topic Cortex XDR Co-Existing with MDfE in Cortex XDR Discussions

Cortex XDR Co-Existing with MDfE

PraveenT — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 23:37:15 GMT

Hi There,
We have an Enterprise customer here in NZ who wants to have Cortex & Microsoft solutions on all their Windows 10 endpoints. So here is my query - Can Cortex XDR co-exist with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint on same endpoints and both operate optimally and independently of each other? Thanks in advance!
Dr. Praveen Talwar (Praveen.Talwar@Spark.co.nz)

Re: Cortex XDR Co-Existing with MDfE

jcandelaria — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 01:35:22 GMT

The answer is yes, they can co-exist but as general reminder, anytime there are 2 AVs, there will always be a spike in resources.

From deployment overview, you can put the XDR in report while defender in blocking then do tuning and once you are ready, you can put the xdr in blocking which will be registered as your primary AV in security center and defender will be disabled but you can always configure schedule scan on defender and make sure you dont do it the same time as xdr.. As always, you can contact your account team if you want Professional services to help you on your initial deployment.

Re: Cortex XDR Co-Existing with MDfE

Remo — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 11:21:34 GMT

Hi @PraveenT

Yes, it is possible to have both AV software active and running on these computers. As written by @jcandelaria (with default settings) defender will be disabled as soon as cortex is configured in block mode. But if you diable the microsoft security center integration for cortex, then both softwares are actively protecting the workstations. If this is always a good, is difficult question to answer. It definately requires more ressources and there might be compatibility issues. But at least in theory this should working fine.