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)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
115
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
212
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), 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 August 2026, in the Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) category, the mindshare of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is 3.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is 5.6%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor Endpoint Secure is 0.7%, 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 Endpoint5.6%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.7%
Sangfor Endpoint Secure0.7%
Other90.0%
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 positive impacts I see from Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks include a complete 360-degree view of our security posture altogether, being a uniform platform where we are ingesting logs from multiple resources."
"Implementing Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has had a significant impact on my security analyst workload because it becomes much easier."
"The level of security I get for my endpoints and servers is extremely valuable."
"After installing this solution, it identified, blocked, and provided the complete attack chain, which was very helpful."
"If you are looking to deploy a security solution as a whole, this is a good option."
"There has been a significant reduction of approximately 70% to 80% in our internal MTTR and MTTD metrics, now around five to eight minutes whereas previously it was hours, which has helped tremendously."
"Cortex is the best solution for avoiding security breaches, malware attacks, and other kinds of security issues."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has changed the way my security team detects, investigates, and responds to threats, as we are able to see the files, unwanted files, unsecured files, and unauthorized files, so we are quarantining them."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is different from other security tools because we can configure it to use multiple types of scanning or archiving."
"It's pretty easy to scale."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been awesome, so far."
"The most likable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is the sheer number of features and data it provides."
"It's very reliable and very dependable."
"Overall, our security posture looks much better and our attack surfaces are limited."
"The solution's main antivirus capabilities are okay, and so far they have kept us safe."
"Auto-remediation: When the product sees malware, it resolves the issue immediately. This protects the machine."
"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."
"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."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure has some good policy certificates."
"We use the product for network protection from any malicious threat."
"The product's initial setup phase was straightforward."
"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 tool's AI feature is helpful in endpoint security."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution should enhance the ADR and reporting."
"Currently, if you use Palo Alto endpoint protection as the only solution it's very complicated to remove pre-existing threats."
"There is a severe gap in functionality between Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. For example all folder restriction settings are Windows only. Traps 5.0+ does not have SAML / LDAP integration."
"I would like to see some additional features related to email protection included."
"The MAC agent is not as robust feature-wise as the PC version."
"In the next release, I would like to see more UI improvements. Their UI is a bit basic. When we are speaking about Palo Alto Networks they are the big company, so they can improve the UI a little bit. The UI, the reports, the log system can all be improved."
"We encountered some issues when we were trying to enable automatic updates from our group policy."
"The time to generate certain alerts on our dashboard can take between 45 minutes to an hour, and I am unsure of the factors that influence this duration."
"There are alternative solutions that offer a greater range of dashboard insights when compared to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."
"For us, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can be improved by providing better visibility into our developers' environments, especially as we try to integrate a lot of the AI coding environments, such as Windows Services for Linux v2."
"Cortex... has good investigation capabilities, out-of-the-box, in case there is an event that you'd like to investigate. It's quite convenient. Microsoft has those capabilities as well, but you need a bit more training on the product to get the basic information that you can get out-of-the-box with Cortex."
"Updates are not coming out of preview quickly enough and it is holding back on the development of the product."
"The product development team makes frequent changes that affect the stability of the solution."
"It is inexpensive but could be cheaper like anything else."
"It is complicated to establish a tunnel due to technical issues in the VPN system."
"Currently, the tool lacks reporting functionalities."
"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."
"The interface has too many buttons, making it cluttered."
"Sometimes, the VPN is not secure and doesn't work properly in Sangfor Endpoint Secure."
"I face issues while migrating from Kaspersky to Sangfor Endpoint Secure."
"When an issue occurs, the response time for first-level support and the time taken for meetings could be improved."
"There are a few areas for improvement. We have encountered licensing issues on occasion, and sometimes updates don't apply properly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-effective compared to similar solutions. It fits for the small businesses through to the big businesses."
"It's way too expensive, but security is expensive. You pay for your licensing, and then you pay for someone to monitor the stuff."
"The price is on the higher side, but it's okay."
"Our license will require renewal in August, after which the maintenance will continue as usual."
"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's about $55 per license on a yearly basis."
"Licensing for Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR can be costly, especially when it comes to a hundred users. A license is required for each user, and the subscription must be renewed on a yearly basis."
"Its pricing is kind of in line with its competitors and everybody else out there."
"It came with Windows."
"There is no licensing fee."
"We pay a yearly license for Microsoft Defender. We also have a support contract with them."
"Currently, for us, Windows Defender is free with the purchase of Windows Server. Pricing is an important point for us when we are looking at the competitors of this solution. If we choose to go with another vendor, we will have to pay some license fees."
"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."
"This solution is part of an enterprise license we have."
"We have seen ROI. Most of the other competing alternatives will cost up to around $30 per user device. We average 400 devices. Therefore, the amount that we save each year is 400 times $30."
"The subscription is part of Windows, so we don't have to pay anything extra for this product."
"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."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure's pricing is cheap. I rate it seven out of ten."
"The solution is cheap. It is cheaper than other products by 15-20 percent."
"Sangfor Endpoint Secure is not a cheap solution."
"Its "pay as you grow" model offers cost-effectiveness compared to major cloud providers."
"The product is expensive compared to other vendors."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
18%
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 Business46
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise54
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: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.