We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender For Endpoint and Sophos Intercept X based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Sophos Intercept X comes out on top. While the Microsoft Defender For Endpoint solution is good, it lacks in certain areas that Sophos Intercept X don’t have to worry about. Overall, users of Sophos Intercept X have mainly positive feedback on the product, agreeing that its set of features is excellent.
"Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance."
"Forensics is a valuable feature of Fortinet FortiEDR."
"I get alerts when scripts are detected in the environment."
"Fortinet is very user-friendly for customers."
"The features that I have found most valuable are the ability to customize it and to reduce its size. It lets you run in a very small window in terms of memory and resources on legacy cash registers."
"Fortinet FortiEDR's scalability is quite good, and you can add licenses to the solution."
"The console is easy to read. I also like the scanning part and the ability to move assets from one to the other."
"Ability to get forensics details and also memory exfiltration."
"The solution has very good usability."
"This solution is easy to configure."
"The base product and the anti-malware feature are most valuable."
"Technical support is responsive and adept."
"The updates and a lot of the day-to-day fiddling that you would have to do with it, can all be done from the cloud so it's easy to manage, and very easy to administer."
"What I have found the most valuable about Sophos Intercept X is the ease of use with management administration and the solution's ability to stop exploits and ransomware."
"It's quite simple to use and user friendly."
"The solution is scalable."
"The folders and files protection are its most valuable features. These have been valuable because of the increase in ransomware attacks. With these two features, I can ensure that no changes have been made to our system or endpoint folders and files without the user being aware."
"It is quite stable. We have not had any cases, i.e., viruses, that would require a reboot, etc. We have never had a situation where we needed to reinstall the tools as a result of the Defender application or a feature being corrupt."
"Defender's analytics are much better than CrowdStrike's."
"We have liked the fact that it comes with Microsoft Windows 10 and it is constantly updated with all new virus definitions. It is also updated with new security features on a regular basis."
"It is easy to use because it is already pre-installed in Windows 10. We don't have to do anything to configure it. You can also configure the firewall by using a group policy so that it can be easily adopted in an environment."
"It is easy to install and use requiring little maintenance but applying updates."
"The best part is that it is built into Windows, whether it is a server base or a desktop base, which gives more control over the operating system. Because Defender, the operating system, and the Office solution are by Microsoft, everything is working like hand-in-glove. Its administrative overhead is less because a desktop user has already got some experience of how to handle a Microsoft Defender notification or administer it."
"Defender is stable, I haven't had any problems with viruses when using it, and it's easy to update."
"There's room for improvement in the quick response time and technical support for integration issues, especially when dealing with multiple vendors."
"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."
"Detections could be improved."
"ZTNA can improve latency."
"Intelligence aspects need improvement"
"Once, we had an event that was locked and blocked, but information about it came to us two or three days later."
"I would like the solution to extend beyond endpoint protection and include other attack surfaces such as other network components."
"FortiEDR can be improved by providing more detailed reporting."
"It should offer better security updates."
"The ADR functionalities feel like they aren't mature enough. It hasn't been a long time since Sophos has offered reproduction. Due to the fact that it's so young, it has fewer functionalities than other and more mature ADR solutions."
"The performance offered by the product needs improvement."
"There are not any solutions that are a 10 out of 10. A 10 would be perfect protection with no impact on the performance of the device. This is not the case, there is some impact on the performance of the device."
"Features that should be improved in the upgrade involve the excessive consumption of the the solution's processor, RAM and resources."
"The initial setup was not very user-friendly."
"There should be a report including a flowchart or diagram. It will be useful to evaluate the software’s effectiveness."
"The solution is expensive, and it could be made cheaper."
"It can be more secure."
"Features like device inventory continue to lack essential workstation drill-downs showing the entire device information with the least effort."
"I would like Microsoft to have some kind of direct integration for USB controls. They have GPO and other controls to control the access of the USB drives on devices, but if there is something that can be directly implemented into the portal, it would be good. There should be a way to control via a cloud portal or something like that in a dynamic way. USB control for data exfiltration would be a good feature to implement. Currently, there are ways to do it, but it involves too many different things. You have to implement it via GPOs and other stuff, and then you move or copy those big files via Defender ATP. If there is a simple way of implementing those features, it would be great."
"We encountered some misbehavior between Microsoft Office Suite and Defender. We had issues of old macros being blocked and some stuff going around the usage of Win32 APIs. There is some improvement between the Office products and Defender, and there is a bunch of stuff that you can configure in your antivirus solutions, but you have several baselines, such as security baselines for Edge, security baselines for Defender, and security baselines for MDM. You have configuration profiles as well. So, there a lot of parts where we can configure our antivirus solution, and we're getting conflicting configurations. This is the major part with which we're struggling in this solution. We are having calls and calls with Microsoft for getting rid of all configuration conflicts that we have. That's really the part that needs to be improved."
"The management console is something that can be improved."
"Auto recovery is the most important feature that we would need from this solution. For decryption, similar to Malwarebytes, there should be something to be able to recover the data up to the last normal status. Its ability to recover data to the last normal copy must not exceed 5 to 10 minutes."
"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."
"Localization is always a challenge, especially with new products you typically want. Solutions are designed to be deployed where the most licenses are being consumed, such as in the United States. They focus on US products, devices, and networks. Specialized deployments for other countries would allow for a smoother experience in transition."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
Intercept X Endpoint is ranked 7th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 101 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. Intercept X Endpoint is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Intercept X Endpoint writes "A standard offering with good threat analysis but reduces machine performance". 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". Intercept X Endpoint is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, Fortinet FortiClient and Seqrite Endpoint Security, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, Trellix Endpoint Security, SentinelOne Singularity Complete and Fortinet FortiClient. See our Intercept X Endpoint vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) vendors and best Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vendors.
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