Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Reviews

We use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint as our EDR solution on all of our user endpoints.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint provides comprehensive visibility into endpoint security. I've been impressed with its ability to detect and monitor threats without any noticeable gaps in coverage.

We use the entire suite of Microsoft products, which are all integrated. Integrating them is very easy. However, getting them to function as expected after integration was a little more difficult.

The integrated solutions work together to deliver detection and response. However, their behavior may not always align with our expectations.

The implementation of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has enhanced our organization's security posture by augmenting our visibility, particularly through the integration of MDE, Sentinel, and Defender for Cloud Apps. Additionally, Intune, when utilized in conjunction with these products, provides comprehensive insights into identity and device risks. The deployment began about three years ago before I joined the company. In terms of EDR or just basic visibility, that was achieved within the first year or so. However, we are still working towards a holistic vision of visibility, especially with Defender for Cloud Apps.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint consolidates multiple dashboards, as all of our security products are Microsoft-based, simplifying our security management.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has saved us time compared to our previous solution, which was an on-premises Trellix EDR solution. This is especially evident in the areas of maintenance and operations.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's WCS function, a content filtering solution, has proven to be the most useful, stable, and reliable option for our current needs.

Defender for Cloud Apps is one of the most significant products that Microsoft could improve. We've encountered several limitations with Defender for Cloud Apps, such as the inability to create custom cloud applications and add URLs. These features would be valuable for the scoping feature in Defender for Cloud Apps, as each application can currently only have one scope. It cannot have multiple scopes, meaning that an application cannot be blocked for some device groups and allowed for others. This is another limitation we've encountered frequently.

The technical support is slow to respond.

The product development team makes frequent changes that affect the stability of the solution.

I am currently using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is generally stable, but the frequent product changes made by the development team have caused several instances of unusability this year. These changes often introduce bugs that disrupt web functionality, bringing it to a standstill. While the product itself is stable when not affected by these bugs, the recurring issue has occurred three or four times in the past year.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is as scalable as any other cloud-based EDR solution. I would give the scalability a nine out of ten.

The technical support is slow to respond and very log-focused.

Neutral

The deployment process is straightforward. We can utilize a script for Intune that can be deployed through SCCM.

The base price for an E5 license, which includes Enterprise Mobility + Security E5, is $57 per user per month. However, there are additional costs for certain security features, such as Premium Threat and Vulnerability Management and Insider Risk Management.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint six out of ten. The support and product development team need to improve.

We have deployed Microsoft Defender for Endpoint across the globe on all of our endpoints.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint updates itself so there is no need for maintenance.

It is advisable to always exercise patience with technical support and occasionally guide them in the right direction. Otherwise, they may become overly focused on irrelevant logs. Additionally, it is crucial to always have a contingency plan in place in case Microsoft Defender for Endpoint encounters unforeseen challenges.

The effectiveness of both best-of-breed and single-vendor security suite methodologies hinges on seamless integration. When products integrate effectively, they provide a unified view of the security landscape, enabling comprehensive monitoring and threat detection. A SIEM, XDR, or similar tool can serve as this centralized dashboard, providing a single pane of glass for security operations. By centralizing visibility and streamlining response times, organizations can effectively achieve their information security analysis and response objectives.

We use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for our antivirus protection.

The visibility into threats that Defender for Endpoint provides is good because we are using all Microsoft products. 

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint assists us in prioritizing threats throughout our enterprise. This prioritization of threats is crucial for safeguarding end-user devices.

Sentinel allows us to gather data from our entire ecosystem, and the interface is highly impressive. Data ingestion is of utmost importance for our organization, especially concerning the security of our environment.

It allows us to comprehensively investigate threats and respond from a unified platform. This is of great significance to us, as Sentinel plays a pivotal role in our Security Operations Center.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint assists us in automating the prioritization of critical alerts. I am certified in cybersecurity. Recently, I have begun the process of renewing my certification as it is set to expire next year. I have been reading numerous articles regarding Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, Identity, and Endpoint applications, and there is a multitude of information available. Automation is now fully integrated, which holds significant importance for enterprise-level customers.

The solution assists in eliminating the necessity of using multiple dashboards, providing us with a single XDR dashboard integrated across various Microsoft products.

The threat intelligence assists us in preparing for potential threats before they occur, allowing us to take proactive measures to prevent them. The assessment mechanism analyzes and identifies threats, providing clear instructions before we proceed to the security parameters.

It has saved our clients time, mainly with their SOC operations. 

The antivirus is the most valuable feature.

There are alternative solutions that offer a greater range of dashboard insights when compared to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. The solution needs better integration with third-party vendors.

The analysis that identifies the threats and remedies them can be enhanced in a future release.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for almost four years.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is stable.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is scalable.

The quality of technical support is determined by the customer's priority levels: P1, P2, and P3. Overall, they are known to provide good support.

Sometimes, the support takes a while to respond, and their shifts change, so we have to begin again with the new person on the shift.

