Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Reviews

We use Defender for Office for its five core features: anti-phishing, malware, link scanning, attachment scanning, and anti-spam.

We switched from Mimecast to Defender, and it's been a massive difference. Mimecast is convoluted, obtuse, and frustrating. That's not the case for Microsoft 365. Mimecast has more false positives, and the link-scanning feature requires you to authenticate devices every time you use the solution, which is untenable if you're on your phone. It's just not possible. 

If you're trying to look up a PDF that somebody sent, and a safe link is embedded in that, Mimecast and Microsoft write it into the "send" box. However, Microsoft is much better because you are already authenticated, so you don't need to re-authenticate again. Mimecast makes you reauthenticate every time.

It gives us one admin portal to see the things we need, which has made life for my admin team easier. I estimate it saves us about an hour or two a week. It saves the clients money because my team spends fewer hours doing tasks each week. 

The most valuable feature is protection against malicious links, fishing, and impersonation. You can train people to be aware of these threats, but they're not always careful. When they're using their phones between meetings, they click on a link, and it's game over. 

Impersonation detection is also crucial because attackers are increasingly advanced. They keep changing their tactics and adapting. People are getting emails with display names that look like people from their organization. SDF records, DMARC, and all that stuff don't always work because people often ignore email addresses. We have also used the phishing simulation component. That's pretty good.

The only thing they should improve is the licensing model. They should stop changing it. A year ago, the five features I mentioned were included in one product. Now, three of them are bundled into one product, and you have to pay extra for the other two. I don't mind paying extra, but I don't want them to change it every year or every six months. I need to know what I'm looking at and not worry about it next year.

I've used Defender in production for about a year.

Defender is stable. 

The number of users isn't significant, so I'm not worried about scalability.

Deploying Defender is a two-person job. You don't have to do much to maintain it per se. You occasionally get tickets from users who expected an email that got quarantined. You need to pay attention to that. You'll get access when you get a false positive, and you need one help desk person to look into it. There's no maintenance outside of that. 

Defender is cheaper than Mimecast in the long run, so there are savings, if not a return. It's like proving a negative. We haven't been hacked, so I don't know if that's worth anything.

The price is reasonable. 

I rate Defender for Office 365 a nine out of ten. If you could find a better solution than Defender, I would take a look. I originally went with Mimecast because they seemed to have a better product, but that's no longer true. Microsoft Defender is better than Mimecast. I used Mimecast for four years before switching. It used to be better, but now it isn't. You go with the best. Diversifying it is not helpful. Microsoft is finally doing a good job doing this email protection, they didn't do well in the past, but now they are.

Our primary use case is for features like mail protection and preventing impersonation. It has extended the protection for the user.

What I don't like about Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is that many of the features should be default. They should be included, not optional, like other vendors provide.

I have been working with Defender for Office since the beginning. It's been evolving all the time.

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. We noticed that from time to time, Microsoft does have problems. Sometimes the service goes up and down. Sometimes they change without prior notice. 

It is a scalable solution. Our organization has around a thousand users using Microsoft Defender for Office 365. 

Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad. It's up and down.

The initial setup is straightforward. You just add the license, click it, and then you can set up the rules. It is quite simple. 

You can set it up in-house. 

The pricing has become expensive. 

Some customers want to use a monthly payment, but Microsoft recently changed its license policies. So we are encouraging most users to pay annually.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. I would definitely recommend using the solution. 

We use Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for email security. We are partners of Microsoft and I'm the company's chief operation security officer. 

The deployment capability is a great feature. We're able to activate this feature throughout France with a click.

I'd like to see fewer false positives and potentially have an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites. There could also be an improvement in some of the features related to training. In a phishing test campaign, for example, it should be more user-friendly and include the capability to evaluate and assess users' understanding of the content provided. 

I've been using this solution for several years. 

The customer support could be more advanced at the technical level and more responsive. There should also be more communication on updates.

We previously had some reinforced email security features with Microsoft; this is just an improvement on what we had.

This is quite an expensive solution and understanding the pricing model and features is quite complicated and it can, in fact, be a nightmare when dealing with Microsoft.

