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Microsoft Defender for IoT vs Microsoft Sentinel 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 IoT
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
33rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
IoT Security (5th), Operational Technology (OT) Security (6th)
Microsoft Sentinel
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
97
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (3rd), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (1st), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for IoT is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Sentinel is 5.1%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

William Tuleja - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration with existing tools boosts management efficiency
The only improvement I see is that some detection explanations are vaguely provided by Microsoft, resulting in generic IoT detections that alert me to an issue yet don't specify what's wrong. Often, it just links back to a generic KB article without additional information. When it happens, it requires extra detective work. This issue doesn't occur often but can be annoying.
KrishnanKartik - PeerSpot reviewer
Every rule enriched at triggering stage, easing the job of SOC analyst
It's a Big Data security analytics platform. Among the unique features is the fact that it has built-in UEBA and analytical capabilities. It allows you to use the out-of-the-box machine learning and AI capabilities, but it also allows you to bring your own AI/ML, by bringing in your own IPs and allowing the platform to accept them and run that on top of it. In addition, the SOAR component is a pay-per-use model. Compared to any other product, where customization is not available, you can fine-tune the SOAR and you'll be charged only when your playbooks are triggered. That is the beauty of the solution because the SOAR is the costliest component in the market today. Other vendors charge heavily for the SOAR, but with Sentinel it is upside-down: the SOAR is the lowest-hanging fruit. It's the least costly and it delivers more value to the customer. The SOAR engine also uniquely helps us to automate most of the incidents with automated enrichment and that cuts out the L1 analyst work. And combining M365 with Sentinel, if you want to call it integration, takes just a few clicks: "next, next finish." If it is all M365-native, it is a maximum of three or four steps and you'll be able to ingest all the logs into Sentinel. That is true even with AWS or GCP because most of the connectors are already available out-of-the-box. You just click, put in your subscription details, include your IAM, and you are finished. Within five to six steps, you can integrate AWS workloads and the logs can be ingested into Sentinel. When it comes to a third party specifically, such as log sources in a data center or on-premises, we need a log collector so that the logs can be forwarded to the Sentinel platform. And when it comes to servers or something where there is an agent for Windows or Linux, the agent can collect the logs and ship them to the Sentinel platform. I don't see any difficulties in integrating any of the log sources, even to the extent of collecting IoT log sources. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has multiple components such as Defender for Servers, Defender for PaaS, and Defender for databases. For customers in Azure, there are a lot of use cases specific to protecting workloads and PaaS and SaaS in Azure and beyond Azure, if a customer also has on-premises locations. There is EDR for Windows and Linux servers, and it even protects different kinds of containers. With Defender for Cloud, all these sources can be seamlessly integrated and you can then track the security incidents in Microsoft's XDR platform. That means you have one more workspace, under Azure, not Defender for Cloud, where you can see the security incidents. In addition, it can be integrated with Sentinel for EDR deep-dive analytics. It can also protect workloads in AWS. We have customers for whom we are protecting their AWS workloads. Even EKS, Elastic Kubernetes Service, on AWS can be integrated, as can the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine). And with Defender for Cloud, security alert ingestion is free

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is manageable and integrates with other Microsoft products, which is crucial for me."
"As a cybersecurity consultant, the best part of Microsoft Defender for IoT is the capability to integrate with other tools such as Microsoft Sentinel and receive real-time alerts from the product."
"I believe it is best suited for cloud services and is unmatched by other cloud security solutions."
"I find Microsoft Defender very effective in vulnerability management and it provides good attack reduction, making it a next-generation protection solution."
"The graphics and analysis in Microsoft Defender for IoT are very representative."
"Mainly, it is manageable and integrates with other Microsoft products, which is crucial for me."
"Sentinel's most important feature is the ability to centralize all the logs in one place. There's no need to search multiple systems for information."
"Azure Application Gateway makes things a lot easier. You can create dashboards, alert rules, hunting and custom queries, and functions with it."
"Microsoft Sentinel has helped by streamlining our security. We have a nine-member network team, with three members managing security for the city, and Sentinel allows us to operate an unofficial SOC."
"The Log analytics are useful."
"It has basic out-of-the-box integrations with multiple log sources."
"The AI and ML of Azure Sentinel are valuable. We can use machine learning models at the tenant level and within Office 365 and Microsoft stack. We don't need to depend upon any other connectors. It automatically provisions the native Microsoft products."
"I've worked on most of the top SIEM solutions, and Sentinel has an edge in most areas. For example, it has built-in SOAR capabilities, allowing you to run playbooks automatically. Other vendors typically offer SOAR as a separate licensed solution or module, but you get it free with Sentinel. In-depth incident integration is available out of the box."
"The best feature of Microsoft Sentinel is its ability to unify all dashboards or functions into one modern SecOps dashboard."
 

