What is our primary use case?
It is an Endpoint Detection and Response system (EDR), and it seems the new term is XDR. We use it for anti-malware protection. It protects from a virus, worm, ransomware, and other similar things.
How has it helped my organization?
It can automatically scan and remediate stuff without an administrator doing anything. We use it for threat and vulnerability management. There are components in there that will tell us about any vulnerable software running on endpoints. There are a whole bunch of other things too.
What is most valuable?
It's great for investigating what's happening on a machine. They show a whole bunch of machine timeline events that are related to a security incident. They have quite good details on the things related to threat and vulnerability management, such as any weakness that has been disclosed publicly, assets that are exposed, and if there is an exploit active in the wild for that vulnerability. It can provide you with all such information, which is cool.
It has got some awesome threat hunting capabilities. It can search for malicious activity that could indicate that an asset is being compromised, but it is not something to which you would have necessarily got alerted.
We're fully Microsoft, it integrates with other Microsoft security products very well. Its interface is also fine.
What needs improvement?
It can get a bit laggy sometimes. Other than that, we don't have any issues. They constantly tweak it and fix it up based on users' feedback. It has improved a lot over the past four years. Defender for Endpoint never really used to be a good endpoint security solution, but over the past couple of years, Microsoft has invested heavily in it. So, it has come a long way in all aspects of endpoint security. If they want to make it better, they should just continue investing in the current path of what they've been doing over the past couple of years.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for nearly four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It can get a little laggy sometimes, but overall, it's fine when investigating events.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
How are customer service and support?
There are different levels of technical support that you can purchase from Microsoft. We don't have the top level, but we used to have the top level, and that was good. I would rate them a five out of five. They've got a dedicated team specifically looking at threats for all their customers.
How was the initial setup?
I was not involved in its setup. I am only a user of the solution, but I'm pretty sure it's pretty straightforward. It's just deployed by Intune or a partial script or something like that.
What about the implementation team?
It was implemented internally. In terms of maintenance, it generally doesn't require any maintenance. There are some policy configuration changes that we can tweak, but the signatures, behavior analysis, and all similar things in the engine are kept up to date by them. We have four people who are dealing with this product.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Licensing models of Microsoft are renowned for being complex. We just purchased the whole E5 stack. With E5 licenses for users, we get access to a bunch of features that are not just related to security. I would rate them a three out of five in terms of pricing.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
One of the things that I like to constantly do is assess other vendors in the same space. We get vendor demonstrations, and for the most of it, it seems like Defender is well truly up there with the other best players in the market. I've never done a proof of concept with any other tool, so I can't really compare it with others. Most of the time, vendor demonstrations are all about glitz and glam to sell their product and show how much better they are than competitors.
What other advice do I have?
I would advise doing your due diligence. This is more than just an endpoint security solution, and sometimes, you've got to think of your technology stacks before applying or purchasing certain security solutions and see if they're applicable to your environment.
I would rate it an eight out of 10. No endpoint solution is ever going to be able to be perfectly good at stopping all types of threats. No endpoint solution would ever get a 10 in my point of view.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.