curbstickle , 4 hours ago (edited 3 hours ago)

There is nothing Microsoft I would consider “top tier” when it comes to security.

Defender does a great job for many AV tasks. Crowdstrike does more, and protection isn’t tied to windows updates.

This isn’t a situation where companies just chose not to use the free item, the free item has other costs (management overhead) and is missing some features.

The best answer, of course, is to not use windows for anything that needs to be secure.

Edit: For those who think I’m wrong, cool. I’m not but you are welcome to disagree.

There is a difference between the free defender and paid for defender. If you’re a home user, check out defenderui.com to get (many, not all) features that are normally limited to intune/gpo.

A full and proper deployed defender stack is very good, but in terms of management… The approach to different os’s is practically cobbled together, the webui is horrific, and it lacks some basic functionality. A problem to manage a system like this is a problem to deploy a system like this.

If you’re on the free Defender level, you are not getting anywhere near the same features as falcon, there is absolutely zero question about that.