Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Acunetix

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Our analysts compared Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Acunetix based on data from our 400+ point analysis of Endpoint Security Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is an advanced security solution designed to protect businesses against sophisticated cyber threats. Ideal for enterprises of all sizes, it offers robust features such as endpoint protection, detection and response, and automated investigation and remediation. Users commend its seamless integration with other Microsoft 365 services. According to one user, "Defender for Endpoint's unified security platform simplifies our cybersecurity strategy." While praised for its efficacy, some users note a learning curve during implementation. Pricing varies based on organizational needs. Users generally perceive it favorably, with one stating, "Microsoft Defender for Endpoint stands out in its ability to provide comprehensive security without compromising user experience, setting it apart from competitors."

Pros
  • Integrated with Microsoft 365 services.
  • Advanced endpoint protection.
  • Automated investigation and remediation.
  • Effective against sophisticated cyber threats.
  • Seamless user experience.
Cons
  • Initial implementation may have a learning curve.
  • Varied pricing based on organizational needs.
  • Requires careful configuration for optimal performance.
  • May not suit smaller businesses with simpler needs.
  • Dependency on Microsoft ecosystem for full functionality.
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Acunetix is an application security testing platform that helps its users safeguard web applications, websites and APIs. It combines dynamic and static scanning technologies and utilizes a separate monitoring agent to detect vulnerabilities.

It offers vulnerability management and compliance reporting functionalities. It is designed for small businesses, pentesters, web professionals and enterprise customers to address vulnerabilities across their critical web assets.
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$5/User, Monthly
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Tailored to your specific needs
$1,995/User, Annually
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
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Product Assistance

