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CrowdStrike Falcon vs Microsoft Active Directory 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
CrowdStrike Falcon enhances efficiency, reduces costs, and boosts productivity through streamlined operations and improved security without excess resources.
Sentiment score
5.0
Microsoft Active Directory enhances productivity by streamlining user management and access control, providing significant time and cost savings.
CrowdStrike Falcon saves time and offers good value for money, especially for enterprise companies, because it can stop breaches.
It's very easy to deploy without many IT admins, saving time.
The solution is really time-saving since I don't need to create users in each server or system manually, and user access control is streamlined.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
CrowdStrike Falcon's customer service is praised for effectiveness and proactive communication, despite occasional slow responses and administrative challenges.
Sentiment score
5.7
Microsoft Active Directory support quality varies; users experience mixed results influenced by representatives' skills and response times.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the technical support as a 10 because they resolve many issues for us.
The CrowdStrike team is very efficient; I would rate them ten out of ten.
They could improve by initiating calls for high-priority cases instead of just opening tickets.
Support documents are available on the internet in every language.
Sometimes support takes long to engage and resolve, extending over weeks or even months.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
CrowdStrike Falcon offers impressive scalability and seamless expansion, effectively supporting diverse organizational needs and thousands of users.
Sentiment score
6.0
Microsoft Active Directory is scalable, adaptable for diverse users, and effective for organizations of all sizes with Azure integration.
It has adequate coverage and is easy to deploy.
In terms of scalability, I find CrowdStrike to be stable, and I have not encountered any limitations with it.
There's no scalability limitation from CrowdStrike itself, as it just requires agent deployment.
Microsoft Active Directory scales effectively; I don't foresee any issues with that at all.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
CrowdStrike Falcon offers stable, reliable performance, with users praising its cloud-based design and high ratings for stability.
Sentiment score
6.2
Microsoft Active Directory is stable and reliable, with high ratings, minor issues, praised scalability, and requires proactive growth planning.
I have never seen instability in the CrowdStrike tool.
We are following N-1 versions across our environment, which is stable.
The biggest issue occurred when every computer worldwide experienced a blue screen.
With multiple domain controllers, stability is ensured.
I've been working with Microsoft Active Directory for over 3 years, and we've had no problems.
 

Room For Improvement

CrowdStrike Falcon needs improvements in user interface, reporting, threat intelligence, legacy support, and cost-efficient pricing and deployment.
Microsoft Active Directory requires improved integration, security, synchronization, usability, scalability, and support to better serve organizational needs.
Simplifying the querying process, such as using double quote queries or directly obtaining logs based on IP addresses or usernames, would be beneficial.
Another concern is CrowdStrike's GUI. It changes annually, making it hard to work and find options.
Threat prevention should be their first priority.
Exporting and verifying group memberships require command line scripts, which isn't simple.
There are some features that need improvements in terms of ease of use and frequency of updates.
Sometimes, it can be overly complicated, and when you apply Group Policy in an Active Directory environment, sometimes those settings apply and sometimes they don't.
 

Setup Cost

CrowdStrike Falcon's pricing varies per device, offering a free trial, with costs impacting smaller enterprises but appealing to larger ones.
Active Directory costs differ by organization, often moderate to high, with cloud solutions like Azure reducing expenses for some.
It is expensive compared to SentinelOne, but as the market leader, it is worth it.
The licensing cost and setup costs are affordable.
The solution is a bit expensive.
For the cloud solution in our region, the pricing of Microsoft Active Directory is very high.
I consider Microsoft Active Directory expensive because if you buy this thing bundled with the Windows Directory Server, you get five user licenses for about a thousand euros, or a little bit less than this.
The pricing, setup cost, and licensing with Microsoft Active Directory is straightforward; you just buy the server and then have to buy the user CALs.
 