We reviewed several on-premise solutions such as Forcepoint that could be integrated with other components within our infrastructure. The reason we didn't go with them is that we have to respond quickly to threats and at an international level. Given the complexity of our situation in terms of architecture, we decided to go with a ready-to-use solution.

We haven't had a review recently, so I can't say that this is the best solution on the market. Things are evolving all the time with new features constantly being added to all solutions. For now, I would rate this solution seven out of 10. 

We use Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for protection. 

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 has improved my organization's security. It makes it easier to manage the infrastructure without the help of third-party applications. 

The product helped us maintain collaboration and communication during the pandemic with the help of Teams. 

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 must improve the overall management style, including the GUI. It also needs to change the filters so that it is easy to whitelist and blacklist data. 

I have been using the product for six years. 

The product is stable. I rate it a ten out of ten. 

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is scalable. I rate it a ten out of ten. 

The tool's support is good. 

Positive

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is expensive but does what it says. 

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is efficient and picks up threats before they pass on to the systems. 

The tool's automation has made us more efficient in our daily tasks. 

The solution saves much time since you don't have to reimage the computer after an attack. 

We have started using Defender on our endpoints, together with the basic Defender for email. We placed Defender on our endpoints through our XDR solution. It's connected to our SOC and the SIEM.

The fact that it's easy to integrate and implement has helped us to move forward with our project.

Also, on the clients, we have implemented automated identification and blocking, and these help our SOC team avoid doing manual work.

It gives us visibility into threats and, for endpoints, it helps us to prioritize threats. We used to have a lack of visibility, but now our time to detect and respond has decreased.

Also, in the beginning, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 saved us time because we had started a completely new company. Now that we are more established, we need another, more advanced solution with more machine learning and artificial intelligence related functionality.

About eight months ago, we started to measure the quantity of phishing and spam that we have been receiving, and it has been increasing a lot. That means that protection for our email is not as good as we were expecting.

Now that we have more visibility into threats, our orientation is to have a more top-market solution to give us more visibility and easier ways to respond to the threats that we find and also to identify threats better.

It is not really straightforward to get a lot of information from Microsoft Defender, so we have had to use Microsoft Graph to create some custom views to export custom information.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for four years.

The stability is really good. We have never had any problems related to Defender.

The scalability is also very good. It's easy to increase usage, but that's expected.

We are a multinational company, so we have multiple locations, including Brazil and several countries in Europe. We have about 470 end-users.

The technical support is really good. 

Positive

We used Symantec when we were part of a big company. We decided to use Microsoft because it is a fully integrated solution and was embedded in our licenses. We did not take into consideration all the features.

Our company was sold by that big company that we used to be part of and we then consolidated and created a new company about four years ago. We wanted to move forward, as fast as possible, with as much security as possible.

It was really straightforward to set up. We implemented it on our endpoint devices, and then we configured a lot of policies to manage and avoid threats, as well as policies for phishing and the cloud.

The maintenance is mostly related to fine-tuning phishing and other issues and is handled by one or two engineers, but it's not needed frequently.

It was done in-house, with two or three of our resources.

It is much more expensive than using another solution because we have had to include some options and upgrade our license. Be aware of the licensing model, because for certain features you need a different level of licensing.

We did not look at other options. The main reason we went with Microsoft was because of the complete integration.

If I were asked whether to go with a single vendor or multiple vendors for security, I would say use multiple vendors. We are using Microsoft for collaboration, email, chat, and security. It's like having the wolf secure your house. Having different vendors would help give you different visibility and data and different people managing different solutions.

We're an MSP, and we deploy security solutions to our clients based in the UAE. We are currently implementing the product ourselves and developing the capacity to deploy it to our clients. We have around 200 total end users. 

In addition to Defender for Office 365, we also use Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Sentinel. The products are integrated.    

The integration was straightforward, as most of our clients and we operate an Azure environment, so integration is usually as simple as a few clicks.

