Every category where a model named Microsoft 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
Container and Kubernetes security	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	51 of 78	25%	4	under 10 labels · led by Aqua Security at 18%
Extended detection and response	Security operations	0%	60 of 61	75%	4	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender XDR at 63%
Endpoint detection and response	Security operations	0%	24 of 54	0%	2	under 10 labels · led by Bitdefender GravityZone at 20%
Cloud-native application protection	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	31 of 57	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Wiz at 46%
Email security	Security operations	0%	53 of 71	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Defender for Office 365 at 31%
Patch management	IT operations and endpoint	0%	75 of 87	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by Action1 at 27%
Privileged access management	Identity and access	0%	59 of 74	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by ManageEngine PAM360 at 21%
Security awareness training	Security operations	0%	62 of 65	100%	1	under 10 labels · led by KnowBe4 at 42%
SIEM platforms	Security operations	0%	37 of 49	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Microsoft Sentinel at 41%
Vulnerability management platforms	Security operations	0%	56 of 80	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Rapid7 InsightVM at 45%

Movement

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

Model	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	1	1	2
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	1	1
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	0	1	2
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	2	1	3
Mistral Small	0	0	2	2
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	1	1	2
Llama 4 Maverick	0	2	0	2
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	0	1
Kimi K2	0	0	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	1	1	2

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

Direct9 labels1

Paraphrase4 labelsNone

Comparative9 labelsNone

Budget-constrained5 labels1

Scale-constrained11 labels1

Negative16 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative54 labels in all, every segment counted; 3 of the 4 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 organizations invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, Defender XDR is the default, highly consolidated choice.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · XDR · comparative prompt · alternative

“If you are 80%+ Microsoft Azure, this is often the financial winner.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · CNAPP · comparative 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.

“Tech giants like Microsoft (Defender XDR), Palo Alto Networks (Cortex XDR), and Fortinet (FortiXDR) offer incredibly powerful native XDR suites. However, they are optimized for their own security tools.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · XDR · negative prompt · soft negative

“Microsoft and Darktrace were positioned in the "Challengers" quadrant - Analysts noted Microsoft relies "generally on developments in adjacent security areas"” MiniMax M2.5 · Email security · negative prompt · soft negative

“These platforms are strongest inside their stack, which means they work best if you're already heavily invested in their ecosystem.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · XDR · negative prompt · soft negative

“native XDR platforms may disappoint because they are designed to work best with their own ecosystem” Mistral Small · XDR · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Microsoft, over the 54 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Microsoft was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

CrowdStrike15 of 542Not in the top three

Palo Alto Networks12 of 542Not in the top three

CrowdStrike Falcon9 of 541Not in the top three

Aqua Security8 of 540Not in the top three

Wiz7 of 543Not in the top three

SentinelOne Singularity7 of 540Not in the top three

Prisma Cloud6 of 540Not in the top three

Sysdig6 of 540Not in the top three

Zscaler5 of 542Not in the top three

SentinelOne5 of 541Not 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. 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 44 of the 54 answers that named Microsoft and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

gartner.com21

gbhackers.com17

cyberpress.org13

expertinsights.com12

cybersecuritynews.com11

decryptiondigest.com10

sentinelone.com9

guideflow.com8

aimultiple.com7

cipherssecurity.com6

114 of the 114 domain citations in answers naming Microsoft came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

gbhackers.com/best-container-security-compared6

gbhackers.com/best-xdr-platforms-compared5

cyberpress.org/container-security-by-business-size-24

guideflow.com/blog/xdr-platform4

guideflow.com/blog/zero-trust-network-access-software4

securityboulevard.com/2024/10/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-endpoint-protection-platforms4

aimultiple.com/xdr-solutions3

cyberpress.org/xdr-platforms-by-business-size3

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Microsoft

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

Microsoft (Defender XDR) 2Microsoft (Microsoft Defender for Cloud) 1Microsoft's native privileged tooling 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'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, 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.