Microsoft Defender for Business Reviews

The solution provides good scalability.

The solution's AI is notorious for false positives, and the time you have to spend training it is ridiculous. I can't believe that Microsoft was using CrowdStrike, which is known for its poor execution protocols.

I do not like that Microsoft does not post the changes it will make beforehand. For example, when you log in to their security portal, they will change the blades on it without any pre-warning. They are terrible at pre-communication. It's like I have to relearn once a month how to use Microsoft every time I log in. They make many changes without warning anyone or communicating with them.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Business for four years.

Microsoft Defender for Business is a scalable solution. Around 2,000 users are using the solution in our organization.

Since Microsoft is a big company, you'll never get a personal MSP-type response from its support. You need to go in with your eyes wide open and know your expectations with Microsoft.

Neutral

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

It took us two months to deploy the solution from start to finish. Microsoft got us up and going pretty quickly, but we hired an MSP to come in and do security tests. They reviewed everything and told us about the changes we needed to make inside our tenant. You can lock everything down, but if you're truly supporting a business, you must ensure their needs are met first and then lock down what you can.

I think the solution's pricing is pretty much on point. Since we're a nonprofit, we get pretty good discounts on the tool.

Microsoft does a good job. My big issue with it is that it has gotten so big that it has over 100 portals for administrative purposes. As a director, I spend more of my time going through the portals, doing my due diligence, and trying to ensure that my cloud tenant is in okay shape. I know we need to hire more people, but Microsoft is clunky.

I rate the solution's protection features a six or seven out of ten. The solution's AI is notorious for false positives, and the time you have to spend training it is ridiculous. I have three hours carved out every week just to go in and pull all the phishing emails that people flag, and I have to run it through and train the AI. Artificial intelligence should be automated, and I should not have to do it.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The solution comes bundled with Microsoft 365 for Business and is a security feature. 

It offers a mix of EDR, which we find quite useful. 

When we sell Microsoft's 365 business solution, we tend to promote this particular product as it is a good security feature for businesses. 

It has helped out client replace their previous antivirus. 

The setup process is easy.

It is easy to configure the solution as needed. 

It is scalable.

I've found the product the be stable. 

The security could always be improved. 

It could have better DLP. For example, we find that Sopho offers better DLP for businesses. 

I've used the solution for three or four years so far. 

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It is reliable. 

So far, the scalability has been fine. 

I've never spoken with technical support in the past. I'm in pre-sales, and therefore, my relation to the solution is more commercial than technical. 

Our clients previously did use another antivirus software. They now use Defender.

I'm also familiar with Sophos, which offers better DLP. 

The initial setup is not complicated at all. It's very easy.

This solution is included in Microsoft's business premium license. It's free to use under 365. 

We are Microsoft partners. We resell Microsoft solutions. We're actually gold partners. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. It's a nice compliment to the 365 Business license. 

We are managed service providers. We provide the solution to our clients.

We are quite happy with the product. The product provides us with stable protection. The interface is quite user-friendly.

We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac.

My organization has been using the solution for four months.

The product is quite stable.

We also use Deep Instinct. We are slowly moving away from the product because we faced a lot of trouble while using it. While it's a good tool, it's probably too good for its own benefit. It made our life very challenging. I had to devote a lot of technical teams and my end resources to figure out problems with the application. There was a financial cost associated with it.

The solution is easy to deploy. It is not as complicated as Deep Instinct.

We use the product in conjunction with a few other solutions. I'm the company's managing director, and I am not involved with the product’s rollout. The complication with Deep Instinct wasn't just in installation. The product hasn't really been used extensively in our organization yet. We are doing gradual implementations. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We get various services with Defender for Business, including endpoint detection and response and threat prevention plus vulnerability management, attack surface detection, and automated investigation.

Microsoft Defender for Business is good for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers solid security flexibility and integration with tools like Microsoft Lighthouse and some other software. It takes some of the features of Defender for Endpoint EDR and provides those services for small and medium-sized business environments. 

The threat landscape is rapidly changing over time, and the scanning can always be improved. Microsoft sees trillions of signals every day, helping them to build their threat intelligence and improve their products.

Defender's threat protection should be fine-tuned to reduce false positives. It could be more targeted, reflecting a continuous evolution in detecting. Also, it could be easier to integrate into other environments. 

I rate Microsoft support seven out of 10. Microsoft customer service is generally good, but they take time to resolve some situations. Time is critical in security. Their support has room for improvement. They could be more proactive and efficient, fixing the issue without multiple follow-ups. 

Neutral

The pricing for Microsoft products can be a little costly at times. On the other hand, Microsoft has an entire ecosystem that covers all the pillars of security, such as identity, applications, endpoints, etc. 

It helped us avoid purchasing products from multiple vendors and integrating those as an ecosystem. It can be somewhat expensive for small organizations, but it's competitive. I don't see a significant difference between Microsoft products and other solutions. 

I rate Microsoft Defender for Business eight out of 10. It's a good solution for protecting small and medium-sized businesses. 

If you're an Intune user, you can bring in certain capabilities like system-hardening policies, which further enhances the security. Also, Defender's vulnerability checking is very sensitive and automatically checks for and reports on vulnerabilities on all machines that have been on the domain.

Defender's reporting is rather scattered, and its URL filtering mechanism doesn't really work. In the next release, I would like to see more fine-grained URL filter control and more reporting options like the ability to generate a scheduled report.

I've been using Microsoft Defender for Business for a month and a half.

Defender is scalable because it's totally cloud-driven.

Microsoft's technical support is very good, but it's difficult to get in touch with them via phone, so we have to raise an online ticket and get a callback (though they do respond very quickly).

Previously, I used McAfee Endpoint Security.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward, with very little configuration work administratively. Just the basic settings have to be brought online, and then the system takes care of things.

Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription.

Defender is top class in terms of functional security. I would rate Defender eight out of ten.