We performed a comparison between Check Point Harmony Endpoint 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.
Comparison Results: Check Point Harmony has a slight edge in this comparison. According to its reviewers, its interface is friendlier than that of Defender for Endpoint.
"Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance."
"The stability is very good."
"Fortinet FortiEDR's scalability is quite good, and you can add licenses to the solution."
"NGAV and EDR features are outstanding."
"We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"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 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."
"This software incorporates security AI features and effectively manages bandwidth with its DRS capabilities."
"It's great for securing our endpoints from any external attacks."
"Before we used this solution, our mail was blacklisted. Now we are white listed by all organizations, including Google. Also the security of our institution has really improved."
"The forensics allows us to search retrospectively for an URL or file opened by users, for example, when you need to quickly check who else has clicked on a phishing link."
"It has extended OS support to ensure your legacy endpoints also have zero-day protection."
"Deploying new versions of the endpoint are easy."
"It provides remote access for the staff and increases their productivity."
"The end-user facilities for managing the tool are good."
"We have liked the fact that it comes with Microsoft Windows 10 and it is constantly updated with all new virus definitions. It is also updated with new security features on a regular basis."
"The solution's latest features for threat analysis are updated to provide us with future protection against the latest threats worldwide."
"We can run the virus scan across our entire environment."
"It captures data through machine learning, which is built-in on the back-end. It also provides built-in analytics and a threat intelligence feature. It is a one-stop solution that doesn't require an antivirus because it comes prebuilt into Windows 10."
"The solution's threat protection is mostly AI and machine-learning based. That is the most important feature of the product. It also offers centralized management so I can remotely manage devices."
"The biggest benefit to Windows Defender is that it is built-in to the operating system by Microsoft."
"It is easy to install and use requiring little maintenance but applying updates."
"Automatic scanning and cleaning of viruses is the best and most valuable feature helping this tool to thrive. If any viruses are found, they are cleaned automatically."
"The amount of usage, the number of details we get, or the number of options that can be tweaked is limited in comparison to that with other EDR solutions"
"The only minor concern is occasional interference with desired programs."
"We'd like to see more one-to-one product presentations for the distribution channels."
"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."
"Detections could be improved."
"I haven't seen the use of AI in the solution."
"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 find the solution to be a bit expensive."
"The patch management and upgrades are not timely."
"There are still functionalities that I have not been able to fully test and I would like to spend more time using the tool before offering an opinion to the IT Central community on this point."
"It would be ideal if they had a migration tool of some sort."
"If the IT department is used to "cloning" endpoints (making images) you are going to have a hard time trying to install the product and you are going to end up reading a lot of Check Point documents."
"I would like to see support for a policy in the appliance that will refuse to create a connection if it does not detect an active virus scanner."
"The solution needs more alerts to warn of attacks."
"Compared to other brands, we would like a dedicated anti-spam to be included in order to close the full circle."
"They need to focus on more scalability (as much as possible) so that the solution can run across all supported OS."
"I wish they would extend the use of the Security Central portal, even for the free option of Defender. Because, as companies grow, it is labor intensive to manage the AV and detection part of it. For companies already subscribed to Office 365, I think this would be a good enhancement."
"Right now, the solution provides some recommendations on the dashboard but we don't have any priorities. It's a mix of all the vulnerabilities and all the security recommendations. I would like to see some priority or categorization of high, medium, and low so that we can fix the high ones first."
"There's scanning going on that occasionally topples the memory, causing everything to freeze. This should be fixed."
"Integrating this with third-party systems has some complexity involved."
"We'd like the stability to be better."
"The time it takes to restore the application could be improved. It has a lot of dependencies. It's not like the Microsoft security that comes with the OS. Updating through the command prompt, most of the time, it takes some time to download some of these dependencies."
"Its interface can be improved a little bit. We would like to have some sort of centralization. It should have something like a central server that is managing all the other clients. There are solutions from Kaspersky or ESET NOD32 that are really doing this kind of thing currently. We would like to see something similar from Microsoft."
"One thing that was lacking in Defender was web filtering. Its web filtering wasn't as comprehensive. Sophos was a little bit better than Defender for blocking URLs or installing programs."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
Check Point Harmony Endpoint is ranked 8th in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 103 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) with 182 reviews. Check Point Harmony Endpoint is rated 8.8, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Check Point Harmony Endpoint writes "Excellent anti-ransomware protection, zero-day phishing protection, and web browsing filtering". 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". Check Point Harmony Endpoint is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Kaspersky Endpoint Security for Business, SentinelOne Singularity Complete and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, CrowdStrike Falcon and Tanium. See our Check Point Harmony 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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