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Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management vs Proofpoint Insider Threat Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 4, 2025

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 Insider R...
Ranking in Insider Risk Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (28th)
Proofpoint Insider Threat M...
Ranking in Insider Risk Management
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
User Activity Monitoring (3rd), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Insider Risk Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management is 11.4%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Insider Threat Management is 14.8%, up from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Insider Risk Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management11.4%
Proofpoint Insider Threat Management14.8%
Other73.8%
Insider Risk Management
 

Featured Reviews

Karthik Ekambaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Scybers
Have consistently built secure internal environments while implementing compliance tools for diverse customer needs
The customizable alerts system needs improvement. The detection rules are not extensive enough. There should be more possibilities for creating alerts based on additional criteria. While rules can be customized, the available criteria for creating detection rules should be expanded. Microsoft's pricing is very expensive. The Business Premium offering should be extended to enterprise customers, as it's currently limited to 300 users. There should be a tier below E5 that includes Microsoft Purview and other features. Currently, E5 licensing costs approximately 6,000 INR per user per month including taxes. Competitive solutions offer similar functionality at about 50% of Microsoft's cost. Email DLP is included in Business Premium or P1 licenses, while P2 licenses cover endpoint DLP and additional channels. Microsoft should introduce an intermediate tier below E5 that covers all P1 licenses, as customers often need coverage across the entire M365 suite.
reviewer1271289 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Leader at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Good value, easy to use, and easy to deploy
In terms of what can be improved, that is a question I think the end users can tell you better. I'm not the end-user for this system. However, I can say that it needs to be more scalable. I think they already have a good value proposition in terms of being a hybrid model, and the reporting is okay, as well. It could have better integration with other SIEMs, but this integration has to come from the SIEM side, not ObserveIT.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Insider Risk Management's graphing is highly specific and useful. You can see the last six months of data for the Microsoft tenant. You can easily find what you need. For example, you can filter for alerts about devices, emails, etc."
"The scoring mechanism is exceptional because it eliminates the need to reinvent criteria for identifying risks, misconfigurations, or vulnerabilities."
"The best thing about Purview is that it's easy to integrate with our day-to-day environment. We have Active Directory, and Word and Excel. Using a third-party vendor and trying to integrate with our existing environment would be much more challenging."
"Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management was helpful in performing investigations after alerts were received."
"An example of how these features from Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management have benefited my organization is that we recently discovered a foreign actor, someone from North Korea took a job at our company and was pretending to be an employee, and with Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management, they notified us of that problem and we were able to remediate the fact that we had a North Korean spy working for us."
"ObserveIT is small, easy to use, easy to deploy, and is not complicated, so it's more generally suited for only SMBs. It's a good value with a cheaper price."
 

Cons

"The user interface also isn't user-friendly. When we introduce Insider Risk Management to our clients, they often find it difficult to understand. There is too much information, and the UI is not scalable. Also, entry-level IT technicians are not always interested in learning something new. It should be clearer and easier to understand."
"The reporting capabilities sometimes leave a little to be desired. It could be improved in terms of producing reports to provide information to the C-suite or others."
"My experience with the deployment of Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management was a fifty-fifty situation because we have a very diverse network, and not all of it is on Microsoft products."
"For certain things, you need to install an agent. I understand it's for integrity, but if there could be a clientless solution for certain aspects, it would make life easier."
"Microsoft's pricing is very expensive. The Business Premium offering should be extended to enterprise customers, as it's currently limited to 300 users."
"ObserveIT is not scalable and it's not for the medium to large corporations. It's for the smaller environments. For the larger corporations, we have other scalable solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
36%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Media Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Performing Arts
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management?
I feel Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management can be improved by being able to identify patterns and practices of users to determine whether or not they fit the normal use case of a developer, a...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management?
My main use cases involve identifying issues related to problems with the current software deployments and whether or not it is being utilized correctly.
What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management?
My advice to another organization that is considering using Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management is to make sure they plan out their deployment very carefully because the biggest sticking poin...
Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
In addition to responsesfrom Xavier Suriol and reviewer1324719, also consider ObserveIT from Proofpoint.
Looking for recommendations and a pros/cons template for software to detect insider threats
Hello All,I hope you had a merry Christmas.In this case it is as simple as it is.Just take Proofpoint ObserveIT - many companies in the public and financial sector have been using it for years.By ...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Insider Risk Management
ObserveIT
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Coca Cola, Allianz, Premiere League, Xerox, AIG, Cigna, Starbucks, Revlon, Toshiba, Nissan and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Purview Insider Risk Management vs. Proofpoint Insider Threat Management and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.