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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
7.1
Microsoft Entra ID Protection offers quick ROI, valued for time-saving features despite high costs, enhancing organizational manageability.
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
6.1
Microsoft Entra ID Protection support is generally responsive, but efficiency varies, with better experiences linked to paid options.
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.
My teammates have had good communication with Microsoft.
 

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
8.6
Microsoft Entra ID Protection efficiently scales across company sizes, with flexibility and high user ratings in scalability despite occasional delays.
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.
 

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
8.0
Microsoft Entra ID Protection is stable and reliable with minor bugs, earning user confidence and high stability ratings.
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 aims to enhance identity management, improve performance, and simplify integration while addressing stability and pricing issues.
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.
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.
Identity protection and trust issues, particularly in hybrid environments, could be addressed better with Microsoft Entra ID Protection.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender offers varying pricing; complex licensing may incur additional costs, but security benefits can justify the investment.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection is competitively priced, though licensing is complex; bundled options offer added MFA and SSO features.
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 boosts security and efficiency with advanced features, Azure integration, and user-friendly interfaces for identity management.
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.
The valuable features of Entra ID Protection include providing me visibility of my entire estate, managing access, and having a level of control.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (12th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (17th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (5th)
Microsoft Entra ID Protection
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (7th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID Protection is 4.4%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
Mahender Nirwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Access to other software is just one click away and suitable for big organizations
Currently, we have limited use of Microsoft AD. We only use it to see if user blocks are available. If they are, we unblock the account and get access accordingly. AD has paid access control features. We can add access control over AD. For example, for documentation, we use an Outline tool. It's open source, and we add our company's knowledge base to it. It's an alternative to Confluence. We don't want everyone to have access to all documentation. If I create documentation for my team, only my team should have access, not support or sales. We can add these scopes or access controls over AD. Once integrated, the person will get the appropriate access control features upon logging in. Role-based access control is a great feature of Active Directory.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
I have set up my Active Directory locally for the same domain. However, Entra ID lacks a function to synchronize from the cloud to the local directory. This is a significant issue since there is no...
 

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: April 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.