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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs VIPRE Endpoint Security 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 Protection Platform (EPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (6th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Defender for Endp...
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
213
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Anti-Malware Tools (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
VIPRE Endpoint Security
Ranking in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
51st
Average Rating
7.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) 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 6.8%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VIPRE Endpoint Security is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint6.8%
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks3.7%
VIPRE Endpoint Security0.6%
Other88.9%
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)
 

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.
SS
IT Security Analyst at a healthcare company with 11-50 employees
Easy to upgrade and manage but needs better reporting
There just was a lot about it that I didn't like. For blocking certain items, such as USBs, we felt like it was slowing down the network too much. Therefore we utilized a GPO for blocking things like that instead. Our environment was big and I didn't feel like the console did a good enough job. We outgrew the product. I've been asking for a change for a couple of years now, and it finally got approved. In terms of the console, I had over 2000 endpoints in there and there wasn't even a search feature for me to look through them. If I had to find where a policy was I had to sort in alphabetical order to find an endpoint that I wanted. They need to offer a search function within the console - maybe something that shows a "last connected" notice. That way, it's easier to manage obsolete machines that you don't need anymore. They had a very vague setting, like after so many days, when do you want us to remove these, you'd see them. I just wish the console was a little more responsive when I would do commands. The reports could have been better. The product would show a lot of endpoints as not communicating. That was another pain point. We constantly had to run an SQL query to clean up the database as I would know immediately when I was in the console, that it just wasn't being responsive. I could tell I was being given bad data and that we had to clean up the database. As soon as I would clean up that database, it was like a purging of the SQL database and it would become a lot more responsive. The problem was that our environment was too big. We're going through a growth spurt right now. In the end, the solution is small and much better suited for a small business. We would get a lot of false positives and instead of them fixing the false positive, they would just want us to put in an exception, which I didn't care for. The product is based on an older model of signature files. It doesn't use any artificial intelligence or anything. It was slow to refresh the policies and computer scans. The larger we got, the more it became an issue. If a company stayed small, I'm not sure if they would have noticed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It detected stuff that other things wouldn't detect."
"Their XDR agent and their behavioral indicators of compromise (BIOC) are pretty nice. Their managed threat hunting is also pretty nice. They also have WildFire, which is a service for actively looking for malware. It's quite useful."
"On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks a nine."
"It has absolutely improved the way our organization functions, we are more secure, it is giving us more peace of mind, and it has found malicious activity happening on our endpoints that probably would not have been detected if we didn't have it."
"The solution doesn't need a high level of technical training."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has helped lighten the load of our security analysts because it was the major tool that we were using and the one we utilized most."
"The anti-exploit is impenetrable."
"The user interface of the solution is sophisticated and straightforward."
"The stability is great, it just keeps getting more and more stable and as it matures it's going to be very good."
"Threat intelligence is one of the most valuable features in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."
"It does not make Windows slow, as compared to all of the third part antiviruses."
"What I like most is the protection against phishing emails and anti-spam."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is useful for the protection of your business information and threat prevention."
"The solution has good performance, I have not seen a problem."
"I like Defender's reporting and logging features. The email alerts are also helpful. It's hard sometimes to sift through the email, especially if you're an IT firm managing hundreds if not thousands of endpoints, but we find email reporting useful. For example, last Tuesday, we learned of new vulnerabilities that were discovered as a result of the previous patches. The endpoints without those patches triggered alerts in Defender."
"The fact that it's from Microsoft, you don't have many false positives, unlike products from other vendors might have."
"It has low overhead as far as machine resources are concerned. Everything runs faster with VIPRE installed versus some of the competitors. It has also been pretty easy to use. It just runs and gives us reports. It also sends us alerts when there is something that we need to look at. It does its job, and you just look at the reports. In other ways, you just forget that it is there."
"In general, it was pretty easy to manage."
"It has improved the way our organization functions, made things run faster in our company, and has done a fantastic job of keeping our networks free of virus."
"Technical support was always very helpful and responsive."
 

