We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Identity and Microsoft Defender XDR 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.
"This solution has advanced a lot over the last few years."
"Defender for Identity has not affected the end-user experience."
"It automates routine testing and helps automate the finding of high-value alerts."
"It is easy to set up. Based on the number of devices you would like to set up, you can use scripts, Group Policy, etc. It takes five minutes to set up."
"The solution offers excellent visibility into threats."
"The basic security monitoring at its core feature is the most valuable aspect. But also the investigative parts, the historical logging of events over the network are extremely interesting because it gives an in-depth insight into the history of account activity that is really easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to export."
"The best feature is security monitoring, which detects and investigates suspicious user activities. It can easily detect advanced attacks based on the behavior. The credentials are securely stored, so it reduces the risk of compromise. It will monitor user behavior based on artificial intelligence to protect the identities in your organization. It will even help secure the on-premise Active Directory. It syncs from the cloud to on-premise, and on-premise modifications will be reflected in the cloud."
"The feature I like the most about Defender for Identity is the entity tags. They give you the ability to identify sensitive accounts, devices, and groups. You also have honeytoken entities, which are devices that are identified as "bait" for fraudulent actors."
"We are able to consolidate licences and make use of many Microsoft products using this solution. If we have any Microsoft customers, we encourage them to use this solution for enterprise defence."
"Microsoft 365 Defender's most valuable feature is the ability to control the shadow IP."
"The EDR features are valuable. By getting the EDR features, we have more control over the device. We have information about events in real-time and more protection against zero-day threats and zero-day vulnerabilities. We can monitor every event or action that a device is going through. We can get an idea if it is something malicious or if we have to take any actions."
"Its most significant advantage lies in its affordability."
"Defender XDR has a feature called the timeline that lets you track all activities. It helps a lot with investigations."
"Microsoft XDR's system of analysis and investigation is super convenient for our customers. It integrates with other Microsoft solutions like Defender for 365 to protect email traffic from malicious external web links and phishing."
"My clients like Defender's file integrity monitoring. They're monitoring Windows and Linux system files."
"The visibility into threats that 365 Defender provides is really good. You get a full review of your security system and what can be improved. In the Microsoft 365 Defender portal the first page gives you a really big summary of which security policies you are following and what can 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."
"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 solution could be better at using group-managed access and they could replace it with broad-based access controls."
"The technical support needs significant improvement. Documentation for more minor issues in the form of guides or walkthroughs could help to resolve this issue. The number of tickets raised would decrease, removing some pressure from the support team and making it easier to clear the remaining tickets."
"There is no option to remedy an issue directly from the console. If we see an alert, we can't fix it from the console. Instead, we must depend on other Microsoft products, such as MDE. That is a significant drawback. It simply works as a scanner, which can sometimes put enough load on the sensors. Immediate actions should be possible from the dashboard because. It can prevent issues from spreading further."
"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."
"When the data leaves the cloud, there are security issues."
"One potential area for improvement could be exploring flexibility in the installation of Microsoft Defender for Identity agents."
"365 Defender has multiple subsets, including Defender for Cloud Apps. When integrating Defender for Cloud Apps with apps on third-party cloud platforms like AWS or GCP, there are limitations on our ability to control user activities. If Microsoft added more control over third-party products, that would be a game-changer and help us quite a lot."
"It would be beneficial to have a more seamless experience with everything consolidated in one place, particularly when dealing with aspects related to the Exchange console."
"The support team is not competent or responsive."
"Advanced attacks could use an improvement."
"It would be helpful if the solution could scan faster when it comes to scanning attachments to emails."
"From an integration standpoint, it is always improving overall. With Security Copilot coming out, as partners, we are waiting for the GDAP support so that we can actually see Security Copilot on behalf of customers if they subscribe to it."
"For some scenarios, it provides good visibility into threats, and for some scenarios, it doesn't. For example, sometimes the URLs within the emails have destinations, and you do get a screenshot and all further details, but it's not always the case. It would be good if they did a better job of enabling that for all the emails that they identified as malicious. When you get an email threat, you can go into the email and see more details, but the URL destination feature doesn't always show you a screenshot of the URL in that email. It also doesn't always give you the characteristics relating to that URL. It would be quite good if the information is complete where it says that we identified this URL, and this is what it looks like. There should be some threat intel about it. It should give you more details."
"The cost can be high if you want to build custom license packages. Another area for improvement is the policies. In Azure, we need to implement policies in JSON format, but in 365 Defender 365, it would be helpful to use a different format so we can customize the platform."
More Microsoft Defender for Identity Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Identity is ranked 8th in Microsoft Security Suite with 13 reviews while Microsoft Defender XDR is ranked 1st in Microsoft Security Suite with 79 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Identity is rated 9.0, while Microsoft Defender XDR is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Identity writes "Offers robust protection from insider threats, but the customer support is poor". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender XDR writes "Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot". Microsoft Defender for Identity is most compared with Microsoft Entra ID Protection, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Entra Verified ID, Splunk User Behavior Analytics and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Defender XDR is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, Wazuh and Trend Vision One. See our Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Microsoft Defender for Identity report.
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We monitor all Microsoft Security Suite reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
