Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Symantec Endpoint Security comparison

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Fortinet Logo
10,056 views|7,518 comparisons
82% willing to recommend
Microsoft Logo
60,745 views|47,911 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
Broadcom Logo
17,737 views|14,849 comparisons
80% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 30, 2024

We compared Symantec Endpoint Security and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint based on our users' reviews across several parameters.

Symantec Endpoint Security is praised for its robust protection, advanced threat detection, and comprehensive coverage, but users suggest improvements in integration, interface, scanning speed, and resource utilization. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint receives high ratings for its security measures, integration, interface, and customer support, but users note the need for enhancements in system performance, user interface, and threat detection capabilities. Pricing for both products is deemed justified, with positive ROI reported by users.

Features: Symantec Endpoint Security stands out for its advanced threat detection and comprehensive security functionalities. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is valued for its seamless integration with other Microsoft products, efficient threat detection, and user-friendly interface.

Pricing and ROI: Symantec Endpoint Security's setup cost is justified by its strong features, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers competitive pricing with a reasonable setup cost. Symantec's licensing is flexible, while Microsoft's process is user-friendly. Symantec Endpoint Security users praised its positive ROI, citing good value, cyber threat prevention, and time/resource savings. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint also delivers strong ROI, with users reporting valuable outcomes.

Room for Improvement: Symantec Endpoint Security has room for improvement in integration with security tools, interface usability, scanning speed, and resource utilization. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could enhance system performance, user interface, threat detection, scanning efficiency, and advanced threat prevention.

Deployment and customer support: Users find that setting up Symantec Endpoint Security takes longer than setting up Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Some users of Microsoft Defender reported varying durations, with some needing three months for deployment and a week for setup, while others required only a week for both. Symantec Endpoint Security offers responsive and efficient customer support, praised for prompt solutions to technical issues. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is highly praised for its knowledgeable support team and effective assistance.

The summary above is based on 208 interviews we conducted recently with Symantec Endpoint Security and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Symantec Endpoint Security Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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.""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 product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls.""We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats.""The setup is pretty simple.""It is a scalable solution...The initial setup of Fortinet FortiEDR was straightforward.""The most valuable feature is the analysis, because of the beta structure.""Having all monitoring, response, tracking, and mitigation tools in one dashboard provides our analysts and SOC team with a comprehensive view at a glance."

More Fortinet FortiEDR Pros →

"It depends on the licensing. Most of the customers have got at least a 365 E3 license, and they can use most of the features of Windows 10 Defender. So, anyone who has got an enterprise license can start using those features. Some of the customers have got E5 licenses, and they can use all advanced features. Customers with E5 licenses use the advanced site protection (ATP) features and web content filtering without going via a proxy, which gives the benefit of replacing the proxy. They can get the benefit of MCAS and integration with Intune and the endpoint manager. It is a kind of single platform for all 365 technologies. It helps customers in managing everything through a unified portal.""Microsoft Defender can block some viruses or malware. So, it can protect my files. It can save files on Office 365 OneDrive. I use encryption for some files, then I can recover them from OneDrive.""Stable endpoint manager, antivirus, and antimalware, with fast technical support and a straightforward setup.""I like the simplicity of the portal and the integration with Microsoft Intune. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy to use and implement.""The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is its ability to bring together all the data, providing more information than just antivirus hits.""It's pretty easy to scale.""The most valuable features are that it's easy to use and the updates are very simple.""Its real-time security is the most valuable."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pros →

"I like the additional features that come with it. The firewall feature and the encryption feature that they throw in are good as well. Another thing that I like about Symantec is that it runs on different platforms, not just on Windows.""Easy to use solution.""The anti-virus and firewall policies are the most valuable features of this solution.""The firewall, malware, and anti-virus protection have earned its keep in times past by catching the unexpected.""The fact that it has centralized management is the most valuable feature.""The most valuable feature is the virus and malware detection capability.""When they started they found it very easy; not easy to implement but easy to use. We started with the headquarters here and later we also implemented it for all the subsidiaries in the region, in other countries. They have a centralized solution, so they can help other countries in management.""Its response time is the most valuable. It is very quick."

More Symantec Endpoint Security Pros →

Cons
"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.""We'd like to see more one-to-one product presentations for the distribution channels.""ZTNA can improve latency.""I would like the solution to extend beyond endpoint protection and include other attack surfaces such as other network components.""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.""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""FortiEDR can be improved by providing more detailed reporting.""Integration with Azure and SaaS provisioning tools could improve Fortinet FortiEDR."

