We performed a comparison between Fortinet Forticlient 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: Both solutions have a valuable set of features and are considered to have good pricing. Users seem to give Fortinet Forticlient slightly better ratings because its deployment is easier than that of Microsoft Defender For Endpoint.
"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."
"The product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls."
"Forensics is a valuable feature of Fortinet FortiEDR."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"Fortinet FortiEDR's scalability is quite good, and you can add licenses to the solution."
"Fortinet FortiEDR's firewalling, rule creation, monitoring, and inspection profiles are great."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"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."
"I find all of the features valuable."
"This is a solid and stable solution."
"FortiClient is very easy, useful, and practical."
"The most valuable feature is the single pane of glass, single point of management."
"From my perspective as an end user, it's consistently stable, and I would rate the stability as a nine out of ten."
"The stability is pretty good."
"Overall Fortinet FortiClient has good functionality."
"The configuration is the most valuable feature."
"I find the vulnerability management section of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint to be very useful for organizations."
"The most valuable features are the Windows Firewall and the regular virus definition updates. These features are very helpful and have helped to improve our security."
"Because it has been integrated with the OS, we get the entire software inventories, and we even get access to the registries. Those are the primary features."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is free and part of the licensing stack of other Microsoft products."
"The attack surface reduction rules are the most valuable. We're able to have unattended remediation actions when the solution works side by side with a local antivirus like Microsoft Defender or Kaspersky. The attack surface reduction rules help us to proactively block and stop threats."
"This product is flexible, and it is very easy to get updates from the Microsoft website."
"It can reach our applications and PC activities in the cloud."
"The fact that it's from Microsoft, you don't have many false positives, unlike products from other vendors might have."
"I think cloud security and SASE are areas of concern in the product where improvements are required. The tool's cloud version has to be improved in terms of the security it offers."
"Once, we had an event that was locked and blocked, but information about it came to us two or three days later."
"Integration with Azure and SaaS provisioning tools could improve Fortinet FortiEDR."
"They can include the automation for the realtime updates. We have a network infrastructure with remote sites. Whenever they send updates, they are not automated. We have to go into the console and push those updates. I wish it was more automated. The update file is currently around 31 MB. It could be smaller."
"The SIEM could be improved."
"The solution is not stable."
"Detections could be improved."
"ZTNA can improve latency."
"The solution requires skillful users."
"An area of improvement could be better integration with the active directory. I did not find it easy to configure."
"The pricing could use improvement."
"The product's performance and pricing could be better."
"I would like for the next release to be more user-friendly for users to do not have as much of a technical background."
"There is room for improvement by increasing the solution's knowledge base."
"I have yet to find the benefits of the latest upgraded version."
"While I cannot think of new features to add, it would be nice if the reports were improved, to have these sent automatically."
"The profiling method currently in use is not very user-friendly and has ample scope for improvement."
"The application control feature requires improvement."
"I am not sure if I will be using this product in the future because of the price."
"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."
"It's not easy to create special allowances for certain groups of users. It can be a little heavy-handed in some areas where Microsoft has decided to lock a feature out, meaning they make it hard to make an exception... One company we work with needed to use about 20 different thumb drives for about 20 users. To make that exception for them was very difficult. In fact, you can't really make an exception. But what you can do is allow them to use it and, while it will still alert, you can actually suppress those alerts."
"The system can always be simplified and have a better integration check. More detailed reports would be good. When it does the integrated check, it just shows if the system is okay but I want to know what happened."
"I would like to see online updates for patches for this solution. I would also like to see online information about what is trending in the market in terms of spams, viruses, or trojans. It takes some time to understand how this solution works. A few things are unclear at the beginning, such as whether it actually restricts the virus or spam at the initial stage, or when there is a security update, how will we come to know and how will it get synchronized. It would be really helpful if there is some kind of knowledge base in the form of video, audio, or document that can explain in a user-friendly way the setup, features, risks, and process to mitigate the risks. Currently, I have installed endpoint security for every individual system. I could not install it like other endpoint solutions where we have a server and a client. It would be really helpful if Microsoft Windows Defender has a server-client based model so that I can save some bandwidth when it downloads or uploads features. It will be helpful if we have a LAN-based or WAN-based controlling system."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
Fortinet FortiClient is ranked 16th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 85 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. Fortinet FortiClient is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiClient writes "Easy to set up and user-friendly with good support ". 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". Fortinet FortiClient is most compared with OpenVPN Access Server, Microsoft Azure VPN Gateway, Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, Ivanti Connect Secure and CrowdStrike Falcon, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete and Microsoft Intune. See our Fortinet FortiClient vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
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