We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Microsoft Defender for Identity 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 ability to prevent users from using certain applications is one of the most valuable features. It doesn't require any configuration for implementation from the client perspective. It just works right away and gives you the information you need."
"Defender's integration with our identity solutions is critical in our current setup."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related."
"We have become more aware of what services our users are using, how often they are using them, and what data is being sent out of the organization and to which services. So, it is really a lot about visibility and helping us make decisions based on that. It drives some of our policy decisions for adding extra security controls."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of management. It's important."
"On-demand scanning is the most valuable feature. In addition, it's a fairly fluid product. It syncs back to the cloud and provides metrics. It's pretty intelligent."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is to stop shadow IT."
"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 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 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."
"Defender for Identity has not affected the end-user experience."
"All the integration it has with different Microsoft packages, like Teams and Office, is good."
"This solution has advanced a lot over the last few years."
"Microsoft Defender for Identity provides excellent visibility into threats by leveraging real-time analytics and data intelligence."
"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."
"It takes some time to scan and apply the policies when there is some sensitive information. After it applies the policies, it works, but there is a delay. This is something for which we are working with Microsoft."
"It doesn't actually decrease the time to respond. This has been an issue with Microsoft recently. Sometimes, there is a delay when it comes to getting an alert policy email... Sometimes it takes two or three hours for that email to be sent."
"Defender for Cloud Apps could come with more configured policies out of the box. Also, integration could be easier. Integration is moderately difficult because Microsoft hasn't developed a solution that unifies device onboarding and management. You have to use Intune to manage devices and Defender for Endpoint to enforce policies. They need to fix their integration, but I believe they will straighten it out by the end of the year."
"I want them to enhance in-session policy."
"They should continue integration with all other Microsoft security-related products. The integration with all the other products is still ongoing."
"There are some features, such as user navigation content filtering, that are disabled by default, and it probably makes sense to enable them by default."
"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"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."
"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 tracking instance needs to be configured appropriately."
"The solution could be better at using group-managed access and they could replace it with broad-based access controls."
"One potential area for improvement could be exploring flexibility in the installation of Microsoft Defender for Identity agents."
"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."
"When the data leaves the cloud, there are security issues."
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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 11th in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 30 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Identity is ranked 6th in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) with 13 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Defender for Identity is rated 9.0. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps writes "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Identity writes "Offers robust protection from insider threats, but the customer support is poor". Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Forcepoint CASB, whereas 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 IBM Security QRadar. See our Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Microsoft Defender for Identity report.
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