Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Morphisec comparison

Microsoft Defender for Iden...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Morphisec and Microsoft Defender for Identity compete in the cybersecurity sector, offering unique approaches to threat prevention and detection. Morphisec seems to have the upper hand in zero-day threat resilience due to its deterministic prevention, while Microsoft Defender for Identity excels in integration within the Microsoft ecosystem for threat detection and comprehensive security management.

Features: Morphisec provides deterministic attack prevention by blocking in-memory attacks without relying on threat detection. It integrates easily with Microsoft Defender, offering a lightweight design and single console for threat visibility. Microsoft Defender for Identity uses behavioral analytics and machine learning for advanced threat detection and integrates across Microsoft's cloud and on-premises environments to enhance the unified security experience.

Room for Improvement: Morphisec could improve its reporting capabilities, interaction frequency with customers, and false positives resolution. It also needs enhancements in dashboard functionality and broader antivirus integration. Microsoft Defender for Identity requires a more user-friendly administrative interface, reduction in false positives, and better on-premises Android detection. Direct remediation actions within the platform and simplified licensing are also needed.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Morphisec is noted for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, although time zone differences can be challenging for some users. Microsoft Defender for Identity offers strong technical support and seamless integration within Microsoft environments, but alert verification can be time-consuming.

Pricing and ROI: Morphisec is considered cost-effective, with competitive pricing and no hidden charges, providing good ROI by reducing security management workloads. Microsoft Defender for Identity, part of the Microsoft 365 suite, offers cost benefits when bundled with other Microsoft products. Despite higher costs, its comprehensive features justify the investment for existing Microsoft ecosystem users.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Morphisec Report (Updated: September 2026).

Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Morphisec

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Helped 913,924 peers since 2012

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 for Iden...

Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

7th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Microsoft Security Suite (6th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (1st)

Morphisec

Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

30th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (57th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (45th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (59th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (34th), Threat Deception Platforms (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Identity is 3.6%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Morphisec is 2.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Identity	3.6%
Morphisec	2.3%
Other	94.1%

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

Featured Reviews

Curtis Mack

Technology Coordinator at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees

Helps detect threats faster and prioritize critical security tasks with increased visibility

The feature I value most about Microsoft Defender for Identity is the ability to see where people are attempting to log in from. Microsoft Defender for Identity helps me automate routine tasks and find alerts that I set up to receive, so it helps me get where I'm trying to go easier and faster. I can see where everything is at. Microsoft Defender for Identity helps me prioritize important tasks. If I get an alert for a user who downloaded an application that is not sanctioned, I normally go straight to that user's computer device to find the device name and the user. Now I can get to them much faster. Microsoft Defender for Identity saves me time overall. I can quantify the time saved by Microsoft Defender for Identity as maybe 25 minutes, or if expressed as a percentage, maybe 20 to 25%. Some of the learning curve and actually learning what these products do takes time to figure out. Microsoft Defender for Identity definitely helps decrease the time of detection and response.

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Rick Schibler

VP of Information Technology at Kentucky Trailer

Offers in-memory protection at a lower price than competitors

Morphisec's in-memory protection is probably the most valuable feature because it stops malicious activity from occurring. If something tries to install or act as a sleeper agent, Morphisec will detect and stop it. Morphisec's Moving Target Defense is critical to hardening our attack surface. If it detects something, it indicates whether it's valid. That means you've got a breach requiring investigation. It detects anomalies but doesn't necessarily point to what caused them. You still need to do that work. The solution is reasonably easy to administer. They made some changes last year, adding a cloud-based monitoring solution that makes deploying and monitoring our endpoints easy.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Defender for Identity has not affected the end-user experience."

"We do not see any issues with the stability of Microsoft Defender for Identity. I can say it is 100% stable."

"I think that for a defensive view, it can give most administrators absolutely amazing insight into what's happening in the network that they probably never had before."

"Microsoft is a big company."