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward for me. All Microsoft products are easy to configure and integrate data also. To properly utilize all the features the person integrating must understand the architecture code concept as well.

Before deployment, I consistently conduct a rapid assessment to comprehend the customer's infrastructure. Subsequently, I formulate a plan grounded in this information. Typically, we aim for minimal personnel involvement due to the centralized nature of cloud operations. Additionally, we can advocate for either GPO or CCM deployment software. Our approach entails utilizing a singular architect, one resource, and one SME for implementing and overseeing the infrastructure, aligning with the security prerequisites of the customer's locale. Continuous monitoring of the infrastructure is imperative, maintaining a 24/7 vigilance.

The implementation takes around three months to install and configure.

The pricing is competitive. The pay model is pay as we use.

For organizations that make use of all Microsoft solutions, the cost is lower, and the visibility is increased.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint nine out of ten.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is indeed a commendable product. However, despite its implementation, we should consider the integration of other security products. This is due to the escalating variety of cyberattacks prevalent today. While Windows consistently issues patches to update its existing products, I propose the adoption of a dual-product approach within our infrastructure. This approach aims to preempt eleventh-hour security breaches. By juxtaposing and scrutinizing the attributes of different solutions, we can better comprehend their nuances, specifically at the feature level. The pivotal factor lies in how adeptly a solution identifies and mitigates potential threats. Therefore, I advocate for the incorporation of two distinct solutions within our infrastructure. This strategy is poised to yield heightened efficiency, effectively mitigating the risks of both security breaches and data breaches.

We use the solution for antivirus and firewall protection.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's visibility into threats is good. The solution helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has helped our organization by providing continuous protection across our organization without overloading our CPUs by running in the background. We realized the benefits of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint while we were comparing it with other solutions.

Microsoft security solutions help automate routine tasks and identify high-value alerts. I used to work as a System Administrator or Network Administrator, so I understand how useful it is for admins to have their routines automated. I am aware that the solution supports policies and ensures that it is very beneficial.

Automation has enabled the process to be automated, such as protecting certain roles or allowing digital transactions, etc.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's threat intelligence helps us prepare for potential threats before they hit and to take proactive steps.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint saves us time and money.

The solution has helped reduce our time for detection and response.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy to load and it runs quietly in the background, unlike other solutions.

The solution is reliable.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can use more advertising to promote their features.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The stability of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is good.

The solution is easily scalable. We have ten people using the solution currently.

I previously used, Symantec Endpoint Detection and Response, ESET Endpoint Security, and McAfee MVISION Endpoint Detection and Response before switching to Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

I give the solution a ten out of ten.

The solution is deployed across our local network. 

I recommend the solution and it should not be removed from a person's computer.

The type of endpoint security solution that is used in an organization should be based on the environment.

It is our endpoint protection solution as a part of the full Defender Suite that we use. We use it for every one of our devices, including Macs and Windows.

Each endpoint is with Intune, and then the management is done out of Azure.

It takes automated actions. If a device is found to have a virus, it will automatically remove it, isolate the device, and then notify us to follow up. That way, things are less critical when we get to them. It will stop the spread. We're a worldwide company with very few people on the security staff. It allows us to remove the risk in an immediate fashion without the staff having to jump on it, which just takes time.

It helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise. We have limited resources to deal with the threats. So, this prioritization is critical to us.

We use more than just Defender for Endpoint. We use Defender for Identity, Defender for Office 365, and Cloud App security. We use the whole 365 Defender suite. It is easy to integrate these products. The challenge is having all the features in your environment and obviously making it work within your environment because of your different applications and business processes, but all these solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. This is critical for us because we have limited resources. So, allowing the machines to talk to each other and not having to jump from place to place just makes life a lot easier.

We use Microsoft Defender for Cloud for the hybrid cloud environment. We are not multi-cloud at this point. We use it to identify weaknesses within our environment, both prem and off-prem so that we can prioritize. We do not use Sentinel at this time.

For the most part, it gives me what I need in one spot. I do have to drill down into other dashboards for more defined reports. We go into the Intune dashboard for compliance and things like that.

Its threat intelligence helps prepare us for potential threats before they hit and take proactive steps. We use the secure score to help identify what we need to do to protect against things as they come up. It lets us know about any ransomware out there so we can jump right on those and do protections. We also use it for the compliance piece against NIST, PCI, and things of that nature.

It saves time. If I didn't have the integrated pieces of Microsoft Defender, to do the same amount and be on top of things, I would probably need two FTEs.

It has absolutely decreased our time to detect and time to respond.

The best thing I like about it is its interaction with the other Defender products. It provides the ability to push telemetry up. It gives me endpoint visibility and allows me to take automated actions. 

It is excellent in terms of visibility into threats. It is very comprehensive in terms of threat detection, and it keeps on getting better. They are consistently adding new features.

They're in the process of pulling more things together. They can continue with the integrations and provide a better way of seeing the impact of security changes, especially on the endpoint side. Before we actually flip the switch, we should be able to see the impact of security changes on the business or business applications. It would prevent breaking any business applications.

