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Exabeam vs Microsoft Defender for Identity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Exabeam
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (12th), User Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA) (2nd), Security Incident Response (5th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (8th), Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (8th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th)
Microsoft Defender for Iden...
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Exabeam is designed for Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and holds a mindshare of 1.1%, down 1.6% compared to last year.
Microsoft Defender for Identity, on the other hand, focuses on Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR), holds 31.7% mindshare, down 38.8% since last year.
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Stephen-Armstrong - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 11, 2024
The SIEM provides a user-friendly UI experience
I use Exabeam for it's end-to-end detection and it's user event behavioural Analytics, i find it a useful SIEM for investigating unusual behaviour by clicking into an incident from the main dashboard. From here we can go into the details of the incident, which are shown by the individual risk…
Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 3, 2022
Easily detects advanced attacks based on user behavior
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. Identity harvesting is the most common threat. Legacy Microsoft solutions and Amazon face the same issues in the cloud. Users don't implement other security mechanisms in the cloud. In an on-premise environment, we would have multiple security devices like firewalls and several layers of security. Cloud users are less bothered because cloud features are there and only need to be configured. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the best solution because all threats are completely visible, and it has a great dashboard. The dashboard displays each threat and score, so we can identify the threat rating and act efficiently to avoid compromising user identities. We have a single sign-on feature on the cloud. If we lose a single set of identities, it can compromise the entire organization, including cloud and on-premise. The same identities are being used everywhere. The user activity has to be completely visible on the dashboard, and it has to generate a pattern. It will notify us if there is any security breach. It is a complete monitoring set. Minor changes in the user identity can lead to data leakage. If a password is changed in the cloud, it will be reflected automatically in the on-premise. This minor change will trigger an alert in Microsoft Defender for Identity. It ensures that each cloud identity is well protected from spoofing. It has a comprehensive database of well-known spoofing techniques, enabling us to provide cloud identity protection completely. It has a vast scope because it is completely single sign-on. In the emerging industry, we use single sign-on because users need to authenticate, but it's challenging to remember multiple passwords. Once your user signs in, you can access all the data. An identity compromise would lead to various issues and affect the data on-premises. Defender maintains a constantly updated database with the latest signatures, attack models, and threats. If it detects one threat, it will monitor the suspicious event and give us frequent alerts. Identity protection is vital because we use an identity mechanism for everything, including firewall-related activities. The exact identity used in the cloud is used in the most complex firewalls. We require an excellent migration technique to regain this user credential if something gets compromised. Blocking this requires a massive set of procedures. Microsoft Defender comprehensively monitors identity and provides frequent alerts regarding any issue, so we don't need to think of anything else. Defender's bidirectional sync capabilities are helpful because we need to sync data from multiple directions, including tenant-to-tenant, on-premise-to-cloud, and cloud-to-cloud syncing. As a university, we have multiple tenants, so we need to sync or access data across platforms. That way, everything is more secure, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud also provides ample security for cloud transfers. The bidirectional sync capabilities are flawless—10 out of 10. Our on-premise Active Directory is perfectly synced with the Azure AD. Everything is synced with on-premise, and changes are reflected in minutes. If a problem with identity is addressed on the cloud, the fix will be mirrored on-premise and vice versa. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Identity are bundled. If we have these two solutions, we don't need to worry about anything else or third-party antivirus. Microsoft Defender for Identity acts as a link to all the Microsoft security features that require identity-based validation. Microsoft Defender instantly provides identity security for all our applications, and users need not worry about typing their passwords. Even in situations with less complex encryption mechanisms, users don't need to worry about typing in their passwords. Defender will check and monitor if there are any flaws in that, and it will let us know if there are any issues. We're a Microsoft shop, so everything works together. If one feature isn't working, everything will be affected. If Defender isn't working, half of our Microsoft security features will be dead. Without identity security, user data can easily be compromised, and data can fall into the hands of intruders or other hackers. The solutions have to complement each other. If anything got wrong, the entire setup would have flaws. Microsoft security has a legacy security mechanism. A while back, we might have gone with Defender for Endpoint, but Microsoft has also grown into the face of the cloud. The same Defender solution is completely maintaining cloud security. We can imagine Microsoft's vast scale and how Defender can protect the cloud environment from vulnerabilities and attacks. We are definitely delighted with Microsoft products. The dashboard features are fantastic because it provides a comprehensive overview. It has a great alert mechanism and log inspector that tracks when users access various servers. With this kind of identity validation, we can control which servers the users can access. We have total visibility from the dashboard. We can track identity usage even if there are no issues. That is an essential advantage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Timeline based analysis; good platform support"
"The UI was very clean."
