We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Business and Microsoft Sentinel based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Microsoft Security Suite solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The interface is quite user-friendly."
"It is scalable."
"If you're an Intune user, you can bring in certain capabilities like system-hardening policies, which further enhances the security."
"Microsoft Defender for Business is good for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers solid security flexibility and integration with tools like Microsoft Lighthouse and some other software. It takes some of the features of Defender for Endpoint EDR and provides those services for small and medium-sized business environments."
"A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is going on. We have a footprint across all of North America, Canada, and Mexico, so we want to make sure that all our endpoints are protected and we are able to look for any anomalous activity."
"The automation rules and playbooks are the most useful that I've seen. A number of other places segregate the automation and playbook as separate tools, whereas Microsoft is a SIEM and SOAR tool in one."
"Its inbuilt Kusto Query Language is a valuable feature. It provides the flexibility needed to leverage advanced data analytics rules and policies and enables us to easily navigate all our security events in a single view. It helps any user easily understand the data or any security lags in their data and applications."
"Sentinel improved how we investigate incidents. We can create watchlists and update them to align with the latest threat intelligence. The information Microsoft provides enables us to understand thoroughly and improve as we go along. It allows us to provide monthly reports to our clients on their security posture."
"The most valuable features are its threat handling and detection. It's a powerful tool because it's based on machine learning and on the behavior of malware."
"The most valuable feature is the alert notifications, which are categorized by severity levels: informational, low, medium, and high."
"Log aggregation and data connectors are the most valuable features."
"I like the KQL query. It simplifies getting data from the table and seeing the logs. All you need to know are the table names. It's quite easy to build use cases by using KQL."
"The UI-based analytics are excellent."
"The biggest one is that Defender needs to be more proactive to the emerging threats. There can be tighter integration with email, especially how it integrates with our email system, which is the Microsoft Outlook suite. There should be the ability to react a lot quicker to emerging threats because sometimes, it takes a few days before some of these new threats are fully identified, and we need that to be a few hours."
"Defender's reporting is rather scattered, and its URL filtering mechanism doesn't really work."
"The security could always be improved."
"Defender's threat protection should be fine-tuned to reduce false positives. It could be more targeted, reflecting a continuous evolution in detecting. Also, it could be easier to integrate into other environments."
"We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac."
"We have been working with multiple customers, and every time we onboard a customer, we are missing an essential feature that surprisingly doesn't exist in Sentinel. We searched the forums and knowledge bases but couldn't find a solution. When you onboard new customers, you need to enable the data connectors. That part is easy, but you must create rules from scratch for every associated connector. You click "next," "next," "next," and it requires five clicks for each analytical rule. Imagine we have a customer with 150 rules."
"Its documentation is not so simple. It is easy for somebody who is Microsoft certified or more closely attached to Microsoft solutions. It is not easy for those who are working on open-source platforms. There isn't a central point where everything is documented, and there is no specific training or certification."
"Currently, the watchlist feature is being utilized, and although there have been improvements, it is still not fully optimized."
"If you're looking to use canned queries, the interface could be a little more straightforward. It's not immediately intuitive regarding how you use it. You have to take a canned query and paste it into an operational box and then you hit a button... They could improve the ease of deploying these queries."
"The product can be improved by reducing the cost to use AI machine learning."
"Improvement-wise, I would like to see more integration with third-party solutions or old-school antivirus products that have some kind of logging capability. I wouldn't mind having that exposed within Sentinel. We do have situations where certain companies have bought licensing or have made an investment in a product, and that product will be there for the next two or three years. To be able to view information from those legacy products would be great. We can then better leverage the Sentinel solution and its capabilities."
"If their UI was a bit more streamlined and easy to find when I need it, then that would be a great improvement."
"I would like to see more AI used in processes."
More Microsoft Defender for Business Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Business is ranked 20th in Microsoft Security Suite with 5 reviews while Microsoft Sentinel is ranked 6th in Microsoft Security Suite with 85 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Business is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Sentinel is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Business writes "Quicker response time, improved security posture, and reduced alerts". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Sentinel writes "Gives a comprehensive and holistic view of the ecosystem and improves visibility and the ability to respond". Microsoft Defender for Business is most compared with HP Wolf Security, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Intune, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and SentinelOne Singularity Complete, whereas Microsoft Sentinel is most compared with AWS Security Hub, IBM Security QRadar, Splunk Enterprise Security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Elastic Security. See our Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Sentinel report.
See our list of best Microsoft Security Suite vendors.
We monitor all Microsoft Security Suite 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.