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Microsoft Defender XDR vs 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Microsoft Defender XDR delivers substantial ROI by streamlining operations, reducing costs, and enhancing security with consolidated functionalities.
Sentiment score
7.5
Sentinel enhanced efficiency, resource allocation, productivity, and financial gains with a user-friendly interface and robust functionality.
We can quarantine and isolate a device within minutes.
Microsoft Defender XDR has saved me at least 50% of my time.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Microsoft Defender XDR support is responsive but varies; premium users receive faster resolutions than smaller organizations or basic plans.
Sentiment score
8.0
Micro Focus technical support varies from needing multiple emails to being very good, while Microsoft's support is generally effective.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
Once issues are escalated to the second or third layer, the support is much better.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender XDR offers scalable adaptability for large enterprises, accommodating diverse needs by leveraging flexible cloud infrastructure and licensing.
Sentiment score
7.5
Sentinel's high scalability, cost-effectiveness, and seamless cloud integration make it popular among large enterprises, educational institutions, and SMBs.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
Microsoft Defender XDR scales pretty well.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Defender XDR is highly reliable but has occasional performance issues on macOS/Linux and alert misclassifications.
Sentiment score
8.5
Sentinel is highly stable and reliable, supporting 5,000 events per second, but can experience occasional region-specific outages during fixes.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
It provides high-fidelity signals.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender XDR requires improved UI, integration, clarity, support, AI, and threat detection for better user experience.
Sentinel requires enhancements in scripting, integration, security, user interface, customization, vendor support, and reducing region-specific outages.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender XDR pricing varies; it's cost-effective with Microsoft 365, but potentially expensive standalone for smaller businesses.
There are certainly savings when using Microsoft Defender XDR, which can range from 30%, 40%, and even up to 50%.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender XDR offers seamless integration, advanced threat management, and automation, enhancing security efficiency while reducing costs and tool complexity.
Sentinel excels in log monitoring, threat detection, automation, cloud security, and offers a user-friendly interface with advanced analysis tools.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
This allows us to secure our systems in advance and proactively improve security, rather than waiting for incidents to occur.
Once we have it on the security dashboard, we can see a real-time storyline.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender XDR
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
Sentinel
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Microsoft Defender XDR is designed for Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and holds a mindshare of 6.9%, down 7.4% compared to last year.
Sentinel, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 3.5% mindshare, up 1.6% since last year.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.
JaideepSingh - PeerSpot reviewer
An automated solution that helped me detect threats in less than half the time it used to take
Sentinel gave us logs to tell us what's going right and wrong in your environment so we could secure the network. We also got multiple kinds of logs. By running some queries from the logs, we could find and fix the anomalies in the environment. Sentinel's threat visibility was great at telling us if we had something going on in our environment. We had to set up alerts in our environment based on the logs. If we had the right alerts set up, we got notified about threats and where security was lacking, so we could also take care of that. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped us prepare and take proactive steps for potential threats before they hit. Having preparation before a threat has helped our security operations. When I was using it, I used to keep going into my dashboards and looking for any threats on a weekly basis, or maybe two or three times a week. Based on that, we would recommend certain changes to the server and infrastructure teams to block or allow some ports. Sentinel's threat intelligence helped plan security against risks.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.
852,764 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
The pricing for Microsoft Sentinel operates on a pay-as-you-go model based on data ingestion. I recall that Defender XDR pricing is based on the number of endpoints.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
For Microsoft Defender XDR ( /categories/extended-detection-and-response-xdr ), there is currently no ability to reset passwords for on-premises accounts, which is a key challenge. Incident managem...
What do you like most about NetIQ Sentinel?
The solution lets us get all the logs properly and regularly monitor customer infrastructure.
What needs improvement with NetIQ Sentinel?
There are still a few vendor-specific devices for which Sentinel needs to work on integration, such as Netskope devices. Also, we often face region-wise outages during operation due to product team...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
NetIQ Sentinel, Novell SIEM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Faysal Bank, GaVI, Handelsbanken, ISC Mªnster, Lambeth Council, Swisscard, The Municipality of Siena, Tukes, University of Dayton, University of the Sunshine Coast
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
852,764 professionals have used our research since 2012.