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Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Sweet Security comparison

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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

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (5th), Cloud and Data Center Security (2nd), Container Security (3rd), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (4th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
Microsoft Defender for Iden...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (3rd)
Sweet Security
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (33rd), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (18th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (21st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (17th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (12th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (6th)
 

Featured Reviews

Ritesh P. - PeerSpot reviewer
It's more scalable and flexible than our previous solution because we don't need to install any agents
The reporting works well, but sometimes the severity classifications are inaccurate. Sometimes, it flags an issue as high-impact, but it should be a lower severity. For example, it might highlight an exposed AWS encryption key, a critical compliance issue, but it isn't tagged as a high-risk problem. That only happens about 10 percent of the time. It shows a true positive 80-90 percent of the time.
Peter Arabomen - PeerSpot reviewer
Has supported hybrid identity management while integrating well with cloud directory services
The only challenge I have with Microsoft Defender for Identity is the latency. I may not put that entirely on Microsoft, because latency could be network related. At times when trying to authenticate, the prompt is delayed. We tried implementing passwordless authentication, especially for on-premises workloads, but we haven't been able to achieve that. Passwordless authentication is part of the identity functionalities, particularly when it comes to enforcing passwordless for on-premises workloads. In terms of improvements, you can't create OUs on Azure AD. Regarding giving users privileges on what they can do across different OUs, I haven't seen that feature on Microsoft Defender for Identity. Microsoft Defender for Identity needs to be able to plug into third-party applications that are not Microsoft. For instance, with a human resource application used to manage users and leave requests, when staff leaves the organization, they are first exited from that application before AD. Integration between Azure AD and third-party applications would allow automatic syncing when removing staff. The initial setup of Microsoft Defender for Identity is not hard. However, setup is one thing, and getting value from the application end-to-end is another. It can be set up and running from the first day but not functioning optimally. Initially, when we did the setup, it wasn't optimal. Over time, with continuous improvement, which we're still doing, we've gotten to a comfortable level, but there's still room for improvement.
Reviewer302234 - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time insights have reduced false positives and improved cross-team collaboration
I find the UX/UI to be comfortable. The insights that it brings us are related to the business logic of our company, which is important. If something is flagged as a critical alert, this indicates that it must be observed closely. We have used the real-time monitoring feature of Sweet Security, and this specific solution has given us real detection that helps us find what is actually important against what is not important. It saves us a lot of investigation time that isn't required anymore. It's a very good product, I'm happy we have it. We looked into the CPU consumption and it's the lowest against the benchmark. The time savings from Sweet Security have varied, but the impact has been significant. It has reduced the need for back-and-forth discussions between teams such as Security, DevOps, and R&D. It only flags the important and critical risks. It saves developers time from looking into fixes for false positives. We use the customizable dashboards in Sweet Security. These dashboards have helped in managing our security posture by presenting all the relevant information that the security team needs to see. The correlation between the information is very efficient. They made a lot of improvements to this over the last year. It's a lot better now than it was a year ago. The insights are good. The reporting is very good because we can customize it to what we actually want to see. The value of having real-time visibility in our cloud environment with Sweet Security changes everything because it differentiates between identifying and reacting to something that is not really a risk and something that is truly a risk that needs to be treated. Sweet Security has had a big impact on mitigating risks and aiding development.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"All the features we use are equal and get the job done."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its storyline, which helps trace an event back to its source, like an email or someone clicking on a link."
"The agentless vulnerability scanning is great."
"The cloud misconfiguration is the most valuable feature."
"I like CSPM the most. It captures a lot of alerts within a short period of time. When an alert gets triggered on the cloud, it throws an alert within half an hour, which is very reasonable. It is a plus point for us."
"Singularity Cloud's ability to create custom correlation searches and reduce noise is highly valuable."
"The UI is responsive and user-friendly."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is better than other vendors because we get all the cloud-related, data center-related information."
"The feature I like most is that you can create your own customized detection rules. It has a lot of default alerts and rules, but you can customize them according to your business needs."
"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."
"This solution has advanced a lot over the last few years."
"We do not see any issues with the stability of Microsoft Defender for Identity. I can say it is 100% stable."
"Defender for Identity has not affected the end-user experience."
"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."
"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 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."
"The value we see from having real-time visibility into our cloud environment is significant, as Sweet Security serves as our eyes and ears inside AWS, telling us what we are doing wrong so we can fix it."
"The value of having real-time visibility in our cloud environment with Sweet Security changes everything because it differentiates between identifying and reacting to something that is not really a risk and something that is truly a risk that needs to be treated."
"Before we had Sweet Security, upon any type of detection of activity, we needed to conduct lots of investigations in different platforms and logs until we could build the larger picture, but once we inserted Sweet Security, we are able to actually see each and every request being made from the application level towards the infrastructure, making it much easier and reducing the time for an analyst to understand what's really happening."
 

