Microsoft Defender for Business

Defender for Business (MDB) is endpoint security packaged for the small-and-medium- business (SMB) segment — up to 300 employees. It includes most of MDE Plan 2's protective power (next-gen AV, EDR, ASR, automated investigation, vulnerability management) with a simplified, wizard-driven configuration so a small IT team or an MSP can deploy and operate it without a dedicated SOC.

It's bundled with Microsoft 365 Business Premium and available as a standalone SKU. For MSPs, it's delivered through Microsoft 365 Lighthouse for multi-tenant management.

When to use

You're an SMB up to ~300 employees, or an MSP delivering security to SMB customers, and you need real endpoint protection without an enterprise SOC budget.

Do not use this skill for enterprise EDR (defender-for-endpoint), Defender XDR cross-product investigation (defender-xdr), or Azure server protection (defender-for-servers).