Microsoft Defender XDR vs Wazuh comparison

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Microsoft Defender XDR

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Microsoft Defender XDR and Wazuh compete in the cybersecurity solution category. Wazuh seems to have the upper hand due to its robust features and cost-effective nature, despite Microsoft Defender XDR's strong user support.

Features: Microsoft Defender XDR offers integration capabilities with a focus on threat intelligence, providing enhanced protection. It leverages its defensive machine learning to address potential threats effectively. Wazuh, being open-source, allows for customizable security configurations which cater to specific needs. It provides comprehensive log data analysis and a significant degree of adaptability, enhancing its functionality for personalized setups.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Defender XDR needs enhancements in the initial setup process, which can be complex. Its system resource usage is perceived as high, impacting performance. Users also desire more customization options for specific industry requirements. Wazuh users call for better documentation to aid in troubleshooting and improvements in support response times. They also wish for a more streamlined integration process for various systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender XDR offers seamless integration with Microsoft products, facilitating an easier deployment process. Its customer service is acknowledged for substantial assistance. Wazuh’s adaptability across platforms is well-regarded, although users find the need for enhanced support services to match their deployment capabilities.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender XDR faces criticism for higher setup costs, though its comprehensive protection offers a promising return on investment. Wazuh provides a cost-effective setup due to its open-source nature, yielding satisfactory ROI through detailed security insights and reduced initial expenditure.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Wazuh Report (Updated: October 2024).

Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Wazuh

October 2024

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Helped 823,795 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)

Wazuh

Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

3rd

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (2nd), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 9.8%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Wazuh is 11.7%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Extended Detection and Response (XDR)

Featured Reviews

Gabor Nyerd

Enterprise mobility and security evangelist at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

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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AKASH MAJUMDER

SOC Analyst at Ovelosec

Open-source platform with custom alerting

There are three key strengths of Wazuh that stand out to me. Firstly, Wazuh offers an enhanced HDR version that outperforms the Elastic Stack. Wazuh has achieved this by running a config or a sec in the background, which has improved the XBR for endpoint security significantly. Secondly, Wazuh comes with built-in frameworks, such as the NISC and ISO, that make it easy to comply with various industry standards. We didn't need to configure any custom frameworks for this, as Wazuh had it built in. Lastly, Wazuh has the ability to collect terabytes of data within seconds, which is a crucial feature for modern enterprises dealing with large amounts of data.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft XDR's system of analysis and investigation is super convenient for our customers. It integrates with other Microsoft solutions like Defender for 365 to protect email traffic from malicious external web links and phishing."

"From the perspective of Microsoft 365 XDR, the main benefit is a single, centralized dashboard offering the holistic visibility organizations crave."

"I have found the ability to delete unwanted threats beneficial."

"The integration, visibility, vulnerability management, and device identification are valuable."

"The solution is well integrated with applications. It is easy to maintain and administer."

"Within advanced threat hunting, the tables that have already been defined by Microsoft are helpful. In the advanced threat hunting tab, there were different tables, and one of the tables was related to device info, device alert, and device events. That was very helpful. Another feature that I liked but didn't have access to was deep analysis."

"The most valuable feature depends on the scenario. For compliance, I like Microsoft Purview Information Protection and Data Loss Prevention. Sentinel is the most helpful feature for security. 365 Defender helps us prioritize threats across an enterprise. It's a crucial feature for the managed services team."

"Defender XDR enables you to scan a system remotely and get a complete inventory of its assets. You can gather more information from the asset inventory and apply threat intelligence using Office 365 or something."

More Microsoft Defender XDR pros

"The product’s interface is intuitive."

"The most valuable feature of Wazuh is the ELK for doing an investigation."

"The product is easy to customize."

"The tool is stable."

"It has efficient SCA capabilities."

"If they support a solution, it is easy to do an integration."

"One of the most beneficial features of Wazuh, particularly in the context of security needs, is the machine learning data handling capability."

