Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Reviews

We use a package of Microsoft security products, including Defender for Endpoint, 365 Defender, Sentinel, and Defender for Identity. You can integrate them with a few clicks. They work together natively, and Sentinel provides advanced monitoring, so you know everything happening in your environment.

It's essential to have one space where you can manage all these solutions together because security can be complicated. It makes it that much more complex to have to navigate to a different portal for identity, email, etc. It's crucial to have a single place to manage all your security operations, so you don't have to move around. 

We started with endpoint protection, where you install an agent on your client with a sensor already built in. Once you have that agent installed, the endpoint can report to the Microsoft security portal. You'll be able to see the device onboarded on the portal using some scripts, and you can monitor most of the vulnerabilities. You can also detect, respond and remedy security vulnerabilities from the portal.

We added email protection by setting policies that will analyze our email. It analyzes our links and attachments to see if there's malware attached. We move ahead to use Defender for Office 365. We also moved forward with Defender for Cloud, and the solution for our workloads, like VM, our network security group, etc. There is another one called Defender for Identity that lets us manage our on-premises and cloud identity from a single portal.

Many of our users are on older operating systems and browsers with vulnerabilities that harm the environment. An attacker can take advantage of those old browsers to access the infrastructure. Defender for Endpoint lets us identify those browsers with vulnerabilities and resolve the issues. We can also find processes that we didn't initiate and stop them right away.

Defender helps us prioritize threats from the security portal. It shows us the dangers that matter the most to our own organization and which threats we should address first to achieve the most significant improvement in our security posture. 

We can manage Defender for Endpoint and Defender for 365 from the same integrated security portal, and it's user-friendly. Microsoft is much more user-friendly than Sophos. 

Microsoft covers every aspect of security and the global challenges we face. The biggest threat today is identity and access management. If someone has access to your identity, they can access much of your technology. They have solid solutions for identity, email, and cloud. I don't think there's anything Microsoft left out. Microsoft has your security environment protected. 

Sentinel enables you to ingest data from your entire ecosystem from on-premise to the cloud. It has single sign-on technology, so you can use your account from your on-prem to sign on to the cloud and vice versa. A user doesn't have to remember a lot of passwords.

Sentinel's data ingestion is essential. Security tasks can be tedious. It's great to have technology that lets you integrate all your data from different sources. You can also incorporate data from other clouds, not just Azure. You can have data from Azure and on-premise. 

So far, Sentinel is one of the most comprehensive SIEMs I've seen. They have even added this XDR. Sentinel doesn't just do SIEM and SOAR. It also covers XDR. The automation is there, so you don't have to do much work. The automation helps you look at the activities behind all this data and correlate them to see the relationships. It gives you information at a glance to see if there is a relationship between these various data sources. 

Defender saves us time. A task takes typically three days and could be accomplished in one day using Microsoft technology. With an on-premise network, you need to switch between portals on all your network devices, but you can achieve that from one portal. You can set policies that will block traffic to your infrastructure, so it saves time. The advanced threat protection using AI has also reduced our detection time. 

We've also saved money. We previously managed the technologies on-premise, so we had to maintain the solutions ourselves. We spend less using Microsoft cloud technology because we don't need to pay for those extra features. We only need to pay for operational expenses. 

We don't have to go to the affected devices when we see a security vulnerability from the portal. We can respond to those issues and resolve them using an endpoint management solution, like Intune. When we resolve a security issue, it takes a week to see the score, but we see the results immediately.

I like the security score that you can see from the portal. You can see the list of the vulnerabilities, and the security score tells you how well your organization is managing those vulnerabilities. It's a strong feature that helps improve your security operations.

Another helpful feature is the recommendations. The portal will guide you on how you can resolve those issues from your own endpoint. This feature is great if you don't have that kind of experience. It will help you understand the technology better and improve your security posture. 

Defender provides useful alerts and groups them. It sends an alert to your portal if it detects any malicious activity, and you can group multiple alerts to form an incident. 

I would like to see Sentinel better integrated with the rest of the security technology within one portal. 

I've been using Defender for more than a year.

