Microsoft Defender XDR Reviews

We manage around 5,000 computers inside and outside our company. I use Defender to work on our security score by deploying security policies. We apply all the security recommendations to our computers and patch all third-party applications. We check every day for malware to alert our security teams.

Seven months ago, our security score was 50 score and it's now 84. We applied all the security policy recommendations coming from the solution and we became aware of the vulnerabilities and fixed them all, one by one.

We can also automate some tasks and that reduces daily work. And if we get an alert, and we know it is not a false positive, we automate things so that we don't get that alert again.

And if we find malware or a threat, we transfer it to level-one technical support to check and, after that, to the security team. But a lot of times, it catches malware and takes action to block it automatically.

Defender has also saved us money, about 30 or 40 percent. When we had Symantec, we suffered one attack against our company and we lost a lot of data and a lot of servers, and that was a lot of money. Since switching, Defender has been perfect, catching all malware and taking action automatically.

It has also decreased the time it takes me to check everything. I now spend only one or two hours a day monitoring things.

I like that it's fully integrated with Windows, Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, and Outlook. It is better than other antivirus solutions because it's fully integrated with all Microsoft products. It's easy to integrate them and onboard all Windows devices from SCCM. That is really amazing. Everything is clear in Defender. It's not difficult.

Also, everything for security is in one dashboard. It's great. It's not only for Defender but email and everything else. it makes things very easy. I can check everything at once.

The dashboard should be easier to use. There is also improvement needed in the reporting when it comes to exporting or scheduling reports.

I have three years of experience with Microsoft 365 Defender.

It is very stable.

It is also scalable.

On-prem, we have around 300 servers, a mix of Linux and Windows. We also have around 5,000 clients, all using Windows 10 and 11. We have a plan to migrate all on-prem servers to Azure. In the next six months we are looking to migrate 90 percent of them to the cloud. 

I like their support sometimes.

Neutral

We used Symantec for antivirus and security and we migrated all users from Symantec to Microsoft 365 Defender. It's easier to use than Symantec or McAfee and we can use it anywhere because it's a cloud solution. Also, with Symantec, we suffered an attack and it did not do anything. In addition, we already had an E5 license with security so we decided to use this license more fully.

I onboarded it to all machines using the configuration in SCCM. It was very easy. It didn't take much time.

We checked McAfee but we went with Microsoft because it has improved its product very quickly. Microsoft Defender of five years ago is not like it is now. Five years ago it was nothing, but Microsoft has improved it very quickly.

It works with Microsoft Sentinel and integrates well with that, but we do not use Sentinel in our company.

The solution is primarily used for security response. We work with many government ministries that use Microsoft, Microsoft 365, or security tools like Azure XDR. This solution integrates with other products, helps with detection, and offers quick response times.

The threat-hunting and incident investigation capabilities are very strong. It can investigate and block phishing attacks and monitor them effectively. We can even do endpoint behavior analysis. 

The solution's XDR platform provides unified identity and access management for customers. If the customer is using a Microsoft Enterprise XDR solution, it does. We do have Microsoft Defender for Identity. It's part of the suite itself. Customers can have Defender for Endpoints, Defender for Identity, and Defender for Cloud. All these things combined form the XDR. The main use cases are around identity - to understand whether there is identity hacking, privilege escalation, or some malicious user in the environment. It helps us respond to those events very quickly.

From a coverage point of view, it's good. We are quite happy with it. If we have users with multiple devices, the solution provides comprehensive coverage.

While the solution does cover technology beyond Microsoft, it's strongest when monitoring the Microsoft Suite. We do have servers, and it can monitor them. They don't necessarily have to be Windows servers.

Defender XDR can stop advanced attacks, like ransomware or business email compromise. It depends on how the solution is configured. It does a lot of monitoring and helps the SOC team or the analysis team find issues. 

The solution has the ability to stop attacks and can adapt to evolving threats. It can ingest a lot of threat intel data, which actually gives us the latest information about how the threats are happening. It does a quick analysis of that. 

Some customers use Defender XDR's multi-tenant management capabilities. That said, most of the time, they might not need a multi-tenancy. In one or two cases, customers may have done it, but not very frequently. The multi-tenant management capabilities for investigating and responding to threats across tenants are pretty decent. It provides a very unified view. That's one of the core capabilities of Microsoft XDR - the unification of the view. In a security situation, I might have solutions in multiple places. However, our tenant will be protected, and we will receive alerts. It helps a lot with individual client monitoring. It will help me hunt other tenants as well. It makes it so we have a very cohesive environment. 

