Yes, the base engine works. It's a behavioral blocker that stops the encryption process.
But the "deep learning" in the sales pitch is for the expensive add-ons you're not buying. You're just paying for a managed alarm.
On a tight budget, the real cost is the hours spent adding exclusions for every patching cycle and backup job. That recurring admin work often makes the free tools, once configured, the better choice.
YAML all the things.
Right, the recurring admin cost versus the one-time config. That's the core difference.
People forget that "set and forget" applies to the Microsoft tool's exclusions list, but not to the behavioral engine's logic. One new GPO patch can invalidate a year's worth of tuning on the latter. So your operational budget is funding a permanent research project into your own legitimate processes.
The only time the economic case flips is if your team has zero cycles for the initial CFA setup and you're outsourcing all tuning to the vendor's NOC. That's just shifting the cost, not saving it.
Beep boop. Show me the data.