I rate Microsoft support seven out of ten. I had some cases a while back and told an agent my issue. When I called the next day, I had to explain everything again to a different person, so I found it annoying to repeat myself all over. 

It would be helpful if they had some coordination between their support, so we don't have to repeat ourselves. They should be able to transfer your details from one agent to another. 

We previously used Sophos.

Defender doesn't cost that much. When you use Microsoft technology, you can start with the free version and see how much the technology helps your organization solve security problems before you use the subscription. They also do this pay-as-you-go model, so you only pay when you use it. 

I rate Defender for Endpoint nine out of ten. It's great. I don't have anything negative to say about those technologies. They are serving their purpose.

We primarily used the solution as Endpoint Detection and protection (EDR, EPP) with secondary benefits of threats and vulnerability management, security incident response, automated query and real-time device monitoring, and with the capability of email security, identity management (DFI), and task automation (Power automate). We used respective licenses where required.

The solution was also used for an endpoint antivirus for workstations in a multi-OS environment, including Windows and Mac OS. We had file, device, and user trajectory monitoring for the security operations team.

The solution benefited the company via:

• OS-level/Tool compatibility for endpoints running Windows (since both are Microsoft products and Defender core files are included in Win10 or later delivery).
• Heuristic capability. Consistent usage of MDE indicates that the tools are continuously learning new prevention techniques by pulling real-time up-to-date cloud resources.

• Alert chaining. The solution makes security Incidents, events, and alerts less tedious from a Security Operation Center standpoint. This can result in false negatives or detriment for small to medium-scale firms running no or semi-automated threat response features.

The most valuable aspects of the solution include:

• Advanced hunting. The product offers flexibility, visibility, and automation capability using a user-friendly query language (KQL).
• Reporting. Clear and concisely plotted graphics show real-time data representation - which is valuable to upper management.

• Scalability/API. We are able to productively integrate with existing on-prem, hybrid, or cloud applications. 
• Great OOB features. The solution comes with SIEM-ingestion-ready features for extensive visibility, automation, and integration, including advanced hunting, threats and vulnerability management, embedded simulation for end-to-end testing, ransomware prevention (Controlled Folder Access), and Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) rules.

Improvements could be made via:

• Clicks. There's a poor user experience with lots of optimizable opportunities of user interface particularly on the newly improved portal (https://security.microsoft.com/). Features like device inventory continue to lack essential workstation drill-downs showing the entire device information with the least effort.

• De-centralized console features. Discrepancies with enabling core features at the click of a button within the MDE portal is mostly due to prerequisites that are tied to the functionality or partial enforcement requirements from other Microsoft tools (Group policy, Azure, Sentinel, SCCM, Intune). EDR in block mode requires Intune security baselines and tamper protection requires MAPS enabled. Web content filtering also has security baseline dependencies

• No single pane of glass. There are too many loose ends with tiny bits and pieces to enforce essential security policies compared to other EDR solutions within the same caliber. A typical example is having to create exclusions in different locations for entirely different functionalities, such as: automation folder exclusion, group policy exclusions (per tenant), Controlled Folder Access (ASR) Allowed application, and Attack Surface Reduction (ASR).

• Service Requests. Noncritical cases with MDE technical support teams tend to be queued for over a week before the first customer engagement. Most of these tickets also end up in the hands of temporary or contracted non-Microsoft employees who are scripted and offer little attention to unique incidents.

Suggested additional features that should be included in the next release include:

• Digestible interface/filter for crown-jewel capabilities like ASR, CFA and Exploit mitigation occurrences.
• Restoration of an always visible search bar from the previous console view (https://securitycenter.windows.com).
• A definitive action plan for Secure Score recommendations and deduplicate of controls.

We were using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint prior to its change of name from Defender ATP. We experienced a plethora of GA changes including, but not limited to, IOS/multiple OS support, device discovery, web content filtering, API updates, and continuous integrations with existing security tools.

We were using the basic endpoint from Sophos without Intercept X and the EDR model, and currently, we are in the selection process of a new platform that has EDR embedded. We are using Microsoft Defender Antivirus for the time being till we get the new platform.