Valuable Features

CrowdStrike Falcon excels in threat detection, endpoint protection, and integration, offering AI-driven, lightweight, efficient security solutions.
Microsoft Active Directory provides integration, scalability, access control, and security, making it vital for large organizations seeking efficient management.
I can investigate by accessing the customer's host based on the RTR environment and utilize host search to know details for the past seven days, including logins, processes, file installations, malicious processes, and network connections.
The real-time analytics aspect of CrowdStrike performs well because we get all logs in real-time, with no delay, allowing us to take action immediately.
Being an EDR solution, it helps us identify attacks in real-time.
One valuable feature is the centralized creation of IDs.
I can control all the devices in my domain by just changing the group policies in one place.
Having active deployment and well-configured systems helps me manage tasks and easily oversee thousands of users.
 

Categories and Ranking

CrowdStrike Falcon
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (6th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (2nd), Threat Intelligence Platforms (1st), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (1st), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (1st), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (1st), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Microsoft Active Directory
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Single Sign-On (SSO) (8th), Active Directory Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. CrowdStrike Falcon is designed for Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and holds a mindshare of 12.7%, down 19.5% compared to last year.
Microsoft Active Directory, on the other hand, focuses on Single Sign-On (SSO), holds 3.2% mindshare, up 2.7% since last year.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CrowdStrike Falcon12.7%
Wazuh10.7%
Darktrace8.3%
Other68.3%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
Single Sign-On (SSO) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Active Directory3.2%
Microsoft Entra ID19.9%
Okta Workforce Identity8.2%
Other68.7%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Waleed Omar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides effective real-time threat detection with potential for cost optimization
Some features such as device control, firewall management, and file analysis are standalone products that we need to purchase separately. If these features came out of the box within the product, it would be much more beneficial for us. Other providers such as SentinelOne include these features in their base product. We attended a CrowdStrike Falcon event where they discussed some shallow AI features, but we cannot see these in our panel yet. We work with different solutions such as Darktrace and SocRadar, where AI features are automatically displayed in our dashboards after release. However, for CrowdStrike Falcon, we cannot see these features.
Giovanni Baruzzi - PeerSpot reviewer
Mature technology delivers consistent capability and enhances centralized user management
I think Microsoft Active Directory could be more intuitive. My impression of the integration of Microsoft Active Directory with third-party applications is that it can be made better. It's not the tendency of Microsoft to use a standard, but to modify it to their needs. This is catastrophic if you have to integrate other applications that use the same standard. This creates a major problem, so you have to be very careful and implement step by step, knowing that the partner is Microsoft. I would leave Microsoft Active Directory as it is and build possibly interfaces. For example, there is a provisioning protocol standard named SCIM. It seems that Microsoft Active Directory does not yet have a SCIM interface, which is a problem.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business46
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise61
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise20
 

Questions from the Community

Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions that are very scalable, secure, and user-friendly. Cortex XDR by Palo Alto offers ...
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing user interface that makes setup easy and seamless. CrowdStrike Falcon offers a cl...
How does Microsoft Defender for Endpoint compare with Crowdstrike Falcon?
The CrowdStrike solution delivers a lot of information about incidents. It has a very light sensor that will never push your machine hardware to "test", you don't have the usual "scan now" feature ...
What do you like most about Microsoft Active Directory?
The solution is easy to install and has good reliability.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Active Directory?
I haven't explored all the features of Microsoft Active Directory yet, as I'm still learning and exploring all the options within the platform. There is one minor improvement I can suggest. Sometim...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Active Directory?
I use Microsoft Active Directory when I need to perform password resets, account unlocks, add users to groups, create users, disable accounts, set account expirations, check memberships, or add lic...
 

Also Known As

CrowdStrike Falcon, CrowdStrike Falcon XDR, CrowdStrike Falcon Threat Intelligence, CrowdStrike Identity Protection, CrowdStrike Falcon Surface
No data available
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike Falcon vs. Microsoft Active Directory and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.