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 most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the vulnerability assessments and the glossary of compliance."
"The main feature is the security posture assessment through the security score. I find that to be very helpful because it gives us guidance on what needs to be secured and recommendations on how to secure the workloads that have been onboarded."
"When we started out, our secure score was pretty low. We adopted some of the recommendations that Security Center set out and we were able to make good progress on improving it. It had been in the low thirties and is now in the upper eighties."
"Microsoft Defender has a lot of features including regulatory compliance and attaching workbooks but the most valuable is the recommendations it provides for each and every resource when we open Microsoft Defender."
"Everything is built into Azure, and if we go for cross-cloud development with Azure Arc, we can use most of the features. While it's possible to deploy and convert third-party applications, it is difficult to maintain, whereas Azure deployments to the cloud are always easier. Also, Microsoft is a big company, so they always provide enough support, and we trust the Microsoft brand."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
"The technical support is very good."
"It integrates very well with all Windows workstations or other Microsoft Endpoint products. It also works quite well. So far, I have not had any issue that hasn't been sorted out. It doesn't use too many resources, so you don't have to install different things."
"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."
"This is not an inventory solution, but it helps you take count of how many workstations you have, as well as what software is installed on each of them."
"You have endpoint security to keep your devices safe. That's the feature that we're interested in."
"I like the simplicity of the portal and the integration with Microsoft Intune. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is easy to use and implement."
"The solution has an easy-to-use interface, is always updated, and is user-friendly."
"User-friendly, offering safety and security."
"The main features of this solution are that it handles everything by itself and is well integrated."
"Another thing that could be improved was that they could recommend processes on how to react to alerts, or recommend best practices based on how other organizations do things if they receive an alert about XYZ."
"The solution is quite complex. A lot of the different policies that actually get applied don't pertain to every client. If you need to have something open for a client application to work, then you get dinged for having a port open or having an older version of TLS available."
"We would like to have better transparency as to how the security score is calculated because as it is now, it is difficult to understand."
"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."
"The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome."
"Microsoft Defender could be more centralized. For example, I still need to go to another console to do policy management."
"From a compliance standpoint, they can include some more metrics and some specific compliances such as GDPR."
"When you work with it, the only problem that we're struggling with is that we have 21 different subscriptions we're trying to apply security to. It's impossible to keep everything organized."
"Microsoft Defender in the basic form is not very useful for managing the security environment. The free version is not capable of covering the needs of centralized management, EDR, and behavioral analysis. If you don't have the commercial version, you can't have centralized management and set up the policies and other things. Each client is a standalone installation, which is not useful for security in an enterprise model."
"I would like to have a dashboard that shows an overview of the results for the enterprise."
"Features like device inventory continue to lack essential workstation drill-downs showing the entire device information with the least effort."
"The automation could be simpler on the mitigation side. It has a learning curve. Otherwise, it's pretty easy."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint does not provide much flexibility in terms of threats."
"With regards to the interface, a challenge I found was that there was not enough documentation on how to tune it. I had to read multiple sources on the internet to learn how to configure the tool appropriately."
"The solution can be more user-friendly."
"It should support non-Windows products better. Microsoft is now one of the leading vendors in the security area. So, they should be product-independent."
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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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