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Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs Varonis Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Purview Data Gove...
Ranking in Data Governance
1st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (8th)
Varonis Platform
Ranking in Data Governance
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (13th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (8th), Compliance Management (8th), Ransomware Protection (9th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Data Governance category, the mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Governance is 27.8%, down from 28.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Varonis Platform is 9.4%, up from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Governance
 

Featured Reviews

James McDowall - PeerSpot reviewer
The sensitivity and retention options in Purview are excellent
Some of the menu headings may not be easy to understand for some people. For example, when I first used Purview, I noticed that one of the self-compliance centers had changed its name. Microsoft has done a huge amount of updates, and sometimes it's hard to keep track of what Purview can do. We almost constantly have to explore it. Maybe Microsoft could have a 365 roadmap where we can look at upcoming features, or some kind of bulletin announcement for Purview users that explains new features and what they can do in simple terms. We could also look at the menu settings. In my experience of using Purview, we've never used it as an exclusive system for IT professionals or technical staff. We were very keen that other specialists around the business made use of some of these features because we thought that some of what Purview could do was relevant to other departments as well as IT. For example, we have HR managers and financial staff who use it. I think that some of the terminology in Purview is pitched toward IT and tech professionals, and it may not be immediately understood by other specialists. This is something that could be improved.
Frederic  Delos - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers the ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data
The most effective feature for me is its ability to identify sensitive areas, allowing you to drill down into the sensitive data, provided you have access, to determine whether it's a false positive or a true positive. That's the best thing for me, out of all of it. It's got everything, like other ones, but I like to be able to look at something if I'm doing forensics on the alert and say, "Okay, do I really need to do something with this?" For example, we don't want sensitive data in our OneDrive. So it identifies the sensitive data that's possibly in the OneDrive. And what I can do is look at it and identify whether it's actually sensitive data in Datalert or whether it looks like sensitive data, but I know it's a false positive. If it is a false positive, I can basically say ignore this pattern based on X, Y, and Z, you know, whether it's Redjax or keyword proximity. So I like that. With other tools, I gotta go through a whole process because it's a little bit more complex. Here, I can tag it and bag it in one shot. And the next good time I scan, it slips over it. So it helps in that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Purview's primary benefit lies in safeguarding sensitive and confidential data, thereby mitigating the risk of internal data exfiltration."
"I don't know if I've gotten much value out of Purview personally, but our security team loves it. Our biggest concern is leakage or theft of our data because we have a lot of PII and stuff that has not been released. We like the insights Purview provides and the way the solution can track and manage things. I'd say that was probably their favorite piece of it so far. From everything the security team has told me, the policy management and DLP features are working spectacularly."
"It is pretty early, but the decision to go with this investment was largely driven by the simplification of our information security technology management stack. That is the primary objective. Once you simplify and you have a connected structure, it allows for faster adoption there. It also gives us additional capabilities as we go on using the technology that we are familiar with, and we do not have to depend on outside parties to come in and tell us how to do certain things."
"My favorite Purview feature is auto-scanning. Once we set up Purview, we can automatically scan multiple data sources when new data comes into specific databases, like SQL and Oracle. We don't need to rediscover the new data or do anything manually because it automatically happens."
"The documentation is very exhaustive. Anyone can go ahead and try different use cases."
"The most valuable feature is the tracking activity and device onboarding."
"The best part is that I can create classifications per my requirements. I use it to classify multiple platforms like AWS, GCP, Azure, and different file sharing systems."
"The custom classifications are one of the most valuable features."
"The most important feature is remediation. In remediation support, there is no group permission. We'll go ahead and remediate the access from the Dell folder to the parent folder."
"That alerting and reporting service is great."
"I also appreciate the reporting feature, which allows for the extraction of various reports based on specific needs. These reports can be used for audit purposes, such as tracking changes in file locations or deletions."
"The analytics would have to be our most valuable feature."
"It can easily identify unusual behavior or access patterns that may pose a potential threat, while operating as a unified reporting system."
"There's also a 90-day policy where if a user is not using the warehouse, it will automatically delete that username."
"Varonis Platform is transparent and captures everything in the environment without impacting the performance. The tool helps us unify data feeds into a single reporting system."
"The telemetry to capture everything and the reports are very easy to configure without having a developer degree."
 