It is easy to use because it is already pre-installed in Windows 10. We don't have to do anything to configure it. You can also configure the firewall by using a group policy so that it can be easily adopted in an environment.

Microsoft Defender in the basic form is not very useful for managing the security environment. The free version is not capable of covering the needs of centralized management, EDR, and behavioral analysis. If you don't have the commercial version, you can't have centralized management and set up the policies and other things. Each client is a standalone installation, which is not useful for security in an enterprise model.

I have been using this solution for six months.

Currently, we have about 2,000 users.

I didn't use support for this solution.

It was already pre-installed in Windows 10.

It is free. It is included in Windows 10.

We are using Microsoft Defender only for the time being. We will switch to another endpoint platform that can offer us more advanced features, centralized management, and EDR. We have not chosen the solution at the moment, but we might go for Bitdefender. It is one of the products that we have evaluated, and it can be suitable for our environment. It has some use cases that are really in the same line as our requirements.

I would recommend this solution only for small home environments. It is not for enterprise environments unless you buy the commercial version.

I would rate Microsoft Defender Antivirus a seven out of ten.

It is a comprehensive monitoring solution for all user activities and their associated details within our tenant. All data flows seamlessly through Sentinel, streamlining the process and ensuring thorough oversight of our environment.

It enhances our security posture. It seamlessly integrates with all our systems, particularly across our Microsoft infrastructure. It offers insights into threats, furnishing information about potential security risks within our environment. It effectively sets up alerts to notify us of any suspicious or unusual activities. The prioritization of threats holds significant importance. It concentrates on the most crucial threats rather than overwhelming us with all potential risks. It excels at organizing and highlighting those critical threats, providing a level of efficiency beyond what I've observed elsewhere. It has proven to be a cost-effective solution, saving both time and money, as the adage goes—time is money. Specifically, it has significantly reduced our time to detect and respond to incidents. Its real-time threat detection and blocking capabilities contribute to these improvements.

The most valuable aspect lies in its automation capabilities, particularly within security automation. It contributes to more efficient time management for us and it provides an efficient way to keep track of user actions and maintain a secure and well-monitored system.

In terms of improvements for their technical support, a focus on enhancing response times could be beneficial.

I have been using it for approximately five years.

The stability is excellent and I've never encountered any issues; it has consistently performed well.

The scalability is impressive, especially since we use it in the cloud. It works seamlessly without any issues.

Microsoft's technical support is commendable. I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

The solution is primarily used for antivirus and malware protection.

It definitely improves the organization in terms of security and productivity. We integrate the Defender with the Microsoft Cloud platform as well. It provides us with sandboxing and other functionalities in real time, where we can have the protection we need. 

It's integrated with advanced threat analysis so we can see how the threat is coming into our network, what it is doing, and more. We can see everything step by step if a threat comes, including how this threat impacted the organization, et cetera.

The first thing which I noticed is that it is completely compatible with Windows. It does not make Windows slow, as compared to all of the third part antiviruses.

The stability has been good.

Technical support is helpful and they have a very robust online community as well.

The product can scale very well.

We would like more customization, actually. They're not too customizable. We'd like the flexibility to be able to set some applications on a white list. We need more options. 

I've used the solution for approximately five years. 

The solution is stable and responsive. 

We have the solution deployed to around 350 users across four different locations.

It can scale to the thousands and thousands. I have seen customers here, some have approximately 12,000 devices and they're running that one program and it's going far without any issues. 

Technical support is good. They know things about the solution. The best part is that if anything happens, the Microsoft community is so big that any problem comes up, you can also just Google it and you will get the solution.

We used McAfee and another solution as well and they both are great and amazing, however, they make PCs slow and every time something happens you have to call the vendor and they will help you support. The difference is, with Defender, it doesn't slow things done and you never have to call Microsoft.

The initial setup is very straightforward. IT is actually my default. We actually helped our end-users with system centers, integrated Defender updates, Defender itself, patching, and Defender configuration using the consent and configuration manager. It's simple. It's not complex to set it up or manage.

It's a bulk operation to set it up, therefore, even if you have 100 PCs, it will only take you about an hour and you will be up and running with everyone. You only need one to two percent of your staff to handle the deployment and maintenance tasks. 

