CrowdStrike vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Comparison

You’re an IT professional and your company is in the market for an Endpoint security solution, sometimes known as Endpoint Detection and Response, EDR. In 2025, two of the biggest names in the that category are CrowdStrike and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. So you’re obviously wondering, what are the differences between the two and which would be better suited for your company?

In this video, I cover 3 key decision factors and all other major differences your company should consider.

Want my recommendations on the best MSSPs for deploying and managing CrowdStrike or Defender for Endpoint? Ask me today.

About Me

Mike Smith has been helping companies select the best telecom, WAN, security, and cloud services since 1999. He founded AeroCom in 2003, and has been the recipient of numerous business telecommunications industry awards, including being recognized as one of the top 40 business people in tech-heavy Orange County, CA. Follow Mike on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit and SpiceWorks.

Transcript

You’re an I.T. professional and your company is in the market for an endpoint security solution, otherwise known as EDR, endpoint detection and response. And two of the biggest names out there right now are Microsoft defender for Endpoint and CrowdStrike. So the obvious question that you’re thinking between these two big companies, these two big solutions, is what’s the difference between the two? Which one is probably a better fit for our companies unique requirements? Well, my name is Mike Smith. I’m the president of Arrow. Come, let’s put our heads together on this

My Recommendations

But first, as you’ll hear me talk about later in the video, if you’re deploying either of those things or any end point security solution, chances are you’re I.T. team is a little bit understaffed. And I suggest that you use an MSP to help you deploy your endpoint detection and response solution also to help manage it long term. There’s just way too many alerts that are coming your way. So if you’d like my recommendation on the best MSPs that your company should be quoting to help you deploy the endpoint detection and response solution of your choice like CrowdStrike or Microsoft Defender for endpoint. If you want to know which MSP is best at that particular solution, reach out, send me an email or give me a call (714.593.0011). Send me an email, give me a call. I’m a broker for all the major MSPs out there that you should be quoting and based on your company’s requirements, all recommend the best ones to you. I’ll help you make a lot better decision in a fraction of the time. And I don’t charge you anything for my broker service, so there’s no excuse not to at least reach out and see what I have to say.

Also, don’t forget to check out our website Aerocom Inc. Guarantee. You’ve never seen a website like this. You’ve got we’ve got all types of different service providers on there and solutions and reviews on their information, all kinds of cool stuff. So check that out. Incoming dot com. Also check out all the past blogs I’ve done.

CrowdStrike vs. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

All right. A little bit of a word of warning. This is a quick video on a very detailed topic. So obviously, we’re not going to be able to cover everything in this video. I don’t want to put you to sleep and make this two hour long video. Right. So if you’d like more information, if you’d like a demo on either of these solutions, if you’d like to go in depth a little bit, if you’d like a quote again, reach out and contact me. Send me an email, give me a call. I’m happy to have an MSP join us on a call and go through all the stuff with you in detail. All right. I’m going to tell you this shortcut right out of the gate. I’m going to talk about the key decision factors when you’re looking at CrowdStrike versus Microsoft defender for endpoint.

3 Key Decision Factors

All right. So the first thing is cost. Which solution cost less? Well, that’s going to be Microsoft defender for endpoint. So if your company is looking for the most cost effective solution, that’s probably going to be the solution. You’re going to lean toward, especially if your company already has an E5 license, because that’s included with it.

All right. If your company is looking for the best in class threat detection, then I’d recommend CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is just a little bit better when it comes to all the different features and available things that you have with threat detection, like, for instance, CrowdStrike has behavioral based threat detection. So where as opposed to Microsoft defender for endpoint is more signature based. What I mean by that is is Microsoft defender for endpoint detects threats based on past threats, behavior history as opposed to CrowdStrike is more behavioral based looking for behavior anomalies. So it’s it’s analyzing all your company’s behavior on a constant basis and looking for something out of the ordinary. So that’s just a more advanced way of doing threat detection. So if you’re looking for best in class, it’s going to be CrowdStrike.

If your company is looking for the best integration with the Microsoft Suite, such as Microsoft Sentinel, your choice is going to probably be Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. That’s really their strength is the integrate that deep integration that they have with all the Microsoft apps, especially Microsoft Sentinel, which is Microsoft’s simple platform. So that’s just, you know, CrowdStrike does a good job with the Microsoft applications, but defender for Endpoint is even better.

Okay. So those are the three main decision making factors that you’re going to see.

6 Additional things to consider

The most obvious differences between CrowdStrike and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. But there’s also some other decision factors that I want to cover in this video.

