Crowdstrike Falcon Endpoint Security and XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Endpoint comparison

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Fortinet Logo
10,049 views|7,442 comparisons
82% willing to recommend
CrowdStrike Logo
40,231 views|28,871 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
Microsoft Logo
59,177 views|46,406 comparisons
94% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Mar 20, 2022

We performed a comparison between Crowdstrike Falcon 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.

  • Ease of Deployment: Users of Microsoft Defender For Endpoint provided mixed reviews regarding the solution’s deployment. Some reviewers said that the setup was easy and straightforward, while other users felt that the initial setup could be complex (especially in regards to the configuration of extra parts), and the deployment can take up to a few months depending on the size of the organization.

    Most CrowdStrike Falcon reviewers agreed that its deployment is a simple and quick process. Only one user reported the manual sensor deployment to be time-consuming.

  • Features: Users of both products were happy with their stability and scalability. Valuable features of Microsoft Defender For Endpoint include holistic integration with all Defender products and MCAS, data leak prevention, high stability, attack surface reduction controls, exploit prevention control, application control, scalability, ransomware, and auto-remediation as well as manual-remediation. There are certain things that users found were lacking. Some users mentioned that other vendors provide a lot more customization when it comes to integration; Others said they encountered some misbehavior between Microsoft Office Suite and Defender; Still other users felt the GUI could be better optimized, the monitoring could be better, onboarding could be a little faster, log collection could be easier, and that the dashboard could be more streamlined.

    CrowdStrike Falcon users noted the high level of threat detection. A few reviewers had difficulties with integrations and felt that CrowdStrike Falcon’s user interface needed improvements.

  • Pricing: Reviewers of both products agreed that their pricing is reasonable.

  • Service and Support: Reviewers of Microsoft Defender For Endpoint felt that their service and support were just average, while Crowdstrike falcon users gave it very positive reviews for technical support.

Comparison Results: All other things being equal, Crowdstrike Falcon is the favorite when it comes to both ease of deployment and customer service and support.

To learn more, read our detailed CrowdStrike Falcon vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Report (Updated: May 2024).
769,976 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 setup is pretty simple.""We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats.""The stability is very good.""Fortinet FortiEDR's firewalling, rule creation, monitoring, and inspection profiles are great.""Fortinet has helped free up around 20 percent of our staff's time to help us out.""Ability to get forensics details and also memory exfiltration.""Additionally, when it comes to EDR, there are more tools available to assist with client work.""It is very easy to set up. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, with ten being very easy to set up."

More Fortinet FortiEDR Pros →

"The features we showcase to potential customers are prevention, malware protection, zero-day protection, and application scripting. Vulnerability assessment is another valuable feature.""It helps us to identify the threats according to the behavior of any process that is running on any particular system. It helps immensely to identify any malicious behavior on any endpoints.""The solution has improved my organization by automating the detection and reporting of unwanted applications so we're aware of them and can respond appropriately.""The most valuable features of CrowdStrike Falcon are the AI in detecting and real-time detections.""CrowdStrike Falcon is a very light solution. It does not use too much processor or RAM.""The stability is very good.""The EDR is amazing and ease of integration with Splunk is a big plus. Integration with BigQuery is also a plus for me and workflow creation is easy. Overall, CrowdStrike Falcon is a great product.""The detection is very reliable. Also, OverWatch is a great feature."

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"It is already integrated with Windows 10, so you don't need to worry about that.""The solution has good performance, I have not seen a problem.""It's one of the best antiviruses on the market.""The most valuable feature is that we can use the solution right out of the box without too much configuration.""The ransomware and malware protection is the most valuable feature.""It is a straightforward setup.""The solution's main antivirus capabilities are okay. So far, they have kept us safe.""It's a Microsoft product; it's easier to deploy this product than other options."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pros →

Cons
"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 only minor concern is occasional interference with desired programs.""The solution should address emerging threats like SQL injection.""We'd like to see more one-to-one product presentations for the distribution channels.""Cannot be used on mobile devices with a secure connection.""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 dashboard isn't easy to access and manage.""To improve Fortinet, we need to see more features and technology areas at the endpoint level introduced."