Defender XDR has enabled some of our customers to discontinue the use of other security products. However, it's not always based on capabilities. In Qatar, for example, it's a government mandate to use Microsoft as much as possible, so we move a lot of customers over exclusively to Microsoft in those cases. That doesn't mean the other product wasn't performing. It just means there is a heavy preference towards being solely on Microsoft. 

The Microsoft XDR solution has helped some customers to reduce costs. One of the major cost reductions is on the resources side (not on the technology side). As a service provider, we can move to a much leaner team with the XDR setup than with a non-XDR setup. When you have different environments to monitor and different alerts coming in from different devices, then you need more people to do the monitoring and analysis. However, when you have a unified view of the environment, then you can reduce the team to a certain extent. We can do a 25% reduction on a team, which is a considerable reduction since resources are expensive. How much a company can save depends on the environment. If it's small, the reduction in cost may not be significant. It can be as low as 10% or as high as 25%, depending on the size of the environment. 

It's helped us save time. It's difficult to specify how much; however, it's likely up to 25% thanks to the reduction in the analysis needed. 

From a performance standpoint, improvements could be made. 

I've used the solution for one and a half years. 

I'd rate the stability eight or nine out of ten. If it's just a Microsoft environment, the reliability is very good. If it's a mixed environment, I'd rate the stability seven out of ten. 

The solution is highly scalable. 

Technical support is good. We have enterprise support and they are responsive.

Positive

I do not handle the initial setup process. The customer may deploy it across multiple locations. The size of the environment can vary from 100 users to 1,000.

There isn't really any heavy maintenance. You just have to renew the licenses. If it's a small environment, one person can handle that. If it's bigger, there may be two or three people. 

My understanding is that Microsoft is trying to change the pricing. However, right now, it's bundled together. If it could be decoupled a bit, it would help customers be able to afford the solution. 

We are service providers, and we resell Microsoft solutions. 

XDR is basically used for unification. It's more of a dashboard. When you have an XDR, you can monitor the entire environment. You can also see and take actions across the entire environment, which is actually a very big advantage when it comes to a particular software analyst's day-to-day job. They can be monitoring one screen. Typically, if an issue is found, a ticket needs to be made, and that's passed onto an engineer, but with XDR, a lot can be automated. It can help reduce costs related to manpower and make the process more efficient. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten and recommend it to others. Smaller companies may not need it; however, if a company is growing fast or is already sizable, it's a good option—especially if it is a mostly homogeneous Microsoft environment.

I am a purple teamer in my current job, so I also work with detection response in my organization. My job is to configure alerts and monitor incidents, and to do that, my company uses Microsoft Defender XDR. My company has endpoint detection tools for all the endpoints in the organization, and through Microsoft Defender XDR, we are able to get a top-down view of all the incidents on a daily basis and then actually be able to even customize what kind of alerts we want to look for and what kind of attacks are happening. One of the things that I personally love about the tool is the attack story that it provides. Every time there is a specific incident, it creates a graph and maps it to Mitre Att&ck Framework, so it could be initial access, or you may have malicious activity within the network. The tool can track all of the aforementioned areas, and it gives a confidence level. For example, if it is a high-confidence, high-risk alert, then the tool would probably quarantine that particular endpoint on its own, and then an investigator goes on there and actually verifies it. In my experience in the last six months, the false positive rates have been close to zero. Every time there is a case of high confidence alert, there has never been a case where it was not a malicious activity, and it is something I love about the product.

In terms of the most valuable feature of the product, I think it stems from the way it classifies incidents, as it is the most important area in my field of work. Another valuable feature of the tool is threat hunting. For example, there could be a chain of phishing emails that are being sent to our organization, and it may come up as an alert. Then, I know that I can use the artifacts, after which it gives a list of artifacts, which could be email addresses or IP addresses, to identify the threat actors. I can then go ahead and hunt for them across all endpoints within the network, making it essentially something similar to an SQL query that I can run based on what I am looking for. I get more leads in terms of which other mailboxes this particular phishing attack might have gone to where the user may not have interacted with it. The tool allows us to be more proactive in terms of getting close to the initial compromise. I think the threat-hunting feature is coupled with the alerts that my company has configured, and it allows us to proactively stop attacks, which is probably the most important thing for us.