In its current rendition, I have been using it for two years.

Its stability is very good.

Its scalability is very good. It definitely scales easily.

Their support is okay. We get support through Insight, which is also our CSP. They're better. I would rate them a five out of ten.

Neutral

On the endpoint side, I've used Sophos and Symantec. We switched because of the integration between all different securities.

The deployment was relatively easy, but when you get into turning on the switches, things can get complicated because it has a lot of different features. Overall, it was easy.

We did it in-house. We had two security systems engineers doing it. 

We have seen a return on investment, but it is hard to give metrics. It has definitely allowed us to maintain a small team and increase our security posture. 

If you're on Microsoft products, and you've bought into what they're doing with Teams Voice and Office, then adding in the security piece is just a slight bump. You go with the E5 licensing, which saves you a lot of money.

With the bundling that Microsoft does, we have saved money. Buying individual point products would've cost us a lot more money than one integrated solution that also capitalizes on Teams Voice and things of that nature. Given our size, buying individual products would have easily cost us a million dollars.

We've looked at other solutions. We've looked at CrowdStrike. We've looked at Symantec. We went for Microsoft because of the full integration. The breadth of the products and the pricing were the main reasons.

I would advise following those secure scores and watching out as you start to communicate with your user base because you're going to impact applications.

To a security colleague who says that it is better to go with a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor’s security suite, my response would be that you got to measure trying to do the integration because with security, to me, bringing that integration together is the key thing. You need to know how quickly you are going to be able to move from your detection to your mitigation. Are you going to turn on things on the firewalls or can you go right to the devices and isolation? The best of the breed is great, but trying to get them all to work together becomes very complex.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We use it as an antivirus and EDR solution. We also use it for vulnerability scanning and threat hunting.

It is cloud-based. We have a cloud-first strategy when it comes to our organization.

We are a very small, lightweight start-up organization who has only been around for a couple of years. We have 17 endpoints. 

We have it deployed on our endpoints and virtual servers. We have a few Windows Servers 2019, and we have onboarded those both onto Defender for Endpoint as well. Those servers are not managed by MDM because they are Server 2019, but we have onboarded them so they are being managed by Defender for Endpoint as well.

This solution definitely increases our security posture. When you are reviewing your existing fleet or endpoints and based on the configuration that you put out of your Defender for Endpoint, you then receive a security score from Microsoft. Depending on what rules you have configured, what policies you have deployed, and what attack surface reduction rules that you have set up and deployed, it is almost gamifying information security in the sense that you are always trying to achieve a higher score. The more hardening you perform on your endpoints, the better score you receive. This generally tends to give you a better peace of mind, but also makes you secure at the same time.

I like the fact that it is baked into the Microsoft platform. 

Since we have deployed it, we have been really impressed with the way that everything just stitches together really well. You can access all your security data and telemetry from a single pane of glass on the Microsoft Security admin console. You can access all your endpoints, see how your antivirus is running, and get all your vulnerability scans and reports. In the software inventories, you can review your known vulnerabilities and understand whether those are zero days or if there are active threats out in the wild. Essentially, you don't need to jump into different admin consoles. You have everything built into Windows Defender Security Center, which we find really useful.

If you consider our organization, we are a fairly Mac-heavy organization. At the moment, around 80% of our fleet are Mac OSs. We made a conscious decision to roll out Defender for Endpoint against all our endpoints, whether it is Windows or Mac OS. However, one thing that we have noticed is that there is definitely no parity on the platform between the two operating systems. When you are configuring, deploying, and onboarding machines, you can get very granular with your security configuration when you are deploying it to a Windows's endpoint. For Mac OS, it is a lot more straightforward. You don't have the ability to apply as much configuration as you would on Windows. That is definitely something that has room for improvement. 

I am also not sure how well the EDR functionality works on the Mac OS platform. It just provides an antivirus and the full EDR capability is not there on a Mac OS. 

The web filtering needs a little bit of work. We are actually in the market at the moment for a third-party web filter or cloud secure web gateway to try and plug that hole since it is a bit of a pain point for us. I don't think we will use the baked in version from Defender for Endpoint.

On the Mac OS platform, there is no parity between Windows and Mac OS. The solution is very feature-rich and very well-integrated into Windows, and I guess baked into Windows 10 and Windows 11. Whereas, on the Mac OS platform, there is still some work there to give it a more feature-reach platform.

I have been using it for about a year.

With Windows, we have been very happy. We have had no issues or problems whatsoever. We had one issue on the Mac OS platform when an update to Mac OS was deployed. It wasn't a major update, like Monterey. It was a point update. So I think it might have been 12.2.1 where the Defender icon was starting to display across, which means I found a threat or it's not working properly. We had that across a handful of machines. I did a bunch of Google searches and sort of realized this was happening to a lot of other organizations, so it was probably a false positive.