More Fortinet FortiEDR Cons →

"Lacks some additional integration.""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.""A challenge is that it is not a multi-tenant solution. Microsoft's tenant is a licensed tenant. I'm an MSSP. So, I have multiple customers. In Microsoft's world, that means that I can't just buy an E5 license and give that out to all my customers. That won't work because all of the customer data resides within a single tenant in Microsoft's world. Other products—such as SentinelOne, Palo Alto Cortex, CrowdStrike, et cetera—are multi-tenant. So, I can have it at the top of the pyramid for my analyst to look into it and see all the customers, but each customer's data is separate. If the customer wants to look at what we see, they would only see their data, whereas in the Microsoft world, if I've got multiple customers connected to the same Microsoft tenant, they would see everybody else's data, which is a privacy problem in Europe. It is not possible to share the data, and it is a breach of privacy.""Lowering the price would be an improvement.""The anti-ransomware features need to be improved upon.""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.""Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could improve by making the reporting better.""There is a lot of information to take in, and the portals tend to change quickly due to the fast-paced nature of the industry."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Cons →

"The management of the server is a bit complex.""We communicate with our local partners and they give us the license key. Then, we have to go to the portal and apply it, but sometimes it doesn't work. We then have to create a new administrative account and migrate all our endpoints. That is the only major issue we have been battling with.""Sometimes, when we are creating a new policy, some of the clients are not being updated with the latest policy.""Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we are no longer receiving the proper support.""It could use more feature parity between what is offered with their on-prem console as well as their hosted console.""I find the documentation on Symantec.com to be not very updated. It seems like Symantec focuses more on their product than on documentation.""Need to improved orchestration for broken clients fixes.""It would be nice to see more antivirus features for USB control."

More Symantec Endpoint Security Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "I know it is tough to get big budget additions up front, but I highly recommend deploying environment wide and adding the forensic service."
  • "There are no issues with the pricing."
  • "The price is comprable to other endpoint security solutions."
  • "The pricing is typical for enterprises and fairly priced."
  • "I'm not familiar with pricing, but it looks a bit costly compared to other vendors I think."
  • "The pricing is good."
  • "I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
  • "The hardware costs about €100,000 and about €20,000 annually for access."
  • More Fortinet FortiEDR Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The product is free of charge and comes integrated into Windows."
  • "The solution is free."
  • "This product is included in the pricing for Windows."
  • "If you don't purchase the advanced threat protection then there is no additional charge."
  • "It is affordable and comes in the Office 365 bundle."
  • "Microsoft Defender ATP is expensive."
  • "I pay for it through the Windows Professional or Standard license. It is a one-time cost for me, and I use the same license."
  • "When compared with other vendors, the pricing is very high."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I’d say SEP deserves the money."
  • "Regarding the licensing, it was important negotiate a long contract to get a more attractive price, including advanced support in case of crisis."
  • "What we have paid for this product is good value for the work and the services that they are providing to us."
  • "Licensing is per user. Therefore, it makes it easy to do licensing."
  • "It is the better product, even if it is a little on the higher side."
  • "It's not cheap."
  • "Pricing and licensing are important to us when choosing a product."
  • "Pricing and licensing for our country is very good. It's not that expensive and the endpoint security is very good. It's not as cheap as some others, but they are not as good."
  • More Symantec Endpoint Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:I suggest Fortinet’s FortiEDR over FortiClient for several reasons. For starters, FortiEDR guarantees solid protection… more »
    Top Answer: Having all monitoring, response, tracking, and mitigation tools in one dashboard provides our analysts and SOC team… more »
    Top Answer:The pricing is significantly high. The implementation of this solution required us to allocate additional funds beyond… more »
    Top Answer:Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface… more »
    Top Answer:We use Symantec because we do not use MS Enterprise products, but in my opinion, Microsoft Defender is a superior… more »
    Top Answer:The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push… more »
    Top Answer:Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very… more »
    Top Answer:The solution's application control feature is very, very powerful.
    Top Answer:Symantec Endpoint Security is a moderately priced solution. On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    enSilo, FortiEDR
    Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
    Symantec EPP, Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP)
    Learn More
    Interactive Demo
    Fortinet
    Demo Not Available
    Broadcom
    Demo Not Available
    Overview

    Fortinet FortiEDR is a real-time endpoint protection, detection, and automated response solution. Its primary purpose is to detect advanced threats to stop breaches and ransomware damage. It is designed to do so in real time, even on an already compromised device, allowing you to respond and remediate incidents automatically so your data can remain protected.

