We performed a comparison between Cisco SecureX and Microsoft 365 Defender based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Cisco SecureX earns high marks for its automated utilities, comprehensive visibility, and seamless integration with external resources. Microsoft 365 Defender offers effortless integration with other Microsoft solutions. Users praised its flexibility and comprehensive protection against multiple threat types. Users say Cisco SecureX needs better documentation and integration with on-premises systems. It would also benefit by expanding its compatibility with third-party solutions. Microsoft 365 Defender could upgrade its machine learning and AI capabilities. Some users suggested adopting Zero Trust features.
Service and Support: Some users describe Cisco support as dependable and efficient, while others noted a decline in quality due to personnel changes. Some of our reviewers were satisfied with Microsoft support, but others complained about slow responses and lackluster problem-solving capabilities.
Ease of Deployment: Setting up Cisco SecureX is generally considered to be straightforward in cloud environments, but it requires more effort to integrate the solution with on-premise products. Setting up Microsoft 365 Defender is potentially complex and may involve integrating with existing policies. Some users reported longer deployment times.
Pricing: A few users said Cisco SecureX’s price could be lower, given that it is included for free with certain Cisco products. Some users say that Microsoft 365 Defender is good value, but others perceive it as more expensive than similar competing products.
ROI: Cisco SecureX provides a positive ROI by speeding up detection and resolution. It also decreases workloads through automation and proactive information gathering. Microsoft 365 Defender offers savings, attack prevention, consolidation of security measures, and proactive threat detection.
Comparison Results: Our users recommend Cisco SecureX over Microsoft 365 Defender due to its data consolidation, centralized platform, automation tools, and affordability. In contrast, Microsoft 365 Defender has received mixed reviews regarding its complexity, pricing, and support. Cisco SecureX appears to offer a more comprehensive and user-friendly solution.
"Using SecureX, a tool provided by Cisco, we can easily integrate it with many of our other Cisco products such as Cisco ISE and many networking devices."
"Integrates well with our existing security infrastructure."
"One of the most valuable features is the simplicity of deploying SecureX. It's very easy to do that and then you gain very detailed visibility into everything that's going on in your network and, obviously, at the device level. There's just a wealth of information that you can pull from all of these products that are part of SecureX. You know exactly if you have an issue or not."
"SecureX enables us to have all the threat intelligence and threat event data in one place."
"The automation and orchestration tools are the most valuable features."
"Our customers find the product's third-party integrations valuable. Our customers are also impressed with the tool's capability to pick up third-party threat feeds and use that as part of the decision-making process."
"It has evolved a lot, just that monitoring piece to the current Orchestrator piece. The additional analytics are there. They now have something called Insight, which can basically take data from Microsoft Azure AD and Intune to give us information about our endpoints. This is detailed information about the endpoints, from Secure Endpoint and all these different products. So, it is just constantly evolving. Every time that it evolves, we have more information with more visibility. There are more features that we have that just make everything so much easier, and it is in one place. I don't have to keep going back and forth. I don't have to go to Secure Endpoint and ISE to get the data. I don't have to go to Intune on Microsoft to get the information. It is all in one place."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to manage all the applications and visibility. For example, if there is malware, spam, or another component that wants to attack the company in my servers, network, or applications, then SecureX will react to the problem."
"The ability to integrate and observe a more cohesive narrative across the products is crucial."
"The integration with other Microsoft solutions is the most valuable feature."
"From the perspective of Microsoft 365 XDR, the main benefit is a single, centralized dashboard offering the holistic visibility organizations crave."
"We are able to consolidate licences and make use of many Microsoft products using this solution. If we have any Microsoft customers, we encourage them to use this solution for enterprise defence."
"My clients like Defender's file integrity monitoring. They're monitoring Windows and Linux system files."
"The product is very easy to use."
"Having a single pane of glass for all Microsoft security services makes everything much easier. A security analyst can go to a single portal and see everything in one view. The integration of everything into one portal is a huge benefit."
"The most valuable features are spam filtering, attachment filtering, and antivirus protection."
"The playbooks provided with the product are great, although I would appreciate having more playbooks available. Threats are constantly evolving, so having access to updated playbooks is crucial."
"One of the improvements the product needs is more integration with collaboration platforms."
"I'm not sure that I would call it a bug, but sometimes the solution is a little slow."
"The front-end work controls the new algorithm and the firewall rules. The search feature of these rules could be improved."
"what's missing right now is the multi-tenant capability."
"For us, the biggest sticking point is that the product is not being designed for multi-tenancy use at present, from an MSP perspective."
"The documentation can be improved and the on-prem integration. The set of applications that it was integrated with wasn't comprehensive."
"If they could make the Cisco Umbrella piece a little bit more advanced or easier to manage, that would help. We use it for filtering and when you compare it to a normal content filter, it lacks some functionality."
"I would like more of the features in Defender for 365 to be included in the smaller licenses. Even if I buy a small license and don't need everything, security shouldn't be a question. Security is one of the main aspects of all projects from our side, so it would be nice to have more features in the smaller licenses."
"There could be a way to proactively monitor unusual activity ."
"The Defender agent itself is more compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11. Other than these two lines, there are so many compatibility issues. Security is not only about Microsoft. The core technical aspects of it are quite good, but it would be good if they can better support non-Microsoft solutions in terms of putting the agents directly into VMware and other virtualization solutions. There should be more emphasis on RHEL and other operating systems that we use, other than Windows, in the server category."
"The tool gives inconsistent answers and crashes a lot."
"Customers say they want absolutely seamless integration between other Microsoft solutions and Defender XDR, including the ability to change device settings within the Defender portal. They need to contact the IT team responsible for the device management tools to change some settings. They would prefer that those changes be initiated directly from the Defender portal or applied from Intune without involving the IT operations team."
"What could be improved in Microsoft 365 Defender is its licensing, e.g. it should be more consolidated and would be good if it has some optimizations. Improving the alerts and notifications, in terms of adding more details, would also be good for this solution."
"The onboarding and offboarding need improvement. I work with other vendors as well, and they have an option to add a device or remove a device from the portal, whereas with Microsoft 365 Defender, we need to do that manually. However, once you do that, everything can be controlled through the portal, but getting the device onboarded and offboarded is currently manual. If we have an option to simply remove a device from the portal or get a device added from the portal, it would be more convenient. The rest of the features are similar. This is the only area where I found it different from others. I would also like to be able to simply filter with a few of the queries that are already there."
"The user interface of Microsoft 365 Defender could improve. They could make it simpler."
Cisco SecureX is ranked 14th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 13 reviews while Microsoft Defender XDR is ranked 5th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 78 reviews. Cisco SecureX is rated 9.0, while Microsoft Defender XDR is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Cisco SecureX writes "Gives our customers visibility and they don't have to go multiple management consoles anymore". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender XDR writes "Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot". Cisco SecureX is most compared with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, Trend Vision One, Splunk SOAR, Cisco Secure Network Analytics and Fortinet FortiSOAR, whereas Microsoft Defender XDR is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, Wazuh and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks. See our Cisco SecureX vs. Microsoft Defender XDR report.
See our list of best Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vendors.
We monitor all Extended Detection and Response (XDR) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