I think that the tool can do a lot of things in a pretty effective way. A lot of times, one of the things I look at is how the false positive rates are, and so far, I see that they have been close to zero. Honestly, I don't think there is a lot in the area of false positives where the tool could improve. I do think that maybe having a feature within my organization where there are three different domains within which we have to operate would be helpful, as there is currently no unified view within the domains. Within a specific Active Directory, you can have Microsoft Defender XDR running, and so everything, including all the endpoints in that domain, are areas you are able to look at from one particular user interface, but there is no feature in which you can merge two different domains. For example, if there are xyz.com and abc.com, all of the endpoints within each of the domains, our company will have a separate UI from Microsoft Defender XDR, and because of it, we have to monitor three different UIs at each point in time. There is also a lot of automation that I have put in place, so every time there is a high-risk alert, our company gets an email in our InfoSec mailbox essentially. I think having a feature where you can merge everything onto a single dashboard would be something from which my company would definitely benefit because it's just a lot of sifting through different user interfaces and then collating data from it. In our company, we should just make sure that we are able to respond immediately, especially whenever there is a security issue within the organization.

I have been using Microsoft Defender XDR for six months. My company is a customer of the product.

I have been in the company for six months, and I think there has only been one time where I remember there was a bit of a slowdown which was associated with the antivirus server and it was not related to Microsoft Defender XDR. Considering the aforementioned issue, my company had to raise a ticket for support, but it has only happened once.

So far, the scalability offered by the product has been fine because it serves as an internal tool managing essentially all of the endpoints within the network, which essentially includes all of the employees, servers, access points, and all of that. In the last six months, my company has not really scaled up the use of the tool that much, and so the numbers have been constant, more or less. If my company ever plans to double up in size in a short period of time, it will probably be the time when the tool's scalability will be tested. I don't think I have the data points right now to answer questions related to the tool's scalability feature.

I have contacted the product's support team. I feel that Microsoft offers a very good support team, as they are usually well-equipped, and the support team members are currently the ones who set up the tool from scratch. The support team has complete visibility of the environment. Every time there is an issue, it gets resolved within 30 to 45 minutes, sometimes more if it is a bit complicated. For example, if the server is slowing down for some reason, the support team is able to sort it out pretty quickly. I think my experience with the tool's support team has been pretty good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

Before Microsoft Defender XDR, I used some other solutions of the past. In one of my previous organizations, we used to use an SIEM solution like Splunk. The company had a lot of open-source tools, so we used Microsoft Defender XDR and ELK stack to generate alerts from a network monitoring point of view. The company also had Snort rules running on the same endpoint, which was like a blue team device for monitoring the network, and we also had a Splunk Universal Forwarder on the endpoint that was connected to Splunk's server, which was useful for visualization. Splunk was not an XDR tool; it was more about monitoring alerts that we had configured within the organization, customizing them, and making sure that we were able to catch threats based on signatures. There was less automation in the sense of how you can react to an incident. For example, in Microsoft Defender XDR, the moment there is a high-risk and high-confidence alert, it quarantines the endpoint or that particular mailbox and sends an alert to our company, and in such a manner, it stops the attacks, and also lets the investigators know that it is not a false positive, which is something I was missing in a SIEM solution that I used in the past. Alerts were being generated from Snort, and the company where I used to work had an ELK stack running, so we configured the alerts on it. The company also had a Splunk Universal Forwarder that would forward the alerts to a Splunk interface, and it is where we used to visualize all the alerts. In general, it was a combination of different tools that allowed my previous company to have the aforementioned process in place.

The solution is deployed on the cloud model, and our company has opted for the cloud services offered by Azure. In our company, we have Microsoft Access Control Service in place, so everything is controlled through Azure. If there are new members in the team, we give them read-only access to XDR through Azure, so it helps manage the identity and access, and then you can access Microsoft Defender XDR's portal. Our organization also creates specific IDs for every investigator to access Microsoft Defender XDR.

