Tanium vs Microsoft Defender for Business

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Our analysts compared Tanium vs Microsoft Defender for Business 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.

Tanium Software Tool
Microsoft Defender for Business Software Tool

Product Basics

Tanium is a cloud-based, zero infrastructure platform designed for a modern workforce, helping organizations solve security and IT management challenges. It delivers instant visibility, comprehensive control and rapid response to manage and secure the entire security environment.

Its unified management and security streamline asset discovery, inventory, configuration and patch management, performance monitoring, incident response, data risks and privacy, and vulnerability and configuration management, without complexity or additional agents.
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Microsoft Defender for Business is a comprehensive security solution designed to protect small to medium-sized businesses from cyber threats. It offers advanced threat protection, endpoint detection and response, and automated investigation and remediation capabilities. This software is particularly suited for industries such as healthcare, finance, and retail, where data security is paramount. Its unique benefits include simplified deployment, centralized management, and integration with other Microsoft services, providing a seamless security experience.

Key features include real-time threat detection, vulnerability management, and detailed reporting. Users appreciate its intuitive interface and robust protection mechanisms, which are often highlighted in user reviews. Compared to similar products, Microsoft Defender for Business stands out for its ease of use and comprehensive coverage. Pricing details can vary, so it's recommended to contact SelectHub for a tailored quote based on specific needs. This ensures businesses get the most accurate and relevant pricing information for their requirements.

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$20/Endpoint, Annually
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$3/User, Monthly
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Product Assistance

