CrowdStrike Falcon and Microsoft Defender XDR are both Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions that offer endpoint protection and threat detection capabilities. CrowdStrike Falcon is a standalone platform, whereas Defender XDR integrates seamlessly with Microsoft security products. CrowdStrike Falcon offers customizable alert settings and machine-learning algorithms for proactive threat hunting. Microsoft Defender is highlighted for its efficient incident response system. Both products have flexible pricing options, with users noting positive ROI from both solutions.
The summary above is based on 207 interviews we conducted recently with CrowdStrike Falcon and Microsoft 365 Defender users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"he solution is an anti-malware product that integrates well with other vendor products such as firewalls, SIEM, etc. It captures threat intelligence and gives you better visibility. The product also has sandboxing features."
"The stability is very good."
"Fortinet FortiEDR made our clients feel secure and more at ease, knowing that they had an EDR solution that would close the gap in their security posture."
"The product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls."
"The console is easy to read. I also like the scanning part and the ability to move assets from one to the other."
"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."
"Forensics is a valuable feature of Fortinet FortiEDR."
"It is stable and scalable."
"The stability is very good."
"The anomaly detection is the most valuable feature."
"CrowdStrike Falcon has done an excellent job at detecting breaches. It has allowed us to stay in business and keep our systems up."
"I like the dashboard nature of it. Everything is clickable, linkable, and information is easy to obtain and find. How it presents that information is probably the biggest win as far as the information correlation aspect. The presentation of it is very good."
"CrowdStrike Falcon's most valuable features are the lightweight agent which has absolutely zero performance issues. There is no performance deterioration on the laptop on the network. It is a signature-less antivirus and anti-malware solution, it doesn't depend on signatures which better protects the systems."
"The solution is silent and sits on your system as one single agent."
"One of the most valuable features of CrowdStrike Falcon is when there are upgrades there are no additional fees."
"The 10 hours a week that we are freeing up from having to manage and monitor our AV solution has really allowed us to focus on other areas of the business. This has been a huge return on investment."
"The most valuable feature of all is the full integration with the rest of the software in the operating system and Office 365, as well as Microsoft SCCM. It is quite easy for us to work with the whole instance of Microsoft products. This integration improves the benefits of the whole suite of products."
"I like Defender XDR's automation capabilities. XDR isn't automated by default, but you can automate it to respond. If an attack is performed anywhere within the organization, you can isolate that instance from the network. This is what I can figure out for it. When integrated with Sentinel, you can set up playbooks to automate all the alerts gathered on Sentinel from different Microsoft solutions. Sentinel has a wider range of capabilities than XDR."
"The ability to integrate and observe a more cohesive narrative across the products is crucial."
"The incident threat response and its ability to facilitate effective remediation against threats are the standout features."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is scalable."
"I like 365 Defender's advanced threat hunting. The dashboard is user-friendly with templates for site policies, etc. The most important use case is evaluating the risk links and applications."
"Defender is easy to use. It has a nice console, and everything is all in one place."
"It provides a single pane of glass within the 365 admin interface, streamlining our experience by consolidating information in one place and eliminating the need to navigate through multiple interfaces."
"The dashboard isn't easy to access and manage."
"Making the portal mobile friendly would be helpful when I am out of office."
"I would like the solution to extend beyond endpoint protection and include other attack surfaces such as other network components."
"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."
"FortiEDR can be improved by providing more detailed reporting."
"It takes about two business days for initial support, which is too slow in urgent situations."
"The solution should address emerging threats like SQL injection."
"FortiEDR could add a separate scanning dashboard. In incident management, we prefer to remove the endpoint system from the environment and scan the system. We typically use Symantec for that, but if we want to use FortiEDR for that, then we need a scanning tab to clarify things."
"CS Falcon sensing capabilities for non-domain machines should be enhanced since the agent doesn't detect the neighbor's IP Address and/or any anomaly which was identified in the network for the non-domain machine."
"As the company has grown, the technical support has felt less personal."
"Tighter integration around XDR could be included."
"CrowdStrike should add support for ransomware protection."
"This solution is relatively expensive."
"The performance could be better."
"I would like CrowdStrike to provide some correlation in the threat analysis, so we can visualize things better."
"In the future release of CrowdStrike Falcon, they should add a sandbox feature."
"It would be beneficial to have a more seamless experience with everything consolidated in one place, particularly when dealing with aspects related to the Exchange console."
"The design of the user interface could use some work. Sometimes it's hard to find the exact information you need."
"Customers say they want absolutely seamless integration between other Microsoft solutions and Defender XDR, including the ability to change device settings within the Defender portal. They need to contact the IT team responsible for the device management tools to change some settings. They would prefer that those changes be initiated directly from the Defender portal or applied from Intune without involving the IT operations team."
"The interface could be improved. For example, if you want to do a phishing simulation for your employees, it can take a while to figure out what to do. The interface is a bit messy and could be updated. It isn't too bad, but doing some things can be a long process."
"It would be highly beneficial if CoPilot could identify anomalies within the network and notify the IT team."
"There is definitely scope for improvement in the automation area. Because the solution is a SaaS platform, we don't have the overall ability to automate stuff.... There is no direct way to go ahead because it's a SaaS platform."
"The management features could be improved, particularly in terms of better integration with Intune, Microsoft's cloud-based management solution."
"The abundance of sub-dashboards and sub-areas within the main dashboard can be confusing, even if it all technically makes sense."
CrowdStrike Falcon is ranked 1st in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 107 reviews while Microsoft Defender XDR is ranked 5th in Extended Detection and Response (XDR) with 78 reviews. CrowdStrike Falcon is rated 8.8, while Microsoft Defender XDR is rated 8.4. 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 XDR writes "Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot". CrowdStrike Falcon is most compared with Darktrace, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Trend Micro Deep Security, Trend Vision One and VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Defender XDR is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, Wazuh, Trend Vision One and Microsoft Entra ID. See our CrowdStrike Falcon vs. Microsoft Defender XDR report.
See our list of best Extended Detection and Response (XDR) vendors and best Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) vendors.
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