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Index › Vendors › Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management · September 2026 Edition

Microsoft Defender · 1 category · Ranked

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management

86Judge labels

10First choices

23Negative labels

12 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Best standing

19% in ASM for enterprise buyers

Rank 5 of 104 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger

0 of 12 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 23% of its 30 labels there were negative.

By buyer segmentStrongest at enterprise.

Small business14 of 96

criticized challenger

In asm · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Attack surface management	Security operations	2%	5 of 104	23%	30	accepted challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	1	1	0	2
GPT-5.4 mini	0	2	0	0	2
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	0	2	2
Perplexity Sonar	0	1	2	1	4
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	2	1	2	5
Mistral Small	1	1	0	0	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	4	0	1	5
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	1	1	2
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	0	0	1
Kimi K2	0	1	1	0	2
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	2	0	0	2
MiniMax M2.5	0	1	0	0	1

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct16 labels1

Paraphrase13 labels2

Comparative21 labels1not counted in share

Budget-constrained19 labels7

Scale-constrained1 labelNone

Negative16 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative86 labels in all, every segment counted; 10 of the 11 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“For the most budget-friendly options, consider Microsoft Defender EASM, Intruder, or Rapid7 InsightVM.” Mistral Small · ASM · budget prompt · first choice

“Best for enterprises already using Microsoft security tools, providing expansive mapping and data richness.” Mistral Small · ASM · comparative prompt · alternative

“If you're a Microsoft/Azure shop, deeply integrated | ~$0.011/asset/day — cost-effective at your scale” DeepSeek V4 Flash · ASM · scale prompt · alternative

“from ~$2/user/month if you're already a Microsoft shop (a very cheap add-on for Defender customers)” DeepSeek V4 Flash · ASM · budget prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Verdict: Avoid if your environment isn't heavily Azure-centric. Be cautious even if it is, due to the false-positive workload.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · ASM · negative prompt · hard negative

“users often report that it is incredibly noisy and difficult to manage without a dedicated Microsoft-certified engineer” Gemini 3.5 Flash · ASM · direct prompt · hard negative

“Avoid if: Not deep in Microsoft ecosystem. Gartner notes it's "complex like most MS products."” Grok 4.1 Fast · ASM · negative prompt · hard negative

“are overkill: $50k+ annually, complex sales cycles, better for 1,000+ employee firms” Grok 4.1 Fast · ASM · paraphrase prompt · hard negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management, over the 86 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Cortex Xpanse59 of 8610Not in the top three

CyCognito51 of 865Not in the top three

Censys ASM39 of 862Not in the top three

Intruder29 of 8621Not in the top three

Detectify26 of 864Not in the top three

CrowdStrike Falcon Surface26 of 860Not in the top three

Tenable Attack Surface Management25 of 860Not in the top three

Bitsight21 of 865Not in the top three

Synack20 of 864Not in the top three

UpGuard BreachSight18 of 862Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 78 of the 86 answers that named Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

upguard.com59

synack.com55

bitsight.com39

gartner.com39

guideflow.com36

wiz.io36

paloaltonetworks.com35

g2.com28

ionix.io27

guptadeepak.com25

379 of the 379 domain citations in answers naming Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

upguard.com/blog/best-attack-surface-management-software-solutions57

synack.com/blog/best-attack-surface-management-tools55

bitsight.com/guides/best-external-attack-surface-management-platforms-for-global-enterpris37

guideflow.com/blog/attack-surface-management-software36

gartner.com/reviews/market/external-attack-surface-management34

wiz.io/academy/cloud-security/attack-surface-management-tools32

paloaltonetworks.com/cyberpedia/asm-tools-comparison29

geekflare.com/cybersecurity/best-attack-surface-monitoring24

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management; a claim can dispute any of them.

Microsoft Defender EASM 20Defender EASM 5Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (Defender EASM) 2Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management (EASM) 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at microsoft.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.