"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."

"It automates routine testing and helps automate the finding of high-value alerts."

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Identity at nine out of ten."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Identity include real-time information for threat detection, its inclusion of behavioral analytics, and vulnerability management."

More Microsoft Defender for Identity pros

"The fact that Morphisec uses deterministic attack prevention that does not require human intervention has affected our security team's operations by making things much simpler. We don't have to really track down various alerts anymore, they've just stopped. At that point, we can go in and we can clean up whatever needs to be cleaned up. There are some things that Morphisec detects that we can't really remove, it's parts of Internet Explorer, but it's being blocked anyway. So we're happy with that."

"Before we got Morphisec we evaluated solutions that claim to do similar things, and we have done additional evaluations since we started using it, but I don't think anything can truly touch what Morphisec does and the way it does it."

"Morphisec has enabled us to become a lot less paranoid when it comes to staff clicking on things or accessing things that they shouldn't that could infect the whole system. Our original ransomware attack that happened came from someone's Google drive and then just filtered on through that. It has put our minds at ease a lot more in running it. It's also another layer of security that has been proven to be effective for us."

"With Morphisec, at least when it does happen, I feel confident that we have in place solutions that will not only prevent it, but also let us know when something has happened."

"Morphisec as the last line of defense is as good as you can get."

"Since using Morphisec we have seen a downturn in attacks because Morphisec protects us versus Defenders and whatnot that are signature-based. I know we have not had any issues with ransomware or other zero-day attacks that we've seen with machines that, all of a sudden, have become before we instituted the product. Now the machine had to be re-imaged and there was a loss of data because something was on the machine. You couldn't really determine what was on the machine because nothing was picking it up. The products we were using weren't picking it up."

"Morphisec makes use of deterministic attack prevention that doesn’t require investigation of security alerts. It changes the memory locations of where certain applications run. If you think of Excel, opening a PDF, running an Excel macro, or opening a webpage and clicking on a link, all of those actions run in a certain area of memory. Morphisec changes the memory locations of where those run."

"Morphisec is a straightforward solution that is efficient and very stable."

More Morphisec pros

Cons

"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."

"Fixing the solution isn't very seamless."

"One potential area for improvement could be exploring flexibility in the installation of Microsoft Defender for Identity agents."

"Feedback on sync issues with the Microsoft portal highlighted its slow nature, with syncs sometimes taking eight hours."

"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."

"Microsoft Defender for Identity does not save me time, but I think it is the way that I secure the data."

"The impact of the sensors on the domain controllers can be quite high depending on your loads. I don't know if there's any room for improvement there, but that's one of the things that might be improved."

"The areas of Microsoft Defender for Identity that can be improved include its cost, which is quite expensive when integrated into Sentinel. Additionally, there is room for improvement in its integration with non-Microsoft applications and systems."

More Microsoft Defender for Identity cons

"We sometimes have to depend on the support team to know what action we should take."

"From a company standpoint, a little more interaction with the customers throughout the year might be beneficial. I would like check-ins from the Morphisec account executives about any type of Morphisec news as well as a bit more interaction with customers throughout the year to know if anything new is coming out with Morphisec, e.g., what they are working on in regards to their development roadmap. We tend not to get that up until the time that we go for a yearly renewal. So, we end up talking to people from Morphisec once a year, but it is usually at renewal time."

"At this time, it is able to recognize vulnerabilities and reporting them to us, but it's not actually resolving them."

"I haven't been able to get the cloud deployment to work. When there's an update, I'm supposed to be able to roll it out for the cloud solution, but right now I'm continuing to use our SCCM solution to update it."

"We have only had four attacks in the last year, "attacks" being some benign PDF from a vendor that, for some reason, were triggered. There were no actual attacks. They were just four false positives, or something lowly like adware. There have been false positives with both the on-premises solution and the cloud solution."

"The weakest point of this product is how difficult it is to understand the reasons for an alert. This is a problem because it is hard to determine whether an attack is real or not."

