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Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Purview Information 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
7.0
Microsoft Defender XDR offers cost savings, enhanced security, and efficiency by consolidating measures, reducing cyberattack losses, and streamlining processes.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Purview Information Protection consolidates tools, enhances protection and boosts response times, ensuring compliance and preventing costly data breaches.
Ever since we turned on the M5 feature set back in June, we have seen a reduced number of potentially malicious clicks and faster alerting when incidents occur.
Purview can do a quick scan, and it doesn't use human resources, so it gets time to do things that we need humans to focus on.
The cost of data loss and your data going to a competitor is potentially massive.
Customers have seen a return on investment through quicker issue detection and cost savings due to automation.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
Microsoft Defender XDR support varies; larger organizations benefit more, with issues in responsiveness and knowledge sharing for smaller companies.
Sentiment score
4.7
Microsoft Purview's customer service is inconsistent, with varying user experiences and recent improvements in support visibility and engagement.
You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain.
It's critical to escalate SEV B issues immediately to a domestic engineer.
The technical support from Microsoft Defender XDR has been disappointingly slow.
Sometimes, I get a fast and knowledgeable response, while other times, I've experienced delays and received no resolution.
It's hard to be an ambassador for a product when you know it will be hard to get support.
We generally receive good support from Microsoft for this solution.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR offers scalable solutions for diverse organizations, with strengths in cloud setups and dashboard management despite some challenges.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Purview Information Protection is scalable, efficiently managing large data volumes, though on-premises scanner improvements are needed.
Microsoft Defender XDR shows tremendous scalability, much more so than on-premises solutions.
It is suitable for enterprise-level deployment but has room for improvement.
It can be scaled across different departments organization-wide very quickly and easily.
It can handle large collections of data without issues.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender XDR is praised for stability and reliability, with minor issues quickly resolved and high user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Purview Information Protection is stable, reliable, and performs well at scale, with minor issues in specific features.
The service has remained consistently online, with any issues isolated to specific components, suggesting a well-designed and modular architecture.
The services within our ecosystem have been reliable, meeting their SLAs.
Once implemented, I haven't had issues with its consistency.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender XDR needs faster scanning, better integration, simpler licensing, and improved automation for user-friendly threat management.
Microsoft Purview Information Protection needs improved integration, enhanced features, reduced costs, clearer communication, and better cloud functionality.
The licensing process needs improvement and clarification.
Improvements are needed in automated response capabilities.
Some inconsistencies exist between blades, which could be improved for a more seamless user and UI experience.
Having a roadmap or updates about new releases would be helpful for demonstrating to clients.
Clarifying product features and use cases would help avoid such confusion.
Purview could better integrate with third-party tools.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender XDR is cost-effective with an E5 bundle but costly separately, influenced by complex licensing and geographic factors.
Microsoft Purview Information Protection is affordable for enterprises with cost-effective bundled options and competitive pricing in Microsoft licensing.
I would rate the pricing as eight out of ten, indicating it is a reasonable cost for the product.
Microsoft purposefully obfuscates this through marketing ploys to hide costs.
There are no issues with pricing, but sometimes, the clarity in licensing is a concern.
I talked to people who had compared it to other products on the market, and they're spending five figures to get started.
Our focus is on helping customers maximize their software investment.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender XDR offers seamless integration, advanced threat hunting, and AI protection, streamlining operations and reducing costs.
Microsoft Purview safeguards data through encryption, automatic classification, and user-friendly compliance features, integrating seamlessly with Microsoft products.
With Microsoft threat intelligence information, it detects various types of threats, including insider attacks, malicious content, and data exfiltration.
It's because endpoint management is my primary focus, and this feature integrates well with my other skills.
The Email Explorer feature has proven invaluable, offering a broader perspective than automated alerts and incidents alone.
Microsoft Copilot is an advantage because it's enterprise-grade AI.
It's paramount to have a single solution for information protection.
Regardless of the education, the employee might share the information anyway, so the AI shouldn't be the first point of failure. It should be a human making good decisions.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender XDR
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (5th)
Microsoft Purview Informati...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (5th), Data Privacy Management Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender XDR is 4.9%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Information Protection is 1.1%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.
Heidi Hasting - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides an essential audit trail that helps prevent accidental exposure of sensitive data, but the changing product names are confusing
One of the key features of Microsoft Purview Information Protection is the auto-classification functionalities, although I have found them to be less effective in complex scenarios. The policy toggle, demanding justification for downgrading labels, provides an essential audit trail that helps prevent accidental exposure of sensitive data. The security tools integrate well. I like that you can scan several data or informational assets, such as your SharePoint list, Teams, etc., and bring them into Purview as a central repository. Partnering with other products, like Sentinel, for logging capability and inventory provides a service across the board. It's essential that Purview automatically prevents highly sensitive corporate secrets and data from being ingested into generative AI models, but the reality is that AI is a tool. It's problematic if consumers rely on a tool to protect them because they must be educated first. Regardless of the education, the employee might share the information anyway, so the AI shouldn't be the first point of failure. It should be a human making good decisions.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
Licensing is somewhat confusing, particularly when presenting our pitch decks to stakeholders and leveraging key features in premium SKUs, but we managed with some assistance from Microsoft.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
It would be beneficial to reduce the number of clicks required to navigate between blades, as the current navigation and breadcrumb system can be a bit confusing. Some inconsistencies exist between...
What do you like most about Microsoft Purview Information Protection?
It ensures that sensitive data is automatically safeguarded, even for email attachments, regardless of the user or device.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Information Protection?
Initially, Purview's cost seemed quite high because it was for personal use. I was scanning a tiny tenant and thinking, "If I extrapolate this to an enterprise-scale tenant, it will be quite costly...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Information Protection?
The communication around Microsoft product names and functionalities can be confusing, like when they combined Office 365 Risk and Compliance with Azure Purview. Then, they added Purview Hub to Fab...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
Microsoft Information Protection
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Microsoft Purview Information Protection and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.