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Index › Vendors › Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management · September 2026 Edition

Microsoft Defender · 1 category · Ranked

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

70Judge labels

5First choices

9Negative 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

8% in Vuln management for enterprise buyers

Rank 6 of 80 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger

0 of 12 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 19% of its 27 labels there were negative.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business12 of 78

In vuln management · 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 Vulnerability 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
Vulnerability management platforms	Security operations	2%	6 of 80	19%	27	accepted challenger

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability 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 Vulnerability 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	0	0	1	1
GPT-5.4 mini	0	2	0	2	4
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	3	0	0	3
Perplexity Sonar	0	2	0	1	3
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	1	1	0	2
Mistral Small	0	0	1	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	3	0	1	4
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	1	0	1
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	0	0	1
Kimi K2	0	2	2	0	4
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

Direct12 labelsNone

Paraphrase6 labelsNone

Comparative18 labelsNone

Budget-constrained12 labels5

Scale-constrained8 labelsNone

Negative14 labels2not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative70 labels in all, every segment counted; 5 of the 7 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.

“The "Zero Extra Cost" Option (If you have a Microsoft Ecosystem) Winner: Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Vuln management · budget prompt · first choice

“If your mid-market company is heavily standardized on Microsoft E5 licensing, Defender's built-in vulnerability management integrates natively with Microsoft Intune” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Vuln management · direct prompt · alternative

“For organizations already in the Microsoft ecosystem: Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is essentially free or very low-cost” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Vuln management · budget prompt · alternative

“or Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management... enabling their built-in VM modules eliminates the need to deploy a second agent” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Vuln management · scale 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.

“can be attractive, but it tends to be more compelling as part of a broader Microsoft security stack than as a standalone best-of-breed VM choice” GPT-5.4 mini · Vuln management · direct prompt · soft negative

“works better as one piece of a broader stack than as the primary platform ... accept the coverage tradeoffs for non-Windows assets” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Vuln management · comparative prompt · soft negative

“best suited for Microsoft environments, so non-Microsoft-heavy shops should be cautious about assuming broad fit” Perplexity Sonar · Vuln management · negative prompt · soft negative

“reviews mention overloaded dashboards, unclear remediation suggestions, and limited customization for some users” GPT-5.4 mini · Vuln management · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, over the 70 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Rapid7 InsightVM36 of 708Not in the top three

Qualys VMDR34 of 704Not in the top three

Qualys28 of 703Not in the top three

Tenable27 of 707Not in the top three

Wiz27 of 700Not in the top three

Intruder23 of 7013Not in the top three

Tenable Vulnerability Management23 of 7011Not in the top three

OpenVAS22 of 703Not in the top three

Rapid717 of 700Not in the top three

Orca Security15 of 700Not 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 Vulnerability 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 56 of the 70 answers that named Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

axis-intelligence.com36

techrepublic.com32

riskwatch.com30

upguard.com25

orca.security23

vicarius.io21

expertinsights.com20

gartner.com20

pdq.com15

cybervendorguide.com13

235 of the 235 domain citations in answers naming Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

axis-intelligence.com/best-vulnerability-management-tools-tested36

techrepublic.com/article/top-vulnerability-management-tools32

riskwatch.com/vulnerability-management-software30

upguard.com/blog/top-vendor-vulnerability-tools24

orca.security/resources/blog/best-vulnerability-management-tools23

expertinsights.com/security-operations/the-top-vulnerability-management-solutions19

gartner.com/reviews/market/vulnerability-assessment15

pdq.com/blog/best-vulnerability-management-tools15

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

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

Microsoft Defender VM 3Microsoft Defender VM "Windows authenticated scan" 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 Vulnerability 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 Vulnerability 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.