Microsoft Defender for IoT vs. Symantec Critical System Protection

Companies that are not using Azure cloud exhaustively will struggle with maximizing the potential of Microsoft defender as multiple important features require the use of IoT Hub etc The product definitely shines though, when integrated with it's friends, i.e when used collectively within microsoft ecosystem. Paired with Intune and IoT Hub, it does a phenomenal job at providing global protection including automated threat protection and cross domain network security features

Incentivized

Symantec Critical System Protection (CSP) is very well suited for environments that do not change such as point of sale systems and critical servers. This product is spectacular at protecting end of life operating systems when supporting legacy software prevents upgrades. When security updates are no longer available, CSP will prevent exploits and other malware from taking advantage. This product is not well suited for systems that require a lot of changes. For one, it does not notify when a change has been blocked by CSP, causing some server administrators to waste many hours chasing a phantom technical problem when turning off CSP could have solved it right away. Also, profiling takes time so systems that constantly change would need hundreds of exceptions made.

Incentivized

• Agentless monitoring
• Integration with Sentinel
• Multiple protocol support

Incentivized

• Data Center Security 6.0 and higher allows you to easily build out policies to deploy to monitor/block what is required/needed.
• The agent that is installed on the hosts has a small footprint in terms of CPU and memory usage.
• The ability to customize it anyway you need to as well as utilize out of the box policies to monitor critical OS functionality.

• To use it to it's full potential, multiple Azure services are required including but not limited to Intune, VM etc
• Due to a heavy focus on UI rather than Code heavy approach, it sometimes limits itself in terms of features and adds additional complexity when looking for niche network security features.
• Major features like Device inventory and alerting are still in preview mode, which of course can hamper an organisation's trust

Incentivized

• Tuning takes a very long time
• Turning the product on or off can take time
• When an action is prevented by CSP, there is no pop up or notification, making this a burden for server administrators

Incentivized

They respond quickly and efficiently without the need to reiterate the actual issue. Their backline support is amazing and always there for us when it is needed. They explain the troubleshooting steps taken and what they did to help us resolve the issue just incase it creeps up again we have the information to correct it ourselves.

Defender being native to MS was the decision maker for us.

Incentivized

We evaluated Bit 9 and you have more flexibility with the rule set and do not rely on the cloud to tell you what is approved and not approved. You build out the policies the way you need them to be and who better knows the environment that the people that work it daily.

• With this Microsoft software the protection of our project data is excellent and easy data mining solution.
• Extraction and data analytics generation is very effective.
• Data modeling and preparation of multiple data reports from various projects.

Incentivized

• Great protection for unchanging systems
• We have comfort that the protected systems are safe from intrusion
• Excellent price

Incentivized