Cons

"With Cloud Native Security, we can't selectively enable or disable alerts based on our specific use case."
"The areas with room for improvement include the cost, which is higher compared to other security platforms. The dashboard can also be laggy."
"Currently, we would have to export our vulnerability report to an .xlsx file, and review it in an Excel spreadsheet, and then we sort of compile a list from there. It would be cool if there was a way to actually toggle multiple applications for review and then see those file paths on multiple users rather than only one user at a time or only one application at a time."
"From my personal experience, the alerting system needs to be faster. If something happens in our infrastructure, the alert appears on the dashboard, but I have to log in to the dashboard and refresh it."
"In terms of ease of use, initially, it is a bit confusing to navigate around, but once you get used to it, it becomes easier."
"To enhance the notification system's efficiency, resolved issues should be promptly removed from the portal."
"There should be more documentation about the product."
"To enhance the notification system's efficiency, resolved issues should be promptly removed from the portal."
"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."
"The solution could be better at using group-managed access and they could replace it with broad-based access controls."
"When the data leaves the cloud, there are security issues."
"The documentation provided by Microsoft is often seen as a waste of time."
"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."
"Feedback on sync issues with the Microsoft portal highlighted its slow nature, with syncs sometimes taking eight hours."
"One potential area for improvement could be exploring flexibility in the installation of Microsoft Defender for Identity agents."
"I would like to be able to do remediation from the platform because it is just a scanner right now. If you onboard a device, it shows you what is happening, but you can't use it to fix things. You need to go into the system to fix it instead."
"The option to run specific playbooks through Sweet Security platform would help us a lot, but these must be fully customizable."
"There was something a year ago that caused a production issue in my company, but they fixed it within an hour."
"One area for improvement could be the alerts, as we have an issue with the alert time, the time it takes for the system to send the alert, but besides that, there is nothing special."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's not expensive. The product is in its initial growth stages and appears more competitive compared to others. It comes in different variants, and I believe the enterprise version costs around $55 per user per year. I would rate it a five, somewhere fairly moderate."
"The pricing for PingSafe in India was more reasonable than other competitors."
"While SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers robust protection, its high cost may be prohibitive for small and medium-sized businesses."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is on the costlier side."
"I wasn't sure what to expect from the pricing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little less than I thought."
"The pricing is somewhat high compared to other market tools."
"PingSafe falls somewhere in the middle price range, neither particularly cheap nor expensive."
"The licensing is easy to understand and implement, with some flexibility to accommodate dynamic environments."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Identity comes as part of the Microsoft E5 licensing stack."
"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."
"Defender for Identity is a little more expensive than other Microsoft products. Identity and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are both a bit costly."
"It is very affordable considering that other SIEM solutions are much more expensive and have many more licensing restrictions and fees."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Wellness & Fitness Company
17%
Healthcare Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?
The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?
I don't handle the price part, but it isn't more expensive than Palo Alto Prisma Cloud. It's not cheap, but it is wor...
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
There is scope for more application security posture management features. Additionally, the runtime protection needs ...
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...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Identity?
The only challenge I have with Microsoft Defender for Identity is the latency. I may not put that entirely on Microso...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Identity?
I've used Microsoft Defender for Identity primarily for provisioning users on Azure AD and Microsoft authentication. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sweet Security?
I am not aware of the pricing details; that is a different department.
What needs improvement with Sweet Security?
There is room for improvement. We have a very close relationship with Sweet Security and have a weekly meeting where ...
What is your primary use case for Sweet Security?
We use Sweet Security primarily for vulnerability management on all of our cloud assets, mainly AWS, but we also use ...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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. Sweet Security and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.