I don't think I can speak much about the pricing model of the product because it is not something I work with, and so I don't know the amount of money being burned by the company for the solution, making it an area beyond my visibility. With the little idea I have about the costs, I can say that XDR tools tend to be a bit expensive. If you are using Microsoft Defender XDR, then you need to go for a subscription-based pricing model. In my organization, which is a relatively large company with close to 3,000 employees, the solution works out well for us. For example, if I had a startup, it probably wouldn't be cost-effective to have an XDR solution in place, and that is where I would probably look at more open-source tools to work with and maybe have a SIEM solution which was a startup, a reason why we had to rely on open source tools. My previous organization also had opted for a subscription to use Splunk, which was expensive, but it was better than getting an XDR tool.

Speaking of whether I started to see the benefits of the product immediately after its deployment or if I had to wait for some time, I would say that Microsoft Defender XDR has been in place from the time I joined my current organization. I immediately saw the benefits of using the product. I wasn't present in the organization at a time when they had moved initially to Microsoft Defender XDR, so I can't speak about the time point during which others in the company saw the benefits or effects of the use of the solution. I think the tool has been very efficient because I have worked in other organizations where they were not using Microsoft Defender XDR, as they preferred SIEM solutions. I have seen that in scenarios where SIEM-based tools were used, it was more of the investigator who had to figure out what was happening because you just had a ton of data coming in from the bottom up. In my previous companies, we had a Splunk interface through which we could indulge in monitoring. I see a stark contrast between the previous products and Microsoft Defender XDR, and it is because the latter-mentioned tool not only allows you to get that bottom-up view where whatever is happening on an endpoint level, I am able to monitor while also being able to push things from the top to down. For example, if I wanted to quarantine a particular file on a subset of endpoints, I can do that from Microsoft Defender XDR, where I can put it on a block list and mark it to a particular Active Directory group, after which I am able to then block that out. The tool is quite effective from a detection and response point of view.

If I consider whether it is better to have just one solution instead of a combination of tools, I would say that it is always better to have a combination of products. The SIEM solution I had used previously was quite efficient in collecting data and in being able to process large amounts of data from where we had a lot of endpoints within a particular network, which I think was fast in many ways. Microsoft Defender XDR internally does the same thing as an SIEM solution. If you ask me, it is always best to have an SIEM solution integrated with an XDR tool because most SIEM products are very good at handling large amounts of alerts, and if you have configured it properly, then you can have a very precise view of what is happening at any given point in time within the network, and once you have it, you can have that database forwarded to XDR that can push down. The XDR tools are very good at classifying events. If you have actions in place as to what needs to be done, then, for example, if an email is marked under the phishing category, you would want to get rid of it from the inbox first. Ideally, it shouldn't even land in the inbox, but if it does, then you want to quarantine it. Pushing a certain action down to the affected devices, I think XDR tools do it brilliantly. I think it is always good to have a match between a SIEM tool and an XDR product or a customization between different tools to help achieve your goals.

The product does require maintenance. With the cloud instances that host the server, our company continuously monitors the health, as we have health checks in place that generate alerts in case something goes wrong, a major reason why we use Microsoft Defender XDR. My company also has Kaspersky's antivirus server, which is essentially hosted on a different server. Sometimes, because of the number of endpoints we have in our company's network, the server does slow down due to resource constraints. It is not my job to maintain the servers in my company, but we have a different team that deals with it. In our company, we do have a couple of instances where the servers are internally managed.

I think Microsoft Defender XDR is one of the best detection and response tools I have worked with as it is quite effective in flagging serious threats for the organization. In our company,we have faced multiple attacks over the last few months, but none of them have been successful, and I think Microsoft Defender XDR has played a major role in it.

Firstly, potential users of the solution should consider that the tool comes with a lot of already customized alerts for any Active Directory environment, but it is always good to understand, especially if you are a new user of the tool. Even if someone is new in the security team, I think it is that person's job to analyze the business, the kind of attacks you could expect coming in, and the kind of visibility that the organization provides on the internet. Once a person gets a good idea about the aforementioned areas, you need to customize alerts and create custom alerts for your organization because that is an area that is going to be unique and different for each and every company, so it won't ever be the same. Microsoft Defender XDR certainly helps with mapping the seven steps of the cyber kill chain, and if the product sticks to it and looks at every single step, lists down the kind of threats, and then customizes the alerts according to that, I believe the users will have a successful time in being able to detect threats before they happen or even while they are happening.

