Defender on iOS Offers Few Security Benefits

• Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) offers very little endpoint defense on Apple’s mobile devices.
• Features currently offered by MDE on Apple mobile devices are overhyped, and limitations are downplayed.
• Many other security vendors also make overly bold claims about their endpoint protection capabilities on iOS, making accurate comparisons difficult.

The Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (MDE) service added support for Apple and Android mobile devices in late 2020. MDE is Microsoft’s line of hosted services for managed antimalware and endpoint detection and response, enabling organizations to discover and defend against evolving attacks against devices. However, the set of MDE features available on Apple’s mobile device platforms are extremely limited, due to the platform limitations designed into iOS and iPadOS (referred to from here on as “iOS” for simplicity, as MDE’s support is identical on both platforms).

Although Microsoft promotes MDE support for iOS, customers need to understand what MDE can and cannot do on iOS, the limited set of MDE features available, and the low likelihood of this changing, due to Apple’s platform design.