I contacted Microsoft support who confirmed that it was just a visual glitch. I guess Apple is well-known for this. When they do push out their updates, they attempt to break the occasional third-party system. That was the only issue that we have encountered, which was more a visual glitch than an actual threat.

It is pretty much zero-touch because the definitions sort of update themselves. The application updates itself because it is deployed through Microsoft Intune. Therefore, the maintenance is pretty straightforward.

It is very scalable. Because it is cloud-based, it is elastic in its nature. You can onboard machines en masse. Whether you are onboarding 15 machines or 1500 machines, it is very straightforward.

As we scale up, this is now our AV and EDR of choice. Every new machine will be rolled out or onboarded to Defender for Endpoint. We will be sticking with it in the long-term. We have also the logs and telemetry from Defender for Endpoint being ingested into our MDRC platform.

The technical support is very good. Wherever I have worked with them, we have always been enterprise customers. Whenever I have raised a ticket for support, you generally receive a phone call anywhere from 10 minutes to three hours after raising your ticket. Even if it is not a P1, but a P2 or P3 ticket or just a request for information that you have generated in the form of a ticket, they will respond back to you quickly.

They have good levels of escalation. So, if their first line support is unable to help, they can quickly escalate to the second or third line. I have never really had any problems with Microsoft support. That is across Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Endpoint Manager as well as for the productivity throughout Office 365 and Azure Active Directory.

I would rate them as eight out of 10.

Positive

We currently have an MSP in place, which is a managed service provider, who manages all our IT support, service desk, and desktop support functions. They had already purchased an antivirus subscription for the organization when I joined the organization, and it was a fairly basic one. Our biggest problem was that it does not have any SIEM integration. 

When we decided to go down the route of having a SOC or MDR service, we couldn't ingest the logs from the antivirus platform into their SIEM. That is when the hunt started for a new AV service.

I wouldn't say the user impact has changed on top of the AV product that we had before.

The initial setup was very straightforward. Microsoft, as an organization, is quite well-incentivized to get you to use their own products. There are hoards of material out there via their social media channel, through their own documentation, or the Microsoft Learn platform. There are reams and reams of user guides for you to go through, all of which are fairly straightforward. They are regularly updated as well.

It is all cloud-delivered so there isn't any on-premise infrastructure that I need to maintain, patch, or configure. It is literally all configured in the cloud. So, it was a very easy setup process for me.

It took days to get a proof of concept together on a handful of machines. Over the next few weeks, once we got the go ahead and thought, "You know what? We are going to go with this." It was just a matter of weeks and that was more down to team availability. We needed to sit down and offboard the existing AV, which we weren't particularly happy with, then onboard Defender for Endpoint. So, we tied that project with our MDM rollout. Therefore, while we were deploying our MDM solution and enrolling the device, we were onboarding the machine to Defender for Endpoint as well.

I actually set it all up myself. I am the only technical person at the organization. I have worked with Microsoft quite extensively in the past, and I have used their fast track consultancy services in other organizations that I have worked with as well. Therefore, I am quite confident and familiar with Microsoft technologies. 

We then signed up with an MDR supplier who does managed detection and response. Essentially, that is a team of cybersecurity experts who connect to our infrastructure and all the data telemetry from our endpoints feed up to their platform. If they see any threats, anomalies, or events, they will then jump in, reviewing and remediating as required.

We had a consultancy session with one of their Microsoft consultants around a month ago, where they reviewed the setup that I configured. They put in two or three recommendations to harden the setup a little bit more, but they were overall pretty happy with it. Thus, if I can do it, then it can't be that difficult.

There is less overhead in terms of having the system administrator or information security manager jumping around different systems and trying to actively keep a handle on our security posture across the organization. Instead, everything is right in front of me.

One of the first things that I did when I came onboard in the organization was scrapping our reseller agreement. I registered us as a not-for-profit with Microsoft, and we now get subsidized licensing at effectively half price. It just sort of makes sense for us. Now, we buy our licenses directly from Microsoft rather than our formal license reseller.

Even if you are not registered as a not-for-profit, the offering that they have is definitely worth consideration. This is in the sense that the E5 stack just gives you so many benefits. You get your entire productivity suite through Microsoft 365 apps. You get all your security and identity protection. You get the Defender for Endpoint and Defender for Identity. You get the cloud access security broker as well. You get Azure Active Directory Premium P2, which gives you so many good things that you can configure and deploy. You don't have to configure them on day one, but you have access to so many different tools that will protect your data, security, endpoints, and identities that you could build out a security strategy 18 months long, and slowly work your way through it, based on what you have available to you through your license.

You can purchase some add-ons, like Microsoft Threat Expert team. I have not read too much into that, but my understanding is that comes at an additional cost. Since we have a dedicated MDR and SOC sitting on top of our Defender for Endpoint, it is not something that applies to us anyway.

We are E5 customers. Essentially, we have the flagship license. We looked at a lot of different organizations and vendors for our antivirus needs. We spoke to the usual suspects: CrowdStrike, Sophos, and Darktrace. 

