We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Defender for Cloud based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comes out ahead of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. While both products have comprehensive features, Microsoft Defender for Cloud’s dashboards may not integrate easily with other enterprise dashboards.
"The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites."
"Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."
"The technical support is very good."
"The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."
"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."
"The vulnerability reporting is helpful. When we initially deployed Defender, it reported many more threats than we currently see. It gave us insight into areas we had not previously considered, so we knew where we needed to act."
"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
"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."
"Real-time detection and cloud-based delivery of detections are highly efficient."
"We like that it has a free version available."
"Microsoft Defender is always running. It is doing its job, so it is fine. I don't have any issues with the way it was implemented or how we are running it. We have been upgrading IT throughout the years, but there have been no issues."
"We have very good visibility on our endpoints. The level of information it throws back is helpful."
"Its threat intelligence feature is beneficial. This solution smoothly integrates with SIEM."
"It's a very solid security system, and the advanced hunting and everything really lets you dive deep into things."
"What I found most valuable in Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is that it's out-of-the-box, which brings more value to the customer. The technical support for the product is also one of the best parts, because it's good, in terms of the product knowledge of the technical engineers."
"I would like to have the ability to customize executive reporting."
"The overview provides you with good information, but if you want more details, there is a lot more customization to do, which requires knowledge of the other supporting solutions."
"From a compliance standpoint, they can include some more metrics and some specific compliances such as GDPR."
"Microsoft can improve the pricing by offering a plan that is more cost-effective for small and medium organizations."
"No possibility to write or edit any capability."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
"The solution could extend its capabilities to other cloud providers. Right now, if you want to monitor a virtual machine on another cloud, you can do that. However, this cannot be done with other cloud platform services. I hope once that is available then Defender for Cloud will be a unified solution for all cloud platform services."
"The documentation and implementation guides could be improved."
"I personally haven't experienced any pain points, but some of my coworkers feel that it isn't secure enough."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's licensing is confusing. It has conflicting information on the website. We also faced integration issues with other systems. It makes laptops slower than traditional antivirus systems."
"They should come up with pre-built inner workflows."
"I would like to see integrations with other products, such as Spunk and other CM solutions. That would create possibilities for me, and for a SOC, to consolidate all events in an older console, not one provided by Microsoft but provided by a third party, and use it to create more insights."
"Windows Firewall is integrated with Windows Defender. Over the last few days, I have had a problem with defining a wildcard on Windows Firewall. For example, I wanted to pull out the connection of my program and install a software package with a lot of executable files. I wanted to prevent it from accessing the internet. I could not select executables by using a wildcard. I had to select a single executable with its full name."
"In active mode, it's great that it gives you so much information, but it does record every keystroke so you have a lot of logs... that amount of data logging started to add up in the cost."
"The integration and effectiveness of email security could be better. It's already built-in to the solution and checks emails, scans the links they contain etc."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 2nd in Microsoft Security Suite with 46 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 5th in Microsoft Security Suite with 182 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". 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". Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Wiz and Microsoft Sentinel, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, CrowdStrike Falcon and Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business. See our Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
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We monitor all Microsoft Security Suite 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.