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Organizations that implement Microsoft Defender often prioritize cost. However, Microsoft Defender's extensive manual configuration, testing, and tuning can increase its total cost of ownership. Sophos provides superior cyber protection with a best-practice configuration out of the box, centralized management, and more.

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Don’t be exploited

Sophos naturally complements and extends beyond the default options in Windows.

Don’t be exploited

Straight out of the box, Sophos builds on top of the basic protection offered in Microsoft Windows with no fewer than 60 proprietary, preconfigured, and tuned exploit mitigations. With Microsoft, the work required to enable and tune other mitigations is manual, increasing the risk of misconfigurations or, worse, the protection not being used.

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Intuitive Management

We provide one location where you can manage your policies, view alerts, and detect and respond to threats across your security operations.

Intuitive Management

Sophos Central is a cloud-based management console that allows you to manage all of your Sophos products in one place and hunt for and investigate threats. The Account Health Check within Sophos Central helps you identify and address security issues. With Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, management is split across multiple console screens. This requires substantial time, expertise, and attention to detail to manage which can lead to an increased risk of misconfiguration and disruption.

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MDR and IR for Everyone

Every organization can increase their cybersecurity and benefit from a managed detection and response (MDR) Service with full incident response (IR). Sophos protects organizations of all sizes, unlike Microsoft.

MDR and IR for Everyone

Sophos supports customers at all levels of sophistication. If you are looking for an endpoint protection solution, an XDR product, a 24/7 MDR service, or an incident response service, we can help you out.

Sophos vs. Microsoft

FEATURES Sophos Microsoft
Attack Surface, Pre- and Post-Execution
Attack surface reduction, with multiple technologies for web protection, application control, and device control that eliminate attack vectors and protect against data loss

Fully provided

Partially provided
Defenses that automatically adapt to human-led attacks

Fully provided

Partially provided
Automated Account Health Check to maintain a strong security posture

Fully provided

Fully provided

Security Heartbeat to share health and threat intelligence information between multiple products

Fully provided

Partially provided
Exploit Mitigations
      Mitigations enabled by default in Windows operating system 7 7
      Mitigations enabled by default in product 60 0
      Mitigations off by default requiring manual configuration 0 32
Ransomware detection with automatic document rollback

Fully provided

Partially provided
Remote ransomware blocking and rollback

Fully provided

Not provided

Feature parity across Windows, macOS, and Linux Partially provided Partially provided
Management, Investigation, and Remediation
Single management console for managing and reporting

Fully provided

Not provided

Alert triage and assistance

Fully provided

Fully provided

Extensive threat-hunting and investigation capabilities

Fully provided

Fully provided

Suitable for customers without an in-house SOC

Fully provided

Partially provided
Suitable for large enterprise organizations with a full in-house SOC

Fully provided

Fully provided

Threat Hunting and Response
Endpoint detection and response (EDR) functionality

Fully provided

Fully provided

(E5 required)

Integrated extended detection and response (XDR) enables analysts to hunt for and respond to threats across your environment, correlate information, and pivot between endpoint, server, network, mobile, email, public cloud, and Microsoft 365 data

Fully provided

Fully provided

(E5 required)

MDR service provides 24/7 threat hunting, detection, and unlimited remediation to organizations of all sizes, with support available over the phone or through email

Fully provided

Fully provided

 
Incident reponse included in top MDR tier

Fully provided

(Optional IR Retainer for lower MDR tiers)

Not provided

Integration with third-party security controls to leverage your existing security investments and provide full visibility into your environment and detections and alerts to your team and the MDR team

Fully provided

Fully provided

(Requires additional purchase
and does not apply to MDR)

Encrypted network traffic analysis (NDR)

Fully provided

Not provided

Default Exploit Prevention

Straight out of the box, Sophos builds on top of the basic protection offered by Windows, with an additional 60 preconfigured, tuned, and automatically enabled exploit mitigations. With Microsoft, you must manually activate and tune the mitigations, increasing the risk of misconfiguration or thinking you're protected when you're not.

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Active Threat Protection

Adaptive Attack Protection

Adaptive Attack Protection is a dynamic step up in endpoint security. When a hands-on-keyboard attack is detected, Sophos Endpoint automatically activates extra defenses with a "shields up" perspective. It stops an attacker and provides you with plenty of time to respond. For more information, watch the Adaptive Attack Protection video.

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A Unified Security Ecosystem

Consolidate your defenses by integrating your endpoint, server, network, mobile, cloud security, and third-party security controls into the Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem. All Sophos products are continuously optimized with real-time threat intelligence and operational insights from Sophos X-Ops.

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How Sophos Delivers Better Cybersecurity Outcomes Than Microsoft

Cybersecurity is complex and moves fast – most organizations can't manage it on their own. In today's ever-changing threat landscape, your security should be frictionless and allow you to focus on your core business. Security products must be easy to configure, work out of the box, feature intuitive workflows, and be available as fully managed services.

