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ArcSight Analytics vs Microsoft Defender for Identity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

ArcSight Analytics
Average Rating
6.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (18th)
Microsoft Defender for Iden...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (8th), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. ArcSight Analytics is designed for User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) and holds a mindshare of 1.8%, up 1.0% compared to last year.
Microsoft Defender for Identity, on the other hand, focuses on Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR), holds 8.9% mindshare, down 17.4% since last year.
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
ArcSight Analytics1.8%
Exabeam8.8%
IBM Security QRadar7.4%
Other82.0%
User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA)
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Identity8.9%
CrowdStrike Falcon12.2%
Huntress Managed ITDR6.3%
Other72.6%
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1311453 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Good filtering and reporting tools but can be difficult to use
It can scale as needed. It's not a problem. There are different teams using it. We have CSOC, which is internal, which is onshore, then we have a security operations center that is offshore, which would be in India. The onshore team might be a group of three, and the offshore might be a group of five. Likely, we have eight to ten people in total using the product directly.
Peter Arabomen - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Engineer at Fidelity Bank Plc
Has supported hybrid identity management while integrating well with cloud directory services
The only challenge I have with Microsoft Defender for Identity is the latency. I may not put that entirely on Microsoft, because latency could be network related. At times when trying to authenticate, the prompt is delayed. We tried implementing passwordless authentication, especially for on-premises workloads, but we haven't been able to achieve that. Passwordless authentication is part of the identity functionalities, particularly when it comes to enforcing passwordless for on-premises workloads. In terms of improvements, you can't create OUs on Azure AD. Regarding giving users privileges on what they can do across different OUs, I haven't seen that feature on Microsoft Defender for Identity. Microsoft Defender for Identity needs to be able to plug into third-party applications that are not Microsoft. For instance, with a human resource application used to manage users and leave requests, when staff leaves the organization, they are first exited from that application before AD. Integration between Azure AD and third-party applications would allow automatic syncing when removing staff. The initial setup of Microsoft Defender for Identity is not hard. However, setup is one thing, and getting value from the application end-to-end is another. It can be set up and running from the first day but not functioning optimally. Initially, when we did the setup, it wasn't optimal. Over time, with continuous improvement, which we're still doing, we've gotten to a comfortable level, but there's still room for improvement.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The correlation engine is good."
"Our organization has improved because ArcSight allows multiple integrations with multiple systems which we did not do before using the product."
"This solution makes it easy to create use cases, and it is easy to move queries from use cases to the report to the dashboard."
"Allows multiple integrations with multiple systems in a stable and flexible fashion."
"Investigating an incident has become super easy and helpful."
"This solution allows us to identify connections for all users, and we can see the name, login time, IP address, and other information for each connection to each server."
"The data collection and the integration with different products are valuable features."
"ArcSight Analytics is used to get a deeper insight and threat analysis about the network."
"Auto-remediation is a valuable feature applied to Microsoft Defender for Identity, reducing the burden of investigating false positives."
"The feature I like most is that you can create your own customized detection rules. It has a lot of default alerts and rules, but you can customize them according to your business needs."
"All the integration it has with different Microsoft packages, like Teams and Office, is good."
"One of our users had the same password for every personal and company account. That was a problem because she started receiving phishing emails that could compromise all of her accounts. Defender told us that the user was not changing their password."
"We do not see any issues with the stability of Microsoft Defender for Identity. I can say it is 100% stable."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Identity include real-time information for threat detection, its inclusion of behavioral analytics, and vulnerability management."
"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Identity at nine out of ten."
"The solution’s alerting is fairly efficient."
 

Cons

"There is a GUI, but it is not complete and lacks functionality that needs to be performed using the console."
"It's a difficult product to navigate, it's complex."
"ArcSight's features that can be improved include anything related to its visualization capabilities and user friendliness."
"Network integration is very crucial, and you need to have the knowledge to get it done."
"I would like to see integration with automation products, such as Phantom Automation."
"Inactive connections from servers, which are upgraded or downgraded within a VM, should be automatically revoked."
"You can use this solution for limited use cases. But for more advanced use cases, there are other solutions which are better than ArcSight."
"Customer service has not been up to the mark. They take longer than they should to resolve issues."
"An area for improvement is the administrative interface. It's basic compared to other administrative centers. They could make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"Microsoft should look at what competing vendors like CrowdStrike and Broadcom are doing and incorporate those features into Sentinel and Defender. At the same time, I think the intelligence inside the product is improving fast. They should incorporate more zero-trust and hybrid trust approaches. They need to build up threat intelligence based on threats and methods used in attacks on other companies."
"The impact of the sensors on the domain controllers can be quite high depending on your loads. I don't know if there's any room for improvement there, but that's one of the things that might be improved."
"And when you are working in a priority IP address, Identity is not able to know that those IPs are from the company. It sees that the IPs are from Taiwan or from Hong Kong or from India, even though they are internal IPs, resulting in a lot of false positives."
"Fixing the solution isn't very seamless."
"I can't say that I've seen a return on investment since we have Microsoft Defender for Identity because we also have another security solution in place."
"The tracking instance needs to be configured appropriately."
"Defender for Identity gives us visibility, but we often get false positives from Azure that take us down the garden path. We go through 30 incidents each day and most of those are false positives or benign positive alerts. Occasionally, we get true positive alerts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is expensive."
"The monthly licensing fee is around $20,000. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"In addition to the costs of standard licensing fees, there is the cost of labor for maintenance."
"ArcSight Analytics is a bit expensive compared with other tools in terms of licensing costs, training, hardware implementation, and support."
"My customers pay a yearly licensing fee for ArcSight Analytics."
"It can range between $30,000 and $40,000 USD, and can go up to $500,000 and $600,000 USD."
"Microsoft Defender for Identity comes as part of the Microsoft E5 licensing stack."
"You won't be able to change your tenants from where you deploy them. For example, if you select Canada, they will charge you based on Canadian pricing. If you are also in London, when you deploy in Canada, the pound is higher than Canadian dollars, but your platform resources are billable in Canadian dollars. Using your pounds to pay for any of these things will be cheaper. Or, if you deploy in London, they will charge you based on your local currency."
"The product is costly, and we had multiple discussions with accounting to receive a discounted rate. However, on the open market, the tool is expensive."
"Defender for Identity is a little more expensive than other Microsoft products. Identity and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are both a bit costly."
"It is very affordable considering that other SIEM solutions are much more expensive and have many more licensing restrictions and fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
20%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Identity?
I really would have to sit down to think about how Microsoft Defender for Identity can be improved. I didn't take stock in what needs to be improved because I appreciated having the tools right the...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Identity?
My main use cases for Microsoft Defender for Identity include Conditional Access, checking risky users, remediating risky users, and user sign-ins. I can easily remediate or determine what the user...
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Defender for Identity?
I don't really use Microsoft Defender for Identity a lot because my new role doesn't allow me to take time to do so. I don't really use the threat intelligence feature of Microsoft Defender for Ide...
 

Also Known As

ArcSight User Behavior Analytics, ArcSight UBA
Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Azure ATP, MS Defender for Identity
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Defender for Identity is trusted by companies such as St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Exabeam, One Identity, IBM and others in User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA). Updated: June 2026.
900,196 professionals have used our research since 2012.