Microsoft Defender (Office 365) and Palo Alto Networks WildFire offer threat protection, however, they target different areas of security. Defender focuses on cloud-based threats within Microsoft 365 applications, while WildFire is a broader network security solution with sandboxing capabilities for analyzing suspicious files. They can be considered complementary solutions.
The summary above is based on 99 interviews we conducted recently with Palo Alto Networks WildFire and Microsoft Defender for Office 365 users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365's most valuable feature is its performance."
"Microsoft Defender has a feature to protect each and every attachment. Even if it's an encrypted attachment, it will check for any potential threats."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Office 365 helps people to work remotely. It is a secure solution. We don't need to use our company's computers or get VPN connections to the networks. I can control how they share screens and what they send to the devices. It keeps our organizations confidential and sensitive information safe."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is the ease of use."
"Our customers are satisfied with Defender for 365 because Microsoft products are easy to use and customize to meet the client's needs. Everything is in one place, so we can adjust policies as needed for phishing, DLP, ATP, or any other security features that our clients want to apply."
"At the moment we are satisfied with this product. It's a stable, scalable, and resilient solution for us."
"I would say that 90% of the spam and phishing attack emails get blocked right off the bat."
"Whole team can use the firewall and understand it."
"The cloud-based services are a nice feature."
"The analysis is very fast."
"Stability is never a concern."
"It has a user-friendly interface."
"We have found that Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable. We currently have six thousand users for the product."
"The most valuable feature for us is the VPN."
"We get support in the free version."
"Too many false positives and lacks an accurate capability to detect malicious SharePoint sites."
"This product's effectiveness could be improved, in terms of detecting unwanted spam or even malware between the emails, compared to other products."
"I'd like some additional features any product can give me to protect our environment in a better way."
"One area for improvement is integration. For example, when it comes to external SaaS platforms, we were not able to get a lot of information on integrations with such apps for security and authentication."
"The certification training for Defender for 365 needs to be deeper and incorporate Sentinel. I took all the security courses except one, and Sentinel isn't included."
"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."
"The phishing and spam filters could use some improvement."
"Microsoft should provide more documentation for users so they can self-educate. I would like to see more documentation for advanced security features."
"The price could be better."
"The threat intelligence that we receiving in the reporting was not as expected. We were expecting more. Additionally, we should be able to whitelist a specific file based on a variety of attributes."
"The configuration should be made a little bit easier. I understand why it is as it is, but there should be a way to make it easier from the user side."
"There are more specialized solutions that compete with Wildfire. Therefore, they need to work on their machine learning and AI to be more competitive."
"High availability features are lacking."
"The price of WildFire should be reduced in order to make it more affordable for our customers."
"In the future, I would like to see more automation in the reporting."
"The size of Palo Alto's cloud is big but it could be easier to use from a product management perspective."
More Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is ranked 1st in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 41 reviews while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is ranked 3rd in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 58 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks WildFire is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Office 365 writes "Allows for easy reporting of problems, valuable anti-phishing, and anti-malware support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks WildFire writes "Good technical support and provides automatic analysis that saves us time in filtering email". Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is most compared with Proofpoint Email Protection, Mimecast Email Security, Microsoft Exchange Online Protection (EOP), Cisco Secure Email and Barracuda Email Security Gateway, whereas Palo Alto Networks WildFire is most compared with Cisco Secure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate, Juniper SRX Series Firewall, Proofpoint Email Protection and Cloudflare. See our Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs. Palo Alto Networks WildFire report.
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