System Center Endpoint Protection

Endpoint Protection in Microsoft Configuration Manager manages antimalware policies and Windows Defender Firewall settings for client computers in an organisation's Configuration Manager hierarchy. On Windows 8.1 and earlier computers, the Endpoint Protection client is installed with the Configuration Manager client. The Endpoint Protection client can be installed on a server that runs Hyper-V and on guest virtual machines with supported operating systems. To prevent excessive CPU usage, Endpoint Protection actions have a built-in randomized delay so that protection services do not run simultaneously. It runs on macOS and Windows.

Current Version

4.7

Product Page

learn.microsoft.com/…/endpoint-pr…

Market

Enterprise

Licence

Paid

Price

Quote

Record Created

2026-08-20

Last Updated

2026-10-10

Microsoft is the largest security vendor in this index by installed base, and almost none of that was bought deliberately: Microsoft Defender Antivirus is built into Windows and switched on by default, so it protects any machine whose owner has not installed something else. That changes how its results should be read — it is the baseline every other product in this index is implicitly compared against. The paid products are a different thing from the built-in one. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint adds detection and response, threat and vulnerability management and central policy to the same engine; Microsoft Defender for Business is the smaller-organisation edition; Microsoft Defender XDR correlates signals across endpoints, identity, email and cloud apps; and Microsoft Sentinel is the SIEM above them. Microsoft Defender for Individuals, included with Microsoft 365, is the consumer application. Microsoft enters the public test cycles regularly, and its results are among the most consistently available in this index — useful, because for many readers the real question is not which product is best in the abstract but whether a paid product beats the one already installed. Vendor page →

Website

microsoft.com

Country

🇺🇸United States

Headquarters

🇺🇸Redmond, United States

Year Established

1975

Customers

1.6M organisations

Users

1.4B devices protected

Revenue

$331.8B (2026)