"Regarding Wazuh, I find the SCA (Security Configuration Assessment) features most valuable. It's crucial for asset management and inventory, allowing us to monitorendpoints and servers' changes easily. This is particularly important for my customers, who aren't heavily focused on incident response but rely on asset management and inventories. Wazuh's compliance management features are very supportive, especially in regions like the Americas and Europe. However, it's less effective in the ANZ (Australia and New Zealand) region since Wazuh doesn't cater to the specific compliance standards there, such as those required in Australia. I appreciate that Wazuh fully complies with PCI DSS and GDPR standards, allowing us to generate necessary reports."

More Wazuh pros

Cons

"Advanced attacks could use an improvement."

"The data recovery and backup could be improved."

"Microsoft frequently changes the names of its products, sometimes even renaming entire portals or features."

"The Defender agent itself is more compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11. Other than these two lines, there are so many compatibility issues. Security is not only about Microsoft. The core technical aspects of it are quite good, but it would be good if they can better support non-Microsoft solutions in terms of putting the agents directly into VMware and other virtualization solutions. There should be more emphasis on RHEL and other operating systems that we use, other than Windows, in the server category."

"Defender also lacks automated detection and response. You need to resolve issues manually. You can manage multiple Microsoft security products from a single portal, and all your security recommendations are in one place. It's easy to understand and manage. However, I wouldn't say Defender is a single pane of glass. You still need to switch between all of the available Microsoft tools. You can see all the alerts in one panel, but you can't automate remediation."

"When discussing the secure score, which includes overviews and recommended actions, some of these recommended actions are not applicable to us, particularly those related to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which we do not use in any of our environments."

"There is no comprehensive visibility, making it less user-friendly."

"From an integration standpoint, it is always improving overall. With Security Copilot coming out, as partners, we are waiting for the GDAP support so that we can actually see Security Copilot on behalf of customers if they subscribe to it."

More Microsoft Defender XDR cons

"A lack of certain features creates limitations."

"They need to go towards integrating with more cloud applications and not just OS like Windows and Linux."

"Log data analysis could be improved. My IT team has been looking for an alternative because they want better log data for malware detection. We are also doing more container implementation also, so we need better container security, log data analysis, auditing and compliance, malware detection, etc."

"Its configuration process is time-consuming."

"It would be better if they had a vulnerability assessment plug-in like the one AlienVault has. In the next release, I would like to have an app with an alerting mechanism."

"There could be a hardware monitoring tool for the solution."

"Wazuh needs more security and features, particularly visualization features and a health monitor."

"An issue I noticed is with tag values in certain rules not functioning properly."

More Wazuh cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The functionality is fantastic, but for medium and small-sized companies it's overpriced. It would be better if it were a little bit cheaper."

"Microsoft Defender falls within a mid-tier price range compared to other security solutions."

"The price could be better. Normally, the costs depend on the country you're located in for the license. When we were in the initial stage, we went with the E5 license they call premium standard. It cost us around $5.20 per month for four users."

"The solution is affordable, and we haven't been hit with any hidden costs. The subscription model is straightforward, and it's easy to understand how much additional features cost. If we need to cancel a license or feature, we do that well in advance to avoid being charged for it, but overall, the pricing and licensing are simple and easy."

"I believe the pricing is fair and acceptable. I consider it to be reasonable and satisfactory."

"Microsoft Defender XDR is priced high."

"I believe that the pricing of the licensing is fair."

"We've managed to navigate it effectively through our enterprise agreement, and Microsoft's academic discounts have proven to be quite generous."

More Microsoft Defender XDR pricing and cost advice

"There is not a license required for Wazuh."

"It is an open-source product."

"We use the free version of Wazuh."

"It is a free-of-cost solution."

"They have a good pricing strategy for market expansion."

"The current pricing is open source."

"Wazuh is open-source, therefore it is free. You can purchase support for $1,000 a year."

"The product is cheaper compared to other tools."

More Wazuh pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.

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823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

University

Comms Service Provider

Government

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 do you like most about Wazuh?

Integrates with various open-source and paid products, allowing for flexibility in customization based on use cases.

What needs improvement with Wazuh?

I am investigating more about the community support for Wazuh. I can't provide a definitive answer yet. An issue I noticed is with tag values in certain rules not functioning properly. It's unclear...

What is your primary use case for Wazuh?