    Fortinet FortiEDR Features

    Fortinet FortiEDR has many valuable key features, including:

    • Easily customizable
    • Real-time proactive risk mitigation & IoT security
    • Pre-infection protection
    • Post-infection protection
    • Track applications and ratings
    • Reduce the attack surface with risk-based proactive policies
    • Achieve analysis of entire log history
    • Optional managed detection and response (MDR) service

    Fortinet FortiEDR Benefits

    Some of the key benefits of using Fortinet FortiEDR include:

    • Protection: Fortinet FortiEDR provides proactive, real-time, automated endpoint protection with the orchestrated incident response across platforms. It stops the breach with real-time postinfection blocking to protect data from exfiltration and ransomware encryption.

    • Single unified console: Fortinet FortiEDR has a single unified console with an intuitive interface, which makes management easier. The solution automates mundane endpoint security tasks so your employees don’t need to do it.

    • Cost savings: With Fortinet FortiEDR you can eliminate post-breach operational expenses and breach damage costs.

    • Flexibility: Fortinet FortiEDR can be deployed on premises or on a secure cloud instance. With Fortinet FortiEDR, endpoints are protected both on- and off-line.

    • Scalability: Because Fortinet can be deployed quickly and has a small footprint, it is easy to scale up to protect hundreds of thousand endpoints.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Fortinet FortiEDR users.

    An Owner at a security firm says, "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 customer has literally about 800 cash registers. That was the use case for Fortinet FortiEDR - to get that down into a tiny space. The only way to do that was to use this product because it had that ability to unbundle services that were a surplus.”

    Chandan M., Chief Technical Officer at Provision Technologies LLP, mentions, “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.” He also adds, “The security is also very good and the firewall response is good.”

    Harpreet S., Information Technology Support Specialist at Chemtrade Logistics, explains, "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."

    DeAndre V., Senior Network Administrator at a financial services firm, states, “The dashboard is easy to follow and use. The deployment and uninstalling were easy. I like the detailed information about the path of a file that might be suspicious. Being able to check that out was easy to follow. Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance.

    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for organizations. It offers real-time protection against various types of cyber threats, including malware, viruses, ransomware, and phishing attacks.

    With its powerful machine-learning capabilities, it can detect and block sophisticated attacks before they can cause any harm. The solution also includes endpoint detection and response (EDR) capabilities, allowing organizations to quickly investigate and respond to security incidents. It provides detailed insights into the attack timeline, enabling security teams to understand the scope and impact of an incident.

    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint also offers proactive threat hunting, allowing organizations to proactively search for and identify potential threats within their network. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft security solutions, such as Microsoft Defender XDR, to provide a unified and holistic security approach. With its centralized management console, organizations can easily deploy, configure, and monitor the security solution across their entire network.

    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a robust and scalable security solution that helps organizations protect their endpoints and data from evolving cyber threats.

    Symantec Endpoint Security is a robust and reliable product that provides complete protection against viruses, malware, Trojans, and malicious files. It offers application and device control, ease of use in deploying and updating, a central control console, stability, scalability, auto-discovery capabilities, patch management, endpoint detection and response capabilities, intrusion detection module. 

    The Symantec Global Intelligence Network (GIN) provides threat intelligence and detection across endpoints, email, and web traffic. It has helped organizations reduce downtime, increase productivity, and improve security posture. Symantec Endpoint Security is easy to use, has a flexible administration, and offers more value than expected.

    Sample Customers
    Financial, Healthcare, Legal, Technology, Enterprise, Manufacturing ... 
    Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
    Audio Visual Dynamics, Red Deer Advocate, Asia Pacific Telecom Co. Ltd., Kibbutz Ein Gedi, and AMETEK, Inc.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Educational Organization5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm19%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization22%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Government8%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    University6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise34%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business40%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise43%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise45%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business43%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Symantec Endpoint Security
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Symantec Endpoint Security and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews while Symantec Endpoint Security is ranked 5th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 139 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0, while Symantec Endpoint Security is rated 7.6. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Symantec Endpoint Security writes "The solution has given us visibility into compliance within our whole system and helped us ensure everything is updated". Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Intercept X Endpoint, CrowdStrike Falcon, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet FortiClient, whereas Symantec Endpoint Security is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, Trend Micro Deep Security and Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business. See our Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Symantec Endpoint Security report.

    See our list of best Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) 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.