I rate the overall tool a ten out of ten.

We provide services to medium-sized businesses in the banking and administrative sectors. We are also using Microsoft Sentinel and Defender for 365. 

Defender helps our clients protect against any threats from outside the organization. Defender XDR helps our clients save about 25 percent by offloading some on-prem functions to the cloud. It also saves time because the cloud interface is manageable, and we can investigate incidents quickly. It's easy to create reports and share information with other teams. 

I like Defender XDR's threat detection and prevention capabilities. Defender's built-in identity and access management features are critical. The solution's coverage extends beyond Microsoft software. Defender is easy to use. It has a nice console, and everything is all in one place. 

The console is missing some features that would be helpful for a managed services provider, like device and user management. 

I have used Defender XDR for the last two years. 

I rate Defender XDR nine out of 10. 

I rate Defender XDR eight out of 10 for scalability. 

I rate Microsoft support nine out of 10. 

Positive

Some aspects of the deployment were not straightforward. It was moderately complex. I enabled all the connections and onboarding process, then implemented a basic set of configurations. It took about seven to 10 days to deploy. 

My clients have seen an ROI from using Defender XDR.

Defender XDR is reasonably priced but may be less affordable in certain countries. For example, it might be expensive for some customers in India. 

I rate Defender XDR eight out of 10. I would recommend Defender XDR. It's a fast solution, and it's easy to train people to use Defender. 

Defender XDR can replace multiple security products. It covers everything, including phishing protection, network security, device security, applications, etc. 

The solution has reduced time spent on manual tasks because almost everything is automated. You don't have to do anything. If something happens, you'll get a notification, and it will instantly run the playbook for the incident. For example, a phishing email might take an hour to investigate manually. If you have Defender, you will have all the information you need on the incident page. It's all there, so you can investigate the incident in around 5 to 10 minutes.

Adopting Defender cuts costs. While the solution is a little pricey, you only need two products—XDR and Sentinel—so you don't need to add other security products. You only need to use the Microsoft security stack. 

The advantage Microsoft Defender XDR has over other XDRs in the market is that it's easy to use. You can quickly differentiate between alerts, incidents, devices, software, etc. It's easier to investigate an incident, and you have so many options. You can automate investigations and use playbooks. There's also the live response session, which is something you can't find in any other XDR. 

The identity protection is excellent. It uses some rules, including some built-in rules from Microsoft itself. It identifies risky users and differentiates between a user who is trying to sign in and isn't the actual user. Identity and access management is a valuable component of Defender.

Defender covers non-Microsoft technologies if you're using the full Microsoft stack with Sentinel and Defender. You can ingest logs from other solutions, like Palo Alto and Fortinet firewalls. 

It stops advanced attacks like ransomware and phishing in real time and prevents them from entering your environment. There's a feature called Security Advisory that shows you all the latest threats and vulnerabilities in the market so that you can make rules for them. It helps you understand them more. 

With Sentinel and Microsoft Lighthouse, you can use multi-tenant access. It allows you to connect multiple tenants to one tenant, which you can use to monitor everything from there. Before we had Microsoft Defender, we had to go to each tenant, log n from your account, and investigate the incident if it's there. Lighthouse has one page with all the alerts, and they're all connected together. You can investigate every alert from one page.

The design of the user interface could use some work. Sometimes it's hard to find the exact information you need.

I rate Microsoft Defender XDR 7 out of 10 for stability. There are some performance issues maybe 5% of the time. 

I rate Microsoft Defender XDR 9 out of 10. It's easy to scale. 

I rate Microsoft support 8 out of 10. They answer quickly. If you open a ticket, they will respond immediately. You can chat with them or schedule a call. 

Positive

The setup is straightforward. You only need to buy the product and onboard every device. It's like a script for Microsoft Intune. The process takes a couple of days for a small company, but a larger business may require three or four days. 

Defender XDR is fairly priced. 

I rate Microsoft XDR Defender 8 out of 10. I recommend giving the product a try. If it doesn't work for you, try something else until you find a suitable product. There might be other solutions that are a better fit. It's good for my case, but it might not be right for everyone. 

