps secure our infrastructure."
"It collects and caches and the knowledge of machine learning from different customers to take to the cloud, it makes it better to use for everybody, it allows for quick learning and updates and can, therefore, offer zero-day malware security, and this sharing of metadata helps make the solution very safe."
"One thing that I like about Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, it is detecting all the suspicious or malicious binaries, and it has integration with Palo Alto Firewall."
"The scalability of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is very good."
"The live terminal is probably the best thing ever. It gives you the access to get straight onto any machine."
"It can automatically correlate events and logs, which is very helpful for an IT administrator. It can correlate different kinds of malware activities over a network, agent, or host system. You do not need to do it manually. It is a good feature. It is also a user-friendly solution. We have deployed it on the cloud because our space does not provide any flexibility for on-premises deployment, but Palo Alto has added some flexibility to install it on-premises. It must be like the same Cortex XDR agent for all the VPN services, web filtering services, and everything else."
"This software helps us understand any issues that may arise when someone is not at work."
"Defender should be fine for home use. It has all the basic functionality you need. I can't speak to how well it works as an enterprise solution because I'm not in the space."
"We have liked the fact that it comes with Microsoft Windows 10 and it is constantly updated with all new virus definitions. It is also updated with new security features on a regular basis."
"It's a stable solution."
"Ensures that I'm working with a product that gets updated regularly without me having to remember to do it. Since it's a Microsoft product, I'm confident that it requires a low use of system resources. The benefit of that being that my computer isn't constantly being drained."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is quite good. We haven't really experienced any issues with it."
"The deployment is seamless and super simple; it's not complex at all, and that's the main selling point for us."
"What I found most valuable in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that it's out-of-the-box, which brings more value to the customer. The technical support for the product is also one of the best parts, because it's good, in terms of the product knowledge of the technical engineers."
"The attack surface reduction rules are the most valuable. We're able to have unattended remediation actions when the solution works side by side with a local antivirus like Microsoft Defender or Kaspersky. The attack surface reduction rules help us to proactively block and stop threats."
"The real-time monitoring feature of Sangfor Endpoint Secure is truly real-time, with no delay compared to other solutions."
"It has a quick response time, threat intelligence, cybersecurity features, quick report generation, behavior analysis, dynamic detection, and quarantine features."
"The product's initial setup phase was straightforward."
"The most valuable feature I have found in the system is its comprehensive end-to-end protection."
"The tool's AI feature is helpful in endpoint security."
"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."
"We use the product for network protection from any malicious threat."
"What stands out to me is the dual-end user interface they provide."
 

Cons

"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is a strong tool, but it is true that digesting information sometimes makes the tool go a little bit slower."
"The dashboard is the area that needs to improve so that we can have the ability to drill down without having to go elsewhere to verify results."
"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."
"Technology evolves every day, so it would be nice if it gets more secure. It can also have more integration with other platforms."
"Basically, they don't provide customer support tools just to investigate the logs."
"Product might have some bugs."
"Every 30 or 40 days, there's a new version and we need to go and make sure our customer's laptops are upgraded."
"I don't like that they have different types of licenses. For example, if users select a license, they think they will have all the platforms they need to improve their network or security. But after some time, Palo Alto Networks changed their licensing, and some of the features that, for example, were free at the beginning now have a cost. I think the integration can be improved. For example, a lot of tools are just integrated through APIs."
"Regarding the pricing of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, during the last three years, we set up the product and sold it, but we faced difficulties because Microsoft pricing is always the same."
"It makes your Surface devices hot. It is resource-intensive. It strains your CPU, not more than other file scanners around, but it also does a lot more. When you are transmitting files or data, it is continuously scanning the traffic and analyzing it bit by bit to see what's going on, and that, of course, is costly in terms of CPU. It is CPU intensive, and if you are on battery, it drains your battery fast. That's the only drawback that it has."
"The solution could be even more secure and provide an even higher level of security."
"I think the overall portal of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could be improved; sometimes there's moving around to different spots and it's a little hard to navigate, so getting used to that was perhaps the biggest hurdle."
"The initial setup can be a bit complex."
"The system can always be simplified and have a better integration check."
"I wish they would extend the use of the Security Central portal, even for the free option of Defender. Because, as companies grow, it is labor intensive to manage the AV and detection part of it. For companies already subscribed to Office 365, I think this would be a good enhancement."
"Some executive reporting is inefficient, and we're looking into ways to improve it."
"There are a few areas for improvement. We have encountered licensing issues on occasion, and sometimes updates don't apply properly."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure performs poorly."
"When an issue occurs, the response time for first-level support and the time taken for meetings could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure should include healing capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 way too expensive, but security is expensive. You pay for your licensing, and then you pay for someone to monitor the stuff."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"Our license will require renewal in August, after which the maintenance will continue as usual."
"Traps pays for itself within the first 16 months of a three-year subscription. This is attributed to OPEX savings, as security teams spent less time trying to identify and isolate malware for analysis as a result of a reduction in malware incidents, false positives, and breach avoidance."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"This solution is part of Windows and comes included with it."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is an expensive solution."
"It is affordable and comes in the Office 365 bundle."
"We are required to pay for the data we ingest, and increasing the data amount incurs additional expenses."
"It came with Windows."
"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."
"The solution comes as a part of Windows 10 and it is covered under its license."
"The price is fair for the features Microsoft delivers. If you want tailor-made features, you have to mix different licenses. It isn't straightforward."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure's pricing is cheap. I rate it seven out of ten."
"Its "pay as you grow" model offers cost-effectiveness compared to major cloud providers."
"The solution is cheap. It is cheaper than other products by 15-20 percent."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure is not a cheap solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business47
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise51
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise45
Large Enterprise96
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.
899,283 professionals have used our research since 2012.