Cons

"The only improvement I see is that some detection explanations are vaguely provided by Microsoft, resulting in generic IoT detections that alert me to an issue yet don't specify what's wrong."
"Customer service and support from Microsoft are costly. The execution by engineers is expensive, and the service is neither free nor toll-free, making it less accessible for customers."
"The primary area that needs improvement is compatibility with the latest IoT technologies."
"The documentation for Microsoft Defender for IoT is lacking. There are no clear steps or guidance, and updates are frequent, which adds to the confusion."
"Microsoft Defender for IoT is not scalable. If you want to monitor another industrial network, you need an additional server, making it less scalable."
"The only improvement I see is that some detection explanations are vaguely provided by Microsoft, resulting in generic IoT detections that alert me to an issue yet don't specify what's wrong."
"In New Zealand, there are customers that run dual stack, running Microsoft but also competitor products, EDR software, cloud security software, and other tooling. While it's improved over the last four or five years, there's still more work that can be done to integrate better outside of the Microsoft ecosystem."
"Sentinel still has some anomalies. For example, sometimes when we write a query for log analysis with KQL, it doesn't give us the data in a proper way... Also, the fields or columns could be improved. Sometimes, it is not giving the desired results and there is a blank field."
"However, we are not using it for some features, mainly for cost-related reasons and our company policy."
"There is room for improvement in entity behavior and the integration site."
"We're satisfied with the comprehensiveness of the security protection. That said, we do have issues sometimes where there have been global outages and we need to raise a ticket with Microsoft."
"Microsoft Sentinel is relatively expensive, and its cost should be improved."
"One key area that can be improved is by building a strong integration with our XDR platform."
"Sentinel provides decent visibility, but it's sometimes a little cumbersome to get to the information I want because there is so much information. I would also like to see more seamless integration between Sentinel and third-party security products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Sentinel is a bit expensive. If you can figure a way of configuring it to meet your needs, then you can find a way around the cost."
"Microsoft Sentinel is expensive."
"Microsoft Sentinel's pricing is relatively expensive and extremely confusing."
"The pay-as-you-go model is beneficial to customers."
"Microsoft can enhance the licensing side. I feel there is confusion sometimes... They should have a single license in which we have the opportunity to use the EDR or CASB solution."
"The price is reasonable because Sentinel includes features like user behavior analytics and SOAR that are typically sold separately. Overall, a standalone on-prem solution would require some high-end servers, and there's a different cost. It is a cloud-based solution, so there are backend cloud computing costs, but they are negligible."
"Pricing for Microsoft Sentinel could always be lower, but it's workable. The ingestion costs for the data analytics is usually the highest cost, but the licensing per Microsoft Sentinel is fairly straightforward and transparent."
"Microsoft is costlier. Some organizations may not be able to afford the cost of Sentinel orchestration and the Log Analytics workspace. The transaction hosting cost is also a little bit on the high side, compared to AWS and GCP."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for IoT?
The solution is relatively expensive with licensing being based on each device. The cost per license might not be affordable for every organization, and I would rate it around six out of ten on a s...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for IoT?
The primary area that needs improvement is compatibility with the latest IoT technologies. Microsoft needs flexibility to ensure good compatibility with new IoT solutions, which frequently introduc...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for IoT?
My primary use case for Microsoft Defender for IoT is security. It helps with vulnerability management and provides significant attack reduction. It functions as a next-generation protection soluti...
Is there a common threat intelligence tool that aggregates multiple threat intelligence sources?
Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized ...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
 

Also Known As

Azure Defender for IoT
Azure Sentinel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for IoT vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,236 professionals have used our research since 2012.