We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Endpoint vs 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: Cisco Secure Endpoint received more favorable ratings in every comparison category.
"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."
"It is a scalable solution...The initial setup of Fortinet FortiEDR was straightforward."
"Fortinet has helped free up around 20 percent of our staff's time to help us out."
"Additionally, when it comes to EDR, there are more tools available to assist with client work."
"This is stable and scalable."
"Fortinet FortiEDR's firewalling, rule creation, monitoring, and inspection profiles are great."
"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."
"Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance."
"It provides real-time visibility and control over endpoints, allowing its users to promptly respond to any security incidents and remediate any vulnerabilities."
"The product provides sandboxing options like file reputation and file analysis."
"There are no issues or drops in the solution's performance...The solution's technical support was helpful."
"I am really satisfied with the technical support."
"Integration is a key selling factor for Cisco security products. We have a Cisco Enterprise Agreement with access to Cisco Email Security, Cisco Firepower, Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco Talos, Cisco Threat Grid, Cisco Umbrella, and also third-party solutions. This is key to our security and maximizing operations. Because we do have the Email Security appliance and it is integrated with Threat Response, we have everything tied together. Additionally, we are using the Cisco SecureX platform, as we were a beta test for that new solution. With SecureX, we are able to pull all those applications into one pane for visibility and maintenance. This greatly maximizes our security operations."
"Any alert that we get is an actionable alert. Immediately, there is information that we can just click through, see the point in time, what happened, what caused it, and what automatic actions were taken. We can then choose to take any manual actions, if we want, or start our investigation. We're no longer looking at digging into information or wading through hundreds of incidents. There's a list which says where the status is assigned, e.g., under investigation or investigation finished. That is all in the console. It has taken away a lot of the administration, which we would normally be doing, and integrated it into the console for us."
"The integration with other Cisco products seemed to be really effective. We had Umbrella in place and we were using AnyConnect as well as Firepower. Once a threat was detected, being able to do the threat lookups and the live tracking was really useful."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its technical support."
"We have very good visibility on our endpoints. The level of information it throws back is helpful."
"The most valuable features are that it is flexible, and it is integrated with Microsoft products."
"It comes included with the Windows license."
"The technical support from Microsoft is very good. We are part of the Microsoft Suite, and from being part of this we have consistent news regarding Microsoft Defender for Endpoint."
"One of the features which differentiates it from other EDR providers is the Automated Investigation and Response, which reduces the workload of SOC analysts or engineers. They don't have to manually investigate each and every alert on the endpoint, since it does so automatically. And you can automate the investigation part."
"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."
"The protection that it provides is quite good."
"We can run the virus scan across our entire environment."
"We've encountered challenges during API deployment, occasionally resulting in unstable environments."
"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."
"Cannot be used on mobile devices with a secure connection."
"Making the portal mobile friendly would be helpful when I am out of office."
"The solution's installation from a central installation server could be improved because the engineers had a little bit of trouble getting it installed from a central location."
"We've had a lot of false positives; things incorrectly flagged that require manual configuration to allow. Even worse, after we allow a legitimate program, it sometimes gets flagged again after an update. This has caused a lot of extra work for my team."
"FortiEDR can be improved by providing more detailed reporting."
"Once, we had an event that was locked and blocked, but information about it came to us two or three days later."
"On the firewall level, they were lagging a little bit behind, but they are running up again. I have full trust in the new 3000 series of firewalls where we would also be able to look more into the traffic that we're monitoring and get more security layers in our services. That would definitely be a big step."
"The one challenge that I see is the use of multiple endpoint protection platforms. For instance, we have AMP, but we also have Microsoft Windows Defender, System Center Endpoint Protection, and Microsoft Malware Protection Engine deployed. So, we have a bunch of different things that do the same thing. What winds up happening is, e.g., if I get an alert for a potential incident or malware and want to pull the file, I'll go to fetch the file to analyze it. But, one of these other programs has already gotten it, so the file has already been quarantined by another endpoint protection system. AMP doesn't realize that and the file fetch fails, then you're left wondering what's going on."
"The connector updates are very easily done now, and that's improving. Previously, the connector had an issue, where almost every time it needed to be updated, it required a machine reboot. This was always a bit of an inconvenience and a bug. Because with a lot of software now, you don't need to do that and shouldn't need to be rebooting all the time."
"I would recommend that the solution offer more availability in terms of the product portfolio and integration with third-party products."
"The initial setup of Cisco Secure Endpoint is complex."
"The integration of the Cisco products for security could be better in the sense that not everything is integrated, and they aren't working together. In addition, not all products are multi-tenant, so you can't separate different customer environments from each other, which makes it a little bit hard for a managed service provider to deliver services to the customers."
"The user interface is dull."
"It could be improved in connection with artificial intelligence and IoT."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could provide us with a more holistic approach, such as collaboration. They can provide us with an environment from where we can manage all the endpoints from one central location, such as overall management."
"They can improve it on the online protection front since people nowadays are moving online and working from home."
"Our team's knowledge of the solution needs to be improved, and Microsoft could do a better job conveying the necessary information to users. We could proactively use the tool more and explore capabilities we are not yet utilizing."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should have more transparency. In the latest edition of Windows, Windows 11, it is a compulsory requirement to connect to a Microsoft account, which in turn has implications for Defender. This should be removed."
"The UI for Microsoft Defender for Endpoint needs to be better. Integration with client dashboards is also lacking in this product, e.g. client dashboards shouldn't just be viewable from the cloud, because when the client's computer is offline, you won't be able to see the client dashboard."
"Alerts need to be sent immediately because as it is now, you see some of them without delay and others arrive perhaps 30 minutes later, and it leaves important gaps in terms of information gathering."
"The management console is something that can be improved."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
Cisco Secure Endpoint is ranked 9th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 44 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. Cisco Secure Endpoint is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Endpoint writes "Single dashboard management, quick infrastructure threat detection, and high level 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". Cisco Secure Endpoint is most compared with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike Falcon, Check Point Harmony Endpoint, VMware Carbon Black Endpoint and Cisco Umbrella, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, CrowdStrike Falcon and Microsoft Intune. See our Cisco Secure 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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