Defender for Office 365 helps automate routine tasks and find high-value alerts, which we can do using Azure Logic Apps. We can create operations, automate them, and make a workflow using automation. One of our clients didn't have the budget to invest in a SOC team, but we deployed the solution for them, and they now run a SOC with only one analyst. They can achieve this kind of maturity through the product's automation.   

The solution's threat intelligence helps prepare us for potential threats before they hit and take proactive steps. Sentinel also features robust threat hunting, which provides indicators of possible attacks and is beneficial information to have.   

Defender for Office 365 saved us time, we have seen many improvements to the product, and Microsoft regularly brings out new features. The tool is at a good point right now and is on the path to improvement. Time saved is in the region of 30-40%.  

It decreased our time for detection and response, especially with its SOAR capabilities. We can activate automated runbooks in a few clicks and block a malicious or unauthorized user in a single click. We rapidly receive alerts, which reduces our response time such that what once took at least an hour can now be resolved in minutes.   

The email protection is excellent, especially in terms of anti-phishing policies. 

The solution's information protection around sensitive labels and compliance-related security features are also very valuable.

Defender for Office 365 provides excellent visibility into threats; we can see the attacks and phishing campaigns running against our users from the portal.  

The product helps us prioritize threats across the enterprise, which is essential because most of our clients come to us with alert fatigue. They have so many alerts they often need help determining which ones to work on, and the solution's threat prioritization helps us narrow that down.  

The comprehensiveness of the threat protection provided by Microsoft security products is excellent; we wouldn't use any other third-party security solutions, and it all comes packaged with Azure or an E5 license.    

Microsoft Sentinel enables us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem, which is vital because when we deliver security products for clients, one of their primary requirements is to collect all the on-prem logs and put them in the cloud. Sentinel is capable of this and requires some expertise to operate in this way. 

Sentinel allows us to investigate threats and respond holistically from one place; that's what it's built for. We work offsite as we aren't in the same region as our clients, so the ability to respond remotely is essential to us.  

Several simulation options are available within 365, and the phishing simulation could be better.

I want to see improvements that will make the tool easier to operate. 

We've been using the solution for one year. 

The product is stable. 

Defender for Office 365 is scalable. 

We never had to contact technical support. When we encounter an issue, we can search for a solution on the internet or YouTube, for example, for specific configurations. There's excellent community support available.

We didn't previously use a different solution. When I joined the company, we were and remained Microsoft Gold Partners, so we don't have any other third-party tools.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, and the solution is lightweight in terms of maintenance. A yearly configuration review is sufficient. 

Defender for 365 comes in various plans and licenses, along with other Microsoft security solutions. Purchasing this kind of package or security bundle gives good value for money, and that's what I recommend.

To a colleague who says it's better to go with a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor's security suite, in terms of pricing, it's better to get a good package for security solutions from one vendor rather than multiple vendors.  

I rate the solution eight out of ten.

Multiple integrated Microsoft solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment, and we Microsoft Sentinel to our clients. It's a SIEM tool, and once we configure Defender, we can push alerts to Sentinel, which is valuable.   

We leverage Sentinel's SOAR capabilities with the help of Logic Apps, and many libraries are available to make automation easier. However, some complexity is involved in developing Logic Apps, so it requires some expertise.

We use it for detecting any kind of breach or intrusion. It is not enabled for everyone because we have our own antivirus.

It has helped us in improving our security posture. It detects any kind of attack or abnormal behavior in accessing the system and sends an alert to the administrator who can check, understand, and review on time to ensure that all activities are legit.

It blocks all known threats immediately and sends alerts to follow up. It is not used on all devices. On the devices on which it is being used, it has improved the security by 80%.

It has improved our security awareness. It helped us in understanding the weaknesses in our configuration that needed to be fixed to avoid any kind of breach. It has increased our security level and mitigated the risk of being compromised.

The risk level notifications are most valuable. We get to know what kind of intrusion or attack is there, and we can fix a problem on time.

The visibility for the weaknesses in the system and unauthorized access can be improved.

Its price should be improved. Its cost is a major concern for us.

We started using it in 2019.