"The ThreatHunter in Advanced Analytics is the most valuable. It helps analyze compromised assets and provides analysis for any entity within my client's environment."
"I have customers that like the EUBA functionality of it. The solution has the ability to build a session, basically. It pulls a lot of information together, for example, everything a user does in a specific timeframe. It's quite helpful."
"The advanced analytics has a really great overview of user behavior."
"The most valuable feature of Exabeam Fusion SIEM is the easy-to-use user interface."
"The platform is not extremely expensive compared to its direct competitors; I would rate its pricing around six out of ten."
"It's a very user-friendly product and it's a very comprehensive technology."
"The solution offers excellent visibility into threats."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Identity include real-time information for threat detection, its inclusion of behavioral analytics, and vulnerability management."
"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."
"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."
"All the integration it has with different Microsoft packages, like Teams and Office, is good."
"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."
 

Cons

"I believe if it were more flexible it would be a better product."
"We had a large volume right from the beginning and they weren't quite prepared for that. That's something that they should think about when it comes to customers that have a large volume to start off with."
"Updating the new release of Exabeam Fusion SIEM takes time and slows our performance."
"One area that needs improvement is interacting with Exabeam's API. There was a headache regarding the API; the documentation wasn't clear, and the syntax wasn't very precise."
"Exabeam's reporting dashboard could have included a filtering option to filter by the most recent detection."
"Exabeam should be a bit faster, especially in loading and vulnerability scanning."
"We still have questions surrounding hardware deployment."
"Adding to the number of certifications that they have, for example, ISO 27001, would be helpful."
"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 solution should provide more detailed data regarding anomaly detections."
"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."
"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."
"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 tracking instance needs to be configured appropriately."
"The solution could improve how it handles on-premises Android-related attacks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"Exabeam Fusion SIEM's pricing is reasonable."
"Exabeam is not a cheap solution."
"There is an annual license required to use Exabeam Fusion SIEM. The price of the solution should be reduced."
"They have a great model for pricing that can be based either on user count or gigabits per day."
"The platform is not extremely expensive compared to its direct competitors; I would rate its pricing around six out of ten."
"It is very affordable considering that other SIEM solutions are much more expensive and have many more licensing restrictions and fees."
"You won't be able to change your tenants from where you deploy them. For example, if you select Canada, they will charge you based on Canadian pricing. If you are also in London, when you deploy in Canada, the pound is higher than Canadian dollars, but your platform resources are billable in Canadian dollars. Using your pounds to pay for any of these things will be cheaper. Or, if you deploy in London, they will charge you based on your local currency."
"Microsoft Defender for Identity comes as part of the Microsoft E5 licensing stack."
"Defender for Identity is a little more expensive than other Microsoft products. Identity and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are both a bit costly."
"The product is costly, and we had multiple discussions with accounting to receive a discounted rate. However, on the open market, the tool is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Securonix UEBA, Exabeam, and IBM QRadar?
It mostly depends on your use-cases and environment. Exabeam and Securonix have a stronger UEBA feature set, friendlier GUI and are not licensed based on capacity (amount of logs and information in...
What do you like most about Exabeam Fusion SIEM?
The solution's initial setup process is easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Exabeam Fusion SIEM?
I do not have much information about the pricing. However, I am aware that Exabeam is cheaper than Palo Alto based on discussions in meetings.
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Identity?
Microsoft Defender for Identity provides excellent visibility into threats by leveraging real-time analytics and data intelligence.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Identity?
The solution could improve how it handles on-premises Android-related attacks. Without Microsoft Defender, it can be challenging to check which accounts are compromised and to analyze activities on...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Identity?
We use Microsoft Defender for Identity to prevent user account-level attacks such as lateral move attacks and pass-the-hash attacks on our on-premises servers. We leverage its features to mitigate ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Azure ATP, MS Defender for Identity
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Hulu, ADP, Safeway, BBCN Bank
Microsoft Defender for Identity is trusted by companies such as St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Exabeam vs. Microsoft Defender for Identity and other solutions. Updated: July 2023.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.