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Microsoft Entra ID vs Thales SafeNet Trusted Access comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 11, 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 Entra ID
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
1st
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
1st
Ranking in Access Management
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
276
Ranking in other categories
Authentication Systems (1st), Identity Management (IM) (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (2nd)
Thales SafeNet Trusted Access
Ranking in Single Sign-On (SSO)
19th
Ranking in Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS)
24th
Ranking in Access Management
24th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Single Sign-On (SSO) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID is 9.8%, down from 26.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Thales SafeNet Trusted Access is 2.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Single Sign-On (SSO) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Entra ID9.8%
Thales SafeNet Trusted Access2.0%
Other88.2%
Single Sign-On (SSO)
 

Featured Reviews

Stafin Jacob - PeerSpot reviewer
Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance Practice Lead at Invoke
Identity has become our central gatekeeper and has provided secure single sign-on for all users
Microsoft Entra ID can improve by focusing more on new passwordless methods and becoming a primary adopter. One feature we would like to see is the ability to have security questions for password resets. I know the current capability is phasing out, so we do not have an alternative method yet. Customers who already use security questions require a smoother transition for that capability to be available. My experience with the deployment has had some challenges, particularly around the Microsoft MFA campaigns. The hardest part is moving users from a different MFA provider to the Microsoft MFA provider, as it ultimately depends on user activity. In large enterprises with numerous users across various geographies, this transition takes time. If there are ways to exert more control around that process, it would improve the situation.
GauravMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President Information Technology at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simple to use, easy to set up, and performs well
I'm not saying that we want to switch the product, however, since the requirement has increased, we are looking at other options that may be better suited. The scalability may not there. We have a few specific use cases where we have to avoid the cloud. Especially in Europe, we're not allowed to carry their phone in factories. We need some sort of secure access solution. There's a dependency on Microsoft Azure. I am paying to SafeNet and in parallel, I also need to pay Microsoft to use the same service. That makes no sense, to pay double. If they could do something about it, that would be very good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user-friendliness of Microsoft Entra ID is what I appreciate the most; everything is organized, simple, and straightforward, and even new technicians can come into it and know what they're looking for, making it the main housing unit for everything that I do in my role."
"It is pretty good in terms of stability."
"Multi-factor authentication (MFA) has improved our customers' security posture. Multi-factor authentication has two layers of authentication, which helps in case you input your credentials into a phishing website and then it has access to your credentials. So if they use your credentials, then you have proof on your phone that was sent to the end user."
"It definitely has improved our security posture, certainly from providing that second factor of authentication, and it enhanced our end user experience quite a bit by giving them self-service password reset and a single sign-on experience instead of having to remember multiple usernames and passwords for different systems."
"The most significant aspect is the security measures inherent in Microsoft Entra ID, including features such as conditional access policies."
"Microsoft Entra ID significantly improved secure access to applications and resources in our environment, primarily through the widespread use of single-sign-on."
"The benefits of using this solution were realized straightaway."
"We simply use Azure AD and everything is taken care of instantly; you need not worry about user management because everything is taken care of by Azure AD itself and you just simply have it in your application and everything is done out-of-the-box."
"The solution is simple to use."
"The validation and integrity features of the endpoint are great."
"I recommend this solution because it protects information."
"The interface is easy to use."
"The interface is easy to use."
"Right now, we only have a small use case for the product, however, it has performed well."
 

Cons

"The technical support has room for improvement."
"Documentation I think is always the worst part with what Azure's doing right now across the board."
"Having more training would be quite helpful."
"I would rate their technical support a six out of ten. It requires starting at the bottom and working our way up, which is time-consuming."
"The area that needs improvement is integrating IDs between multiple environments and forests. In our case, it's hard to get the identities from multiple forests into one location. This is probably our biggest challenge."
"The variety of different group types has caused challenges in areas where we have Microsoft 365 groups, distribution groups, and security groups, and the different types do not always make programmatic management clear."
"Active Directory could always be more secure. Right now, we've got two-factor authentications. All services based on Active Directory have a username and password. If somebody hacked our username, they could easily get all the data from our side. So I want two-factor authentication and a stronger password policy from Active Directory. The domain controllers should be more secure as well."
"My understanding is, in the future, they will be able to bring everything into one single platform and they are not there yet."
"There's a dependency on Microsoft Azure."
"SafeNet's reporting and monitoring features could be improved."
"I'd like to see more networking features, such as the ability to integrate network monitoring solutions and authenticate the app users."
"Lacks the ability to integrate network monitoring solutions and authenticate the app users."
"SafeNet's reporting and monitoring features could be improved."
"The scalability may not be there."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of Entra ID depends entirely on our organization's specific needs and use cases."
"Azure Active Directory has a very extensive licensing model. Most of the features are available in the free and basic version, and then there are premium P1 and P2 editions. The licensing model is based on how many users you have per month. In Australia, for a P1 license, the cost is 8 dollars. With P1 and P2 licenses, you get a lot of goodies around the security side of things. For example, User Identity Protection is available only in P2. These are extra features that allow you to have a pretty good security posture, but most of the required things are available in the free and basic version."
"The process for buying licenses from Microsoft is somewhat messy and really hard to do. We have to talk to someone because it's hard to find out how many licenses we need. If I'm applying for 2,000 users, how many Windows licenses do we need? They could also charge less for support."
"Its price is per user. It is also based on the type of user that you're synchronizing up there."
"We make sure that we only enable the licenses that are needed for the users, rather than enabling licenses in a blanket fashion."
"Entra ID is not too bad, but Microsoft licensing generally is insane. Most customers normally buy a bundle license with Microsoft 365, E3, or E5. Out of our 2,000 customers, for 99.9% of our customers, the Entra ID license that they are getting through the part of that would be sufficient. There are some more advanced ones that give you a bit more functionality, but we probably have not had a customer for that. We do not even internally use that ourselves. When you buy the Entra ID license on its own, it is probably three or four pounds. You just get it included in the license."
"The subscription should be categorized by business size. For example, small companies should have a discounted price, this would help small companies and the organization to be automated."
"I think we're on the E3 — I think it was about 35 dollars per user."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
11%
Performing Arts
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business90
Midsize Enterprise41
Large Enterprise161
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does Duo Security compare with Microsoft Authenticator?
We switched to Duo Security for identity verification. We’d been using a competitor but got the chance to evaluate Duo for 30 days, and we could not be happier. Duo Security is easy to configure a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that going through and being able to use these things is always part of delivering an M365 bundle, so I don't think the experience is great ...
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory?
Microsoft Entra ID can be improved by open-sourcing it. You already have Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is open-source Linux in Microsoft. One major shift for Microsoft would be using the commo...
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Also Known As

Azure AD, Azure Active Directory, Azure Active Directory, Microsoft Authenticator
SafeNet Trusted Access, Gemalto SafeNet Trusted Access
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Entre ID is trusted by companies of all sizes and industries including Walmart, Zscaler, Uniper, Amtrak, monday.com, and more.
IBM, Western Union, Vanderbilt University Medical Centre, Novartis, and AT&T.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Entra ID vs. Thales SafeNet Trusted Access and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
896,467 professionals have used our research since 2012.