More Fortinet FortiEDR Cons →

"In the future release of CrowdStrike Falcon, they should add a sandbox feature.""Too many false positives.""The Integration with tools, SOC tools, could be better.""The management reporting functionality needs to be improved.""CrowdStrike Falcon could improve by having an easier way to search and use the interface for extracting queries from the data. The interface could improve.""We encounter occasional issues, such as when disabling network access for a host that uses CrowdStrike.""I would like to see equal support across all versions. Aside from that, I would say most of the features are there.""The dashboard area must be improved. We have integration with Splunk, and we are creating a dashboard there. Their dashboard area must be up to date. It should have more details and more options to create the reports and things like that."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Cons →

"There's scanning going on that occasionally topples the memory, causing everything to freeze. This should be fixed.""They're in the process of pulling more things together. They can continue with the integrations and provide a better way of seeing the impact of security changes, especially on the endpoint side. Before we actually flip the switch, we should be able to see the impact of security changes on the business or business applications. It would prevent breaking any business applications.""Lacks some additional integration.""I would like to have additional features such as DNS lookup, which would help for detecting malicious sites.""Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is effective for validating work, but not ideal for investigations.""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.""It can get a bit laggy sometimes. Other than that, we don't have any issues. They constantly tweak it and fix it up based on users' feedback. It has improved a lot over the past four years. Defender for Endpoint never really used to be a good endpoint security solution, but over the past couple of years, Microsoft has invested heavily in it. So, it has come a long way in all aspects of endpoint security. If they want to make it better, they should just continue investing in the current path of what they've been doing over the past couple of years.""From an audit point of view, our auditors would like to have more reports on how things are used, if things go wrong, and how they went wrong. For example, if something got a warning, "Why?" So, we would like more versatility for tracing and reporting. That would improve the product, as long as the user interface doesn't get bogged down."

More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint 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 pricing will depend upon your volume of usage."
  • "I would like them to further reduce the price, because it is quite pricey at the moment."
  • "Purchasing the product through the AWS Marketplace is just a click away. Since we were using the on-premise version of the product, we continued on the cloud by purchasing it through the AWS Marketplace."
  • "I do not have experience with the cost or licensing of the product."
  • "The other administrator and I can log in to check the exact details of what happened, what was running, and what caused the detection. We know exactly what was happening on the end users PC and we can tell if it's something that we actually need or something that's malicious."
  • "We are at about $60,000 per year."
  • "This solution has a very competitive price."
  • "Our company pays approximately US$ 65,000 annually for 900 machines."
  • More CrowdStrike Falcon 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 →

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    Answers from the Community
    Netanya Carmi
    Koji Miura - PeerSpot reviewerKoji Miura
    Real User

    Depends on your budget and on the conditions of a Microsoft license. If you have an M365 license (like E3 or E5), Microsoft is cheaper.


    In terms of functionality, CrowdStrike is better.

    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:We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats.
    Top Answer:We license it per employee, so as long as the employee count remains the same, the licensing won't change. We have it… more »
    Top Answer:Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions that… more »
    Top Answer:Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing… 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: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 most valuable aspect lies in its automation capabilities, particularly within security automation.
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    enSilo, FortiEDR
    CrowdStrike Falcon, CrowdStrike Falcon XDR
    Microsoft Defender ATP, Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection, MS Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender Antivirus
    Learn More
    Interactive Demo
    Fortinet
    Demo Not Available
    CrowdStrike
    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.

    CrowdStrike Falcon offers advanced threat detection, real-time visibility, easy interface, and responsive customer support. It enhances workflow and efficiency, promotes collaboration, streamlines processes, and boosts productivity. With features like incident response options, customizable alerts, and proactive threat hunting, it helps protect organizations from malware and ransomware attacks.

    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.

    Sample Customers
    Financial, Healthcare, Legal, Technology, Enterprise, Manufacturing ... 
    Information Not Available
    Petrofrac, Metro CSG, Christus Health
    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
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government7%
    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%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business50%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise34%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise50%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise57%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business40%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise43%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business22%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise45%
    Buyer's Guide
    CrowdStrike Falcon vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike Falcon vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    769,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    CrowdStrike Falcon is ranked 3rd in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 105 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. CrowdStrike Falcon is rated 8.8, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of CrowdStrike Falcon writes "Easy to set up with good behavior-based analysis but needs a single-click recovery option". 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". CrowdStrike Falcon is most compared with Microsoft Defender XDR, Darktrace, Trend Micro Deep Security, Trend Vision One and VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks and ESET Endpoint Protection Platform. See our CrowdStrike Falcon 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.