Microsoft Combines & Renames Products Under Defender Brand

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” True, Juliet, but a name does matter, especially when it’s simply arbitrary versus describing what it actually is. And this seems to be a truth that Microsoft has taken to heart…

After rebranding Windows Defender as Microsoft Defender in early 2019, Microsoft announced in September that they are renaming and bringing more products under the Defender brand.

The Defender product line is now larger and split into two buckets:

• Microsoft 365 Defender for end user environments: Microsoft 365 Defender delivers XDR (Extended Detection and Response) capabilities for identities, endpoints, cloud apps, email and documents. It uses artificial intelligence to reduce the SOC’s work items, and in a recent test we consolidated 1,000 alerts to just 40 high-priority incidents. Built-in self-healing technology fully automates remediation more than 70% of the time, ensuring defenders can focus on other tasks that better leverage their knowledge and expertise.
• Azure Defender for cloud and hybrid infrastructure: Azure Defender delivers XDR capabilities to protect multi-cloud and hybrid workloads, including virtual machines, databases, containers, IoT, and more. Azure Defender is an evolution of the Azure Security Center threat protection capabilities and is accessed from within Azure Security Center.

The Microsoft 365 Defender line now includes:

• Microsoft 365 Defender (previously Microsoft Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (previously Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (previously Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection)
• Microsoft Defender for Identity (previously Azure Advanced Threat Protection)

The Azure Defender line now includes:

• Azure Defender for Servers (previously Azure Security Center Standard Edition)
• Azure Defender for IoT (previously Azure Security Center for IoT)
• Azure Defender for SQL (previously Advanced Threat Protection for SQL)

This rebranding of Microsoft’s security offerings is in alignment with other product renaming initiatives (such as the renaming of the Office 365 SMB SKUs) that have taken place over the last year or so.

OneNeck Product Director, Jim Brown, states, “It just makes sense. As Microsoft is striving to simplify and unify their security offerings to cover an end-to-end security portfolio, the names need to reflect this strategy and enable clear consumption models and make it easier for organizations to understand how to use them to be more secure.”

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As an experienced Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) and Microsoft partner, we’re here to help. So, if you have any questions regarding the new Microsoft product names and how to use them to secure your data and applications, let’s chat.

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