The first is the response portion of endpoint detection and response EDR. So some companies will purchase CrowdStrike or Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and try to handle the response part themselves, meaning that you’re taking in all the alerts and you’re responding to certain alerts, but I don’t recommend doing it that way, not unless you have a huge i.t staff with a whole security department or section of your i.t staff that can look at all the alerts coming through and is really expert in this field which 99.9% of the companies I talk to don’t have that. So really to get the most out of the software, I really recommend using an MSSP p for the response portion of the edr solution because you’re bringing in an expert who looks at alerts every single day and you know, both of these software solutions have a response that you can purchase from them like CrowdStrike. If you want to upgrade to their solution. That includes the response. A live person who can who’s analyzing all the threats, you can do that. It’s extra money, It’s a lot of money. And then Microsoft defender for endpoint same thing. You can pay Microsoft an additional fee to have live people looking at the alerts coming through. But if you think about it, those people work for either CrowdStrike or Microsoft.

Response

So that’s where their area of expertise is. And most companies have additional applications that are outside of CrowdStrike or Microsoft that there’s threat information coming through one. So for instance, you know, a threat might show themself a little bit through CrowdStrike, but maybe it’s crossing through an Apple device or maybe it’s crossing through on your Microsoft device. So it’s better to have an MSSP that is an expert in looking at all different types of products and applications, looking at the threats coming through. And I just I highly recommend doing it that way. Again, if you’d like my recommendation on the best MSSP to work with for either CrowdStrike or Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, reach out and contact me.

Architecture

You might be wondering about architecture. What’s the difference in the architecture of these two different solutions? Well, CrowdStrike is a really lightweight application in its cloud native as opposed to Microsoft Defender for endpoint however is cloud integrated and it’s a more resource intensive solution. And it also requires Microsoft Defender Antivirus.

Cross-Platform Support

But what about cross-platform support? And by that I mean, what different applications can these solutions support? CrowdStrike is strong with Windows, Mac OS Linux and cloud solutions like Google and Azure and Containers. So they’re strong and all of those. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint obviously has very strong support for Windows. That’s their strength. They also can support Mac OS and Linux, but it’s a little bit weaker compared to CrowdStrike.

####Integration & Compatibility

What about integration and compatibility? CrowdStrike integrates with all types of different security solutions, like say you have a different SIM solution and you want to integrate that with CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is very good at integrating with different security solutions and usually companies have all types of different security solutions and CrowdStrike is really good at that, and as you can expect, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is really strong with Microsoft Sentinel Intune and Azure. So you know, they can support other security solutions, but it’s obviously going to be much better if you have a full Microsoft environment

Automation

automation is another factor you should consider. So do you want some remediation steps automated? Well, CrowdStrike is really good at that. You can fully customize a lot of different automated responses. So that response portion, if you want some of those automated CrowdStrike is really good at that. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, however, does have some automated response options, but it’s not customizable like CrowdStrike.

Management

And finally, management. Are these solutions easy to manage? Well, CrowdStrike is really easy to deploy and it’s really easy to manage work. It’s difficult is analyzing all the threat information that’s coming in, and that’s where I recommend that MSSP. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, however, is a pretty complex setup and once it’s set up though, it’s not that difficult to manage. I’d say it’s a little bit more difficult than CrowdStrike, but not too difficult. And but like CrowdStrike, you’re going to get a lot of information pouring in and that’s where the complexity comes in. And again, that’s why I recommend getting an MSP.

Still confused? Reach out and contact me

Speaking of which, again, if you’d like my recommendation on the best MSP to help your company deploy CrowdStrike or Microsoft Defender for Endpoint or any other Endpoint Security solution, reach out, send me an email or give me a call (714.593.0011). I’m a broker for all the major or all the best, I should say, companies that provide MSSP services for these endpoint solutions and I’ll ask you a few questions. And based on your answers to those questions, I’ll recommend the best two or three vendors you should speak to. I’ll introduce you to those vendors. I’ll arrange a demo, I’ll arrange a quote, I’ll make sure that I oversee the pricing and make sure you guys get the best pricing possible from the vendor of your choice. And the nice thing is, is all those services that I provide you are at no cost to you.

Which MSSPs should your company quote?

This, the service providers, the MSPs actually pay me for my broker fee. So you guys don’t have to pay me anything. So there’s no excuse not to at least to reach out and see what I have to say. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years, so I know the landscape inside and out and I know which vendors you should avoid, which vendors usually gravitate toward, especially based on the security solution that you choose. So give it a try. Reach out, Contact me. It’s the reason why I do these videos. If you got something from this video, it’s a nice way to say thank you. So send me an email, Give me a call. I love to talk to you about this stuff and definitely check out our website Aerocominc.com. And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss any of my future weekly videos that I’ll put out. Thanks for watching and have a great day.