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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Increase Efficiency: Reduces resources and the time required to perform critical business processes. Ensure business continuity and close resilience gaps by adapting to disruptions. Breaks down information silos between operations and security teams. Removes accountability gaps produced by disparate systems and teams by ensuring consistent data. 
  • Extensive Visibility: Achieve control and visibility throughout all the endpoint devices in a network. Organizations can scale to a million endpoints without requiring additional infrastructure. Removes visibility gaps created by siloed tools and complicated environments. Eliminates point solutions requirements and decreases infrastructure costs. 
  • Improve Customer Service: Delivers visibility, control and response to every customer through capabilities like connecting Tanium data with external systems, strengthening zero trust initiatives, increasing data quality and speed, reducing lateral movement risks and making data-driven decisions. 
  • Reduce Costs: Lowers management, infrastructure and maintenance costs. Improve ROI by reducing the total ownership costs and working on valuable things. Streamlines onboarding and new capability implementation and adoption to speed up time to value. 
  • Solve IT Challenges: Customers can solve complex security, management and compliance challenges by integrating tools they already use with Tanium’s solutions via technology alliances. Offers IoT management, data visualization, analytics, automation and more. Manage and secure endpoints efficiently using packaged integrations and solutions through Tanium and its partners. 
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  • Enhanced Threat Detection: Microsoft Defender for Business leverages advanced AI and machine learning to identify and mitigate threats in real-time, reducing the risk of data breaches.
  • Automated Response: The software automates the response to detected threats, ensuring swift action to contain and neutralize potential security incidents without manual intervention.
  • Comprehensive Protection: It provides end-to-end security across devices, applications, and data, ensuring a holistic defense strategy for your business environment.
  • Cost Efficiency: By integrating multiple security functions into a single platform, Microsoft Defender for Business reduces the need for multiple security solutions, lowering overall costs.
  • Scalability: The solution is designed to grow with your business, easily scaling to accommodate increasing numbers of devices and users without compromising performance.
  • Regulatory Compliance: Helps businesses meet regulatory requirements by providing detailed reporting and audit trails, simplifying compliance with standards like GDPR and HIPAA.
  • Reduced Downtime: By quickly identifying and addressing threats, the software minimizes downtime and ensures business continuity, keeping operations running smoothly.
  • User-Friendly Interface: The intuitive dashboard and easy-to-navigate interface make it simple for IT teams to manage security tasks and monitor the overall security posture.
  • Integration with Microsoft 365: Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365, providing a unified security solution that enhances the protection of your existing Microsoft ecosystem.
  • Proactive Threat Hunting: Enables proactive threat hunting capabilities, allowing security teams to identify and address potential vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.
  • Customizable Policies: Offers customizable security policies tailored to the specific needs of your business, ensuring optimal protection without unnecessary restrictions.
  • Expert Support: Access to Microsoft's extensive support network and resources ensures that your business can quickly resolve any security issues that arise.
  • Employee Training: Includes tools and resources to educate employees about security best practices, reducing the likelihood of human error leading to security incidents.
  • Real-Time Alerts: Provides real-time alerts and notifications, enabling immediate action to address potential threats and minimize impact.
  • Data Encryption: Ensures that sensitive business data is encrypted both in transit and at rest, protecting it from unauthorized access and breaches.
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  • Asset Discovery and Inventory: Monitor assets continuously with each endpoint device serving as a sensor. Maintains consistent visibility into managed and unmanaged devices to provide current, accurate hardware and software assets inventory throughout the network, enriching data stores and empowering workflows. 
  • Software Management: Provides software visibility, updating and standardization across distributed endpoint environments. It helps users in software package creation, bundled software installations and updates, operation system upgrades and software usage reporting. 
  • Performance Monitoring: Improve the end-user experience by managing and sustaining endpoints’ operational performance. Monitor granular performance-relevant data like system crashes, hardware resource consumption, CPU memory and more. Perform root cause investigations, receive proactive reporting on unreported issues and make informed asset management decisions. 
  • Patch Management: Simplifies and accelerates operating systems, application patches and updates. Continuously scan the environment for new endpoints and missing patches or updates and create dynamic rules, exceptions and customized patching playbooks. Produce automated reports on the patch environment’s accurate status. 
  • Configuration Management: Offers core management capabilities through a single console to unify operation, security and compliance workflows. Monitor and manage policy settings for hardware, servers and clients across laptops, desktops and mobile devices. Provides configuration management tools for security teams and IT operations. Enables centralized reporting on endpoint configuration status. 
  • Incident Response: Automates threat detection with proactive, perpetual and real-time alerts. Organizations can take enterprise-wide response actions to neutralize threats. Quickly hunt for known and unknown compromises within the network. Investigate anomalies, map advanced threats and devise a remediation strategy. Take required action and harden the environment against detected threats. 
  • Data Risk and Privacy: Enhances visibility into regulatory frameworks like CCPA, PCI or GDPR. Enables custom-defined rulesets and data patterns to narrow the search and optimize results through out-of-the-box content and data risk and privacy solutions. Auditors and remediation specialists can restore compliance by getting good validation standing or targeted recommendations set. 
  • Vulnerability Management: Simplify and accelerate workflows by seamlessly switching between critical vulnerability and configuration management actions. Enables vulnerability and misconfiguration assessments, remote remediation and control and reporting and audit preparation. 
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  • Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR): Provides advanced threat detection and response capabilities to identify and mitigate sophisticated attacks on endpoints.
  • Threat and Vulnerability Management: Continuously scans for vulnerabilities and provides actionable insights to prioritize and remediate risks.
  • Automated Investigation and Remediation: Uses AI and machine learning to automatically investigate alerts and remediate threats, reducing the burden on IT teams.
  • Next-Generation Antivirus: Offers real-time protection against malware, ransomware, and other malicious software using advanced heuristics and behavior analysis.
  • Attack Surface Reduction: Implements policies to minimize the attack surface by controlling the applications and scripts that can run on devices.
  • Integration with Microsoft 365: Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365 services, providing a unified security experience across email, documents, and collaboration tools.
  • Centralized Management Console: Provides a single pane of glass for managing security policies, monitoring threats, and viewing security reports.
  • Customizable Security Policies: Allows businesses to tailor security settings to meet their specific needs and compliance requirements.
  • Cloud-Based Threat Intelligence: Leverages Microsoft's vast threat intelligence network to stay ahead of emerging threats and provide up-to-date protection.
  • Device Control: Manages and restricts the use of external devices such as USB drives to prevent data leakage and malware introduction.
  • Incident Reporting and Analytics: Offers detailed incident reports and analytics to help businesses understand and respond to security events effectively.
  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Ensures that only authorized personnel have access to security settings and data, enhancing overall security posture.
  • Scalability: Designed to scale with your business, providing robust security for small to medium-sized enterprises without compromising performance.
  • Compliance Management: Helps businesses meet regulatory requirements by providing tools and reports for compliance management.
  • 24/7 Threat Monitoring: Offers continuous monitoring and alerting to ensure that threats are detected and addressed promptly, regardless of the time of day.
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Product Ranking

