We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Identity and Azure Active Directory Identity Protection based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Microsoft Defender for Identity has bidirectional sync capabilities, customized detection rules, and integration with other Defender components. Meanwhile, Azure Active Directory Identity Protection offers a reverse proxy feature, compliance and authentication capabilities, and effective sign-in and audit logs. Microsoft Defender for Identity could benefit from better group-managed access controls and direct issue remediation, as well as improved on-premise alignment and reduced false positives. On the other hand, Azure Active Directory Identity Protection would benefit from identity labeling and password management, as well as SIEM events in the auditor tool and centralized models.
Service and Support: The reviews for Microsoft Defender for Identity's customer service are varied, with some users having positive interactions with knowledgeable and responsive technical support, while others report delays and a lack of technical ability. In comparison, Azure Active Directory Identity Protection's technical support is consistently rated as very good.
Ease of Deployment: Microsoft Defender for Identity's initial setup can vary in time, but Azure Active Directory Identity Protection has a straightforward setup that needs preparation.
Pricing: Microsoft Defender for Identity is more cost-effective than Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, as it does not have any additional costs beyond the standard licensing fee. However, it is still considered somewhat costly compared to other solutions. On the other hand, Azure Active Directory Identity Protection has a setup cost of $5-$6 per user, but is rated highly in terms of competitive pricing in the SMA segment.
ROI: Microsoft Defender for Identity focuses on incident prevention and reduced management time while Azure Active Directory Identity Protection aims to reduce the risk of identity-based attacks and improve overall security posture.
Comparison Results: Microsoft Defender for Identity is the preferred option over Azure Active Directory Identity Protection according to user reviews. It offers more comprehensive threat protection, better customer service and support, and a more straightforward setup process. While Azure Active Directory Identity Protection offers strong information security and compliance capabilities, it needs improvements in identity labeling and sensitivity, password management, and optimization for Mac devices.
"One of our users had the same password for every personal and company account. That was a problem because she started receiving phishing emails that could compromise all of her accounts. Defender told us that the user was not changing their password."
"The solution offers excellent visibility into threats."
"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."
"All the integration it has with different Microsoft packages, like Teams and Office, is good."
"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 feature I like the most about Defender for Identity is the entity tags. They give you the ability to identify sensitive accounts, devices, and groups. You also have honeytoken entities, which are devices that are identified as "bait" for fraudulent actors."
"Defender for Identity has not affected the end-user experience."
"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."
"The solution helps us with authentication."
"The primary and most valuable aspect of Azure AD identity is its ability to function seamlessly on both on-premise and cloud infrastructure, eliminating the need for extensive updates. However, this dual solution can pose vulnerabilities that require substantial support and security measures in the on-premise environment. Despite the challenges, it is currently not feasible to completely abandon AD, especially for companies in the sales and energy sectors. The integration with Microsoft Defender is crucial for enhancing security, making identity and security the primary focus and purpose of Azure AD."
"The reverse proxy feature provides additional security that is not available in other solutions."
"I use conditional access most of the time."
"The tool is simple and you can find a lot of tutorials, and videos on YouTube that can help you."
"One potential area for improvement could be exploring flexibility in the installation of Microsoft Defender for Identity agents."
"I would like to be able to do remediation from the platform because it is just a scanner right now. If you onboard a device, it shows you what is happening, but you can't use it to fix things. You need to go into the system to fix it instead."
"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"Integrating some notifications, not necessarily all, but at least for important events or alerts, would be beneficial as it would function as a team solution or something similar."
"Azure AD could improve by enhancing the availability of specialized courses for security, such as NETSCOUT security or other relevant certifications. It would be beneficial to have specific courses for security, to provide in-depth knowledge and skills related to Azure AD. While there are micro-learning resources available for various concepts, many people in the IT industry may not have the time to go through all the courses to properly configure and utilize Azure Active Directory. Simplifying the implementation process and making it easier for individuals to join a company with Azure AD could also be considered areas for improvement."
"Identity labeling and sensitivity needs improvement."
"The solution is not optimized to work with Mac devices on a granular level. They work seamlessly with Windows but have a lot to improve to work with Mac devices. It also needs to improve stability and scalability."
"The solution's sync should be faster since it can take about 30 minutes to two hours to complete a simple sync. The tool needs to sync instantly. It also needs to improve scalability, support, and stability."
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Microsoft Defender for Identity is ranked 8th in Microsoft Security Suite with 13 reviews while Microsoft Entra ID Protection is ranked 14th in Microsoft Security Suite with 5 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Identity is rated 9.0, while Microsoft Entra ID Protection is rated 8.4. 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 Microsoft Entra ID Protection writes "Enables smooth user sign-on experience, seamlessly deployment, and scales well". Microsoft Defender for Identity is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Entra Verified ID, Splunk User Behavior Analytics, Microsoft Sentinel and Rapid7 InsightIDR, whereas Microsoft Entra ID Protection is most compared with CrowdStrike Identity Protection, BloodHound Enterprise, Microsoft Entra Permissions Management, Microsoft Sentinel and Intercede MyID. See our Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Microsoft Entra ID Protection report.
See our list of best Microsoft Security Suite vendors and best Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) vendors.
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