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Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Veritas Alta SaaS Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

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)
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (1st)
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
28th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (11th), SaaS Management Platforms (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Identity is 6.9%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
Easily detects advanced attacks based on user behavior
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. Identity harvesting is the most common threat. Legacy Microsoft solutions and Amazon face the same issues in the cloud. Users don't implement other security mechanisms in the cloud. In an on-premise environment, we would have multiple security devices like firewalls and several layers of security. Cloud users are less bothered because cloud features are there and only need to be configured. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the best solution because all threats are completely visible, and it has a great dashboard. The dashboard displays each threat and score, so we can identify the threat rating and act efficiently to avoid compromising user identities. We have a single sign-on feature on the cloud. If we lose a single set of identities, it can compromise the entire organization, including cloud and on-premise. The same identities are being used everywhere. The user activity has to be completely visible on the dashboard, and it has to generate a pattern. It will notify us if there is any security breach. It is a complete monitoring set. Minor changes in the user identity can lead to data leakage. If a password is changed in the cloud, it will be reflected automatically in the on-premise. This minor change will trigger an alert in Microsoft Defender for Identity. It ensures that each cloud identity is well protected from spoofing. It has a comprehensive database of well-known spoofing techniques, enabling us to provide cloud identity protection completely. It has a vast scope because it is completely single sign-on. In the emerging industry, we use single sign-on because users need to authenticate, but it's challenging to remember multiple passwords. Once your user signs in, you can access all the data. An identity compromise would lead to various issues and affect the data on-premises. Defender maintains a constantly updated database with the latest signatures, attack models, and threats. If it detects one threat, it will monitor the suspicious event and give us frequent alerts. Identity protection is vital because we use an identity mechanism for everything, including firewall-related activities. The exact identity used in the cloud is used in the most complex firewalls. We require an excellent migration technique to regain this user credential if something gets compromised. Blocking this requires a massive set of procedures. Microsoft Defender comprehensively monitors identity and provides frequent alerts regarding any issue, so we don't need to think of anything else. Defender's bidirectional sync capabilities are helpful because we need to sync data from multiple directions, including tenant-to-tenant, on-premise-to-cloud, and cloud-to-cloud syncing. As a university, we have multiple tenants, so we need to sync or access data across platforms. That way, everything is more secure, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud also provides ample security for cloud transfers. The bidirectional sync capabilities are flawless—10 out of 10. Our on-premise Active Directory is perfectly synced with the Azure AD. Everything is synced with on-premise, and changes are reflected in minutes. If a problem with identity is addressed on the cloud, the fix will be mirrored on-premise and vice versa. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Identity are bundled. If we have these two solutions, we don't need to worry about anything else or third-party antivirus. Microsoft Defender for Identity acts as a link to all the Microsoft security features that require identity-based validation. Microsoft Defender instantly provides identity security for all our applications, and users need not worry about typing their passwords. Even in situations with less complex encryption mechanisms, users don't need to worry about typing in their passwords. Defender will check and monitor if there are any flaws in that, and it will let us know if there are any issues. We're a Microsoft shop, so everything works together. If one feature isn't working, everything will be affected. If Defender isn't working, half of our Microsoft security features will be dead. Without identity security, user data can easily be compromised, and data can fall into the hands of intruders or other hackers. The solutions have to complement each other. If anything got wrong, the entire setup would have flaws. Microsoft security has a legacy security mechanism. A while back, we might have gone with Defender for Endpoint, but Microsoft has also grown into the face of the cloud. The same Defender solution is completely maintaining cloud security. We can imagine Microsoft's vast scale and how Defender can protect the cloud environment from vulnerabilities and attacks. We are definitely delighted with Microsoft products. The dashboard features are fantastic because it provides a comprehensive overview. It has a great alert mechanism and log inspector that tracks when users access various servers. With this kind of identity validation, we can control which servers the users can access. We have total visibility from the dashboard. We can track identity usage even if there are no issues. That is an essential advantage.
SunilPanigrahi - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution with good duplication capabilities and fair pricing
The duplication is the solution's most valuable feature The backup reports and the dashboard need improvement.  I've been using the solution for five years. The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any problems over the past five years of use. Scalability is fine. We keep adding different…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It automates routine testing and helps automate the finding of high-value alerts."
"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."
"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Identity at nine out of ten."
"Microsoft Defender for Identity provides excellent visibility into threats by leveraging real-time analytics and data intelligence."
"The most valuable aspect is its connection to Microsoft Sentinel and Defender for Endpoint, and giving exact timelines for incidents and when certain events occured during an incident."
"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 most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Identity include real-time information for threat detection, its inclusion of behavioral analytics, and vulnerability management."
"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's a good solution. It's pretty stable."
"I think the most important feature is the ability of SaaS Backup to cover all modules proposed by Office 365, because competing solutions don't cover the total scope."
"The most valuable feature is that it is simple to use."
"Veritas is loaded with features because the appliance is ready to integrate with the cloud in cases where the customers have a hybrid or cloud environment."
"Some of the tool's best features include an enhanced dashboard and strong security features compared to native Veritas. Our environment is entirely automated."
"The solution's hardware appliance is very scalable and very useful."
"It's very comprehensive. It's one of the first brands to appear in its field."
"We're comfortable using this kind of technology. It's user-friendly."
 

Cons

"Defender for Identity gives us visibility, but we often get false positives from Azure that take us down the garden path. We go through 30 incidents each day and most of those are false positives or benign positive alerts. Occasionally, we get true positive alerts."
"The tracking instance needs to be configured appropriately."
"And when you are working in a priority IP address, Identity is not able to know that those IPs are from the company. It sees that the IPs are from Taiwan or from Hong Kong or from India, even though they are internal IPs, resulting in a lot of false positives."
"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."
"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."
"When the data leaves the cloud, there are security issues."
"The solution should provide more detailed data regarding anomaly detections."
"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."
"The usability of the solution isn't the best."
"Currently, it isn't possible to use anything other than Veritas cloud to back up to. I think today it's important to cover the three major cloud provider: GCP, Azure and AWS."
"The technical team wasn't very helpful."
"An area for improvement is the product's performance, especially how long it takes to do a job."
"The solution does lack a lot of features, and we're considering switching."
"In the future, we would like to see support for virtualized machines."
"Technical support can be improved."
"The tool can be improved in terms of maintainability and flexibility, especially as companies grow larger. In these aspects, I feel Veeam is better for cloud and operational purposes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Defender for Identity comes as part of the Microsoft E5 licensing stack."
"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."
"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."
"The program is quite expensive."
"I would rate this solution's pricing as five out of five."
"The tool is expensive compared to Veeam."
"SaaS Backup isn't the most expensive solution."
"This solution is not cheap and not expensive but priced in the mid-range."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

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?
There is room for improvement in delivering knowledge to technical users, especially regarding what we can gain from the solution and how to apply it. The documentation provided by Microsoft is oft...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Identity?
The primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Identity is to maintain control and privilege inside our organization and revoke rights when they are not needed. The solution is used to keep our or...
What needs improvement with Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
The tool can be improved in terms of maintainability and flexibility, especially as companies grow larger. In these aspects, I feel Veeam is better for cloud and operational purposes.
What is your primary use case for Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is good for cloud backups and has many integration features. It works well in a hybrid model.
 

Also Known As

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

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. Veritas Alta SaaS Protection and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.