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Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Microsoft Entra ID Protection 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
Determining ROI from Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is challenging due to package inclusion and unclear financial benefits.
Sentiment score
5.4
Microsoft Entra ID Protection offers full ROI in three years, with immediate efficiency, satisfaction, and time-saving benefits.
As a Microsoft partner, we receive significant discounts, making the solution affordable for us.
There is a return on investment in terms of time-saving, control, and ease of manageability of the environment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender's customer service receives mixed reviews, highlighting inconsistent support and varying effectiveness in technical assistance.
Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Entra ID Protection support receives mixed reviews, with varied satisfaction based on response times, support quality, and subscription level.
They are sometimes responsive, however, often issues cannot be reproduced on their end, making it challenging.
The support we receive from Microsoft is declining, and for example, after taking advanced support, we have not received satisfactory answers.
My team raised multiple support tickets for the product, and we were able to get responses from Microsoft support team.
They often refer to internal blogs, which doesn't offer much new information and can limit our capabilities in troubleshooting.
Tickets often bounce from person to person, requiring the sharing of information multiple times.
The response time can be affected based on the type of Azure subscription tier.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is praised for its high scalability and seamless integration, receiving consistently high user ratings.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Entra ID Protection effortlessly scales with customer needs, supported by licenses and cloud-native features, ensuring minimal scaling issues.
It is scalable; I evaluated the product and decided to use Defender on over 700 of our company servers.
Since it is a cloud computing product, it can accommodate a range of company sizes, from a few users to large businesses.
There are no issues with scalability up to your license limitations.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender is rated highly stable with 99% availability, despite minor portal, compatibility, logging, and memory issues.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Entra ID Protection is reliable, with occasional minor issues, but overall supports large-scale implementations smoothly.
There are compatibility issues occasionally arising with false positives when other security tools are not whitelisted in Microsoft Defender.
It is very resource-intensive, consuming a lot of memory and CPU.
I would rate the overall stability as an eight.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender needs improvements in accuracy, customization, integration, resource efficiency, macOS support, user-friendliness, and affordability.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection requires enhancements in identity management, scalability, documentation, pricing clarity, and third-party integration.
This scoring should be for specific industries as well. If I belong to the healthcare industry using Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, it should provide me with a risk score and show how I fare against the risk score of my industry.
A vulnerability I patch within 15 minutes takes 24 additional hours for an update.
The product is not stable; it often uses excessive memory and CPU, which makes it slow.
If there was some level of backup mechanism available with quick restore functionality, that would be beneficial.
Microsoft has not offered control over how they calculate high or low-risk scenarios.
There is no write-back feature from the cloud to local, which would allow me to use my own credentials from the cloud tenant securely.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender offers varying pricing; complex licensing may incur additional costs, but security benefits can justify the investment.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection's pricing is competitive but confusing, with added value for enterprises using Azure subscriptions.
Overall, every organization wishes for cheaper options, but we look at the security side as well, so we are good for now.
For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
The pricing is reasonable, and it's included in the whole Microsoft E5 bundle, so it's all-inclusive.
Entra ID Protection is not badly priced, but some clients, especially in medium to smaller scale companies in third-world countries, find it quite expensive.
Microsoft Entra ID requires additional licensing components.
The pricing for Microsoft Entra ID protection is not expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management excels in integration, compliance, risk prioritization, and real-time assessments, enhancing security across diverse environments.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection enhances security with multifactor authentication, seamless Azure integration, and advanced threat detection for businesses.
The main advantage of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is that it can locate and prevent most threats even when the endpoints are not connected to the corporate network, as long as the internet is available.
The most valuable aspect is the kind of assessment results I get, and the recommendations provided in Microsoft products really help in taking care of the resources.
The integration with Sentinel has been one of the most valuable features for my organization.
Having a single sign-on feature with Entra ID ensures seamless access to various applications, even those with significant security constraints.
These features ease the job of security analysts, providing a better vision of user activities and potential risks.
We use automated remediation for logon purposes and error purposes. It remediates issues and provides just-in-time access when applicable.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (16th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (5th)
Microsoft Entra ID Protection
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (6th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID Protection is 3.5%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Entra ID Protection3.5%
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management0.8%
Other95.7%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

NaySan @ Suraj Verma - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides actionable vulnerability insights and recommendations with notable efficiency
They may need to improve the portal refresh rate for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management because it takes time for recommendations to disappear after mitigation; sometimes, it takes one week, when it should ideally take only one to two hours. Overall, everything is good with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, but the portal refresh rate can take up to seven days in some cases and three or four days in others to reflect changes.
Ankit Gupta. - PeerSpot reviewer
Comprehensive identity management enhances security and access controls with advanced integration
The monitoring from Microsoft Entra ID Protection provides great visibility at a granular level. It provides all the details, including IP address, username, and permission or error logs. This information is available in both the audit log and regular log. The alert functionality supports general day-to-day monitoring and any violation or trigger for errors. Microsoft Entra ID Protection's features are suitable for all sizes of companies. It's a must-have product because traditionally Active Directory was used for identity and authentication on computers. Now, with hybrid capabilities, every company of any size needs these features and tools. I rate Microsoft Entra ID Protection ten out of ten.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
I would rate the price as a three for us due to the partnership discounts. For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
I have not thought about improvements for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management as of now, but this is typically an operational maintenance process. The operational maintenance process refers...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory Identity Protection?
The pricing for Microsoft Entra ID protection is not expensive. It varies based on the company's size and quality.
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory Identity Protection?
A potential area of improvement in Microsoft Entra ID Protection could include backup-level capability or snapshot capability. Currently, we are required to use third-party backups for the overall ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, Azure AD Identity Protection
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Microsoft Entra ID Protection and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,513 professionals have used our research since 2012.