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Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Symantec Advanced Threat Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Symantec Advanced Threat Pr...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is 12.9%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is 2.4%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Luis-Brown - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows for easy reporting of problems, valuable anti-phishing, and anti-malware support
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 lacks proactivity in assisting us with preparing for potential threats before they occur. While they employ a substantial amount of threat intelligence to preemptively prevent incidents, their effectiveness diminishes when it comes to delivering proactive threat intelligence alerts from Microsoft. Their focus primarily revolves around managing the internal environment. On the other hand, my other vendor, Check Point, along with my membership in MS-ISAC, supplements me with this type of information. The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement. It is adequate, but it doesn't match the quality of Proofpoint or Mimecast. However, it comes close in effectiveness. Plus, if we're obtaining it for free, investing in the other products seems impractical.
Dennis O'Reilly - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides end-to-end antivirus protection and has good stability
Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control. It can integrate with other Broadcom solutions, such as Symantec Messaging Gateway and Symantec DLP. If you want to send an email, it gets scanned through endpoint protection and DLP. We get all Symantec functionality in a single pane.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like its investigation capabilities, as that is what is most important to me. It is fairly simple with a user-friendly interface."
"The email protection is excellent, especially in terms of anti-phishing policies."
"There are several features that I consider valuable."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the individuals within our organization who are affected."
"The good part is that you don't have to configure it, which is very convenient."
"Defender is a SaaS platform, so it offers more flexibility. Managing the permissions is easier. The solution's automated detection and response features are scalable."
"Does a thorough job of examining email and URLs for malicious content."
"The great advantage in using this product is it creates multiple services."
"The incident management on the solution is very good. You get a lot of detailed information about an incident. You also get a lot of documentation in connection with the CVI or integration."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"You don't have to buy a separate email security platform. You can enable that using their endpoint, and I like that. You don't have to have two agents running on the same box."
"Technical support is very responsive. You just have to open a ticket. They respond in a timely manner. Their response is good. I'm satisfied."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control."
"They manage to solve detection quite nicely. There is some rather elaborate detection compared to other providers."
"What I like most about Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is its notification capability."
 

Cons

"The UI needs to be more user-friendly."
"Microsoft wants its well-paying customers to finish testing some of its half-baked products, find bugs, and report bugs back to Microsoft's team, which is a little frustrating for those who have to manage it and roll it up to thousands of people across the organization."
"One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get a lot of information on integrations with such apps for security and authentication."
"You should be able to deploy Defender for every subscription without the need to add servers."
"We need to be able to whitelist data at the backend."
"It would be better if it were more scalable. It depends on the architecture, but we would like to make it more scalable for both data centers."
"One area for improvement is support, in terms of being able to reach them and, especially, technical support for configuration."
"About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting."
"It's a strange situation where the infrastructure of the consumer or customer is behind some kind of firewall and they have always used some kind of customized proxy. In this situation, the ATP has a very tough time to pass the information to the cloud and back. To fix, it requires a more elaborate and complex configuration for that particular case."
"An improvement could be made on the reporting because then it would be easier to collect information and submit it for compliance."
"It should be able to collect information if the agent is disabled."
"The product's support services need improvement."
"Entire threat protection is not available for the advanced features."
"The security features need to be improved."
"There are some ‎features that would add value to this product. One of them would be a graphical presentation of threats that the system has encountered."
"The cloud platform needs to have improvement in terms of the user interface and the different capabilities it has available. It needs to match the other leading next-gen EDR products that are available in the market. That's the reason why we are stepping away from Symantec. Their cloud environment is just generally lacking in comparison to others."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution could be better by simplifying the business model of their licensing. It was hard to figure out how to get the licensing done for the environment, initially."
"The pricing has become expensive."
"Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend."
"Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us."
"It's a user-base subscription."
"For licensing, it's usually a yearly package for customers who are subscribed to Office 365, but they can also pay on a monthly basis."
"The product is expensive."
"From the pricing point of view, like any other product in the market, there is scope for negotiation."
"Symantec Advanced Threat Protection's pricing is comparable."
"The price is quite expensive."
"Pricing is good. It is nice to have a great product at a fair price."
"The pricing of this solution is inexpensive and affordable."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection has an average price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
75%
Financial Services Firm
5%
Computer Software Company
3%
Manufacturing Company
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of various email campaigns, pinpointing where they emanate from, and identifying the indi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
The pricing is reasonable since it comes integrated with our Office 365 license.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Sometimes, phishing emails manage to pass through the filter, so the system needs to enhance its phishing email detection capabilities. We also need alerting features for abnormal actions like unus...
What do you like most about Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and devic...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
The price is quite expensive because a different entity has taken over the company.
What needs improvement with Symantec Advanced Threat Protection?
One area for improvement could be the pricing model. Future releases could further enhance integration capabilities with other platforms and simplify the licensing model to compete more with Micros...
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
ECI
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.