Because we also have a Gartner subscription, we reached out to our Gartner analyst, and said to them, "Look, we have the E5 license and know that Microsoft doesn't have the greatest reputation when it comes to their antivirus products, but we understand they have come on a lot over the last few years. This is the direction that we proceed. We want to deploy Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. We then want to layer an external managed detection response service on top of it that will essentially provide 24/7/365 monitoring for alerts and anomalies." Gartner advised us that it has improved to the point where they are now considered one of the leaders on their magic quadrant, so we should be absolutely fine with it. 

Originally, Microsoft wasn't in mind for us at all. We sort of had our heart set on CrowdStrike because we were really impressed with them. We got quite deep into advanced discussions with them and Darktrace as well.

The deciding factor for going with Microsoft was the budget. We were already paying for the E5 licensing. So, we were allowed to use Defender without any extra costs. We could just enable and configure it. We thought that we would use the budget left over to purchase a dedicated MDR service who would maintain an overall ability for all the endpoints to connect with it. We could also expand that to our Google Cloud Platform as well as our AWS and Azure Cloud environments. We could also extend that service onto our physical appliances, e.g., the logs from our on-premise firewalls, security appliances, and routers.

We felt that in terms of scaling up to get to the security posture that we needed, this might be a better solution for us. Whereas, CrowdStrike and Darktrace, at the time, were more focused on the endpoints. For example, if there was some suspicious behavior happening on our Azure Active Directory and our CEO's user account was under a brute-force attack, then CrowdStrike wouldn't necessarily pick up on such an attack because they are more focused on the endpoint rather than the cloud instances. Thus, we thought Microsoft gave us better coverage overall as well as the fact that we were already licensed for it.

It just made sense for us to go down that direction. We just felt we would have a more well-rounded approach if we went with Defender for Endpoint supported by the MDR service, who would then provide monitoring over all our cloud instances, endpoints, and on-premise infrastructure and appliances.

One of the main benefits is cost. Being an E5 subscriber, we are essentially already paying for Defender for Endpoint. However, it wasn't on our initial list of antivirus solutions when we were going out to market. We really felt that we were going to go for a managed service, such as CrowdStrike or Darktrace. When we decided to go for Defender for Endpoint, we created a cost savings. So, it was easier for us to prove the business case to our senior management.

A good antivirus is something that sort of happily sits in the background and just pretty much does its job until it is needed. It is just sitting there constantly watching and monitoring. Then, if it does need to intervene or remediate against the threat, that is when you know, "My antivirus is happily working." We haven't had many incidents to deal with. To be honest, we have had a couple of false positives. 

Definitely shortlist them in your list when you are out looking for a new vendor. What tends to happen with a lot of IT professionals is that they overlook the Microsoft offering because of the reputation that Microsoft Defender has had in the past, when it came to its consumer version. However, they have spent the last few years completely revamping their security stack. I think it offers a really well-rounded, holistic approach to cybersecurity now. They are definitely worth considering next to CrowdStrike, Sophos, and Darktrace.

A lot of organizations are probably like, "Oh, no, we don't want to get Microsoft. We don't want to get Defender. We want to get an established name," but I think Microsoft has put a lot of effort, budget, and development time into their security stack. It is a great suite. 

As their Azure platform grows, they leverage that to power and drive their Defender for Endpoint. A lot of the protections that they deploy are cloud-delivered platforms. So, they are picking up telemetry from millions of different signals and endpoints. They have so much data and can see trends really quickly.

I would rate them as eight out of 10.

Microsoft Defender that you get by default on Windows is an unmanaged solution. It detects, but it is conventional EDR in the sense that it can detect malicious code on the machine, but it is not good from an enterprise point of view because you can't see what is being detected. The difference between Defender and Defender ATP is that you get what's called the execution chain, which is its classic use case. 

When I try to open an attachment to an email, Defender tells me that this is malicious, but when you are in an enterprise and you do receive an alert that the file is malicious, the problem usually for the analyst is that they don't know what the person clicked on. They know there was a malicious file but was it an attachment? Was it something on the USB stick? Did they download it from the internet? That's not clear. Defender ATP gives you the execution chain. In this particular example, you can see that it was outlook.exe that launched the suspicious file which then launched or tried to download various components. You can see the whole execution tree because very often, the initial thing you get is a dropper, which then downloads subsequent components, and very often, the subsequent components get missed.

It essentially gives you visibility into the execution chain. So, you are better able to do a risk assessment. For instance, if something came from Outlook, then you know that you need to go and look in exchange or look in the mail system. If the trigger came from winword.exe, then you know that it was a document, and the person had opened a document from the email. You might see Internet Explorer, when it was still there, spawn PowerShell or a command shell, which is unusual, or you might see calc.exe open a command shell. All of this detection is invaluable for identifying whether something is suspicious or not. Your EDR might not detect any of this, but ATP would see this suspicious sequence of opening and flag it. So, essentially it is the visibility and the ability to detect unusual behavior that conventional EDR would not necessarily do for you.