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24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Advanced Threat Protection: Defender for Endpoint provides robust protection against a wide range of advanced threats, including malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks. It employs cutting-edge threat intelligence and machine learning to proactively identify and block malicious activities, keeping your organization's endpoints secure.
  • Real-Time Threat Detection: With its real-time monitoring and detection capabilities, the platform continuously scans for suspicious behavior and indicators of compromise. It swiftly identifies and responds to potential threats, reducing the dwell time of attackers within your network.
  • Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): Defender for Endpoint offers EDR functionality, enabling security teams to investigate and respond to incidents effectively. It provides detailed insights into endpoint activities, helping organizations understand the scope and impact of security incidents.
  • Automated Incident Response: The platform streamlines incident response with automation. It can isolate compromised devices, remediate threats, and even roll back changes made by attackers, minimizing the impact of security breaches.
  • Threat Intelligence Integration: Microsoft integrates global threat intelligence into Defender for Endpoint, enhancing its ability to identify and mitigate emerging threats. This intelligence is continuously updated to keep defenses current against evolving attack techniques.
  • Cloud-Powered Security: Leveraging the cloud, Defender for Endpoint can scale effortlessly to protect organizations of all sizes. It benefits from the vast computing power of Microsoft's cloud infrastructure, ensuring optimal performance and protection.
  • Centralized Security Management: The platform offers a unified management console, allowing organizations to oversee and configure security policies across all endpoints from a single interface. This simplifies administration and ensures consistent security posture.
  • Integration with Microsoft 365: For organizations using Microsoft 365, Defender for Endpoint seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft security services, creating a cohesive security ecosystem. This integration enhances visibility and control over security threats.
  • User and Device Risk Assessment: Defender for Endpoint assesses the risk associated with both users and devices. It evaluates user behavior and device health, enabling organizations to enforce access policies based on risk levels.
  • Threat Analytics and Insights: The platform provides detailed analytics and insights into security threats and trends. This data helps organizations make informed decisions to strengthen their security posture and adapt to evolving threats.
  • Reduced Security Complexity: By consolidating security functions into a single solution, Defender for Endpoint simplifies security management. It reduces the need for multiple security tools and streamlines operations, ultimately lowering the total cost of ownership.
  • Compliance and Reporting: The platform assists organizations in meeting regulatory compliance requirements by offering reporting and auditing capabilities. It helps organizations maintain transparency and demonstrate adherence to security standards.
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  • Vulnerability Scanner: Includes web vulnerability tests in SecDevOps processes to save resources and avoid late patching. Uses a unique scanning algorithm, SmartScan, to quickly find vulnerabilities and save resources during penetration testing due to low false-positive rates. It can be deployed locally on macOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. 
  • Manage Security: Discover multiple vulnerabilities, including weak passwords, misconfigurations, exposed databases, XSS, SQL injections and out of the band vulnerabilities. Scan complex multi-level forms and password-protected areas through advanced micro-level technology. 
  • Improved Results: Verifies real vulnerabilities and assesses the severity of issues to provide actionable insights. Eliminates lengthy setups and onboarding times to facilitate quick scanning, preventing network hogging and server overloading. 
  • Enables Automation: Schedule and prioritize full or incremental scans according to traffic load and business needs. Handle identified issues using built-in management functionality or integration with its current tracking systems. Scan new builds with the latest CI tools like Jenkins and import pre-seed crawl data from Burp, Fiddler, Postman, Paros and more. 
  • Seamless Integrations: Track and protect against identified vulnerabilities through integrations with third-party applications. Development teams can streamline collaboration and manage work using issue trackers. Create appropriate rules to protect against attacks targeting vulnerabilities with web application firewall integrations. Offers a Jenkins plugin to discover and track vulnerabilities early on in the software development lifecycle.  
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  • Antivirus and antimalware protection
  • Endpoint detection and response (EDR)
  • Automatic investigation and remediation
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  • Automated Penetration Testing: Manually identify web application vulnerabilities like cross-site scripting, SQL injections and more before starting a penetration test. Allows vulnerability assessment and management with integration options, including an API for building personal integrations. Follow up with further manual tests using GUI-based and command-line penetration testing tools. 
  • Website Security Scanner: Run scans to probe sites and find application risks. Examine web applications built with Java frameworks like Struts, Spring and Java Server Faces. Scan password-protected pages automatically using the Login Sequence Recorder. Utilizes AcuSensor technology to inspect web application’s source code. Replicates user actions to execute scripts like a browser. Employs black and gray box testing to focus on the entire attack surface. 
  • External Vulnerability Scanner: Scans perimeters for network-layer vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. Provides options to schedule external vulnerability scans at a specific time to run regular scans. Generates technical, regulatory and compliance reports like OWASP top 10, PCI DSS, HIPAA and more. Export vulnerabilities to third-party issue trackers such as GitHub, GitLab, Atlassian JIRA, Bugzilla, Mantis and Microsoft TFS. 
  • Web Application Security: Defends against known and website or web application vulnerabilities that include sites built with hard to scan HTML5 and JavaScript SPAs. Scan website files through custom form authentication or other access controls and session management. Assess and minimize security risks with out-of-the-box vulnerability management tools, including prioritization and historic trends. 
  • AcuSensor Technology: Enables interactive application security testing and works with applications written in PHP, ASP.NET and Java. Provides additional information from the server back end during web application scanning to offer ease of remediation, greater precision and full coverage. It can be installed on staging servers to perform IAST analysis. 
  • AcuMonitor Technology: Increases the scope of vulnerabilities detected by Acunetix scanner and enables out of the band detection. Identifies vulnerabilities like host header attacks, blind XSS, blind server-side XML/SOAP injection, out of the band remote code execution and SQL injection, email header injection, server-side request forgery and XML external entity injection. 
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Product Ranking

#52

among all
Endpoint Security Software

#53

among all
Endpoint Security Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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Attack Prevention Attack Surface Reduction Endpoint Detection And Response (EDR) Exploit Prevention Managed Detection And Response (MDR) Services Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Vulnerability Management 93 100 98 97 92 38 59 100 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 64 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 64 reviews
88%
of users recommend this product

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 88% when considering 64 user reviews from 1 recognized software review sites.

90%
of users recommend this product

Acunetix has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 90% when considering 64 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

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4.5 (32)
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4.5 (32)
4.4 (64)
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Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Vulnerability Management.