Its stability is good.

Its scalability is good. It is able to leverage more and more functions, which is essential because cybersecurity threats are increasing nowadays.

Initially, we had only 10 users, and currently, most of the users are switching to another platform. We only have one user, and only the system administrator is managing it.

I didn't need any tech support because the documentation and the procedures are simple and easy to understand.

We have Symantec Endpoint Protection, and we also use Sophos. We are using Defender only on our Azure system because it is a suitable tool for the Microsoft environment.

Its initial setup is straightforward. Because it is cloud-based, when we assign the license for Office 365, it can be automatically deployed from the console. Because the number was small, we manually installed it on each device one by one. Its deployment requires minimal staff. Depending on the connectivity, it can take about 30 minutes for each device.

We have not seen an ROI yet.

Defender is a little bit more expensive as compared to others. We are in the manufacturing environment. So, we don't have a high budget for all of our endpoint devices. Its cost is a major concern for us.

It is a good product, but its price is the most critical point for consideration. In terms of technology and capability, I would rate Microsoft Defender an eight out of 10.

We mainly use it to identify software vulnerabilities. It reports all the software vulnerabilities installed in our web stations and servers.

With Defender for Office 365, we have been able to increase the security posture across our organization. Within the first month of using this product, we realized that benefit.

When it comes to software vulnerabilities, we can target them and update the software as soon as we see that there is a vulnerability. And then we can make sure that they are updated and check that the update process was successful within a different department. That has really helped us improve our productivity.

The solution saves us time because we don't have to go here and there to identify things. It's a single portal that has all the details we need. Their support is also good. These features have, again, helped us improve our productivity a lot. It saves us about 25 percent of our time.

It has also saved us money because we don't have to pay for other security products like Nessus. This solution has almost everything we got from other products, so we don't have to go for an additional solution. It's saving us about 50 percent, cost-wise.

Our time to detect threats has decreased. With products like Nessus, until their scan runs, we are not aware whether a threat is fixed or not. But with Defender, within one to two hours that information is reflected. With Nessus, sometimes we had to wait a day to see that information reflected in the portal. Because we are aware of issues earlier, we can act on them sooner.

The most valuable feature is the score. By looking at the score, you can identify if you are at risk or not.

It also gives the vulnerability status according to the versions you have selected. Let's say you have Google Chrome. It mentions the versions it has, and it updates. Within two hours of an update, it is reflected in the dashboard. That's really nice to have.

It gives me everything I need, visibility-wise. It also helps prioritize threats across our enterprise and that's very important. That means we can identify the critical vulnerabilities first and keep an eye on other vulnerabilities. By looking at the dashboard, I immediately get an idea of how critical an issue is and we can fix vulnerabilities before they result in an attack.

It has also helped eliminate looking at multiple dashboards, giving us one XDR dashboard, which has made our security operations really easy. We can also create internal tickets within the portal itself. We can assign them to people and see how long it took them to close the tickets. That makes things really easy.

In one of the reports, I can get the exact place where a vulnerable file resides. But for that, I need to explicitly go into the device and check. If they could include that file part in the report, without my having to go to the device itself, that would help.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Office 365 for about two years.

It is stable.

There are bugs here and there, but they have been able to rectify them.

It's scalable. It discovers almost all of the workstations and servers across our organization. We have about 3,000 endpoints.

Whenever we ask a question, they provide us with a solution. I'm happy with their technical support.

Positive

We previously used Nessus. We switched mainly because of the cost and the integration. With Nessus, we had to install an agent, but with Defender, since we were already using it, we could just turn it on with the cloud portal and deploy it very easily.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but in terms of maintenance, we push it through Windows Update so we don't have to explicitly do any updates.

I would recommend Microsoft Defender for Office 365. 

If you already have a deployment method, like CCM or something similar, it will be easy. Even if not, there are several other deployment methods that could support any scenario.

We already had an Office subscription, so we just started a trial and we were happy with it and we went with it.

In terms of a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor security suite, a single vendor security suite is good when it comes to deployment and manageability. It's easy.