Security Services Roadmap

• A range of Microsoft-hosted security services are available to help organizations secure their infrastructure and endpoints.
• Most client-centric services are licensed through Microsoft 365 E5, and server-centric services are licensed à la carte as Azure services.
• An additional set of security services may be necessary to discover vulnerabilities and incidents and comprehensively manage security perimeters.
• Achieving more complete security coverage requires a large number of services, including Microsoft Sentinel.

Three collections of hosted security services are available from Microsoft: Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and a growing range of paid security and consulting services. Customers who use part of a family will likely end up licensing all of it. They will also be committing to an ongoing stream of costs, since Microsoft sells security software only through subscriptions, with no perpetually licensed options.

Defender XDR is an umbrella brand used to describe a range of stand-alone client-side services typically licensed as a part of Microsoft 365 E5 suites, although each can be licensed independently.