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Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention 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
5.7
Microsoft Defender for Identity improves incident management, reduces costs, enhances ROI, and saves time despite unclear financial benefits.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Purview DLP offers cost savings, security enhancements, and reduced onboarding time, though ROI varies among users.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.5
Microsoft Defender for Identity's support receives mixed feedback, with users praising premium service but noting poorer lower-tier support responses.
Sentiment score
5.1
Microsoft Purview DLP support is inconsistent, with quick responses and clear resources but also delays and monopolistic concerns.
The quality of support is very good, but troubleshooting can take time due to complex setups and the need to provide many logs.
Generally, the support is more effective than other providers like Oracle.
Once we got to the Microsoft engineers, the experience was great.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Microsoft Defender for Identity is scalable, efficiently supports large networks, and integrates well into Microsoft-centric environments with minimal effort.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention offers scalable, flexible cloud solutions, but needs improvements in user-friendliness and device-level scalability.
In a Microsoft-centric organization, especially with Azure infrastructure and Office 365, Microsoft Defender for Identity is scalable.
The policy working and detection technology need enhancements.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Defender for Identity is stable and reliable, though occasional sensor restarts occur, generally scoring 6-9/10 in stability.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is highly stable, reliable, and responsive, though minor real-time issues and internal connection challenges exist.
Microsoft Defender for Identity is quite robust and built on Azure hyperscale infrastructure, with a 99% availability.
We do not see any issues with the stability of Microsoft Defender for Identity.
Having recently started using it, reliability is affirmed, but manual investigation is often performed to verify if alerts identified by auto-remediation are accurate.
Sometimes the solution is not stable when the internal connection is not reliable, so this aspect needs improvement.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Identity needs better integration, usability, and support, with improved detection and cost efficiency highlighted by users.
Microsoft Purview DLP needs better integration, improved UI, enhanced AI features, cost-effective licensing, and better language support.
If Microsoft could develop a feature that indicates when impossible travel is caused by VPN connections, it would prevent unnecessary password resets and session disruptions, especially for VIP users in organizations.
Reducing false positives is something we've been working on with Microsoft.
One improvement I would recommend is the integration of an admin application within Teams, allowing easy access to attack information on a mobile platform.
Implementing a degree of severity ranking is essential.
Endpoint Data Loss Prevention needs to be improved as it is not up to expectations.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Identity is cost-effective within E5, offering flexibility compared to standalone purchases or E3 add-ons.
Microsoft Purview DLP in E5 licenses offers competitive pricing and flexible payment, valued for security features and added services.
If they can reduce the costs, organizations will be happy, and it will compensate for using the Azure environment, which is more expensive on the infrastructure as a service side.
From an organization perspective, using E5 licenses is value for money, especially if Azure and Office 365 are already in use.
Ensuring a fair price according to market standards.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Identity excels in integration, real-time detection, privilege management, AI analytics, and comprehensive security monitoring features.
Microsoft Purview DLP enhances data security with auto-labeling, multi-cloud support, cross-platform protection, and strong compliance features.
We receive an advance report of risky users, allowing us to take preemptive action before an attack causes damage to organization details.
The most valuable feature is its hybrid artificial intelligence, which gathers forensic data to track and counteract security threats, much like the CSI series in effect.
The advanced threat protection is one of the strengths of Microsoft Defender for Identity, as it utilizes user and entity analytics and can detect indicative attacks.
The feature I find most valuable that I'm currently using is the quickness of the emails that the Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention solution sends to us, where we get notifications that say a user has potentially breached our data guideline rules, and we get those alerts continuously, allowing us to enforce them manually.
Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention usually performs well, except for endpoint Data Loss Prevention, which may need improvements.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Iden...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (3rd)
Microsoft Purview Data Loss...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Identity is 6.9%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention is 2.7%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

ROBERT-CHRISTIAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration within the ecosystem enhances collaboration and automates functionalities
The integration into the Microsoft Defender ecosystem is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Identity. It fits very nicely with all the other Defender tools, allowing for excellent collaboration among them. It also fits seamlessly into Microsoft Sentinel SIEM. Furthermore, Microsoft security solutions can save time as they allow the automation of numerous functionalities, and the reporting inside the Microsoft ecosystem is commendable.
Roby Skariah - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation has given us consistent analytics and improved quality of insights into user activity
One of the valuable features of Purview is the ability to create a legal hold on a user's account within the compliance portal. That's pretty useful when it comes to any litigation or if you want to redeem the content within a mailbox, OneDrive, or a generic public SharePoint site. If you want to retain the user's data until the case is resolved, you can use the legal hold feature. Also, it's important that Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices. With smartphone involvement, so many applications can now be accessed through them and it is important to apply Purview across operating systems and platforms. Purview's natively integrated compliance across Azure Dynamics and Office 365 is also significant because within Microsoft 365 there are multiple applications. Irrespective of whether it's Dynamics or Azure, it's very important that it has native support. The data connectivity should be efficient enough to support and secure their own platform's data. In addition, with varying regulations in different industries and matters, Purview lets you create rules and conditions based on industry standards around the world. That is important. Our company is in pharmaceuticals and the rules and conditions are different from other industries. It is important to be able to keep track of all these regulations and have a tool that is flexible enough to create the regulatory rules and conditions we need. And when it comes to data loss protection, Purview has features that can recognize patterns and detect any sort of data loss, where the data is being transferred from its platform to a different one. The default settings that come with it are pretty nice for identifying data transfer or data loss across the platform. It also comes with a lot of training materials, with use cases and examples, to help educate users and make them familiar with the tool.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Identity?
Microsoft Defender for Identity provides excellent visibility into threats by leveraging real-time analytics and data intelligence.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Identity?
For improvement, I need to complete the testing. We are currently in the initial phase. Improvement insights will be shared post the thorough testing phase. We have just started using it a month ag...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Identity?
We are performing testing under Microsoft Defender for Identity ( /products/microsoft-defender-for-identity-reviews ). The implementation is very recent, as we started using it about a month ago.We...
What do you like most about Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention?
The most valuable features are identifying sensitive data and issuing alerts.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing is not something I manage directly since I'm the owner operator; my colleagues might be more involved with that aspect as we have other te...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention?
Improving Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention would involve recognizing that the whole AI path we are all on is going to help, given the massive amount of data we handle; even if there are true ...
 

Also Known As

Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Azure ATP, MS Defender for Identity
Microsoft Endpoint Data Loss Prevention, MS Endpoint DLP, Microsoft Endpoint DLP
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Identity is trusted by companies such as St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and more.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Microsoft Purview Data Loss Prevention and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.