Microsoft Purview Information Protection vs Varonis Platform comparison

Microsoft and Varonis are both solutions in the Data Governance category. Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.0, while Varonis is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 2.8% mindshare in DG, compared to Varonis’s 10.8% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Varonis users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Purview Informati...

Read 14 Microsoft Purview Information Protection reviews

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1,411 Comparison Views

86% willing to recommend

Varonis Platform

Read 14 Varonis Platform reviews

9,196 Views
4,414 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Microsoft Purview Informati...

Varonis Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 7, 2025

Microsoft Purview Information Protection and Varonis Platform focus on data protection solutions, with Varonis often considered superior due to advanced features, despite its higher cost. Microsoft Purview enjoys better integration within Microsoft environments, while Varonis shines with detailed monitoring and comprehensive security.

Features: Microsoft Purview Information Protection is known for its multi-cloud data loss prevention, allowing access from iOS, Mac, and Android. It offers automated labeling and encryption, bolstering data security. Notably, its seamless compliance integration aids regulatory adherence. Varonis Platform excels in data governance, threat management, and access permissions, vital for unstructured data monitoring. The platform provides detailed visibility into file access and data categorization.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Purview could improve in reporting capabilities and third-party application integration. Pricing and feature integration could be more competitive, as well as support for PDF on Macs. Varonis Platform can work on enhancing user interface friendliness and cloud transition. High licensing costs are a barrier for smaller businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Purview is mostly deployed in public and hybrid clouds, leveraging the Microsoft ecosystem, but faces customer service inconsistencies. Varonis combines on-premises and cloud deployments, though users have noted some support delays.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft's pricing includes competitive E5 licenses, offering value for compliance prevention. Varonis is costly due to separate module pricing and server needs, yet provides strong data governance, justifying expenses for large-scale businesses.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Purview Information Protection vs. Varonis Platform Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Purview Information Protection vs. Varonis Platform

July 2025

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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 Purview Informati...

Ranking in Data Governance

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Privacy Management Software (2nd), Microsoft Security Suite (14th)

Varonis Platform

Ranking in Data Governance

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Security (20th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (9th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (6th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (18th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (12th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Compliance Management (7th), Ransomware Protection (10th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Microsoft Purview Information Protection is 2.8%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 10.8%, up from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Data Governance Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Varonis Platform	10.8%
Microsoft Purview Information Protection	2.8%
Other	86.4%

Data Governance

Featured Reviews

Abhi T

Associate Director at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech

Achieve comprehensive data protection with reliable performance and room for enhanced discovery accuracy

The product is still in a growing phase. I could see that many use cases in their product are not capable enough in terms of detecting or protecting. Compared to other products, they are in the middle of bringing their solution up to the mark, so it is not a full-grown solution. They have to get more accurate results in terms of data discovery and classification. The second thing is their support; support from Microsoft takes a lot of time to get a response from their support team. The third thing is their OCR capability is not that great in terms of identifying the documents. We would love to see response times of less than 24 hours. Additionally, there is no way to check the policy's current status in terms of whether it got synced or not. You have to wait and test the use cases after 24 hours or after 48 hours, and once it starts working, then it appears the policy got implemented.

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Frederic Delos

Senior Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data

The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Purview is about auditing and discoverability. We need to ensure people aren't releasing information that they shouldn't and that they're doing multi-factor authentication or accessing it from the correct devices. It aids in reducing silos within organizations, enabling staff to easily find documents and contacts without exhausting human resources."

"The simplicity of the way we can configure the DLP rules in Microsoft Purview Information Protection is good."

"Microsoft Purview Information Protection integrates with the productivity and security tools that my customers use regularly, allowing them to avoid using multiple information protection solutions."

"I created training materials for end users on applying different labels, explaining their purposes, and providing examples. This was crucial since end users would apply the labels in different protection scenarios. The implementation helped the organization in several ways."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview Information Protection is its ability to respond to sensitive data shared on Teams chat by deleting the message, not just monitoring or logging."

"Microsoft Purview Information Protection integrates with the productivity and security tools that my customers use regularly, allowing them to avoid using multiple information protection solutions."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Purview Information Protection is its ability to respond to sensitive data shared on Teams chat by deleting the message, not just monitoring or logging."

"We use the solution for our customers' services. It helps identify and protect sensitive data in documents, PDFs, emails, and Teams chats to prevent data leakage. It can detect and block emails containing credit card information sent outside the organization."

More Microsoft Purview Information Protection pros

"That alerting and reporting service is great."

"The 24/7 support is the most valuable feature. They have been able to answer support questions pretty quickly."

"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."

"The most important feature is remediation. In remediation support, there is no group permission. We'll go ahead and remediate the access from the Dell folder to the parent folder."

"Varonis offers robust data access governance, allowing us to understand which sensitive data exists and who has access to it."

"Varonis Platform is transparent and captures everything in the environment without impacting the performance. The tool helps us unify data feeds into a single reporting system."

"It can easily identify unusual behavior or access patterns that may pose a potential threat, while operating as a unified reporting system."

"There's also a 90-day policy where if a user is not using the warehouse, it will automatically delete that username."

