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Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Rapid7 InsightIDR 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Iden...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (3rd)
Rapid7 InsightIDR
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (14th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (5th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (25th), Threat Deception Platforms (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Security Systems solutions, they serve different purposes. Microsoft Defender for Identity is designed for Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) and holds a mindshare of 16.3%, down 25.0% compared to last year.
Rapid7 InsightIDR, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 2.6% mindshare, down 2.6% since last year.
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

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.
Asim Naeem - PeerSpot reviewer
Providing comprehensive insight into alerts while working towards AI enhancement
I definitely recommend Rapid7 InsightIDR. It is becoming better, with improvements being continuously made to the product. Right now, I do not have any advice about Rapid7 for other users because every organization or user has different criteria or multiple use cases, so I refrain from commenting on that. I rate the overall solution seven out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integration into the Microsoft Defender ecosystem is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Identity."
"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."
"It automates routine testing and helps automate the finding of high-value alerts."
"Defender for Identity has not affected the end-user experience."
"One of our users had the same password for every personal and company account. That was a problem because she started receiving phishing emails that could compromise all of her accounts. Defender told us that the user was not changing their password."
"The solution offers excellent visibility into threats."
"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."
"I recommend Microsoft Defender for Identity because it is easy to implement."
"Very intuitive and easy to set up."
"InsightIDR has allowed us to find potential security issues that we did not know existed, and get remediation quickly."
"Enables the use of honey pots, honey users, and honey files to monitor for suspicious patterns."
"Features for user behavior analytics and the rules for attack review are good."
"If you were on other solutions, you would notice that they use agents from third-party, from open-source, from a native OS, or from other tools. Here, however, it is an agent from Rapid7 itself. This adds to the solution's overall capabilities."
"InsightIDR helps us investigate an environment to discover information about incidents."
"Another very important part of insightIDR is the ability to collect data from endpoint devices via agent software. With a large remote workforce, this allows visibility into the endpoints that are connected to the internet, but not to the corporate network."
"InsightIDR’s ability to process millions of transactions per day, and to notify me of the most critical ones, is priceless. InsightIDR has the alerts tuned, and has the ability to quickly drill down to determine the threat level."
 

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."
"One improvement I would recommend is the integration of an admin application within Teams, allowing easy access to attack information on a mobile platform to promptly alert affected users and their friends."
"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."
"The tracking instance needs to be configured appropriately."
"The solution could be better at using group-managed access and they could replace it with broad-based access controls."
"The solution could improve how it handles on-premises Android-related attacks."
"One potential area for improvement could be exploring flexibility in the installation of Microsoft Defender for Identity agents."
"One of the things that could be better is digital forensics. It is there, but it can be better. They could provide more on the endpoint detection level."
"Lacks a mobile application."
"Cloud risk assessment is one area where I think they need a lot of improvement."
"Needs a better ability to customize the check within the console."
"Sometimes, it is hard to get the right queries to use. Currently, the tool lacks a pre-made set of queries."
"I feel it would greatly benefit from more supported log sources."
"The reporting is the weakest aspect. There needs to be multi-level grouping for events (for example, group by user and destination). Right now, we can do a group by user and a separate table or group by destination. But I'd be more interested in where a person was logging into instead of who was logging in or where he was logging in."
"InsightIDR is only available in a cloud version. Some of our customers prefer an on-prem solution because they want to manage the security within their environment."
 

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."
"Microsoft Defender for Identity comes as part of the Microsoft E5 licensing stack."
"It is very affordable considering that other SIEM solutions are much more expensive and have many more licensing restrictions and fees."
"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."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR charges us based on the endpoints we connect to."
"The pricing is good, and it is not very expensive."
"Rapid7 InsightIDR is priced very well and is cost-effective."
"I rate Rapid7 InsightIDR's price a four on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"The pricing and licensing are competitive."
"It is a reasonably priced solution."
"It is more reasonably priced than other vendors."
"It is on a yearly basis. For our own company, for about 250 users, it was 16,000 euros a year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
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 SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What do you like most about Rapid7 InsightIDR?
During simulations or demonstrations, the tool generates alerts, providing details such as the specific application, its origin, and potential threats. For instance, it can identify if an applicati...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Identity is trusted by companies such as St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and more.
Liberty Wines, Pioneer Telephone, Visier
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Rapid7 InsightIDR and other solutions. Updated: July 2023.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.