Norton wants $160/yr per device. McAfee bundles 47 useless features. Webroot was acquired and degraded. What should a 10-person Miami office actually run in 2026? Here's the honest ranking from the folks who deploy these every week.
Skip the consumer brands
Norton, McAfee, Bitdefender Total Security, Kaspersky Premium — these are consumer products. They're loud, ad-heavy, and miss modern threats (fileless malware, living-off-the-land attacks). Their detection rates against current ransomware are 40-60%. Stop using them in business.
The 2026 tier list
🥇 Tier 1: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint
If your office runs Microsoft 365 Business Premium ($22/user/month), Defender for Endpoint is included. It's genuinely the best in class for 90% of small businesses — EDR, XDR, machine-learning detection, automated investigation. Microsoft has more attack telemetry than anyone on the planet. We deploy this to 60% of our managed clients.
🥈 Tier 2: SentinelOne Singularity
If you don't have M365 Business Premium, SentinelOne is the next best for SMBs. Per-endpoint pricing, rollback feature (if ransomware encrypts files, S1 can undo it), strong macOS support. Deploys in 15 minutes. Worth the per-seat cost for businesses that can't justify the M365 upgrade.
🥉 Tier 3: CrowdStrike Falcon Pro
Industry gold standard but priced for mid-enterprise ($100+/endpoint/yr at small scale). If you handle regulated data (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, CMMC) or are funded enough to care about best-in-class threat hunting, CrowdStrike is the play. The 2024 outage incident was a one-off — they're still elite.
What about free options?
Windows Defender (the free one, not "Defender for Endpoint") is actually quite good for a single home PC. For business with employees? No — you need centralized visibility, automated response, and EDR features that the free version lacks.
What we deploy for Miami clients
Our standard SMB security stack (10-50 employees):
- EDR: Microsoft Defender for Endpoint (via M365 Business Premium)
- Email security: Microsoft Defender for Office 365
- DNS filtering: Cisco Umbrella or Cloudflare Gateway
- Backup: Veeam + immutable off-site (S3 Object Lock or Wasabi)
- Phishing simulation: Microsoft Attack Simulator or KnowBe4
The single most important thing
Whatever you choose, deploy MFA on every account. 90% of breaches that hit Miami SMBs in 2025 would have been prevented by MFA. No exaggeration. If you do nothing else this week, turn on MFA for every login.
Free 30-min security audit: we look at your current setup, score it 0-100, and tell you the top 3 things to fix. No sales pressure. See our cybersecurity services or try the free risk score.