#36

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Endpoint Security Software

#68

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Endpoint Security Software

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User Sentiment Summary

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Fair User Sentiment 1 reviews
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60%
of users recommend this product

Microsoft Defender for Business has a 'fair' User Satisfaction Rating of 60% when considering 1 user reviews from 1 recognized software review sites.

n/a
3.0 (1)

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Fast deployment of patches and updates: Users praise Tanium for quickly deploying patches and updates across their entire endpoint estate, even for large and complex environments with hundreds of thousands of devices.
Real-time visibility and control: Tanium provides real-time visibility into endpoints, allowing administrators to see which devices are online, what software is installed, and any potential security risks. This real-time visibility extends to control, enabling immediate action to mitigate threats or enforce security policies.
Comprehensive endpoint management: Tanium excels in its comprehensive approach to endpoint management. It doesn't just focus on security but also extends its capabilities to areas like asset inventory, software distribution, and IT hygiene, simplifying a range of IT operations tasks from a central platform.
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Strong Protection: Safeguards your business from various threats like ransomware and malware, ensuring your data and operations remain secure.
Streamlined Management: Offers a single dashboard to monitor and manage security across all devices, simplifying administration for your IT team.
Proactive Defense: Identifies and addresses vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, minimizing the risk of successful attacks.
Automated Response: Takes immediate action against threats, even outside of business hours, ensuring continuous protection without manual intervention.
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Complex Setup and Management: Users frequently mention that getting Tanium up and running can be a headache due to its intricate configuration and the need for specialized knowledge.
High Resource Consumption: Tanium's substantial resource demands on endpoints, often leading to noticeable slowdowns, are a common gripe among users.
Pricey Proposition: A consistent pain point for users is Tanium's high cost, which can be prohibitive, especially for organizations with tight budgets.
Troubleshooting Challenges: When issues arise, users have reported difficulties in pinpointing the root cause, finding Tanium's troubleshooting process complex and time-consuming.
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Complex Setup: Some users have reported that the initial configuration of Microsoft Defender for Business can be more complicated compared to other security solutions, potentially requiring additional time and resources.
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Is Tanium truly the titanium of endpoint security solutions, or is it more like a tin foil shield? User reviews from the past year reveal a mixed bag. Tanium shines when it comes to its speed and comprehensive visibility across an organization's entire endpoint ecosystem. Users rave about its ability to execute tasks like patching and software deployment at a pace that outstrips competitors. This speed, coupled with its detailed device inventory, makes Tanium a favorite for incident response, allowing security teams to quickly identify and isolate compromised systems. However, this robust functionality comes at a cost, quite literally. Users consistently point to Tanium's high price tag as a major drawback, making it a tough sell for budget-conscious organizations. Another area of contention is Tanium's complexity. While its granular control is praised by experienced users, some find the learning curve steep and the interface less intuitive than competing solutions. This complexity often necessitates dedicated Tanium administrators, further adding to the overall cost. In essence, Tanium is like a high-performance sports car – powerful and impressive but demanding expertise and a hefty investment. It's best suited for large enterprises with robust security teams and deep pockets who need unparalleled speed and visibility in managing their endpoints.

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Is Microsoft Defender for Business truly a defender of businesses, or does it leave them vulnerable? User reviews from the last year reveal a mixed bag. On one hand, Defender for Business is praised for its robust security features, particularly its effectiveness in combating ransomware and malware. Users highlight its integration with other Microsoft products as a key strength, allowing for a centralized security management experience. For instance, its seamless compatibility with Microsoft 365 streamlines security workflows and reduces the need for third-party solutions. This integration is particularly valuable for businesses heavily reliant on the Microsoft ecosystem, offering a unified and cost-effective approach to security.However, the initial setup process is a common pain point, often described as complex and time-consuming. This complexity might pose a challenge for businesses lacking dedicated IT expertise. Additionally, while Defender for Business excels on Windows platforms, its performance on other operating systems like macOS or Linux is reportedly less impressive. This limitation could be a dealbreaker for businesses with diverse device ecosystems. Overall, Microsoft Defender for Business is best suited for small to medium-sized businesses heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, prioritizing strong security features and seamless integration over cross-platform compatibility. Its robust protection against modern threats, combined with its user-friendly interface once set up, makes it a valuable asset for businesses seeking a comprehensive yet cost-effective security solution.

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