I'm a deployment engineer for Microsoft products, and we work with multiple SMEs. Customers adopting Microsoft products want the same features they had in their third-party solutions. We look at their requirements and the types of features they need. We determine the security mechanism that best addresses their vulnerabilities. We might suggest Defender for Identity,  Defender for Endpoint, 365 Defender, and Defender for Cloud Apps. In addition to those security solutions, we offer device management. We provide everything.

Defender improves our security operations. I've had chances to collaborate with our SOC team. Our customers face many random attacks they don't know how to prevent, and the SOC team handles them remotely. The security engineers can investigate the incident or use the information from the customer's environment to offer a recommendation. If the customer doesn't have the detection mechanism, we can recommend a product or find a solution for them. 

The solution can help customers save money because we can bundle it with all the other Microsoft solutions, like email and Defender for endpoint, identity, and cloud apps. Most of our customers use Windows 10 devices and Microsoft Active Directory, so everything is on the same page. Defender can save time by automating investigation and response. We don't need to spend much time because it'll automatically take action in many cases. 

The best feature is threat hunting. There are a lot of other features I like, such as the alert mechanism. The chain alert mechanism has a huge impact. It combines all the alerts into one incident and automatically correlates them with AI. 

Defender has integrated identity access management, and you can add DLP features through a separate solution called Microsoft Purview. Within the cloud, we can create access policies based on each user's risk. It's integrated with Azure AD and on-prem Active Directory, so all the user identities can be managed in a single portal.

We use the multi-tenant management capability, so we can cover customers that have multiple regions. We can easily investigate across tenants based on severity. For high-priority alerts, we start from scratch and ignore what's happening on the endpoints or emails. We isolate the device and ensure that nothing will be released from it. Next, we check this device and some more details.

There is no common area where we can manage all the policies for the EDR, third-party solutions, devices, servers, Windows, Mac, etc., but it's on the roadmap, and we were waiting for that feature. 

I have used 365 Defender for about four years.

365 Defender is stable. There is no downtime. Still, Microsoft is constantly rolling out features, so there are sometimes bugs after new releases. Our customer experience team is collaborating with Microsoft and sharing feedback with them. 

365 Defender is scalable 

I rate Microsoft support nine out of 10. The support depends on the product and the customer's issues. 

Positive

I work with customers coming to Microsoft from other third-party products, so I try to understand what the product does and suggest a solution. The names are different, but all the technology is the same.

Deploying Microsoft Defender isn't complex if you have experience. The deployment depends on the number of users, apps, and the client's requirements. If the client wants to implement XDR, it takes about a month to achieve full functionality.  Endpoint protection takes around five to ten days. It's a cloud product, so it doesn't require any maintenance. 

Defender XDR is agentless, so you don't need to install an agent anywhere. It's a cost-effective option.

I rate Microsoft 365 Defender nine out of 10. We recommend it to our customers. 

We use 365 Defender to manage organization-level devices and vendor security compliance. We are a retail-focused organization that offers cloud services through Azure, GCP, and AWS, but we manage all the security through 365 Defender. Some of our users are based in other countries, and everything is centralized. We operate in multiple regions. 

We can easily track any other malicious activities or additional applications that will prevent it. We can get it here. It will be a helpful tool once we create policies for DLP and third-party programs. 

365 Defender stops the lateral movement of advanced attacks. It prevents something that happens on the device level from affecting us on the organization level. The solution enables us to track all the details, like the IPs and the device types. 

365 Defender helps us deal with unknown threats by creating custom policies, which enable us to block access by specific unknown sources and unsafe links. 365 Defender has multi-tenant capabilities, and we have multiple tenants, but I'm only involved in the retail part, so I don't have authority over other tenants. 

We were able to discontinue some of our other security products when we implemented 365 Defender, but there are some exceptions. We can use non-Microsoft solutions when the customer requires it. Mostly, we use cloud solutions. We've saved some costs on the security side at the organizational level by reducing equipment costs. Using 365 Defender's automation capabilities, we can cut our vulnerability management time by about 40-50 percent. 

I like 365 Defender's advanced threat hunting. The dashboard is user-friendly with templates for site policies, etc. The most important use case is evaluating the risk links and applications. 

The cost can be high if you want to build custom license packages. Another area for improvement is the policies. In Azure, we need to implement policies in JSON format, but in 365 Defender 365, it would be helpful to use a different format so we can customize the platform.

I have used 365 Defender for more than two years. 

