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Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management vs Microsoft Sentinel 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

Microsoft Defender External...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
33rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Attack Surface Management (ASM) (13th)
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 5.0%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

AndyChan3 - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced visibility and exposes vulnerabilities but needs more integration
I am currently in the pilot stage of implementing Microsoft External Attack Surface Management (EASM). My organization is transitioning to a comprehensive track of Microsoft solutions, and we will move to full-scale production in another year, maybe Microsoft External Attack Surface Management…
Ivan Angelov - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat detection and response capabilities enhance investigation processes
My security team has been using Microsoft Sentinel for around two years. We also have Bastion and SolarWinds as part of our monitoring tools. We use a three-way tool, alongside Microsoft Sentinel, in our environment The most valuable features for us include threat collection, threat detection,…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It seems to be better at protecting from cyberattacks."
"Microsoft External Attack Surface Management helps improve the visibility of my exposed vulnerabilities and provides an overview of my security posture across the globe."
"Microsoft External Attack Surface Management helps improve the visibility of my exposed vulnerabilities and provides an overview of my security posture across the globe."
"The query language of Microsoft Sentinel is easy to understand and use."
"The best functionality that you can get from Azure Sentinel is the SOAR capability. So, you can estimate any type of activity, such as when an alert was triggered or an incident was found."
"We have seen at least a 60% increase in efficiency with Microsoft Sentinel and the ability to reduce the MTTD down to under five minutes and MTTR down to under fifteen."
"What is most useful, is that it has a good connection to the Microsoft ecosystem, and I think that's the key part."
"The native integration of the Microsoft security solution has been essential because it helps reduce some false positives, especially with some of the impossible travel rules that may be configured in Microsoft 365. For some organizations, that might be benign because they're using VPNs, etc."
"The in-built SOAR of Sentinel is valuable. Kusto Query Language is also valuable for the ease of writing queries and ease of getting insights from the logs. Schedule-based queries within Sentinel are also valuable. I found these three features most useful for my projects."
"The UI-based analytics are excellent."
"We feel safe knowing that we have a solution that we can use to react in case of an emergency."
 

Cons

"With Microsoft, support is always crazy, it's not easy to get support."
"The integration is not as seamless compared to competitors like Palo Alto."
"Further integration across different Microsoft products would be an improvement."
"The product can be improved by reducing the cost to use AI machine learning."
"If Azure Sentinel had the ability to ingest Azure services from different tenants into another tenant that was hosting Azure Sentinel, and not lose any metadata, that would be a huge benefit to a lot of companies."
"Sentinel could improve its ticketing and management. A few customers I have worked with liked to take the data created in Sentinel. You can make some basic efforts around that, but the customers wanted to push it to a third-party system so they could set up a proper ticketing management system, like ServiceNow, Jira, etc."
"We are invoiced according to the amount of data generated within each log."
"The data connectors for third-party tools could be improved, as some aren't available in Sentinel. They need to be available in the data connector panel."
"The AI capabilities must be improved."
"Add more out-of-the-box connectors with other SaaS platforms/applications."
"They're giving us the queries so we can plug them right into Sentinel. They need to have a streamlined process for updating them in the tool and knowing when things are updated and knowing when there are new detections available from Microsoft."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"From a cost perspective, Microsoft Sentinel is quite costly."
"Sentinel's pricing is on the higher side, but you can get a discount if you can predict your usage. You have to pay ingestion and storage fees. There are also fees for Logic Apps and particular features. It seems heavily focused on microtransactions, but they may be slightly optional. By contrast, Splunk requires no additional fee for their equivalent of Logic. You have a little more flexibility, but Sentinel's costs add up."
"It is a consumption-based license model. bands at 100, 200, 400 GB per day etc. Azure Sentinel Pricing | Microsoft Azure"
"Microsoft Sentinel is pretty expensive, and they recently announced that they will increase the price of all Microsoft services running in Azure by 11 percent. Luckily, I'm not responsible for the financial side. For one of my clients, the estimated cost is 880,000 euros for one year. There are additional costs for the service agreement."
"I am not involved on the financial side, but from an enterprise-wide use perspective, I think the price is good enough."
"We only pay for the amount of data we bring in, which is fair."
"No license is required to make use of Sentinel, but you need to buy products to get the data. In general, the price of those products is comparable to similar products."
"There are no additional costs other than the initial costs of Sentinel."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management?
Further integration across different Microsoft products would be an improvement. Introduction of more AI automation into the products would also be beneficial. The integration is not as seamless co...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management?
I am currently in the pilot stage of implementing Microsoft External Attack Surface Management (EASM). My organization is transitioning to a comprehensive track of Microsoft solutions, and we will ...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.