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Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Microsoft Purview eDiscovery 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
7.7
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery boosts ROI by improving data efficiency, compliance, risk management, and reducing legal and IT workloads.
We have seen a 100% return on investment.
The ease of accessing necessary information promptly is the biggest return on investment.
It's hard to quantify the ROI in a dollar amount, but we realize value by doing more tasks in less time than we did before.
 

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
7.6
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is praised for responsive support, despite some mixed experiences with wait times and outcomes.
Generally, the support is more effective than other providers like Oracle.
The quality of support is very good, but troubleshooting can take time due to complex setups and the need to provide many logs.
I would rate Microsoft Purview eDiscovery's customer service and technical support a ten.
 

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
7.9
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is scalable and efficient, seamlessly integrating with cloud infrastructures but lacks some search functions.
In a Microsoft-centric organization, especially with Azure infrastructure and Office 365, Microsoft Defender for Identity is scalable.
It scales with us seamlessly.
With the E3 licensing, I would rate the scalability of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery as a six because it lacks certain critical search functionalities.
 

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
8.6
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is generally stable, with minor slowdowns, but users seek more transparency on performance issues.
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.
For us, it has been one hundred percent reliable.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is highly reliable.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Identity needs better integration, usability, and support, with improved detection and cost efficiency highlighted by users.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery needs faster, more efficient features, better integration, NLP for queries, and affordable pricing for users.
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.
One improvement I would recommend is the integration of an admin application within Teams, allowing easy access to attack information on a mobile platform.
Reducing false positives is something we've been working on with Microsoft.
Adding more features, as Microsoft continues to expand their cloud offerings, would be beneficial.
Defining what constitutes a credit card because that is where I get the most false positives.
We find that many critical functions are available only to E5 license holders.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Identity is cost-effective within E5, offering flexibility compared to standalone purchases or E3 add-ons.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery pricing is complex, with E5 costly yet beneficial, while E3 is cheaper but limited.
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.
Ensuring a fair price according to market standards.
From an organization perspective, using E5 licenses is value for money, especially if Azure and Office 365 are already in use.
With CSP or MCE-style agreements with Microsoft, the process is streamlined since we have reps from both Microsoft and CDW working together.
As an M3, I find the Purview pricing of 1250 per user worthwhile.
The pricing and licensing with Microsoft can be complex, and licensing is known to be a challenge because it changes frequently.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Identity excels in integration, real-time detection, privilege management, AI analytics, and comprehensive security monitoring features.
Microsoft Purview eDiscovery ensures efficient data retrieval with multi-platform integration, automation, compliance visibility, and adherence to global data privacy laws.
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 most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive.
Purview can connect to iOS, Mac, Android, and SaaS apps, which is critical for capturing SMS and MMS text message data.
Purview's inclusion of global regulations is critical because we're heavily regulated by FERC, Sarbanes-Oxley, and the SEC.
 

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 eDiscovery
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
eDiscovery (2nd)
 

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 eDiscovery is 0.8%, down from 0.9% 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.
Frank Radeck - PeerSpot reviewer
Tasks that took an entire day before we implemented the solution now take just 30 minutes.
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery is its ability to search across various platforms, including Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive. It enables a streamlined, unified process for searching across these platforms. It is critical for Purview to be able to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices and data in other SaaS apps. From a support perspective, I can do things while I'm eating lunch or something else. It's more dynamic and responsive. I think everybody appreciates it. We're not tied to one device. Purview's multi-cloud capabilities are also essential for the same reasons. Keeping everything under one umbrella further increases the time savings. Purview accounts for critical regulations from around the world. This is crucial because we hold ourselves accountable to standards and need to align with them. Working at a law firm, we have clients who dictate to us what standards they expect. The visibility is excellent. As we move more things into the cloud, more opportunities exist to put everything under one umbrella.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
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 eDiscovery?
The tool has been beneficial. Some of our previous users left the organization without sharing the information they had at a personal level. This information was related to the organization, and th...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The setup process was very straightforward. We acquired pricing through our reseller in NASDAQ, eliminating the need to search for prices ourselves.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery?
The query language can be time-consuming to figure out if you don't know it initially. While there are options with dropdowns to select criteria, having a natural language feature would be benefici...
 

Also Known As

Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Azure ATP, MS Defender for Identity
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Identity is trusted by companies such as St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and more.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Microsoft Purview eDiscovery and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.