"In the Windows Defender integration, they have put in a report of computers that need Windows Defender updates. If those updates could be kicked off directly from the dashboard, instead of having to go to another system entirely, that would be good."

"I haven't been able to get the cloud deployment to work."

More Morphisec cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Defender for Identity is a little more expensive than other Microsoft products. Identity and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are both a bit costly."

"The product is costly, and we had multiple discussions with accounting to receive a discounted rate. However, on the open market, the tool is expensive."

"You won't be able to change your tenants from where you deploy them. For example, if you select Canada, they will charge you based on Canadian pricing. If you are also in London, when you deploy in Canada, the pound is higher than Canadian dollars, but your platform resources are billable in Canadian dollars. Using your pounds to pay for any of these things will be cheaper. Or, if you deploy in London, they will charge you based on your local currency."

"It is very affordable considering that other SIEM solutions are much more expensive and have many more licensing restrictions and fees."

"Microsoft Defender for Identity comes as part of the Microsoft E5 licensing stack."

"Morphisec is reasonably priced because our parent company's other subsidiaries use different products like CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is four or five times more expensive than Morphisec. The competitive pricing saves us money in our overall security stack."

"Our licensing is tied into our contract. Because we have a long-term contract, our pricing is a little bit lower. It is per year, so we don't get charged per endpoint, but we do have a cap. Our cap is 80 endpoints. If we were to go over 80, when we renewed our contract, which is not until three years are over. Then, they would reevaluate, and say, "Well, you have more than 80 devices active right now. This is going to be the price change." They know that we are installing and replacing computers, so the numbers will be all over the place depending on whether you archive or don't archive, which is the reason why we just have to keep up on that stuff."

"Licenses are per endpoint, and that's true for the cloud version as well. The only difference is that there is a little extra charge for the cloud version."

"It is priced correctly for what it does. They end up doing a good deal of discounting, but I think it is priced appropriately."

"Price-wise, it's on the higher side. A traditional antivirus solution is cheaper, but in terms of security and manageability, its ROI is better than a traditional antivirus. I would recommend it to anybody evaluating or considering an antivirus solution. If your system gets compromised, the cost of ransom would be a lot more. This way, it saves a lot of cost."

"We are still using a separate tool. I know for our 600 or I think we're actually licensed for up to 700 users, it runs me 23 or $24,000 a year. When you're talking to that many users plus servers being protected, that's well worth the investment for that dollar amount."

"The pricing is definitely fair for what it does."

"It does not have multi-tenants. If South Africa wants to show only the machines that they have, they need their own cloud incidence. It is not possible to have that in a single cloud incidence with multiple tenants in it, instead you need to have multiple cloud incidences. Then, if you have that, it will be more expensive. However, they are going to change that, which is good."

More Morphisec pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Construction Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Identity?

I really would have to sit down to think about how Microsoft Defender for Identity can be improved. I didn't take stock in what needs to be improved because I appreciated having the tools right the...

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What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Identity?

My main use cases for Microsoft Defender for Identity include Conditional Access, checking risky users, remediating risky users, and user sign-ins. I can easily remediate or determine what the user...

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What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Defender for Identity?

I don't really use Microsoft Defender for Identity a lot because my new role doesn't allow me to take time to do so. I don't really use the threat intelligence feature of Microsoft Defender for Ide...

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Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID Protection vs Microsoft Defender for Identity

Compared 6% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Identity vs Microsoft Defender for Identity

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Microsoft Defender for Identity

Compared 4% of the time

BloodHound Enterprise vs Microsoft Defender for Identity

Compared 4% of the time

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Symantec Endpoint Security vs Morphisec

Compared 9% of the time

FortiCNAPP vs Morphisec

Compared 5% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Morphisec

Compared 4% of the time

Orca Security vs Morphisec

Compared 3% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Morphisec

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Microsoft Defender for Identity

Download Microsoft Defender for Identity product report

Download Morphisec product report

Also Known As

Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Azure ATP, MS Defender for Identity

Morphisec, Morphisec Moving Target Defense

Overview

Microsoft Defender for Identity offers real-time threat detection and protection for hybrid Active Directory environments. It integrates with Microsoft 365 components for seamless security and monitors advanced behaviors, enhancing identity protection across cloud and on-premises environments.

