We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Identity and Palo Alto Networks VM-Series based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It automates routine testing and helps automate the finding of high-value alerts."
"The most valuable aspect is its connection to Microsoft Sentinel and Defender for Endpoint, and giving exact timelines for incidents and when certain events occured during an incident."
"Microsoft Defender for Identity provides excellent visibility into threats by leveraging real-time analytics and data intelligence."
"The basic security monitoring at its core feature is the most valuable aspect. But also the investigative parts, the historical logging of events over the network are extremely interesting because it gives an in-depth insight into the history of account activity that is really easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to export."
"This solution has advanced a lot over the last few years."
"Defender for Identity has not affected the end-user experience."
"The feature I like most is that you can create your own customized detection rules. It has a lot of default alerts and rules, but you can customize them according to your business needs."
"The best feature is security monitoring, which detects and investigates suspicious user activities. It can easily detect advanced attacks based on the behavior. The credentials are securely stored, so it reduces the risk of compromise. It will monitor user behavior based on artificial intelligence to protect the identities in your organization. It will even help secure the on-premise Active Directory. It syncs from the cloud to on-premise, and on-premise modifications will be reflected in the cloud."
"It has excellent scalability."
"The most valuable features of the solution are its stability, ease of implementation, ease of operation, and security."
"The Palo Alto VM-Series is nice because I can move the firewalls easily."
"The feature that I have found the most useful is that it meets all our requirements technically."
"The most valuable feature is that you can launch it in a very short time. You don't have to wait for the hardware to arrive and get it staged and installed. From that perspective, it is easy to launch. It is also scalable."
"The VM series has an advantage over the physical version because we are able to change the sources that the machine has, such as the amount of available RAM."
"The most effective features of the solution for threat prevention are Layer 7 inspection, SSL decryption, IPS, and the web filtering profile."
"Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is very easy to use."
"The technical support needs significant improvement. Documentation for more minor issues in the form of guides or walkthroughs could help to resolve this issue. The number of tickets raised would decrease, removing some pressure from the support team and making it easier to clear the remaining tickets."
"Microsoft should look at what competing vendors like CrowdStrike and Broadcom are doing and incorporate those features into Sentinel and Defender. At the same time, I think the intelligence inside the product is improving fast. They should incorporate more zero-trust and hybrid trust approaches. They need to build up threat intelligence based on threats and methods used in attacks on other companies."
"The impact of the sensors on the domain controllers can be quite high depending on your loads. I don't know if there's any room for improvement there, but that's one of the things that might be improved."
"And when you are working in a priority IP address, Identity is not able to know that those IPs are from the company. It sees that the IPs are from Taiwan or from Hong Kong or from India, even though they are internal IPs, resulting in a lot of false positives."
"The tracking instance needs to be configured appropriately."
"An area for improvement is the administrative interface. It's basic compared to other administrative centers. They could make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"When the data leaves the cloud, there are security issues."
"We observe a lot of false positives. Sometimes, when we go for a coffee break, we lock our screens. Locking the screen has a separate Windows event ID and sometimes I see it is detected as a failed login."
"The reporting part of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The command-line interface is something that some people struggle with and I think that they should have an option to go straight to the GUI."
"The product needs improvement in their Secure Access Service Edge."
"AWS doesn't integrate well with third-party firewalls."
"There could be dynamic DNS features similar to Fortinet in the product."
"We have ran into issues with Palo Alto’s limitations for resolving large IP lists from DNS lookups, as well as the antivirus interfering with App-ID."
"I would like to have automatic daily reporting, such as how many users have connected via SSL VPN."
"They made only a halfhearted attempt to put in DLP (Data Loss Prevention)."
More Microsoft Defender for Identity Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Identity is ranked 6th in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 13 reviews while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is ranked 11th in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 53 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Identity is rated 9.0, while Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Identity writes "Offers robust protection from insider threats, but the customer support is poor". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks VM-Series writes "Many features are optimized for troubleshooting real-time scenarios, saving a lot of time". Microsoft Defender for Identity is most compared with Microsoft Entra ID Protection, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Entra Verified ID, Splunk User Behavior Analytics and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, whereas Palo Alto Networks VM-Series is most compared with Azure Firewall, Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Fortinet FortiGate, Cisco Secure Firewall and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls. See our Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Palo Alto Networks VM-Series report.
See our list of best Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) vendors.
We monitor all Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.