Looking to Compare Sophos with Microsoft?
Prevent Breaches, Ransomware, and Data Loss with Sophos
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.
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.
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.
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 |
| 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.
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.
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.
See Why Customers Choose Sophos
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.
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.
The Solution: Sophos
Cybersecurity as a Service
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
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.
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.
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.
Lower TCO
Many customers who have switched to Sophos tell us that they double their efficiency and enjoy an 85% reduction in security incidents.
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.