We compared ESET PROTECT Enterprise and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint based on our users' reviews in six categories. We reviewed all of the data, and you can find the conclusion below.
Features: ESET PROTECT Enterprise is praised for its performance and intuitive, powerful management interface, with dynamic folders and group capabilities. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint excels in file protection, encryption, and ransomware defense. It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft security products. Users appreciate its user-friendly interface and scalability.
Room for Improvement: ESET PROTECT Enterprise users have suggested that file downloads should be enabled in ESET File Security. They also want more automation and better dashboard reporting. Users say Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should improve its central console and auto-recovery feature. Users also requested better reporting capabilities and integration with third-party platforms.
Ease of Deployment: ESET PROTECT Enterprise is generally considered easy to set up, but some users struggled with proxy configuration. On-prem setups take longer and require additional configuration, but cloud setups are problem-free. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint's setup is straightforward. While it can be more complex for larger organizations, it is generally considered simple, particularly for smaller companies or those familiar with Microsoft environments.
Service and Support: Customers have had positive experiences with ESET’s customer service, rating it highly. Microsoft customer service garnered mixed feedback. Some praised the fast response times and expertise of the support engineers, while others were dissatisfied with slow replies and a lack of coordination among the support teams.
Pricing: ESET PROTECT Enterprise offers low licensing costs. Users find its pricing reasonable. Reviewers say Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is fairly priced, noting that it is typically included for free with Windows or Microsoft Office 365 subscriptions. However, some users believe that Microsoft's pricing could be more affordable, and others noted that their licensing models can be complex.
ROI: Users said that ESET PROTECT Enterprise delivered a positive ROI. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint delivers cost savings, enhanced efficiency, and heightened threat management.
Comparison Results: ESET PROTECT Enterprise is an affordable solution that is highly regarded for its impressive performance, resource efficiency, and hassle-free setup. At the same time, users say ESET PROTECT Enterprise could enhance its file downloading capability and automation. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers sophisticated protection against ransomware, easy deployment, and smooth integration with Microsoft solutions. However, Microsoft’s customer support has received middling reviews, and users would like better compatibility with third-party solutions.
"ESET is better in some ways than other vendors because it fulfills many areas where we'd otherwise have to use different products."
"The product enabled Zero-Day Protection for our environment. We never encountered any issues regarding threats."
"The solution provides EDR. You can customize how you prepare the endpoint for clients and the dashboard alerts."
"The solution doesn't have high memory usage."
"We can easily manage resources, disable or enable clients and update them."
"The solution provides EDR. You can customize how you prepare the endpoint for clients and the dashboard alerts."
"ESET PROTECT Enterprise is reliable."
"I like the dynamic groups feature. They give the ability to filter endpoint machines by any parameter, software, or hardware inventory, and that's a significant advantage when you need to, for example, automate a secondary firewall profile for endpoints outside your network. Or if you want to automatically isolate the computer from the rest of the network if the ransomware is found."
"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 protection that it provides is quite good."
"Defender for Endpoint provides good visibility into threats and has favorable threat intelligence."
"We had certain compliance and usage issues. For example, our company wanted to go with CIS, but we didn't have a proper way of measuring whether the endpoints have the right standards in place or whether they were compliant with CIS. Microsoft Defender was like a one-stop for most things because it gave us the vulnerability and patching scores so that our vulnerability management teams can focus on covering up the vulnerabilities and the patching team can check the vulnerable versions and deploy the right versions."
"We have just started to implement it. It is useful for protection from malware and ransomware."
"The solution has good performance, I have not seen a problem."
"The most important feature is the way it monitors the threats and blocks them. About 10 days ago, we were implementing SOC for a particular client. The SOC was not yet implemented, but they had Microsoft Defender. That organization was hit by some ransomware, but the hacker could not succeed. Because of the EDR, the hacker could not install the hacking tools. They were trying to do that, but Microsoft Defender completely blocked that. The hacker could log into the system, but they could not install anything."
"It's free. There is no additional cost. It's part of Windows."
"The availability and sustainability could also be improved."
"I would like to see more in managing mobile devices in an on-premise solution. The latest news I've heard is that ESET drops mobile management module development for the on-prem version. It's moving to the cloud. Like in endpoint client protection, I would also like to see more of the vulnerability management features and additional app control functionality in ESET Protect."
"The solution can be quite technical and therefore is challenging for new users."
"The tool is complex and expensive."
"Sometimes, the connection to the machine requires troubleshooting."
"I would like to see more features on the reporting side of things."
"Its automation can be improved."
"ESET Protect could improve the performance. The performance of the home computers and laptops becomes slow due to their heavy software load. It would be a benefit to make a lighter version of the software which does not have any impact on the performance of the computer's hardware."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can improve by providing more and different types of reports."
"I would like to have a dashboard that shows an overview of the results for the enterprise."
"I would like to see fewer pop messages and alerts."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint could improve by adding more security features."
"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."
"In India at least, it seems to be a bit more expensive than other options."
"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."
More Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Pricing and Cost Advice →
ESET PROTECT Enterprise is ranked 14th in Anti-Malware Tools with 11 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 1st in Anti-Malware Tools with 182 reviews. ESET PROTECT Enterprise is rated 9.0, while Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of ESET PROTECT Enterprise writes "Constantly improving their online resources to make it easier for new users to work with it". 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". ESET PROTECT Enterprise is most compared with Wazuh, ESET Endpoint Protection Platform, Avira Antivirus, F-Secure Total and Cybereason Next-Generation Antivirus, whereas Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, Trellix Endpoint Security and SentinelOne Singularity Complete. See our ESET PROTECT Enterprise vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint report.
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