We performed a comparison between Check Point Harmony Endpoint 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: Check Point Harmony has a slight edge in this comparison. According to its reviewers, its interface is friendlier than that of Defender for Endpoint.
"The solution was relatively easy to deploy."
"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."
"Additionally, when it comes to EDR, there are more tools available to assist with client work."
"The main thing is that I feel safe. Because the processes that have been used to get a handle on the attackers are much better than other competitors"
"The console is easy to read. I also like the scanning part and the ability to move assets from one to the other."
"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."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The ease of deployment and configuration is valuable. It's very easy compared to other vendors like Sophos. Sophos' configuration is complex. Fortinet is a lot easier to understand. You don't need a lot of admin knowledge to do the configuration."
"The main advantage of the solution is the ability to implement complete security policies for the terminals in order to address how apps are installed on corporate devices."
"The product improved the overall security of our organization with the features like sandboxing and phishing prevention."
"The solution has good threat intelligence features."
"The most valuable features of the solution are web protection and threat prevention."
"Check Point Endpoint Security helps us ensure device control and security. It helps us make sure users can access only the network resources they should be accessing and keep malware to a minimum."
"The most valuable feature is forensics."
"It prevents the most imminent threats to the endpoint such as ransomware, phishing or drive-by malware, while quickly minimizing breach impact with autonomous detection and response."
"It is integrated with a cloud platform that takes advantage of many emulation features in real-time filtering of malicious attacks."
"This is a very go, proactive solution to threat protection using advanced analysis."
"It integrates very well with all Windows workstations or other Microsoft Endpoint products. It also works quite well. So far, I have not had any issue that hasn't been sorted out. It doesn't use too many resources, so you don't have to install different things."
"The features I have found most valuable are the ransomware and malware protection. The solution detects malware live and whenever it detects suspicious activity, it quarantines it."
"The best feature is the fact that for certain mobiles you can control your corporate profiles versus your personal profiles. That is amazingly important. Apple just supported the separation of corporate and personal profiles, whereas Android has been doing that for quite some time... Because Android supports that, if an Android phone is lost or stolen, I can wipe out all the corporate-related information from that phone and not touch the personal side. I can separate the apps and I can separate the ability to cut and paste between apps."
"We had Norton Antivirus before, and with Norton, we didn't have a way to centrally manage a lot of features. Defender allowed us to deploy it from our Office 365 admin console. That is probably the biggest thing that made us go with Defender."
"It can reach our applications and PC activities in the cloud."
"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."
"Defender is stable enough and is competitive with the other products in the market."
"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."
"The support needs improvement."
"Everything with Fortinet having to do with their cloud services. They need to invest more in their internal infrastructure that they are running in the cloud. One of the things I find with their cloud environment compared to others' is that they go cheap on the equipment. So it causes some performance degradation."
"Once, we had an event that was locked and blocked, but information about it came to us two or three days later."
"The security should be strong for the cloud. Some applications are on-prem and some are on the cloud. Fortinet should also have strong security for the cloud. There should be more security for the cloud."
"The EDR console should have more extensive reporting. You shouldn't need to purchase FortiAnalyzer. It should be included in the EDR part. The security adviser cloud platform could be improved with more options for exclusive or intensive rules for devices."
"Making the portal mobile friendly would be helpful when I am out of office."
"I would like the solution to extend beyond endpoint protection and include other attack surfaces such as other network components."
"It gives you an alert for malicious sites, which, after searching on the Google database, don't come out to be the same."
"I would like to see more automation."
"Technical support can be a bit slow at times."
"The solutions agent could have better performance, it is a little slow sometimes."
"I have a few issues when attempting to install Harmony on some of the machines."
"This is one of the most innovative solutions due to the fact that it includes many real-time content filtering features, management, and assurance of the transactions of what went in or out of our peripherals. That said, it is important to integrate other solutions to continue innovating in the market."
"The management in Check Point Harmony Endpoint could be improved."
"Endpoint vulnerability management is one of the modules I believe is missing and it is something that is required."
"Defender could be more secure and stable."
"I would just like them to have more consistency, and that's a comment that's across the board with Microsoft. They change things a lot."
"Features like device inventory continue to lack essential workstation drill-downs showing the entire device information with the least effort."
"Its user interface (UI) can be improved. Currently, in the console, you have to dig down for certain things. They've got many different layers to get to things instead of having it all on the surface. You have to go three folds lower to get to specific functionality or click a particular option. It would be good if we can manage the console through menus and instead of three clicks, we can do things in one click. They need to change the UI and work on it in terms of a better user experience."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is secure but when it comes to security all solutions could improve security."
"It would be nice to have a paid upgrade that would provide additional screening of the day-to-day activities."
"I had some cases a while back and told an agent my issue. When I called the next day, I had to explain everything again to a different person, so I found it annoying to repeat myself all over."
"In terms of improvement, they update the platform it seems quite a bit. Every month something is in a new spot or something changed somewhere. There should be less of that."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point Harmony Endpoint is ranked 8th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 101 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. Check Point Harmony Endpoint is rated 8.8, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Check Point Harmony Endpoint writes "Excellent anti-ransomware protection, zero-day phishing protection, and web browsing filtering". 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". Check Point Harmony Endpoint is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, SentinelOne Singularity Complete and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete and Trend Micro Apex One. See our Check Point Harmony 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.
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.