IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint · September 2026 Edition

Microsoft Defender · 2 categories · Named, not ranked

Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint

6Judge labels

3First choices

0Negative labels

5 of 12Models named it

2Categories

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

Standing

5 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint was named 5 times in Endpoint protection and 1 other category, where Microsoft Defender for Cloud led with 22%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business15 of 89

under the label threshold

Mid-market9 of 99

under the label threshold

Enterprisenot named

No model named it for this buyer.

In endpoint protection · 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 for Business / Endpoint 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
Endpoint protection	IT operations and endpoint	4%	9 of 99	0%	4	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Cloud at 22%
Endpoint detection and response	Security operations	0%	26 of 54	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Bitdefender GravityZone at 20%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint 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 for Business / Endpoint across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

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

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

Direct2 labels1

Paraphrase3 labels1

Comparative0 labelsNone

Budget-constrained0 labelsNone

Scale-constrained1 label1

Negative0 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative6 labels in all, every segment counted; 3 of the 3 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.

“### 1. Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint Best if: You're already using Microsoft 365” Kimi K2 · Endpoint protection · direct prompt · first choice

“If your company relies heavily on the Microsoft ecosystem... this is often the most logical choice.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Endpoint protection · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Best value if you're in that ecosystem.” Grok 4.1 Fast · Endpoint protection · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“Best for Microsoft-Centric Businesses” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Endpoint protection · paraphrase 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.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint, over the 6 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Bitdefender GravityZone5 of 62Not in the top three

SentinelOne Singularity4 of 61Not in the top three

CrowdStrike Falcon4 of 60Not in the top three

Sophos Intercept X2 of 61Not in the top three

CrowdStrike2 of 60Not in the top three

SentinelOne2 of 60Not in the top three

Bitdefender1 of 60Not in the top three

CNiC1 of 60Not in the top three

Cynet1 of 60Not in the top three

Huntress1 of 60Not 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 for Business / Endpoint. 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 5 of the 6 answers that named Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

gbhackers.com5

cyberpress.org4

cybersecuritynews.com4

deel.com3

av-comparatives.org2

cnicsolutions.com2

gartner.com2

kaseya.com2

solutionsinsider.com2

trustradius.com2

Twenty-eight of the twenty-eight domain citations in answers naming Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

gbhackers.com/best-edr-solutions-compared4

deel.com/blog/best-endpoint-protection-for-business3

cnicsolutions.com/cybersecurity-threat-protection/best-endpoint-protection-edr-solutions-f2

cnicsolutions.com/cybersecurity-threat-protection/detection-response/best-endpoint-protect2

cyberpress.org/business-antivirus-by-business-size2

cyberpress.org/edr-solutions-by-business-size2

cybersecuritynews.com/best-business-antivirus-software2

cybersecuritynews.com/best-edr-solutions2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Microsoft Defender for Business / Endpoint; a claim can dispute any of them.

Microsoft Defender for Business/Endpoint 2

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 for Business / Endpoint'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 for Business / Endpoint, 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.