We performed a comparison between ESET Endpoint Security and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: ESET Endpoint Security ultimately won out in this comparison. Our reviewers agree that ESET Endpoint Security is easy to install and easy to use. In addition, it has excellent customer support.
"We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats."
"Fortinet has helped free up around 20 percent of our staff's time to help us out."
"It is a scalable solution...The initial setup of Fortinet FortiEDR was straightforward."
"he solution is an anti-malware product that integrates well with other vendor products such as firewalls, SIEM, etc. It captures threat intelligence and gives you better visibility. The product also has sandboxing features."
"It notifies us if there's any suspicious file on any PC. If any execution or similar kind of thing is happening, it just alerts us. It doesn't only alert. It also blocks the execution until we allow it. We check whether the execution is legitimate or not, and then approve it or keep it blocked. This gives us a little bit of control over this mechanism. Fortinet FortiEDR is also very straightforward and easy to maintain."
"It is stable and scalable."
"This is stable and scalable."
"I like FortiClient EMS. FortiEDR has a lot of great features like lockdown mode, remote wipes, and encryption. I can set malware outbreak policies and controls for detecting abnormalities. You can also simulate phishing attacks."
"The stability is great."
"The potential threat protection feature is the most valuable. In the event that one of my computers is not on the network and gets a virus, ESET Endpoint Security quickly detects the malware, and in most cases, it removes the virus. It also has the ability to remotely shut down the computer. I like the remote control part the most."
"I have found the ESET Management Console very good. It gives me many features, such as managing users and installing a new version."
"I find the main valuable feature to be the antivirus, it is very effective with removing viruses."
"I feel the solution to be beneficial in respect of features that I cannot find with SSTM's."
"It has a clean and clear interface."
"It can block certain web pages that may contain viruses or pose a threat to the computer."
"The product offers great reporting tools"
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that it is embedded into the Windows system. Additionally, the performance is good and simple to maintain."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is different from other security tools because we can configure it to use multiple types of scanning or archiving."
"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."
"The biggest benefit to Windows Defender is that it is built-in to the operating system by Microsoft."
"The threat hunting service is very useful for a security professional."
"The main features of this solution are that it handles everything by itself and is well integrated."
"There are some competitive products on the market, but the best is Microsoft Defender because it's very easy to integrate. That's one reason a lot of clients want Microsoft Defender. It's also very easy to implement compared to other solutions."
"It's absolutely free to use."
"We've encountered challenges during API deployment, occasionally resulting in unstable environments."
"The amount of usage, the number of details we get, or the number of options that can be tweaked is limited in comparison to that with other EDR solutions"
"It takes about two business days for initial support, which is too slow in urgent situations."
"The only minor concern is occasional interference with desired programs."
"Detections could be improved."
"The dashboard isn't easy to access and manage."
"The solution should address emerging threats like SQL injection."
"FortiEDR could add a separate scanning dashboard. In incident management, we prefer to remove the endpoint system from the environment and scan the system. We typically use Symantec for that, but if we want to use FortiEDR for that, then we need a scanning tab to clarify things."
"When users renew licenses, they should offer a discount."
"We have experienced some problems with the actualization of some endpoints. We then have to manually reinstall the version on these endpoints."
"We are looking to move towards an EDR solution rather than EPP. EDR is a solution that can dynamically detect threats based on the process behavior. It would be better if this solution was an EDR and an EPP solution, this would increase security protection."
"It seems to have some issues with updates. When you do updates, it sometimes requests for a reboot, and even when you do the reboot, it still says that you need to reboot. Currently, on my computer, it says that a new ESET Endpoint Antivirus has been installed, and I need to restart the computer for the changes to take effect, but I've already done that, and the same message is still there, which is a little annoying. It should have a feature similar to the Intercept X feature in Sophos."
"It can be hard to set up if you need to customize it."
"It would be useful if they could automate the deployment more."
"Its initial setup process could be more straightforward."
"They need to improve licensing for VMs. When ESET is uninstalled from a VM, the seat stays on the license management server. We have to manually delete the seat from that server because it doesn't know how to handle it. I contacted exclusive ESET support here in Croatia and they told me there is no solution for this yet."
"I would like to see the next generation of the tool improved to work with other operating systems, like Linux."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is secure but when it comes to security all solutions could improve security."
"Features like device inventory continue to lack essential workstation drill-downs showing the entire device information with the least effort."
"The profiling method currently in use is not very user-friendly and has ample scope for improvement."
"The central console needs improvement. Both McAfee and Symantec antivirus have dashboards. These integrate with a server and work on my antivirus or some other product. However, with Microsoft Defender, you use Microsoft Group Policy Object. Defender does not provide a central console. Therefore, if you implement Defender, then maybe use another tool for the central view."
"The end-user also cannot do some advanced actions on it. It's a little bit complicated for our end-user, so it needs to be simplified."
"The scalability could be improved - I would rate it between a seven and an eight."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint does not offer default templates for alerts, requiring us to configure everything ourselves to avoid numerous false positives."
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ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is ranked 11th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 97 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of ESET Endpoint Protection Platform writes "Easy to set up with good security and rapidly improving capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint writes "Eliminates the need to look at multiple dashboards by automatically providing one XDR dashboard to show the security score of each subscription". ESET Endpoint Protection Platform is most compared with Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, Check Point Harmony Endpoint and Fortinet FortiClient, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, CrowdStrike Falcon and Fortinet FortiClient. See our ESET Endpoint Protection Platform vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors, best Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) vendors, and best Anti-Malware Tools vendors.
We monitor all Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) 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.