Vulnerability Management Award

Acunetix stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Effective Threat Detection: Users praise Defender for Endpoint's ability to detect and mitigate a wide range of threats effectively, including malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks.
Seamless Microsoft Integration: The product seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft ecosystem, making it convenient for organizations already using Microsoft services.
Real-Time Monitoring: Real-time monitoring and threat detection provide immediate visibility into security incidents, allowing for swift responses.
Automated Incident Response: Users value the platform's automated incident response capabilities, which reduce the manual effort required for handling security incidents.
Centralized Management: Organizations can easily manage security policies across all endpoints from a centralized console, simplifying administration and ensuring a consistent security posture.
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Automated Vulnerability Detection: Acunetix excels at automatically finding vulnerabilities like SQL injections and cross-site scripting, which are common ways hackers exploit websites.
API Security Testing: Acunetix can automatically test the security of RESTful APIs, including those without a web front end, ensuring comprehensive API protection.
Detailed Reporting and Remediation Guidance: Acunetix provides detailed reports with proof of exploit and clear remediation guidance, enabling developers to understand and fix security issues efficiently.
Integration with Development Workflows: Acunetix integrates with popular CI/CD pipelines and issue tracking systems like Jira and GitHub, streamlining security processes and facilitating DevSecOps practices.
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Resource Intensive: Users have reported that Microsoft Defender for Endpoint can be resource-intensive, impacting the performance of older or less powerful devices.
Complex Configuration: Some users find the initial setup and configuration complex, especially those without extensive cybersecurity expertise. This can lead to misconfigurations that affect security effectiveness.
False Positives: Like many security solutions, Defender for Endpoint can generate false positives, flagging legitimate activities as suspicious, potentially causing disruptions and requiring additional investigation.
Cloud Dependency: Users in areas with unreliable or limited internet connectivity may face limitations due to the platform's cloud dependency, impacting security when offline.
Cost for Small Businesses: Pricing concerns have been raised, particularly by small businesses, who may find it less budget-friendly, potentially straining their cybersecurity budgets.
Learning Curve: Users transitioning from other security solutions may encounter a learning curve when adapting to the platform's features and functionalities, affecting operational efficiency.
Compatibility Challenges: Some users have reported compatibility issues with specialized or legacy software, necessitating additional configuration or exceptions, which can add complexity to deployments.
Endpoint Management: Effective endpoint security relies on proper configuration and maintenance of devices. Neglected or misconfigured endpoints can be more vulnerable to threats, requiring vigilant management.
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Limited Customization: While Acunetix offers various scan types, users have reported limited control over specific vulnerability checks within those scans, potentially leading to less targeted assessments.
False Positives: Acunetix may occasionally flag vulnerabilities that are not genuine issues, requiring manual verification and potentially slowing down remediation efforts.
Scan Duration: Some users have found Acunetix scans to be time-consuming, particularly for large and complex applications, which could impact development and deployment cycles.
Supplementary Testing Required: Acunetix recommends additional security measures, such as manual testing and network mapping, suggesting its automated scans may not be as comprehensive as some users expect.
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Users consistently praise Microsoft Defender for Endpoint for its robust security features, with one user commending its "advanced endpoint protection" and another highlighting its "seamless integration with Microsoft 365 services." Many appreciate the automated investigation and remediation capabilities, emphasizing its effectiveness against sophisticated cyber threats. While the product's efficacy is widely acknowledged, some users mention a learning curve during the initial implementation. One user notes, "The implementation process had its challenges, but the benefits far outweighed the initial hurdles." Pricing variability based on organizational needs is a common concern, with users suggesting careful consideration to align the solution with budgetary constraints. Comparatively, users believe Microsoft Defender for Endpoint stands out from competitors, offering comprehensive security without compromising user experience. One user succinctly states, "It's a top-tier solution in its ability to provide holistic security." However, a few users caution that optimal performance may require careful configuration, and dependence on the Microsoft ecosystem for full functionality may not be suitable for all organizations. Despite these considerations, the prevailing sentiment is positive, with users appreciating the product's efficacy in safeguarding against evolving cyber threats.

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User reviews from the past year suggest that Acunetix, developed by Invicti, is a well-regarded tool for managing endpoint security, penetration testing, and website security. Users have praised its comprehensive vulnerability scanning capabilities, highlighting its ability to detect a wide range of threats, including SQL injection and cross-site scripting. One user commended Acunetix for its "good OWASP scans and reports and automation," emphasizing its effectiveness in identifying and addressing security risks. Another user lauded its user-friendliness, stating that it "makes me feel a part of the test." However, some users have pointed out limitations. One criticism targets the licensing model, with a user describing it as "the worst I have ever used" due to its inflexibility in reallocating target URLs. Another user cautioned against relying solely on Acunetix, noting that "some vulnerabilities still can't be detected" and recommending manual vulnerability assessments as a supplementary measure. Despite these drawbacks, Acunetix is generally viewed favorably by users, who appreciate its robust features, accuracy, and ease of use. Acunetix appears to be a suitable choice for organizations of all sizes that prioritize web application security. Its comprehensive scanning, automation features, and integration capabilities make it a valuable asset for security professionals and developers alike. However, potential users should carefully consider the licensing model and the need for manual vulnerability assessments to ensure it aligns with their specific requirements and risk tolerance.

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