We used an integrator during the initial setup. They were quite helpful. Our experience with them was good. 

We have seen an ROI.

The solution is free for end-users. 

While we have the solution set up on our private cloud, you can also use a hybrid setup if that's better for your organization. 

I would advise new users to connect it with an endpoint manager and connect it with the cloud and then let the real magic happen.

I'd rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We are using Microsoft Windows Defender for Windows services because it is the default antivirus and protection solution with Windows Server 2016 and 2019. We are using it for Windows servers, file servers, and active directory.

Its simplicity is the most valuable. It also has very good integration. We like it.

Its interface can be improved a little bit. We would like to have some sort of centralization. It should have something like a central server that is managing all the other clients. There are solutions from Kaspersky or ESET NOD32 that are really doing this kind of thing currently. We would like to see something similar from Microsoft.

We have been using this solution for more than two years.

It is very stable. It is highly recommended.

It has good scalability. We are happy with it and plan to increase its usage. We currently have around 20 users.

Technical support is good. We like Microsoft, and they provide good technical support.

It is straightforward.

We implemented it by ourselves.

Currently, for us, Windows Defender is free with the purchase of Windows Server. Pricing is an important point for us when we are looking at the competitors of this solution. If we choose to go with another vendor, we will have to pay some license fees.

We are considering moving to another solution, so we are trying to inform ourselves about the other products in the market that will fit our budget and needs. We are trying to see what the competitors offer in the server market. We are looking into ESET NOD32 because we know the product from back in the day.

I would recommend this solution. It is free, and it is doing its job for Microsoft Windows Server. It is a good product. I would rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint a nine out of ten.

We call the solution MDATP - Microsoft Defender Advanced Persistent Threat Protection. At the same time, we're using it more from an EDR point of view, as an Endpoint Detection Response. It can detect any threats, malware, or processor, which are illegitimate and being executed by the end-users or malicious actors. When it sees this, it detects and reports to us. 

Not only that, at the same time, it's detection, prevention, and response. Mostly what we were working on is detection. When I refer to detection, I mean that it can, with pinpoint accuracy, detect something and expose the threat. It can also map those threats with a MITRE, which is one of the great things that I love about it, on top of the accuracy and the threat description it provides.

There are a few different use cases. We return with a query language, which is provided by Microsoft. We are able to create some threat hunting queries. We can pinpoint, accurately detect, and run pain testing. When there’s a threat or issue, I am able to find it and track it with great accuracy in MDATP. MDATP is able to tell me that, for example, in my organization, if there was a guy who was doing pain testing, which is black listed, and if there was an attempt to exploit something or install some malicious code or try to hack into the system. I am able to find this and pinpoint its occurrence. Not only that, I’m able to map them onto a MITRE framework and tell which stage of the attack it was, where the attacker came from, et cetera. I can see if it was something that was planned in the organization. 

I can both detect internally and externally. I have full faith that the MDATP will detect behaviors and warn us of issues.

When you go to do a deep-dive or investigation as a SOC analyst or any security analyst, it gives three structures or processes, as well as the execution that it performs. I am able to perform a very deep-level investigation with MDATP - more than I can with any other tool.

It did increase our security posture. While we had an antivirus before, it would only detect or prevent certain types of attacks. However, based on that capability, you cannot respond to the threat directly. For example, if there was ransomware on a system, the antivirus will be able to identify, detect, and mitigate it. However, at the same time, even if the antivirus detects that and tries to prevent it, you need to contain that machine, or you need to isolate that machine from the network. You don't want that machine to be talking to anybody in the network. Antivirus solutions can’t exactly do that.

With respect to prevention, it has an auto-remediation feature, which is a good feature that I love with respect to prevention. It does auto-remediation as well as manual remediation, which is pretty good.

With respect to response, we were able to contain, block, and respond to threats faster with MDATP. When we analyze the incidents or the threats it gives us a very good view of everything.

