For those of you who might be interested, we launched Indominus Managed Security in January to address this very problem. We offer a managed instance of Defender for endpoint/for business with 7/24 support and we automated most of the on-boarding. We also optionally offer managed vulnerabilities and updates for Windows devices. We target small and medium businesses who otherwise would not be able to hire/retain cybersecurity professionals. Let me know if we can help.

I fell similarly. The model of having to be aligned with a solution provider instead of an inhouse team is common across the modern business spectrum. But, it leaves one to be upfronted with additional costs for service whenever anything goes awry. Service is not inherently bundled with the product, and costs vary with the provider. Everything is going to the "as a service" model. For me, that means added costs and hits to the bottom line. The question is if it is worth the cost to run Defender over the competition. Microsoft still has a at least a perceived view that their defense solution is not as good as most other premium services in this category, whether or not it is founded. I had a client fall victim to the recent 3CX Trojan issue . They were running Trend Micro Apex One in house on most of their systems, and it didn't have any idea they were collecting multiple malware instances. The few units on the built-in Windows Defender caught the downloads after the initial infection, which is better than most AV applications faired.

yes so many