Its version is usually up to date. It is a cloud solution. 

Its visibility is the most useful part of it, and it also increases the effectiveness of your response. You spend less time asking the users the standard question of what did they click on. To which, they usually say that they didn't click on anything. You can go in ATP, and you can see that they opened an email and then clicked on a link, and the link is this. There is no hiding this. Users do lie.

You can detect threats that are not necessarily known because of a behavior. If you have Internet Explorer opening a command shell, that is not normal. That does not happen unless there is some kind of malicious activity. It is also very good for visibility into what PowerShell scripts do. PowerShell is a double-edged sword. It is very powerful, but in a lot of cases, there is no visibility on what it is doing. With ATP, we generally have that ability.

I like the process visibility. This ability to visualize how something was executed is valuable, and the fact that Defender ATP is also linked to the threat intelligence that they have is also valuable. So, even if you have something that doesn't have a conventional signature, the fact that you get this strange execution means that you can detect things that are normally not visible.

The other feature that I like in Defender is that because it is up in the cloud, when you're trying to do any kind of managed service, it is fairly easy to set up if you're just within one tenant, but there are a lot of things wrong with the way Microsoft does it as compared to other products like Palo Alto Cortex, SentinelOne, or CrowdStrike.

The catch with ATP is you have to have the right Microsoft license. The licensing of ATP is linked to the licensing of Office 365. You have to have an E3 or an E5 license. If you have a small office license, it is not possible for you.

Another challenge is that it is not a multi-tenant solution. Microsoft's tenant is a licensed tenant. I'm an MSSP. So, I have multiple customers. In Microsoft's world, that means that I can't just buy an E5 license and give that out to all my customers. That won't work because all of the customer data resides within a single tenant in Microsoft's world. Other products—such as SentinelOne, Palo Alto Cortex, CrowdStrike, et cetera—are multi-tenant. So, I can have it at the top of the pyramid for my analyst to look into it and see all the customers, but each customer's data is separate. If the customer wants to look at what we see, they would only see their data, whereas in the Microsoft world, if I've got multiple customers connected to the same Microsoft tenant, they would see everybody else's data, which is a privacy problem in Europe. It is not possible to share the data, and it is a breach of privacy. So, the licensing and the privacy aspect makes it problematic in some situations.

It is also very complicated. If you decide to outsource your monitoring through an MSSP, the model for allowing the MSSP to connect to your Defender cloud is very complicated. In Office 365, it is relatively simple, but because of the way it has been done in Defender—because Defender is not part of the same cloud—it is a mess. It is possible, and it is workable, but it is probably one of the most complicated integrations we do.

It is still clunky as compared to products like Cisco AMP, SentinelOne, and CrowdStrike. Microsoft took the Defender product, and they bolted on the extra features, but you can see that there are different development teams working on it. Some features are well integrated, and some features are not. They keep on improving it, and it is better than it was. It is better than an unmanaged solution, but it is far from perfect.

I have been using it for about two years. I've got a couple of customers today with it.

Its stability is lesser than some of the competition. I've seen machines having a blue screen. I've seen machines block, but it is usually a problem related to the lack of resources. I wouldn't deploy it on a machine with less than 16 gigs of memory. All the issues that we had on the laptops were essentially related to memory because it does all the analysis in memory, and it eats a lot of memory to do that. So, stability is more a function of making sure that your endpoint farm has what's available. If you've got less than 16 gigs, I would not recommend it. You need to either change your endpoints or consider using another solution because although it'll work, it can be very slow.

It is like Microsoft Office. Its scalability is good, but I don't know how manageable it would be on a big scale. The biggest deployment I've worked on was about 5,000 endpoints, and it seemed to be okay.

It is Microsoft support. It can be very good, and it can be very bad. It depends on who you get on the phone. I would rate them a five out of ten.

Neutral

It is very simple. You can deploy it through the normal tools that you use, such as SCCM. The deployment for it is linked back to your tenant. 

We use it as a headless install. It is pushed out onto all the machines. Our normal rollout process rolls out about 50 to 100 machines in no time. They can pull the agents from the internet, or they can pull the agents internally, deploy them, and turn them on. For an antivirus, it is quite quick.

In terms of maintenance, it is pretty much like other Microsoft solutions. If you are able to do the auto-update functions, that's good. The downside to it is that it is fairly heavy on network traffic. On one of the large deployments, we found we had problems with the internet gateway because the console and all the telemetry and everything else is in the cloud. It was problematic.

It runs in the background. It is like any other antivirus solution. Sometimes, it needs tuning. An example would be that we have developers who do a lot of source code compiling. They might have tens of thousands of files that get touched or accessed when they do a compile. We have to make sure that those particular file types and certain directories are not scanned on read when they're opened. Otherwise, what normally might take an hour to compile can take more than 12 hours. That's not a problem specific to Defender. It is a problem in general, but it is fairly easy to create profiles to say that for those particular groups of machines or those particular groups of users, these file directories are exceptions to the scanning.