365 Defender can have some performance issues during enrollment. It can take a while at times, but sometimes it's duplicated immediately. That's an issue with some other cloud-based programs like Intune and Azure products. 

I rate Microsoft 365 Defender support nine out of 10. Their support representatives provide solutions based on priorities. They prefer to follow the proper SLA part. 

Positive

The deployment is quick, straightforward, and involves only two people. 

Sometimes 365 Defender is expensive, but it can be moderate, depending on the organization's size and the license type. We're satisfied with the cost because it gives us a product that protects our entire environment with DLP. To compromise some cost, of course, we are to complete the most secure environment. 

I rate 365 Defender nine out of 10. 

We're using it for our email filtering to check incoming emails and URLs. We're also using it for vulnerability management to see the status of our assets that are registered on the system. We also check it to see what kinds of threats and campaigns are currently being launched via emails.

It provides us with better insight into what's going on across our platform. It has also given us a very easy way to respond when threats or alerts come through. And when looking for someone in particular, it helps with that. It hugely improved our insight into what's going on inside the company's premises and environments.

365 Defender also helps find high-value alerts, but we haven't used it for complete automation. It has some automation features where it can try to block or quarantine things, but beyond the default automation configuration, we haven't explored deeper into using automation. The default settings work well.

And while we've always used one or two dashboards, this system has made it easier to have a quick overview on a single platform.

In addition, the threat intelligence helps prepare you for potential threats, to a certain limit, because it gives you insights into where your shortcomings are, your vulnerabilities. It also gives you some security recommendations to make improvements.

And the solution has decreased our time to respond because on high alerts you can get a quick response. The system will notify you very quickly if it detects something at a certain thread level or a custom threat level that you set.

Microsoft 365 Defender has a very great interface to help protect registered devices when it comes to web protection, which is very handy.

We also use the alert systems often. It's a great threat intelligence source for us, providing alerts for things it detects on the network and on the machines. We've used it often when there is a potential incident to see what was done on a computer. That works quite nicely because you can see everything that the user has done, including websites accessed, et cetera. And if something was on the machine, we can see what it was trying to do.

I use the alert system on a daily basis. It gives you a very good analysis of where something was found, which employee or which device. And it often gives you a good history on that. The alerts help me to monitor and check what is going on. That's a very valuable system to have.

We've also tried the attack simulation, which sends out phishing emails internally as a test to see how the users respond. We get feedback and use the training simulation as a result. We've only done that once, and it's something we want to work on a little more.

In addition, we're using the assets on the system as well as the inventory functionality. It checks all the machines to see what software is installed on them.

We've used a lot of the features on the cloud, although not everything to its full potential, but we've used 70 to 80 percent of all the features on the cloud.

In the beginning, it's difficult to navigate the system because it is quite large. Just trying to find your way and understand how the system works can be hard. After spending quite a lot of time searching it's a lot easier, but I wish it were a bit more user-friendly when you're trying to find things.

The information it provides is great, but for a newcomer, it is quite tedious and takes a long time to load. Here in South Africa, when you click, oftentimes you have to wait quite some time before you get to the next page. It's not necessarily internet-related. I think it's just that the service is a bit slow.

Also, while the solution does help to prioritize threats, unfortunately, it doesn't do so for the entire environment. The reason is that it only supports full integration from Windows 10 and up. It provides you certain information from your server environment, but when you start going with legacy services, it is a bit lacking.

Another issue that is sometimes a headache is that they constantly make changes. Things will be merged, they will get different names, or be moved around. Things will be added and other things go somewhere else. They do a lot of development to make the product better, but it's very frustrating having to search for stuff after they've moved it, because you don't always know that they have moved things. They might have little banners, but if you're just working and don't read them, you don't know where things have gone. 

I would also really like to see better integration with the server platforms for managing your server environment. That's something it currently doesn't do. For all the server environments, you either need to make use of group policies or SCCM to manage that independently. It can provide you information on the system, but it doesn't have control over your server line.

Also, I make use of 365 Defender on a business level and on a personal level. On the personal level, there is a lot less functionality. Something that would be very nice is that, for the level you are on, you would only see the product you are subscribed to. For instance, if you log on via the business, you have all your action areas, anything you can do and see, on the left. Because you're using it at a corporate level, you can see and do everything. On the personal level, or in a small business where you're only using some of the features, you still have all the same options, but when you click on them, it tells you that you need to upgrade or subscribe. They should only show you what you have access to, and not all the tabs and then say, "You need to subscribe to get access to this." It just clutters the whole area.

