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Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Microsoft Entra ID Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.8
Microsoft Defender is essential and affordable for users, offering cost advantages over AWS, despite unclear individual financial benefits.
Sentiment score
7.1
Microsoft Entra ID Protection achieved ROI in three years, enhancing efficiency and user satisfaction despite higher costs.
As a Microsoft partner, we receive significant discounts, making the solution affordable for us.
There is a return on investment in terms of time-saving, control, and ease of manageability of the environment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender's support is reliable yet inconsistent in communication and timeliness, praised for skills but needs improvement.
Sentiment score
6.1
Entra ID Protection support receives mixed reviews; while responsive for some, others report delays, reliance on documentation, and inconsistent ticket handling.
They are sometimes responsive, however, often issues cannot be reproduced on their end, making it challenging.
My team raised multiple support tickets for the product, and we were able to get responses from Microsoft support team.
Their response time and skill set are both good.
Tickets often bounce from person to person, requiring the sharing of information multiple times.
They often refer to internal blogs, which doesn't offer much new information and can limit our capabilities in troubleshooting.
My teammates have had good communication with Microsoft.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
Microsoft Defender is praised for its scalability and integration, efficiently managing vulnerabilities across various sectors and servers.
Sentiment score
8.6
Microsoft Entra ID Protection offers scalable, adaptable solutions with high performance, praised for flexibility and cloud-native capabilities across industries.
It is scalable; I evaluated the product and decided to use Defender on over 700 of our company servers.
Since it is a cloud computing product, it can accommodate a range of company sizes, from a few users to large businesses.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is stable and reliable, though it has minor compatibility issues and can be resource-intensive.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Entra ID Protection and Azure AD are generally stable, reliable, and perform well, with minor and infrequent issues.
There are compatibility issues occasionally arising with false positives when other security tools are not whitelisted in Microsoft Defender.
It is very resource-intensive, consuming a lot of memory and CPU.
I would rate the overall stability as an eight.
 

Room For Improvement

Improve efficiency by reducing false positives and enhancing integration, stability, and AI capabilities while considering cost and resource demands.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection needs better management, integration, scalability, and simplified user interface, with key improvements for Mac support.
A vulnerability I patch within 15 minutes takes 24 additional hours for an update.
The product is not stable; it often uses excessive memory and CPU, which makes it slow.
A potential improvement could be the introduction of a more advanced AI agent, possibly a large language model with better performance than the existing Microsoft Copilot.
Microsoft has not offered control over how they calculate high or low-risk scenarios.
There is no write-back feature from the cloud to local, which would allow me to use my own credentials from the cloud tenant securely.
There is room for improvement in the ability for Entra ID Protection to inherit roles and configurations from whatever solution I am migrating from.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management has competitive pricing, requiring a license upgrade for additional features, often included in packages.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection's pricing is seen as competitive, yet sometimes perceived as complex or expensive by enterprise buyers.
For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
Overall, every organization wishes for cheaper options, but we look at the security side as well, so we are good for now.
The pricing is reasonable, and it's included in the whole Microsoft E5 bundle, so it's all-inclusive.
Entra ID Protection is not badly priced, but some clients, especially in medium to smaller scale companies in third-world countries, find it quite expensive.
The pricing for Microsoft Entra ID protection is not expensive.
Microsoft Entra ID requires additional licensing components.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management enhances security and efficiency through integration, accurate assessments, risk analysis, and management features.
Microsoft Entra ID Protection integrates seamlessly, enhancing security with multifactor authentication, conditional access, and scalable user management.
A valuable feature is the ease of management and integration with Microsoft products.
The recommendations, scores, and steps to remediate actions are highly useful.
It closes alerts with justifications based on historical data, thanks to integrated AI capabilities.
These features ease the job of security analysts, providing a better vision of user activities and potential risks.
Having a single sign-on feature with Entra ID ensures seamless access to various applications, even those with significant security constraints.
Microsoft Entra ID can detect if a user is at risk and then execute actions based on the risk level.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
22nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (14th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (17th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (5th)
Microsoft Entra ID Protection
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (8th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Entra ID Protection is 4.6%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

TakayukiUmehara - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of management and integration supports operations, but has high resource consumption
A valuable feature is the ease of management and integration with Microsoft products. I appreciate that I can click on a server in the Defender Console, notice a risk, and retrieve all necessary information. Speed is a key feature as it is very quick to administer and allows for manual configuration from the portal.
Mahender Nirwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Access to other software is just one click away and suitable for big organizations
Currently, we have limited use of Microsoft AD. We only use it to see if user blocks are available. If they are, we unblock the account and get access accordingly. AD has paid access control features. We can add access control over AD. For example, for documentation, we use an Outline tool. It's open source, and we add our company's knowledge base to it. It's an alternative to Confluence. We don't want everyone to have access to all documentation. If I create documentation for my team, only my team should have access, not support or sales. We can add these scopes or access controls over AD. Once integrated, the person will get the appropriate access control features upon logging in. Role-based access control is a great feature of Active Directory.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
I would rate the price as a three for us due to the partnership discounts. For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
For our current usage, we do not have any complaints, but a potential improvement could be the introduction of a more advanced AI agent, possibly a large language model with better performance than...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Active Directory Identity Protection?
The pricing for Microsoft Entra ID protection is not expensive. It varies based on the company's size and quality.
What needs improvement with Azure Active Directory Identity Protection?
I have set up my Active Directory locally for the same domain. However, Entra ID lacks a function to synchronize from the cloud to the local directory. This is a significant issue since there is no...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Azure Active Directory Identity Protection, Azure AD Identity Protection
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Microsoft Entra ID Protection and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.