Amidst the backdrop of a surging number of ransomware campaigns worldwide, organizations have increasingly chosen Microsoft Defender’s endpoint security as their preferred solution. It’s engineered to disrupt cyberattacks and not business continuity. As a result, for a third year a row, Microsoft has been ranked number one for modern endpoint security market share in the IDC report, “Worldwide Modern Endpoint Security Market Shares, 2024.” Our market share grew from 25.8% in 2023 to 28.6% in 2024, at a 28.2% growth rate.
As IDC notes in their report, the endpoint security market “is growing in response to an increasingly sophisticated threat” powered by AI. Global enterprises like Crocs, Victorionox, and Del Monte Foods are choosing Microsoft Defender more and more to secure their environments because of the value they see not only in our endpoint security, but also our defense-in-depth approach across domains powered by AI. Spanning from the devices to the cloud, the Microsoft Defender platform protects every aspect of their daily operations.
“It was surprisingly simple to enable real-time visibility across our environment. It’s been a leap in our security maturity level, and with the native interoperability of our Microsoft security solutions, we achieved it much faster than we expected.”
—Glauco Sampaio, Chief Information Security Officer, Cielo
Worldwide Modern Endpoint Security 2024 Share Snapshot
Why organizations increasingly prefer Microsoft Defender for endpoint security
Microsoft Defender helps organizations proactively secure their digital estate with AI-powered endpoint protection across Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS, and Internet of Things (IoT). It empowers security operations center (SOC) analysts with unique capabilities spanning pre-breach exposure management to post-breach attack disruption.
A key driver behind Microsoft Defender’s growing market share is its deep investment in cross-platform support, especially for Linux. Over the last three years, Microsoft has reengineered its Linux security for zero workload disruption, using eBPF sensor technology for greater visibility with minimal reliance on the kernel mode. This innovation has led to significant performance gains, with the solution consuming less than 1% CPU across 95% of deployments. Defender now supports a broader range of Linux distributions, including ARM64, and is optimized for low-resource environments such as single-core servers. At the same time, we’ve continued to drive cross-platform innovation to further expand comprehensive endpoint security across Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and IoT.
An organization’s best offense against the rapidly evolving threat landscape is a secure defense, where Microsoft Defender’s next-generation protection and then built-in exposure management capabilities are critical. To help you manage your risk, you get a dynamic risk score that continuously measures vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in your environment and provides actionable recommendations for resolution. In the case of a cyberattack, you immediately see the most critical junctions in your network with attack path analysis. Our unique visibility into your environment provides a risk-based map of the potential devices that adversaries can exploit so you can proactively harden your environment, cutting them off from progressing further.
Advanced detection and response capabilities like automatic attack disruption are next in the stack. Informed by the full breadth of Microsoft Defender’s 84 trillion daily signals, it is a built-in self-defense capability that contains in-progress cyberattacks across the organization to prevent further lateral movement and damage. Meanwhile, the security operations team remains in control of investigation, remediation, and restoring asset availability. Even as attack disruption harnesses extended detection and response (XDR) signal, it can stop cyberattacks in a decentralized way across devices with just Defender for Endpoint deployed.
It also surgically protects critical assets like servers by containing compromised IP addresses while allowing the server to continually operate. You can maximize attack disruption’s reach and effectiveness across assets like identities, email, and additional domains by expanding your Microsoft Defender deployment. In addition, Defender provides analysts a rich set of detection and response capabilities such as live response and advanced hunting to further secure their environment.
Further supporting SOC teams with a global footprint, the Microsoft Defender portal experience comes in more than 100 languages and dialects, and documentation covers more than 60 languages and dialects. This robust coverage means security analysts can quickly and confidently understand, investigate, and remediate without language barriers. Wherever the security analyst operates from, Defender likely speaks their language.
These capabilities and global approach to securing organizations are just some of the reasons why organizations are increasingly choosing Defender for Endpoint over other vendors in the market. Thank you to our valued customers and partners for your trust and collaboration that empower us to advance our mission and build a more secure future together.
To learn more
- Read about Microsoft’s leadership in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection Platforms.
- Read the Defender for Endpoint e-book.
- Watch the Defender for Endpoint overview video.
- Try out Defender for Endpoint with a free trial.
To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity.
Worldwide Modern Endpoint Security Market Shares, 2024; (Doc # US53349725, May 2025).
