Jamf Protect vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

The main reason we went with Jamf Protect was because we wanted a dedicated macOS security endpoint. Is was easy to implement and migrate over from our previous endpoint provider. As a university we have lab macOS devices that multiple users use. So we have Jamf Protect profiles that block the use of external drives and other other profiles that allow it. We different user accounts requiring different access this can get a bit messy when deploying the config profiles at login for each user that signs in.

Incentivized

Scenarios where it is Well-Suited Are Enterprise Environments with Microsoft Ecosystems, Organizations with Remote and Hybrid scenarios, Advanced Threat Protection Needs, and any company that needs to protect sensitive data. Scenarios where it is less appropriate are mixed Operating System Environments, Companies with Limited IT Resources, highly Specialized Security Needs, and Organizations needing extensive customizations.

Incentivized

• Low resource use Protected Agent - stops tampering with agent and is not a resource hog
• Managed and custom Analytics - along with the out of the box Analytics provided by JAMF, admins can also set up their own to focus on areas of concern eg NISTcompliance items
• Vendor support - support is very responsive and knowledgeable

Incentivized

• It integrates perfectly with Azure Sentinel. I mean, that's great. We can have a single pane of class with other platforms, like Defender for Cloud, Defender for endpoints, and Defender for servers, which is awesome as well. The ease of deployment is because Microsoft made sure around a year ago that every single workstation with Microsoft Windows came with Defender for Endpoints embedded.

Incentivized

• The integration with Jamf Pro has come a long way but could still be a bit more "one stop" vs two tools and two dashboards.

Incentivized

• While it's a very good product for auditing, it has a very hard time to distinguish what is malicious and is an attack, what is not. Very rarely we get indication of a real malicious attack. We got lots of hours for off the shelf malware that it cleans up automatically. So basically we never get to look at it, which is a positive thing, but threats are detected by the third party endpoint, so it will not be enough by itself.

Incentivized

Cost add-ons for Security features is nickel and diming the process to keep pace with cybercrime. Limited Education budgets require us to be more pro-active in finding cost-effective measures to protect our devices, staff and students. Defender is a strong, well-featured product that is pricing itself out of the education market

Incentivized

The first time I tried to onboard my macOS endpoints to MDE I struggled for quite a bit. I had to reach out to Microsoft's MDE support team. The tech was very helpful in walking me through the steps during a screen share session

Incentivized

In some aspects, Jamf Protect was far superior to the others mentioned above. The only downside I can see is that it is only macOS which could be a problem for hybrid environments.

Incentivized

I would say not to name specific company names, because I'm a partner with one of them and that's the account that I work with. But I use some competing solutions that I would say are pretty heavy from an overhead perspective with the agent that has to be installed in the machine. It can be too restrictive for permissions where it gets in the way of an employee doing their job and the ability for Defender to be secure in that, but still allow an employee to go about their day and do what they need to do is certainly a change maker there. But yeah, from the other products perspective across the years, whether it be business or personal, some other products I can name are other endpoint protections from Vera Avast, McAfee, of course as folks remember that. And some of the other major players too that I would say a large networking company that doubles in security as well. I'll name them that way.

Incentivized

• Better detection of malware reducing downtime and risk to network
• Easy to implement
• Can be a bit of a steep learning curve in general

Incentivized

• It is a unified platform with lots of core features for exposure detection, antivirus and SIEM all in a single platform.
• The centralized management is absolutely the it.
• It creates a more intertwined secure environment because it integrates well with other Microsoft security apps.
• Automated detection and remediation saves in time and money.
• Visibilities of endpoints and advanced threat detection increase our security and well-being.

Incentivized