We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Business and Microsoft Entra ID based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Microsoft Security Suite solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is going on. We have a footprint across all of North America, Canada, and Mexico, so we want to make sure that all our endpoints are protected and we are able to look for any anomalous activity."
"It is scalable."
"Microsoft Defender for Business is good for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers solid security flexibility and integration with tools like Microsoft Lighthouse and some other software. It takes some of the features of Defender for Endpoint EDR and provides those services for small and medium-sized business environments."
"The interface is quite user-friendly."
"If you're an Intune user, you can bring in certain capabilities like system-hardening policies, which further enhances the security."
"The most valuable feature is Conditional Access, and we use it extensively."
"Every feature in Microsoft Entra ID plays a crucial role in overall security."
"The tool's most valuable feature is auto logs. It helps with user activity and monitoring. It also assists us with GLBA policies and procedures. Microsoft Entra ID gives a 360 view of what the user has access to, what applications are available to them, when they are logging in and out, etc. It makes knowing what is happening to our tenants incredibly powerful."
"We use BitLocker for policy enforcement. And now, because of the Microsoft 365 Business Premium package, we get Intune as a part of it. That's very useful for us for setting policies and managing the systems. The biggest strength of Azure AD is Intune."
"Using [Azure AD's] passwordless technology, you're not even using a password anymore. You're basically just creating a logon request without actually sending or typing or storing the password. This is awesome for any user, regardless of whether you're a factory worker or a CFO. It's secure and super-simple."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Entra ID is its security options, where we can provide highly effective security for user accounts during authentication."
"It is a really nice tool and we have a license for the more complex model."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to act as an identity provider for other cloud-based, SaaS applications. In our bank, this is the main identity provider for such features."
"We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac."
"Defender's threat protection should be fine-tuned to reduce false positives. It could be more targeted, reflecting a continuous evolution in detecting. Also, it could be easier to integrate into other environments."
"The biggest one is that Defender needs to be more proactive to the emerging threats. There can be tighter integration with email, especially how it integrates with our email system, which is the Microsoft Outlook suite. There should be the ability to react a lot quicker to emerging threats because sometimes, it takes a few days before some of these new threats are fully identified, and we need that to be a few hours."
"Defender's reporting is rather scattered, and its URL filtering mechanism doesn't really work."
"The security could always be improved."
"The SSO MyApps interface is very basic and needs better customization capabilities."
"From time to time it takes a little bit of time to replicate, with some of the applications—something like five to 10 minutes. I know that the design is not supposed to enable real-time replication with some of the applications. But, as an administrator, I would like to run a specific change or modification in Azure Active Directory and see it replicated almost immediately."
"The licensing and support are expensive and have room for improvement."
"The only issue with Azure AD is that it doesn't have control over the wifi network. You have to do something more to have a secure wifi network. To have it working, you need an active directory server on-premises to take care of the networks."
"Transitioning to the cloud is very difficult. They need the training to make it easier."
"Its area of improvement is more about the synchronization of accounts and the intervals for that. Sometimes, there're customers with other network challenges, and it takes a while for synchronization to happen to the cloud. There is some component of their on-prem that is delaying things getting to the cloud. The turnaround time for these requests is very time-sensitive. I don't mean this as derogatory for this service, but in my experience, that happens a lot."
"Azure Active Directory could be made easier to use. We have large amounts of data and storage. We are looking for video files and media content for applications, we will think about options, such as cloud storage or a CDN."
"The management interface has some areas that need improvement."
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Microsoft Defender for Business is ranked 20th in Microsoft Security Suite with 5 reviews while Microsoft Entra ID is ranked 4th in Microsoft Security Suite with 190 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Business is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Entra ID is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Business writes "Quicker response time, improved security posture, and reduced alerts". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Entra ID writes "Allows users to authenticate from home and has excellent integrations in a simple, stable solution". Microsoft Defender for Business is most compared with HP Wolf Security, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and SentinelOne Singularity Complete, whereas Microsoft Entra ID is most compared with Microsoft Intune, Google Cloud Identity, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, Cisco Duo and Okta Workforce Identity. See our Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Entra ID report.
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