The licensing fee is a function of your Office 365 license. The feature set you get is a function of the license as well. There is probably an E2 version, an E3 version, and an E5 version. There are several versions, and not all features are the same. So, you might want to check what features you're expecting because you might get shocked. If you only have an E3 license, the capability isn't the same.

You have to look at the total cost of ownership (TCO) because the license component is only one aspect of the block. So, if your internal IT teams know well about IBM cloud solutions, then Defender is very easy because there is nothing new. What hurts the projects is integration. It is a hidden cost because it is beyond licensing. It can be problematic if you don't have some of the other integration tools from Microsoft. So, if you don't have the package deployment platforms and all the cloud equivalents, then there is a lot of manual work involved.

The other aspect that comes into the cost is that there is an option to store. You can make the agents report a lot more information, but if you increase the storage, then you increase your Azure storage costs, which can be painfully expensive. You typically have about 7 to 30 days of basic detection data included, but if you want to keep a more detailed log so that your IT guys can go back and figure out what was going on, it would increase your storage requirements, and that can get expensive. I know customers who turned on some of the features to increase the detection rate, and they got a huge bill from Microsoft.

A weakness, as well as an advantage, of Defender is that it is always on the cloud. There is no on-prem. You deploy additional agents into the customer infrastructure, but the console and the feedback are through the cloud.

Customers often say that Microsoft has included it in their license. So, it is license-cost neutral, but just because it is included in the license and appears to be cheap, it isn't necessarily a good reason for doing it. It isn't equivalent to other EDR or XDR solutions, but to an extent, you get what you pay for. ATP is a work in progress. To me, it is not a complete product.

Customers also go for it because it gives them visibility, and it means it is one less system to manage. They have the license for it, and they just want everything in the same ecosystem. There isn't much that we can do about that. As an MSSP, we're agnostic from a technology point of view. If the customer says, "This is what we want to do," we'll take it over.

I would advise asking yourself:

• What do your endpoints consist of?
• Which operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, iOS, or Android, will you have to support? The functionality that you get depends on your license.
• What is it that you're trying to achieve by taking Defender? 
• Are there more capable XDR-type solutions out there? 

If I was comparing them, from most effective to least effective or least integrated, I would put SentinelOne, Palo Alto Cortex, Cybereason, Microsoft Defender, and Cisco AMP.

If you want to get into the advantages of XDR solutions, which is about the detection capability coupled with artificial intelligence (AI) and data leaking, then it may not be the solution that you want. If you also want to be able to do threat intelligence, it is not the solution for you. That's because essentially the threat intelligence features are not there. You can get some threat intelligence from Azure, Microsoft Sentinel, etc, but it is not in the product like with Palo Alto Cortex, SentinelOne, or Cybereason.

I'd give it a cautious six out of ten.

Microsoft Defender is a Windows platform that can be integrated with various solutions. It has a complete dashboard that gives us clear visibility into the total security of things, the endpoint devices connected, and their status. It also gives us information about who has been logged in and at what time. Compared to other solutions, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint gives us more visibility and threat analysis reports.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has improved my security score very well. Since it is a fully automated solution, all false positives have been ruled out for me. The investigations provided by the dashboard have compliance functionality and are useful for auditing purposes.

The solution's latest features for threat analysis are updated to provide us with future protection against the latest threats worldwide. It allows us to prepare from our side for the worst scenarios so that the business operations would not be affected.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should include better automation that will make it faster to detect the latest threats happening across the world. The solution should also generate an automatic report for any investigation before I generate a report. The solution's cost could be improved as it is an expensive tool.

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

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a highly stable solution.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a scalable solution. We have around 3,000 total endpoint devices with two administrators, and we have plans to increase the usage.

The solution's technical support is good. We were able to get proper support from the technical support team.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

The solution’s deployment took almost three weeks. Two network engineers and I ensured the configuration of the group policies. We ensured that all the inbound and outbound traffic was properly configured and implemented.

We have seen a return on investment with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is an expensive solution.

Before choosing Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, we evaluated other solutions by Azure. We chose Microsoft Defender for Endpoint because of its better functionalities and capabilities.

The solution provides us with clear visibility. We have a clear dashboard analysis, and we don't need to worry about the changes we need to make as it gives a clear solution for us. Threat hunting is the best feature that gives the response to any event happening.

The solution helps me prioritize threats across our enterprise because I'm able to map all the devices across my enterprise. It is improving my security score compared to the earlier one. Compared to our earlier endpoint protection solutions, we have a good edge over the mapping we have with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Any new devices getting added to our ecosystem are getting secured in a better way.

We use more than one Microsoft security product. We have integrated all of these products, and it was easy to integrate them.

The integrated Microsoft security solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. This is very important for us because we follow a framework where protection, detection, response, and recovery have to happen in a seamless manner.

Microsoft security products give visibility into the information about the latest threats happening across the globe. This gives us awareness and helps us to be well-prepared before the attacks.