Microsoft Defender for Identity provides detailed threat insights and user behavior analytics to detect unauthorized access and notify anomalies. It allows setting custom detection rules, enhancing threat response automation. While it needs improvements in cloud security, SIEM integration, and access controls, users leverage its ability to mitigate identity threats like suspicious logins and ransomware. Enhanced integration with Microsoft security products ensures a coordinated threat response for identity control and privilege management.

What are the key features of Microsoft Defender for Identity?

Active Directory Federation: Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365 for comprehensive security.
Real-time Security Monitoring: Provides immediate insights into advanced user behaviors and potential threats.
Threat Insights: Delivers detailed analysis of threats with the ability to customize detection rules.
User Behavior Analytics: Analyzes user activities to detect anomalies and potential risks.
Identity Protection: Offers comprehensive protection in both cloud and on-premises environments.

What benefits should users expect from reviews of Microsoft Defender for Identity?

Unauthorized Access Prevention: Identifies potential unauthorized activities with advanced detection mechanisms.
Anomaly Notification: Alerts users to unexpected activities within their environments.
Threat Response Automation: Facilitates rapid response to threats with automated solutions.
Enhanced Cloud Security: Strengthens identity management across hybrid and cloud frameworks.

In specific industries, organizations implement Microsoft Defender for Identity to secure on-premises and hybrid Active Directory environments through user and entity behavior analytics, malicious activity detection, and integration with Microsoft security tools. This approach enhances security posture assessment and helps mitigate identity threats like identity harvesting and unauthorized access.

Microsoft

Morphisec enhances security with its signatureless attack prevention, integrating smoothly with Microsoft Defender. Users benefit from real-time threat detection and seamless system integration, protecting against zero-day threats and ransomware across networks.

Morphisec's security solution focuses on preventing cyber threats without requiring threat signatures or user action. Its integration with Microsoft Defender offers simplified visibility and management while delivering quick responses. Lightweight in nature, Morphisec ensures zero performance degradation and employs in-memory protection along with Moving Target Defense. This approach effectively counters zero-day threats and ransomware, maintaining a user-centric dashboard that eases administrative workloads. Morphisec's easy deployment also enables small teams to manage risks and uphold robust security measures efficiently.

What are Morphisec's key features?

Signatureless Threat Prevention: Stops attacks without threat signatures or user interaction.
Microsoft Defender Integration: Provides unified management and quick response capabilities.
In-Memory Protection: Shields against zero-day and ransomware threats efficiently.
Moving Target Defense: Minimizes exposure to in-memory attacks.
User-Friendly Dashboard: Simplifies administration by reducing burdens.
Easy Deployment: Facilitates straightforward setup for small teams.

What benefits and ROI should be considered in user reviews?

Real-Time Detection: Immediate identification of threats enhances proactive threat management.
Seamless Integration: Compatible with existing systems, reducing delay risks.
Cloud-Based Updates: Ensures current protection with minimal manual input.
Multi-Layered Security: Adds a solid last defense layer, supplementing other antivirus solutions.

Morphisec is widely used across industries like financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing to bolster defenses against malware and ransomware. Its deployment spans workstations and servers, integrating efficiently into existing infrastructures. Industries value real-time threat detection, ease of deployment, and cloud-based updates, noting its ability to identify threats missed by other antivirus solutions.

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Identity is trusted by companies such as St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and more.

Lenovo/Motorola, TruGreen, Covenant Health, Citizens Medical Center

Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Morphisec