More Varonis Platform pros

Cons

"Purview could better integrate with third-party tools, but I don't have a specific use case for that because It's currently integrated into the managed services we offer to Microsoft customers using E5 licenses."

"Scalability is affected by the time it takes to update policies."

"Microsoft Purview Information Protection can improve in terms of scan concurrency and scan processing time."

"I wouldn't recommend Microsoft Purview Information Protection for petabytes of documents as performance might be affected."

"There is potential for more integration in the use of AI."

"Our primary concern is third-party application visibility. Many people choose other DLP tools, as they can search the Office 365 suite and detect sensitive information across thousands of other apps. The product is weak compared to the competitors on the DLP front, but the classification is good; the tool needs a bit more maturation."

"The communication around Microsoft product names and functionalities can be confusing, like when they combined Office 365 Risk and Compliance with Azure Purview. Then, they added Purview Hub to Fabric, and people thought Purview Hub would do data lineages, but it didn't. It isn't full-fledged Purview. It's just one feature set."

"I would evaluate Microsoft's customer support for Microsoft Purview Information Protection as not satisfactory. I'm not happy with Microsoft's customer support."

More Microsoft Purview Information Protection cons

"The solution's interface is a little complicated with regard to setting up filters and reports."

"I would like it to have cloud integration."

"The product is very complicated."

"It is significantly complex."

"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords"

"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."

"There is one thing that if I add something manually, I get so many alerts. That's the biggest bad thing."

"The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components."

More Varonis Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and setup costs are transferred to my clients, who find it affordable and are satisfied with what they receive."

"The tool's pricing is fairly low, less than 100,000 for a year."

"The price is determined by the enterprise licensing, either the E3 or E5 licensing or the EMS plus security and other feature licensing."

"The tool's pricing is not a problem for customers because they often purchase it as part of a bundle. With an E5 license, for example, users get access to the entire functionality. This is one of the main reasons why many customers are choosing Microsoft."

"The product is affordable, and our clients agree. Sensitivity labels come with the MIP license at an additional $2 a month per user, an excellent deal for auto-labeling capabilities."

"Initially, Purview's cost seemed quite high because it was for personal use. I was scanning a tiny tenant and thinking, "If I extrapolate this to an enterprise-scale tenant, it will be quite costly." However, I talked to people who had compared it to other products on the market, and they're spending five figures to get started. At least, Purview has a free trial, so you can try some of the features early on."

"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."

"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."

"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."

"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."

"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."

"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Purview Information Protection?

It ensures that sensitive data is automatically safeguarded, even for email attachments, regardless of the user or device.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Information Protection?

Pricing is good because if somebody is looking for an overall cybersecurity solution, Microsoft has one license with many solutions bundled with that license. The E5 license covers most of the solu...

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What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Information Protection?

See all answers

What do you like most about Varonis Platform?

The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand w...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?

Varonis started as an on-premises solution and is transitioning to cloud. It hasn't fully moved yet, which is an area for improvement. Varonis requires more access permissions for its core function...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?

The primary use case for Varonis Platform is data discovery, specifically for discovering sensitive data in our organization to protect it. We are looking for a solution that can scan our repositor...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Purview Information Protection

August 2025

Microsoft Purview Information Protection report

Download Microsoft Purview Information Protection product report

Buyer's Guide

Varonis Platform

August 2025

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Also Known As

Microsoft Information Protection

SlashNext Complete

Overview

Implement Microsoft Information Protection (MIP) to help you discover, classify, and protect sensitive information wherever it lives or travels.

MIP capabilities are included with Microsoft 365 Compliance and give you the tools to know your data, protect your data, and prevent data loss.

To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

Microsoft

Varonis Platform enhances data security and governance with advanced analytics, identifying unusual access patterns and sensitive areas. Its centralized interface manages permissions across systems, offering essential capabilities for alerting and reporting.

Varonis Platform provides continuous data protection and monitoring by identifying and alerting on unauthorized data access. It offers comprehensive insights into file access and user activities, supporting data classification and simplifying compliance with tracking and monitoring capabilities. Integration with storage systems enables users to manage permissions and access effectively. Room for improvement includes cloud integration and simplifying its interface and calculation engine for ease of use. Challenges include on-premises dependency, licensing costs, and a need for enhanced DLP capabilities.

What are the primary features of Varonis Platform?

24/7 Technical Support: Ensures continuous assistance and issue resolution.
Advanced Analytics: Identifies unusual data access patterns for increased security.
Centralized Permission Management: Manages access permissions across systems.
Data Classification: Categorizes data to enhance protection measures.
Integration with Storage Systems: Simplifies compliance through tracking and monitoring.

What benefits and ROI should users expect?

Increased Security: Protects against unauthorized data access.
Compliance Simplification: Offers comprehensive tracking and monitoring to meet compliance standards.
Efficient Permission Management: Simplifies access controls across platforms.
Enhanced Alerting: Provides timely notifications of potential security breaches.

In finance, Varonis aids in safeguarding sensitive financial data, while in healthcare, it secures patient records. Legal industries utilize it for protecting client information, and retail sectors manage sensitive customer data. These industries benefit from Varonis' ability to prevent unauthorized access and streamline compliance.

Varonis

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Nottingham Building Society

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Purview Information Protection vs. Varonis Platform

July 2025

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