With this product, before containing or responding, we get the information and can see what exactly is happening and when that malicious file was installed. After that, we have an event timeline. The visibility is not that much when you only have an antivirus. Now, we see the full picture. When we adopted this tool, we got the detect, prevent, and response functionalities. Overall, our security posture looks much better and our attack surfaces are limited. Endpoints are also most vulnerable today and we can efficiently protect them now. Since we have reduced the attack surface our security posture has improved dramatically. On top of that, we have the capability to respond and to go deeper on a forensic level.

The product doesn’t affect our end-users. I do not see any major issues. There are exceptions where approvals may be necessary. However, the user acceptance is good. This is something that organizations pre-plan and there is nothing the user really has to worry about or act on.

Defender’s GUI can be optimized. The console needs to be more refined. After you have been using it for some time, you get used to it, and it is manageable. However, it should be a little bit more refined.

They should come up with pre-built inner workflows. I would really like to see this. There need to be workflows with respect to notifications, remediations, or any actions that people want to take. They should come up with predefined or prebuilt hunting capabilities. Right now, we have to manually write queries. I would prefer if they could come up with something more automated.

This is with respect to a SOC analyst perspective. Other users, other administrators, other different roles might have different issues. For me, there are no major concerns. It is a good tool, out of the box.

I've used the solution for about a year and a half, and have also done training on it.

The stability is good. It's a stable platform. I don't see any issues right now. However, I did see something in the past. I can't quite remember the exact situation. It's resolved and right now there are no issues. 

The solution is highly scalable.

You can onboard as many end systems as you want. If you bring more, for example, 100 users or 100 endpoints, you can integrate them with no issue. It's not a problem with MDATP.

We have somewhere around 2,000 to 3,000 users who are using it. We have an endpoint team and they manage the antiviruses and security tools and all those things. We manage the product partially from a policies perspective, and the endpoint team manages the platform and maintenance of it, including any upgrades, as necessary.

I've dealt with technical support in the past. It's good, not excellent. That said, it's okay.

Before using this solution, the company mostly dealt with antivirus solutions.

We moved to this solution to strengthen and report, detect and prevent, et cetera, which antivirus solutions don't offer. We wanted forensics and capabilities that were missing. Antiviruses simply cannot protect you from advanced persistent threats, and they cannot protect you from ransomware and they don't respond to things faster. Response capabilities were something that was missing. Basically, we just needed more.

I'm usually not part of the entire setup, however, I do manage it. We have to do certain policies within our organization. However, from what I've seen, it's not a complex setup. It is pretty straightforward.

In terms of how long the deployment takes, I don't remember the length of time. If you have a CCM centralized, you can push the policies within hours. 

The licensing is something that management decides on. I don't deal with the pricing or licensing.

We didn't really evaluate other options. We provided support for one of our clients, and it was a decision they made. 

We're a consulting company. We are not partners with Microsoft.

We use the solution as a SaaS.

I'd advise other companies to use this solution. It's an ideal choice, however, I'm not sure about the pricing. Maybe it's on the higher end of other competitors' pricing. That said, if you have an opportunity to use it, it will solve a lot of problems with respect to pain point detecting and doing investigations. At the same time, with Microsoft, if 80% of your organization is using Windows systems, it's going to be compatible. Specifically, with its platform, Microsoft understands what is right and what is wrong. Therefore, if the money is not a concern, or the budget is not a concern, opt for this. At the same time, as a generic statement, if not this solution, go for an EDR tool that suits your organization's needs best.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten simply due to the fact that I have not fully optimized it. 

The stability has been good so far. 

If I compare its features to the other solutions in the market, it has some good features. It's comparable to others.

The solution can scale as needed. 

In India at least, it seems to be a bit more expensive than other options. 

I've just recently been introduced to the product. I haven't used it for very long. 

The stability has been fine. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability has been great. If you need to expand, you can.

I have never needed to contact technical support. I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. 

The pricing is a bit high for the Indian market.

We are a partner and we consult clients on security solutions. It's one of the solutions we take to our clients.

For companies that are Microsoft shops, I would recommend the product. It saves a lot of integration requirements as compared to other solutions. It's a good product that does what it says it will do. 

I would rate the product a seven out of ten. There are improvement opportunities in terms of the overall tech and commercial aspects of the product. It needs to be more competitive and technical.