We performed a comparison between CrowdStrike Falcon 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.
Features: CrowdStrike Falcon stands out for its minimal impact on system performance, optimal resource utilization, and precise detection of threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is highly regarded for its automated processes, advanced threat analysis, and extensive security measures, including protection against ransomware and access controls. CrowdStrike Falcon could benefit from adding a sandbox feature and more detailed firewall management options. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could use enhancements in automation and ease of use.
Service and Support: CrowdStrike Falcon's customer service has been commended for its promptness and assistance. Some Defender for Cloud users reported positive experiences with Microsoft, while others complained that the solution's outsourced support lacked technical knowledge.
Ease of Deployment: CrowdStrike Falcon's setup is considered to be simple and efficient, with varying deployment times ranging from a few days to a month. While there may be some challenges during installation, they are generally manageable. The initial setup of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is described as straightforward, but the deployment time may vary depending on specific requirements.
Pricing: Some users find CrowdStrike Falcon costly and think the price should be lowered to make it more competitive. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is in the mid-to-high pricing tier. While some users find it expensive, others believe it offers good value.
ROI: CrowdStrike Falcon offers cost savings by decreasing the required number of engineers and eliminating the necessity for onsite servers. Microsoft Defender for Cloud streamlines security tasks and saves users money by consolidating various solutions.
Comparison Results: Users prefer CrowdStrike Falcon over Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Users like CrowdStrike Falcon's effortless setup process and lightweight design. It provides an in-depth analysis of endpoint devices, precise threat detection, and robust defense against cyberattacks.
"The stability is very good."
"NGAV and EDR features are outstanding."
"Exceptions are easy to create and the interface is easy to follow with a nice appearance."
"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."
"Fortinet has helped free up around 20 percent of our staff's time to help us out."
"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."
"It is a scalable solution...The initial setup of Fortinet FortiEDR was straightforward."
"The most valuable feature is the analysis, because of the beta structure."
"The Protect functionality on the laptops provides great visibility into what's occurring, and the cloud management of the platform is what we needed."
"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."
"We are happy with CloudStrike's ease of use and touch notification."
"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."
"It provides very good protection and the ability to crosscheck environments."
"Probably the most valuable thing to me is the real-time response piece. The fact that I can connect to an endpoint as long as it is on the Internet, no matter where it is globally. I can remove files from the endpoint, drop files on the endpoint, stop processes, reboot it, run custom scripts, and deploy software. Pretty much no other tool can do all that."
"I like Falcon's threat detection and endpoint investigation features. It's a user-friendly solution."
"I like the vulnerability assessment and proactive hunting features of CrowdStrike Falcon."
"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."
"Technical support is helpful."
"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."
"The technical support is very good."
"It's quite a good product. It helps to understand the infections and issues you are facing."
"DSPM is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"The solution is very easy to deploy."
"FortiEDR can be improved by providing more detailed reporting."
"Everything with Fortinet having to do with their cloud services. They need to invest more in their internal infrastructure that they are running in the cloud. One of the things I find with their cloud environment compared to others' is that they go cheap on the equipment. So it causes some performance degradation."
"The support needs improvement."
"The solution should address emerging threats like SQL injection."
"The dashboard isn't easy to access and manage."
"ZTNA can improve latency."
"We find the solution to be a bit expensive."
"Integration with Azure and SaaS provisioning tools could improve Fortinet FortiEDR."
"We'd like to see more integration capabilities."
"We sometimes get false positives."
"The overall cost of CrowdStrike Falcon could be reduced."
"CrowdStrike costs a little more than its competitors."
"The performance could be better."
"The skillsets needed to run CrowdStrike Falcon are extensive if you want to get the most value out of the tool."
"I think there's an opportunity to enhance the AI or at least the traps to say, if something changes from this baseline, let us know and flag it."
"It would be nice if the dashboard had some more information upfront, and looked a little better."
"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."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"The solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge."
"The solution could extend its capabilities to other cloud providers. Right now, if you want to monitor a virtual machine on another cloud, you can do that. However, this cannot be done with other cloud platform services. I hope once that is available then Defender for Cloud will be a unified solution for all cloud platform services."
"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."
"It needs to be simplified and made more user-friendly for a non-technical person."
"From my own perspective, they just need a product that is tailored to micro-segmentation so I can configure rules for multiple systems at once and manage it."
"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."
CrowdStrike Falcon is ranked 3rd in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) with 107 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 46 reviews. CrowdStrike Falcon is rated 8.8, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud 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 Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". CrowdStrike Falcon is most compared with Microsoft Defender XDR, Darktrace, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Trend Micro Deep Security and VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Wiz and AWS Security Hub. See our CrowdStrike Falcon vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
We monitor all Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) 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.