We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Identity and Symantec Advanced Threat Protection 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."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."
"This solution has advanced a lot over the last few years."
"It is easy to set up. Based on the number of devices you would like to set up, you can use scripts, Group Policy, etc. It takes five minutes to set up."
"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."
"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."
"It automates routine testing and helps automate the finding of high-value alerts."
"All the integration it has with different Microsoft packages, like Teams and Office, is good."
"All of the solution's features are quite valuable for us. We especially like the threat protection it provides."
"You don't have to buy a separate email security platform. You can enable that using their endpoint, and I like that. You don't have to have two agents running on the same box."
"What I like most about Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is its notification capability."
"Currently we have 800-plus nodes connected with this solution, without any issues. The solution is scalable."
"It has certainly helped out our audit efforts because we each stay compliant in terms of various security standards."
"The Application Control code and the easy integration are valuable features."
"Symantec Endpoint Protection provides end-to-end protection. Along with antivirus protection, it has a lot of key areas, including intrusive prevention, firewall features, and application and device control."
"The incident management on the solution is very good. You get a lot of detailed information about an incident. You also get a lot of documentation in connection with the CVI or integration."
"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."
"The tracking instance needs to be configured appropriately."
"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."
"There is no option to remedy an issue directly from the console. If we see an alert, we can't fix it from the console. Instead, we must depend on other Microsoft products, such as MDE. That is a significant drawback. It simply works as a scanner, which can sometimes put enough load on the sensors. Immediate actions should be possible from the dashboard because. It can prevent issues from spreading further."
"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."
"One potential area for improvement could be exploring flexibility in the installation of Microsoft Defender for Identity agents."
"Defender for Identity gives us visibility, but we often get false positives from Azure that take us down the garden path. We go through 30 incidents each day and most of those are false positives or benign positive alerts. Occasionally, we get true positive alerts."
"The solution could be better at using group-managed access and they could replace it with broad-based access controls."
"Scalability could be better."
"It also needs network-based threat protection for shared folders and files."
"It should be able to collect information if the agent is disabled."
"The support for new OSs and older OSs could be a little tighter. They need to be more upfront about what protection services they're going to provide on new OSs. I haven't seen the Windows 11 version out yet. It is either already released in Beta, or the Beta will be released soon. There could be a little bit more advanced updates on what they're doing to help protect Windows 11 environments. They can let us know in advance so that we know it is going to be protected. We can't roll out the new OS without putting end-point protection on it. So, they should tell us what is their support model for that, and what are they doing to protect Windows 11. They're not telling me, and that's a criticism. The same issue is applicable to all the other antivirus tools. It is not just Symantec; all of them have this problem."
"Entire threat protection is not available for the advanced features."
"The product's support services need improvement."
"Symantec appliances need improvement. The whole appliance environment is a robust system and it needs a massive amount of storage space. If you have to increase or speed up the background storage it's a pretty complicated process. The scalability and sizing is critical, and if you do it wrong you run into issues pretty quickly."
"It's a strange situation where the infrastructure of the consumer or customer is behind some kind of firewall and they have always used some kind of customized proxy. In this situation, the ATP has a very tough time to pass the information to the cloud and back. To fix, it requires a more elaborate and complex configuration for that particular case."
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Microsoft Defender for Identity is ranked 6th in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 13 reviews while Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is ranked 20th in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 14 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Identity is rated 9.0, while Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is rated 7.8. 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 Symantec Advanced Threat Protection writes "Provides end-to-end antivirus protection and has good stability ". 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 Symantec Advanced Threat Protection is most compared with Palo Alto Networks WildFire, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Check Point SandBlast Network, Trellix Network Detection and Response and Fortinet FortiSandbox. See our Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Symantec Advanced Threat Protection report.
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