Cons

"I would like to have AI functionality on the dashboard to help me analyze and report on the data that we capture using Purview on a daily basis."
"Although you can explore the data, that creates a great interest in data lineage or the data flow. How does it go from a source to a platform to a Power BI report, for example? It is possible, to some extent, to see that with Purview, but the lineage feature requires some manual work on the development side or more work from Microsoft to improve on it."
"The standard support is acceptable, but sometimes it doesn't respond fast enough. Overall, it doesn't meet our expectations."
"One drawback of Microsoft Purview, though it's beneficial and easy to use, is that when you start plugging in connectors for third-party sources when setting the solution up for data collection, it becomes a bit more tricky."
"Frequent daily updates from Microsoft can cause interface elements like buttons to appear and disappear, making navigation unpredictable."
"Another area for improvement is in managing the business glossary terms. If they could provide the same type of method that we use to configure the scan rule sets, that would be helpful. Currently, there is no option like this, so we have to do it manually. Automatic detection would be great."
"It supports only a limited number of tools and technologies that pertain to Microsoft products. If you want to leverage other solutions such as Workday or Oracle Fusion, features will be coming up, but as of now, it is for the Microsoft suite."
"Setting up Purview in a production tenant proved challenging due to a lack of clear documentation on permission requirements."
"The solution's interface is a little complicated with regard to setting up filters and reports."
"The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components."
"The product is very complicated."
"One area for improvement is the calculation engine. When applying rules in Varonis, especially for large datasets (terabytes of data), the calculations can be slow and require time to process. Speeding up this process would be beneficial."
"For unstructured data monitoring, it's one of the top ones, if not the top one, due to its usability."
"We have Microsoft Office 365. I just saw an article today which says that they're actually getting integrated with Microsoft Office 365, which would be a useful feature. For user-based reports, log on activity, and stuff like that, it doesn't seem to really be present like Log360. That could just be my inexperience with it. I've been dealing with it for only about two and a half months."
"I would like it to have cloud integration."
"I'd like to see automatic updates for this solution. Currently, it's a manual process to update all the keywords"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Purview's price is pretty high when you factor in storage costs."
"The pricing depends on the client's requirements and the number of applications."
"I would rate the cost of Microsoft Purview a six out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"Price-wise, I think it's very generous and accessible to not just enterprises but small to medium-sized companies as well. I think it's very fair in terms of how they break apart the storage and the actual computing, and that makes it very accessible. So, that is a very big plus for Purview."
"Some people find the tier licensing system complicated, but it offers a lot of value for money if we use the features."
"Purview is included in our Microsoft E5 licensing."
"Microsoft Purview has a pay-per-use pricing model, so it's one of the most cost-effective tools, as your cost will be based on your usage. It's a pricing model that Microsoft has nailed down, making it great whether you're a small organization or a multinational, giant organization."
"It is cheap. It is based on consumption. If somebody wants to start using it, the price is definitely cheaper than a tool like Collibra."
"You could do a subscription, where you pay yearly, or you could purchase it outright. The licensing cost is based on the number of users on the system that you are monitoring."
"The pricing is good. It neither expensive nor cheap. It is average."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with ten being the most expensive."
"Varonis Platform wasn't certainly the cheapest solution."
"It's expensive, kind of, really expensive."
"Licensing is on an annual basis. Maintenance and renewal fees are separate. Varonis Datalert is quite expensive."
"The platform is expensive. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Purview?
It is designed to seamlessly connect to various data sources, which is particularly beneficial for our customers who primarily use Microsoft technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Purview?
The auto-tagging feature should be available at a lower licensing level.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Purview?
Auto-tagging should be available at lower levels of licensing. Right now, a high level of licensing is needed for auto-tagging, and this feature should be made available at a lower license level.
What do you like most about Varonis Platform?
The solution has significantly improved data security and compliance posture by allowing us to track and monitor activities. We can see who accesses data and when files are created and understand w...
What needs improvement with Varonis Platform?
The solution's areas of improvement are the interface and the dependency on on-premises deployment for some components. The interface has improved with the move to a SaaS model, but aspects could s...
What is your primary use case for Varonis Platform?
Customers use the product to identify sensitive information, correlate it with access permissions, and utilize its automation engine for remediation. It includes fixing broken permissions and manag...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Purview, MS Azure Purview
No data available
 

Learn More

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Nottingham Building Society
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs. Varonis Platform and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
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