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Microsoft Defender XDR vs WatchGuard EPDR comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR offers cost savings, enhanced security, and efficiency by consolidating measures, reducing cyberattack losses, and streamlining processes.
Sentiment score
7.0
WatchGuard EPDR delivers strong performance, enhancing security and productivity while offering cost-effective, comprehensive threat protection and efficient endpoint management.
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
6.3
Microsoft Defender XDR support varies; larger organizations benefit more, with issues in responsiveness and knowledge sharing for smaller companies.
Sentiment score
9.0
Customers commend WatchGuard EPDR's support team for quick problem resolution, professional handling, and reliable, efficient service consistently meeting expectations.
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
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR offers scalable solutions for diverse organizations, with strengths in cloud setups and dashboard management despite some challenges.
Sentiment score
8.8
WatchGuard EPDR is scalable, efficiently manages workloads, offers centralized deployment, easy licensing, and robustly supports expanding needs.
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
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for stability and reliability, with minor issues quickly resolved and high user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.0
WatchGuard EPDR is praised for its stability, reliable performance, and efficiency in threat management, meeting user expectations consistently.
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 XDR needs faster scanning, better integration, simpler licensing, and improved automation for user-friendly threat management.
WatchGuard EPDR is costly, needs more integrations, better compatibility, enhanced features, timely notifications, and streamlined operations.
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 XDR is cost-effective with an E5 bundle but costly separately, influenced by complex licensing and geographic factors.
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 XDR offers seamless integration, advanced threat hunting, and AI protection, streamlining operations and reducing costs.
WatchGuard EPDR offers zero-trust application service, AI anomaly detection, firewall integration, detailed reporting, and patch management for Windows and Linux.
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 XDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
WatchGuard EPDR
Ranking in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR)
39th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (44th)
 

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.
CarlosArdila - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides endpoint protection with patch management at reasonable pricing
The solution could improve when the solution keeps adding more new functions. Every three months, they launch something new on it. You should activate all features that you need to activate and work with the same client. You don't need to install a different client for something. For example, it's the same client if you have EPP and want to move into EPDR. You activate the license, and it turns into an EPDR. The solution could have improved availability. When I send a notification, it neutralizes immediately. However, this delay doesn't mean it fails to perform on time. Their notifications arrive a bit later.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
7%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 do you like most about WatchGuard EPDR?
The product's most valuable features are the zero-trust application service and its capability to detect threats and attacks.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WatchGuard EPDR?
The solution's pricing is better compared to other products.
What needs improvement with WatchGuard EPDR?
WatchGuard EPDR does have areas for improvement. One significant gap is the lack of a virtual patching feature integrated into the endpoint security. This would be particularly useful for endpoints...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. WatchGuard EPDR and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.