We use Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and we make use of its bi-directional sync capabilities. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has both on-premises and cloud capabilities.

We use Microsoft Sentinel, which enables us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. We have different types of endpoints. The ingestion of data gives more data and more credibility to the logs, which makes my environment more secure.

MS Sentinel enables us to investigate threats and respond holistically from one place. It provides vulnerability management and threat detection so that we'll be able to see different logs and parameters. Normally, the threat collection, detection, and response are very much important for an organization.

MS Sentinel’s built-in SOAR and UEBA are different higher-end functionalities with artificial intelligence that provide a secure environment for any platform. It can analyze more volumes of data.

Compared to MS Sentinel, SOAR solutions are more costly.

Our Microsoft security solution helps automate routine tasks and help automate the finding of high-value alerts. It gives us a clear investigation report to find the RCA appropriately, thereby speeding up our response time.

Our Microsoft security solution has helped eliminate having to look at multiple dashboards and given us one XDR dashboard. I can integrate all my security parameters into one dashboard, and looking for the management review is easy for me.

The solution’s threat intelligence helps prepare us for potential threats before they hit and to take proactive steps. It alerts me immediately from which IP the threat is coming so that I can block that respective port immediately and prevent it from entering my network.

Our Microsoft security solution has saved us time by making the operations faster and reducing the response time. The solution has saved me almost 15 days in a month.

Our Microsoft security solution has saved us money by providing a single integrated solution and eliminating the need for different security solutions.

The solution has decreased our time to detect and respond. The solution has enabled me to act quickly on any issue before it hits me.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a one-stop solution for your protection, and it gives overall visibility of your endpoint devices. You can easily add on the devices whenever the enterprise is growing.

With Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, you can club your endpoint protection, email protection, network protection, and application protection and ensure they are in good hands. We can handle anything regarding security operations, investigations, or complaints from a single point.

Overall, I rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint a nine out of ten.

I am a SOC analyst and I use Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to investigate endpoints in our environment and malicious activity.

The visibility into threats that Defender provides is excellent. The logs I receive are quite comprehensive, allowing me to see what is happening on each endpoint, including the running processes and generated alerts. It does a pretty good job of detecting when certain events occur, which helps me stay attentive to potential issues. Overall, it offers significant visibility.

Defender does a good job in helping to prioritize threats across our entire enterprise because it provides me with context by distinguishing between high and medium threats.

We also utilize Azure Sentinel, Defender for Cloud Apps, Defender for Identity, and Office 365. These solutions are integrated together, and whenever one of them receives an alert, it is sent to the main alert queue. I would give the integration an eight out of ten.

Sentinel allows us to collect data from our entire ecosystem. We primarily use it for the network firewall logs, but it can also handle other types of logs.

Sentinel does an excellent job of providing us with comprehensive security protection and visibility into security alerts and incidents. It informs us about policy violations, such as foreign user sign-ins and sign-ins from multiple or different devices, among other things. Therefore, it offers greater visibility beyond just phishing alerts.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has significantly improved our organization by identifying the activities of individual users and effectively hunting for any threatening activities they might engage in. For instance, if a user downloads a malicious file or clicks on a malware-infected link, the software can promptly detect and mitigate the issue on the server.

Defender helps to automate routine tasks and the identification of high-value alerts. Sentinel aids in the automation process by allowing me to address the issue of numerous false positives. Specifically, I automated the handling of certain false positives that originated from a particular IP range. This IP range was generating false positives due to a flagged server, even though the server itself was not actually malicious. In such cases, Sentinel proved to be beneficial as it facilitated the automation and removal of unnecessary noise.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has helped save us the trouble of looking at multiple dashboards by providing a single XDR dashboard.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has been instrumental in saving us time, especially by identifying true positives instead of wasting time on false positives.

I enjoy using the live response feature, which allows me to remotely access different endpoints and investigate malicious files, such as malware that people may have downloaded, and other related issues.

Threat intelligence has the potential for improvement, particularly by integrating more sources. This will enable us to accurately identify when a domain or an IP is malicious. If we could obtain information from external sources, it would reduce the need to use different open source tools to verify whether a domain or IP is malicious or not.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for a year and a half.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is stable. I have only experienced one crash.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint proved to be scalable in our environment, supporting over 500 endpoints.

I have also used Splunk. Splunk is more modular and portable, allowing us to integrate it with a wide range of different tools. In contrast, features of Defender and Sentinel, such as those provided by Microsoft, do not integrate well with as many other options.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Endpoint a nine out of ten. It provides me with greater certainty regarding malicious activity compared to Splunk, which demands much more analysis. Defender for Endpoint performs a significant amount of work in terms of identifying and validating malicious elements. This saves us from having to read and interpret a large number of logs. It takes care of the interpretation and conducts about half of the log analysis on our behalf.

I still have to conduct threat intelligence on my own, such as open-source intelligence. I don't automatically search VirusTotal for things, but I still end up doing my own source searching.