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Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

No sentiment score available
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR offers cost savings, enhanced security, and efficiency by consolidating measures, reducing cyberattack losses, and streamlining processes.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management's support team is helpful but faces communication challenges and delays, needing improved response times.
Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Defender XDR support varies; larger organizations benefit more, with issues in responsiveness and knowledge sharing for smaller companies.
My team raised multiple support tickets for the product, and we were able to get responses from Microsoft support team.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is highly rated for scalability, seamless cloud integration, and efficient vulnerability handling across industries.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR offers scalable solutions for diverse organizations, with strengths in cloud setups and dashboard management despite some challenges.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Users commend Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management's stable, reliable performance, with satisfaction ratings from eight to ten over the years.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for stability and reliability, with minor issues quickly resolved and high user satisfaction.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender needs enhanced integration, simplified reporting, improved remediation, and better support for small to medium-sized businesses.
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scanning, better integration, simpler licensing, and improved automation for user-friendly threat management.
The automated remediations can be more specific.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Microsoft could improve on threat hunting and build more on threat detection and handling.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender's complex licensing and per-user cost is offset by its competitive pricing and valuable security benefits.
Microsoft Defender XDR is cost-effective with an E5 bundle but costly separately, influenced by complex licensing and geographic factors.
Overall, every organization wishes for cheaper options, but we look at the security side as well, so we are good for now.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management integrates compliance tools and insights, aiding in threat prioritization and offering a valuable security scorecard.
Microsoft Defender XDR offers seamless integration, advanced threat hunting, and AI protection, streamlining operations and reducing costs.
The most valuable aspect is the kind of assessment results I get, and the recommendations provided in Microsoft products really help in taking care of the resources.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
The email protection feature is the most valuable because our risks primarily lie there, and it seems to be the most popular target.
Vulnerability assessment and just-in-time access are some valuable features of Defender for server plans.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
25th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (17th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (21st), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (6th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 4.9%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

René-SylvainBédard - PeerSpot reviewer
The vulnerability assessment is very accurate because it runs directly into the vulnerability database
I have three years of experience with Microsoft Defender and Office 365 for eleven years. My company operates as a shop for Microsoft products, and we have always stayed with Microsoft. We intend to displace the competition when my company enters a new client environment. I have dealt with customers who were using Carbon Black and SentinelOne. My company's customers switched work from their previous products to Microsoft because the tools they were using were power-hungry solutions, which had an impact on production. Microsoft Office 365's premium licenses have many built-in services, which our customers used to use from some other products. With Microsoft products, there is no need for our company's customers to pay extra for licensing charges. The major difference between Carbon Black and Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management revolves around areas like stability and integration capabilities within the operating systems, which are strong in Microsoft, especially compared to any of its competitors. The actual depth of knowledge that the platform offers is good because Microsoft has been very rigorous in documenting every single vulnerability that exists for its platform. Microsoft has the most complete list of vulnerabilities for its platform.
Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
We are aware of the pricing for some parts that we are using. Microsoft documentation helps figure out pricing and other aspects. Overall, every organization wishes for cheaper options, but we look...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
The automated remediations can be more specific. However, the score and recommendation aspects are good. Currently, I do not see any significant challenges.
What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
It would be beneficial to reduce the number of clicks required to navigate between blades, as the current navigation and breadcrumb system can be a bit confusing. Some inconsistencies exist between...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
825,399 professionals have used our research since 2012.