I am currently evaluating and using Wazuh for file monitoring and compliance reporting. We are in the process of conducting a POC to understand how the rules work. I lead this effort to explore and...

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Comparisons

Compared 35% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Microsoft Defender XDR

Compared 8% of the time

Trend Vision One vs Microsoft Defender XDR

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager vs Microsoft Defender XDR

Compared 4% of the time

Fortinet FortiEDR vs Microsoft Defender XDR

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender XDR Competitors

Security Onion vs Wazuh

Compared 16% of the time

AlienVault OSSIM vs Wazuh

Compared 10% of the time

Elastic Stack vs Wazuh

Compared 9% of the time

Elastic Security vs Wazuh

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Security QRadar vs Wazuh

Compared 2% of the time

More Wazuh Competitors

Product Reports

Download Microsoft Defender XDR product report

Microsoft Defender XDR

November 2024

Download Wazuh product report

November 2024

Also Known As

Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender

No data available

Learn More

Microsoft

Overview

Microsoft Defender XDR is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect against threats in the Microsoft 365 environment.

It offers robust security measures, comprehensive threat detection capabilities, and an efficient incident response system. With seamless integration with other Microsoft products and a user-friendly interface, it simplifies security management tasks.

Users have found it effective in detecting and preventing various types of attacks, such as phishing attempts, malware infections, and data breaches.

Watch the Microsoft demo video here: Microsoft Defender XDR demo video.

Wazuh is an enterprise-ready platform used for security monitoring. It is a free and open-source platform that is used for threat detection, incident response and compliance, and integrity monitoring. Wazuh is capable of protecting workloads across virtualized, on-premises, containerized, and cloud-based environments.

It consists of an endpoint security agent and a management server. Additionally, Wazuh is fully integrated with the Elastic Stack, allowing users the ability to navigate through security alerts via a data visualization tool.

Wazuh’s agent can run on many different platforms, and is lightweight. It can successfully perform the tasks needed to detect threats in order to trigger responses automatically.
Wazuh manages the agents, can analyze agent data, and can scale horizontally.
Elastic Stack is where alerts are indexed and stored.

Wazuh Capabilities

Some of Wazuh’s most notable capabilities include:

Intrusion detection: Wazuh’s agents can detect hidden files, cloaked processes, or unregistered network listeners, as well as inconsistencies in system call responses. Wazuh’s server component uses a signature-based approach to intrusion detection, using its regular expression engine to analyze collected log data and look for indicators of compromise.
Log data analysis: Wazuh can read operating system and application logs, and securely forward them to a central manager for rule-based analysis and storage.
Integrity monitoring: File integrity monitoring can help identify changes in content, ownership, permissions, and attribute of files. Wazuh’s file integrity monitoring can be used in conjunction with threat intelligence.
Vulnerability detection: Wazuh agents can identify well-known vulnerable software so you can see where your weak spots are and take action before an attack can exploit them.
Configuration assessment: System and application configurations are monitored to make sure they are compliant with security policies. Periodic scans are used to detect applications that are known to be vulnerable, insecurely configured, or unpatched.
Incident response: Wazuh responds actively when active threats need to be addressed. It can perform countermeasures like blocking access to a system when a threat source is identified.
Regulatory compliance: Wazuh includes the security controls required to be compliant with industry regulations and standards.
Cloud security: Wazuh’s light-weight and multi-platform agents are commonly used to monitor cloud environments at the instance level. In addition, Wazuh helps monitor cloud infrastructure at an API level.
Security for containers: With Wazuh, you have increased security visibility into hosts and containers, allowing for easier detection of threats, anomalies, and vulnerabilities.

Wazuh Benefits

Some of the most valued benefits of Wazuh include:

No vendor lock-in
No license costs
Uses lightweight, multi-platform agents
Free community support

Wazuh Offers

Annual support and maintenance
Assistance with deployment and configuration
Training and instructional hands-on courses

Reviews From Real Users

"It's very easy to integrate Wazuh with other environments, cloud applications, and on-prem applications. So, the advantage is that it's easy to implement and integrate with other solutions." - Robert C., IT Security Consultant at Microlan Kenya Limited

“The MITRE ATT&CK correlation is most valuable.” - Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm

Sample Customers

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.

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