When choosing a security product, it's important to understand its upfront cost, long-term overhead, and operational expenses. For example, the security products offered by Microsoft may be considered complex and unintuitive. Manual tuning of features requires you to commit substantial time and resources to learn how to use, configure, and fine-tune them. Many Microsoft settings are not on by default which could be putting your company at risk. If you want to rely solely on your E3/E5 license, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Who will fine-tune, run, and administer it in your environment?
  • How will you protect against attacks designed to bypass Windows' defenses?
  • How will you hunt for, investigate, and remediate hidden threats that are not handled automatically?

Customers increasingly look to security experts to help them deal with advanced cyberthreats. Hiring and retaining cybersecurity experts has become fiercely competitive and costly. Most organizations have started to look externally for the help they desperately require to protect against cyberattacks and data breaches.

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Sophos vs. Microsoft:
What You Need to Know

Superior cyber protection and fast threat detection and response keep your organization and data safe from malware and advanced attacks. And it's all managed through Sophos’ cloud-native security platform that is also available as a 24/7 Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service.

 

Sophos

Microsoft

ATTACK SURFACE AND PRE-EXECUTION

   

Category- and name-based application control

Yes

No

Device control

Win/Mac

Win/Mac

Windows antimalware scanning

Yes

Yes

macOS and Linux antimalware scanning

Yes

Yes

Intrusion Prevention System (IPS)

Yes

Yes

Malicious URL protection

Yes

Yes

Category-based web filtering

Yes

Yes

POST-EXECUTION

   

Exploit mitigations

Yes

Yes

  Mitigations enabled by default in Windows Operating System 7 7

  Mitigations enabled by default in product

60

0

  Mitigations off by default in product requiring manual configuration

0

32

Behavior-based crypto ransomware detection and automatic rollback

Yes

No

Master Boot Record tamper prevention

Yes

No

MANAGEMENT, INVESTIGATION, AND REMEDIATION

   

Single console for managing and reporting on all endpoint security features

Yes

No

Alert prioritization

Yes

Yes

Extensive threat hunting and investigation capabilities

Yes

Yes

Suitable for large enterprise organizations with a full in-house SOC

Yes

Yes

Suitable for customers without an in-house SOC

Yes

No

THREAT HUNTING AND RESPONSE

   

Live response for deep investigation

Yes

Windows only

Event correlation across devices

Yes

Yes

Optional: Encrypted Network Traffic Analysis (NDR)

Yes

No

Optional: Firewall sensor and enforcement

Yes

No

 

Default Exploit Prevention

Straight out of the box, Sophos builds on top of the basic protection offered in Microsoft Windows with no less than an additional 60 preconfigured and tuned exploit mitigations. With Microsoft, the work required to enable and tune other mitigations is manual, increasing the risk of misconfigurations or, worse, the protection not being used.

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The Solution: Sophos
Cybersecurity as a Service

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Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service seamlessly combines globally recognized security services, technologies, expertise, and tools into one holistic solution. Our technology can be deployed in minutes, with strong protection out of the box. In addition, Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service can be provided as a fully managed service for non-stop threat detection and response.

Along with Sophos Cybersecurity as a Service, Sophos MDR provides organizations with an instant security operations center (SOC) that delivers 24/7 cyber protection. Our MDR service is backed by threat detection and response experts. It is compatible with your existing cybersecurity technologies and helps you get the most value out of them.

With a broad set of advanced telemetry, Sophos provides enhanced visibility for fast threat detection and response. We can help you detect threats across your:

  • Endpoints
  • Servers
  • Firewalls
  • Emails
  • Identities
  • Networks
  • Cloud environments

Our highly trained security analysts hunt for cyberthreats and uncover and eliminate more threats than security products can on their own. We respond to threats in minutes – whether you need full-scale incident response or help making accurate security decisions. 

More Organizations Trust Sophos for Cybersecurity as a Service Than Any Other Vendor
 

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Highest-Rated and Most Reviewed

Sophos is highly rated by customers on Gartner Peer Insights for MDR , Endpoint , and Firewall, with a 4.8/5 average customer rating and over a 95% recommendation rate across the board.

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Top Vendor

Sophos MDR was recognized as the overall best MDR solution in the market by G2 for their Winter 2023 (published December 22, 2022) report. Sophos MDR is highly rated and reviewed on Gartner Peer Insights.

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Deep Threat Hunting

Find threats faster than ever before thanks to extensive native and third-party integrations across your endpoints, servers, networks, mobile devices, emails, and public clouds.
 

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Lower TCO

Many customers who have switched to Sophos tell us that they double their efficiency and enjoy an 85% reduction in security incidents.

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24/7 Incident Response

Threat notification isn't the solution – it's the starting point. Our security experts investigate anomalous behaviors and protect against threats every day, around the clock.

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