Microsoft Defender for Endpoint Services

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is Microsoft's enterprise endpoint detection and response (EDR) platform. It combines antivirus, EDR, vulnerability management, attack surface reduction, and automated investigation into a single agent that runs across Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android devices. Unlike traditional antivirus, it uses AI, behavioural analysis, and cloud-scale threat intelligence to detect and respond to threats that signature-based tools miss.

Microsoft Defender Antivirus is the built-in antivirus engine included with every Windows device - it blocks known malware using signatures and basic heuristics. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a full enterprise EDR platform that includes Defender Antivirus - but adds behavioural detection, threat hunting, vulnerability management, attack surface reduction rules, automated investigation, and centralised management. The antivirus is the door lock; Defender for Endpoint is the door lock plus alarm system, cameras, and response team.

Plan 1 (P1) provides the core EDR essentials - next-generation antivirus, attack surface reduction, device-based conditional access, and centralised management. Plan 2 (P2) adds the advanced capabilities most Australian organisations actually need: automated investigation and response, threat and vulnerability management, advanced hunting, sandbox detonation, and the Threat Analytics dashboard. P2 is included with Microsoft 365 E5 and Microsoft 365 E5 Security add-ons. For most organisations subject to compliance obligations or handling sensitive data, P2 is the practical baseline.

In most cases, yes. If you're already licensed for Microsoft 365 E5 or the E5 Security add-on, Defender for Endpoint is included at no additional cost - and consolidating onto it eliminates the licence fees, agent conflicts, and operational overhead of running a second EDR platform in parallel. It also integrates natively with Defender for Identity, Sentinel, and Purview, giving you unified detection and response across your entire Microsoft stack. Our team runs an EDR consolidation assessment covering licence entitlements, current detection coverage, and migration risk before recommending a switch - so the business case is grounded in what you'd actually save, not a generic pitch.

Deployment is led by senior Microsoft security consultants and covers onboarding across all supported devices, tuning attack-surface reduction rules, configuring automated investigation and response policies, setting up exclusions to avoid business disruption, integrating with Defender for Identity and Sentinel, and building custom detection rules aligned to your threat profile. Every deployment includes knowledge transfer to your internal IT team and documentation so you can run and refine the platform independently.

Defender for Endpoint directly supports four of the eight Essential Eight strategies: application control (through Windows Defender Application Control), patching applications (via vulnerability management), user application hardening (through attack surface reduction rules), and restricting administrative privileges (through Endpoint Privilege Management). We configure Defender for Endpoint against your target Essential Eight maturity level, with evidence packaged to support IRAP assessment or ACSC self-attestation where applicable.