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Microsoft Defender XDR vs Vectra AI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Defender XDR's customer support is mixed; user satisfaction varies by support package and representative expertise.
Sentiment score
8.3
Vectra AI's customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise but varies with the assigned engineer's quality.
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.
The support is quite reliable depending on the service engineer assigned.
 

Room For Improvement

Sentiment score
5.0
Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scans, better AI, UI simplicity, improved integrations, clearer visibility, and enhanced threat intelligence.
Sentiment score
5.2
Vectra AI needs better integration, enhanced detection, and reporting, with user interface improvements and advanced feature capabilities.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
Neither Vectra nor Darktrace have a function like a status health check on my log sources and traffic sources.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for scalability, efficiently managing global endpoints with its cloud-first architecture, despite minor challenges.
Sentiment score
7.1
Vectra AI offers excellent scalability, handling deployments effectively from small teams to large enterprises, with straightforward cloud integration.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Sentiment score
5.4
Enterprise users find Microsoft Defender XDR pricing reasonable for its features, valuing integration with Microsoft products despite some additional costs.
Sentiment score
6.4
Enterprise buyers have mixed opinions on Vectra AI's pricing, finding it both competitive and costly compared to alternatives.
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.
Vectra is cheaper in terms of pricing and features compared to Darktrace.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender XDR is highly reliable and stable, with occasional issues resolved promptly for a smooth user experience.
Sentiment score
8.0
Vectra AI offers reliable performance with minimal downtime, efficient updates, low maintenance, and rare issues, ensuring stable operation.
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.
 

Valuable Features

Sentiment score
8.6
Microsoft Defender XDR integrates across platforms, offering threat detection, management, and automation, valued for ease of use and security.
Sentiment score
8.0
Vectra AI excels in precise threat detection, reducing alert fatigue, and improving response efficiency with AI-driven analysis and integration.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
From an attack chain perspective, Defender XDR handles phishing and spam emails easily, while Defender for Endpoint manages endpoints effectively.
It's because endpoint management is my primary focus, and this feature integrates well with my other skills.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
Vectra AI
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (2nd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (5th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Tony Whelton - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates well with other security solutions and provides good technical support
The biggest feature for us, because we are heavy Microsoft users, is its integration with Office 365. On top of Vectra AI, we use all of the Microsoft security platforms, such as Defender ATP and Sentinel. Having full integration and a central platform to look at all of the threats that are coming through from the different platforms is a huge benefit for us. With one nice front dashboard, we can look at the high-volume threats rather than all of the noise. We do get a lot of noise as our students all own their own devices. With Vectra AI, we can look at threats in a controlled manner, which saves us an extraordinary amount of time. Even if I doubled the manpower, I doubt that I would still have the same visibility that I have with the correct security platform. Vectra AI's Threat Detection and Response platform has done remarkably well. We're well-versed in using the security dashboard from Microsoft Defender, and we're at the stage where we are checking both. We haven't fully switched to relying on only the Vectra dashboard yet. In terms of Vectra AI Attack Signal Intelligence for empowering security analysts within our organization, we have complete faith in the data that's coming through from Vectra. If we could also have what's happening at the front-end, that is, the firewall, then it would give us the complete security front dashboard.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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?
The pricing is a little high, however, it is on par with other competitive tools in the market.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft could improve on threat hunting and build more on threat detection and handling. The cybersecurity and cloud security posture features are a bit lesser than standard security products.
What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?
The two platforms take a fundamentally different approach to NDR. Corelight is limited to use cases that require the eventual forwarding of events and parsed data logs to a security team’s SIEM or ...
What do you like most about Vectra AI?
The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?
Vectra is cheaper in terms of pricing and features compared to Darktrace.
 

Also Known As

Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Vectra AI and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.