Cons

"As an improvement, I would like to see enhanced connection speeds."
"A better pricing plan would make this product more competitive."
"Being able to filter the events to see those that are related to the actual alert would save time spent by the engineer."
"Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR does not detect malicious activity like in other anti-virus solutions like Trend Micro and Windows with Cisco."
"When it comes to malware files, it should be a little quick because, at times, it would give a wrong result in the sense of what it might be on malware, even if it still might be a normal one."
"There is also no recovery feature; if some endpoint is under attack there must be the possibility of recovering it or restoring it to a normal state."
"The solution should add unwanted malicious hash values to a block list so that whenever the action is triggered, it will automatically prevent the malicious content."
"The MAC agent is not as robust feature-wise as the PC version."
"I think Microsoft needs to improve some of the security aspects of Defender. The email part, in particular, needs to be improved in terms of security effectiveness."
"There could be an increase in security for the solution."
"We are having calls and calls with Microsoft for getting rid of all configuration conflicts that we have."
"The frequency of the patching, and the frequency of the updates, are not included with the free version."
"Technical support is an area that needs a lot of improvement. Microsoft does not have the right people who can help with any challenges or problems, and ultimately, we end up finding the solutions on our own rather than relying on them."
"This solution is not secure, which is why I have moved to Linux."
"The product should reduce updates since it is hard to keep up."
"More integration with different platforms is an area for improvement for this product, and should be included in its next release."
"Their management interface is a little buggy. It requires a few system resources on the management interface. Its reporting can also be better. Overall, the reports are pretty good. They patch some third-party software, but if they can expand what they do for reporting and patch enterprise software, it would be handy."
"Their management interface is a little buggy as it will hang up and crash from time to time."
"We would get a lot of false positives and instead of them fixing the false positive, they would just want us to put in an exception, which I didn't care for."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I am using the Community edition."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"I don't have any issues with the pricing. We are satisfied with the price."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is quite an expensive solution."
"I don't recall what the cost was, but it wasn't really that expensive."
"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."
"It has reasonable pricing for the use cases it provides to the company."
"The solution is an open source version and was free with a paid version of Windows 10."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is more affordable compared to some other endpoint solutions."
"It's all pretty easy. For some clients, it's an easier sell because it's just an add-on to their existing Microsoft licensing and Office 365 licensing."
"Even if you are not registered as a not-for-profit, the offering that they have is definitely worth consideration. This is in the sense that the E5 stack just gives you so many benefits. You get your entire productivity suite through Microsoft 365 apps. You get all your security and identity protection. You get the Defender for Endpoint and Defender for Identity. You get the cloud access security broker as well. You get Azure Active Directory Premium P2, which gives you so many good things that you can configure and deploy. You don't have to configure them on day one, but you have access to so many different tools that will protect your data, security, endpoints, and identities that you could build out a security strategy 18 months long, and slowly work your way through it, based on what you have available to you through your license."
"It is an expensive solution. It would be nice if it could be included with the Microsoft Office package."
"We have the E5 security license, and the solution comes with that."
"The solution is included with Microsoft Windows."
"I'm not too familiar with costs as I'm an architect, though I know about online pricing, as I help two teams with online purchasing and procurement. Nowadays, everyone has an enterprise agreement, such as an E3 license, which we provide to our customers."
"Its price point has been phenomenal. Our previous solution from Trend Micro was triple the cost of it."
"Its price point has been phenomenal. Our previous solution from Trend Micro was triple the cost of it."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Comms Service Provider
15%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise52
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business82
Midsize Enterprise45
Large Enterprise96
No data available
 

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...
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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
VIPRE Cloud, VIPRE Endpoint Security Cloud Edition, VIPRE Endpoint Security Server Edition
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
College Station ISD, Mid-West Companies, Guardian Network Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. VIPRE Endpoint Security and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,228 professionals have used our research since 2012.