We have been using Microsoft 365 Defender for about two years.

Overall, it has 95 percent stability. We don't have any issues with it. It works well. Microsoft does provide frequent information when there are issues or delays. But the stability is very good.

We're still learning a lot about its capabilities. It's more capable than what we use it for. That is due to a restriction on our resources and availability to get to know the system even better.

We have contacted Microsoft tech support multiple times. They are quick to respond to the original request. Sometimes I have been quite surprised because they have replied within 15 minutes. Some of the questions we had were resolved quickly, on the order of 60 minutes. I had one that took almost two years to get resolved. But in general, they are quick to respond. Their support is very good and quick.

Positive

Before 365 Defender, we made use of Avast as our antivirus, which had its own web console. For malware protection, we used an on-prem Cisco IronPort system that was scanning all our emails. And most of our SIEM logging information was done manually. We had much less insight into what was going on in the company.

Because it was a new solution for us, we had a company that works with Microsoft assist us, to make sure that all the configurations were standard. But since then, we've maintained most of it ourselves. On our side there were no more than five people involved.

It's a very expensive product, but for any threat it has definitely stopped or protected us from, in that sense, it has saved money and time, by preventing things that could have happened. But is it affordable? No, it's expensive.

If you look at everything that the solution entails, and the big cost to companies, especially medium-sized companies, one would like to have a bit of a price decrease due to economic circumstances. The functionality is fantastic, but for medium and small-sized companies it's overpriced. It would be better if it were a little bit cheaper.

We did look at other solutions. In the end, we decided on 365 Defender because it was all integrated. It worked to our advantage because all the products that we needed were already on the machines. All the products that you get from the Defender area are part of the built-in Windows 10 features. It gave us a better way of controlling and managing things. Overall, it made more sense to have one central place to manage and control and be alerted.

My advice is don't be frightened when you start getting into the solution. If you are not used to the environment, it is a mouthful, and it can really scare your socks off. There's just so much to it that you won't really know where to start.

The best thing I can recommend to anybody who is starting is to get somebody who knows the system to give you a walkthrough. Also, look at the tutorials to see what the functionalities are. It will be beneficial for any person to get a good overview of what's going on in 365 Defender, the capabilities and how it looks. But getting in contact with somebody who has some experience already in using it will help you to ask where to find things. "Where do I go from here? Show me how you're set up, so I can at least see some of the functionalities."

My very first impression of 365 Defender was that I was looking for something, but I didn't even know where to start. It was too overwhelming. As I spoke to other people who knew about the system, they gave me an overview and that made it easier for me to understand and to know where to go.

365 Defender is our main deployment, but we've got the endpoints also connected on Intune. They work together to deliver coordinated detection and response in our environment. Our complete suite is pretty much all Microsoft. Our environment is a 50/50 hybrid. We use Intune for certain policy changes and some of the deployments. But because our environment has a lot of legacy systems, we make use of the normal, on-prem deployment services as well.

Sentinel is linked to our on-premises Active Directory. It helps identify things that are happening on-prem. For example, when a user's account instance gets locked out, it will show you, on Defender, from which local machine it was locked out. Or if certain things are accessed, it will show that information on the on-prem Active Directory. It works well. For investigating and responding to threats, it definitely helps by dumping the information in a centralized location with the alerts to identify a bit more flow pattern. If something happens that's not on the cloud area, but it's on-prem, it helps track and identify movement. The information from Sentinel is an added bonus.

Overall, Defender 365 has saved us time, compared to the old ways of doing things, but at the same time, I wish the site was faster. Sometimes it can be very slow.

Best-of-breed solutions versus a single vendor's suite comes down to personal experience. With best-of-breed, at least you know that they have been tested in the industry and have a lot of history behind them. Also, the redundancy would be a lot better. Going with a single vendor sometimes makes it a little bit difficult, especially if they are only focusing on one area. It's a difficult question. It might come down to the way someone was "brought up" in the security industry or the way that they trust these companies.

I give Microsoft 365 Defender a nine out of 10. Once you get to know the system, it's really awesome. It provides a lot of insights.