Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Reviews

Mainly, companies use it for end-user compute devices. 

It has provided more centralization for managing endpoint security. We have greater flexibility. We can have people manage it from anywhere. I could be working from home or on-prem. That's a great thing about the cloud. The portal is accessible anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. It doesn't really limit you from where you can work or manage it.

It's an in-depth tool. It pretty much logs the events line by line, and with the portal, it just makes it searchable on a wider basis. We've got greater visibility than we used to have from historic products.

It helps to prioritize threats across the enterprise. Your AV is now your footprint, which means you can footprint files faster than you can provide a patch. That is the whole idea of security solutions these days. Sophos used to pioneer using file footprints to basically stop stuff at the front door. So, if you got an EXE or something else, such as a JavaScript file or JSP, or any nefarious malware, Trojans, they footprint the file. Such a file will get scanned and blocked. That's the whole idea of it. It can't ever execute on the machine. 

It helps automate routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts. It allows us to pinpoint threats and automate the boring stuff. Any automation or AI is a good thing.

It eliminates having to look at multiple dashboards and gives one XDR dashboard. I've one dashboard, and it's a unit. So, there is a unified approach. 

Having everything in one place helps because the engineers don't have to log into multiple places to find something, and they can put in best practice rules quicker. If they want new ASR rules, they can put them in. One of the things that security engineers do is create alerts in there. If they want to alert for a specific threat and just create a query, they'll run it through the system, or they put an alert for specific file extensions that might execute, such as ICU.7ZZ. There are code obfuscations and file obfuscations, and they can search for those things. They'll put alerts on for them.

This centralization saves us time. Because it's all in one portal, we can search across all endpoints we manage. That's the whole idea. The automation has probably saved an engineer between 10% to 20% of the time. It's something we just plug in and leave to work. It gets tweaked every now and again. Since I have implemented it, the tickets I've got from the security department and the infrastructure have gone down to about 10% to 15%. Once the rules are in place, they're there forever or as long as the product life cycle lasts.

I am not sure if it has saved us money because that's finance-related. It's probably more about uptime if you can keep threats off the end-user devices and don't have to rebuild them. I don't recall seeing a virus on my PC here in the current client I've worked for in the last five years. If you got a virus on the device, you just have to rebuild it. I don't remember having seen any rebuilds here. They are only for new users.

It reduces the time to respond. Your portal is a few clicks away. The fourth-line engineer can assist the security department within five minutes. Generally, we just get a Teams message if they need assistance or they raise a ticket. It depends on if it's a structural change or if it's a reactive response.

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.

They need to improve the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules. In the latest version, you can implement ASR rules, which are quite useful, but you have to enable those because if they're not enabled, they flag false positives. In the Defender portal, it logs a block for WMI processes and PowerShell. Apparently, it's because ASR rules are not configured. So, you generally have to enable them to exclude, for example, WMI queries or PowerShell because they have a habit of blocking your security scanners. It's a bit weird that they have to be enabled to be configured, and it's not the other way around. Normally, you'd expect when something is not configured, it doesn't enable itself, but for the purpose of this, apparently, Microsoft has told us to enable them. So, you've got to enable them because they keep flagging and blocking products even when they're not configured. It was just an oversight in the design department when they deployed an update to the feature, but I'll live with it.

I'd like to see them automate best-practice antivirus rules. If you search Microsoft best practice antivirus exclusions, there are virus scanning recommendations for antivirus computers running Windows or Windows Server. There is a whole list to exclude the most common things, which could be anything from NTFRS, check folders, temp.DB, or EDBs. There are a lot of things for group policy extensions, exclusion, etc. This is a list of best-practice antivirus rules, but they still have to be implemented manually. In Sophos, five or six years ago, if it was a SQL Server, they automatically included the rules to exclude certain folders or file extensions when doing on-demand scanning. I'd like Microsoft to do the same.

I have been using it in my professional capacity for five years.

It's greatly stable.

It's definitely scalable. My current client has 2,000 users.

They're excellent. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

I've previously used Symantec, which for some is the greatest product. My top two are Sophos and Microsoft Defender for antivirus or web filtering. Symantec doesn't really come close to these two.

Microsoft Defender is probably now accepted as the best product on the market for antivirus and web filtering. Five or ten years back, there were Symantec and others, but Microsoft has basically built a competitive product to rival those that used to do this kind of thing. Businesses are just happy to accept that it works. It's expensive, but it does what it says on the tin.

The legacy products, like Symantec, on servers and clients no longer work. They require a lot of manual configuration, and they also don't protect the PC or server as well as Defender, which is also more cost-effective. It's already built into your home PC's operating system. If you've got a business PC, it's built-in. With Defender for Cloud Apps or Defender Endpoint management or InTune, you've got the management of the PC, which is what this pays for.

It's cloud-based and deployed through InTune. The device has to be registered, and the device also has to be in the right license period.

The initial setup is straightforward. We use InTune to roll it out. The actual component is already on the Windows PC. It's called Windows antivirus or Defender. From the business side, by putting the devices in InTune, we can gather the metrics from the PC through Defender for Cloud Apps, or the Defender Endpoint management portal. It gives you a bit more management of the PC from that perspective.

In a reasonable deployment, it takes at least a week to deploy. The PCs have to be in InTune first to roll it out, and then, it's generally a matter of just switching on the feature.

For most businesses where I worked, it took a period of time to realize its benefits from the time of deployment. As the product got developed and became more mature, it got greater functionality in the end. It's now a mature product. The initial deployment was done when I was here, but I've been involved in enabling the maturity of the product's life cycle. There were always lots of tickets for changes regarding Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. It's a very intelligent product.

In terms of the number of people, sometimes, you need one person and sometimes two. Generally, you're trying to do things in the background.

It doesn't require any maintenance in particular. It's mainly just the configuration of rules and policies and then the security department does the rest and watches it.

The ROI is there. It's the uptime. You don't want end-user devices going offline. It disrupts the business for that user. Every time a user is down or the machines are being rebuilt because of a virus, it's downtime for the business. They can't do their work at that point in time. Increased uptime is always better on end-user compute devices or servers.

It has fair pricing. You pay for what you get. As far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee.

It's probably one of the top three on the market. You've got Defender and then you've got Sophos, and then, I suppose the other one that comes close is probably Norton. These are probably the top three. I am not really a fan of Trend Micro products or Kaspersky.

I would recommend implementing it. It's the number one product in the market. The only thing they should automate is to put AI on their virus scanner recommendations rather than having to enable them by default. They might already have done that, but from what I've seen, generally, they do things manually.

At the moment, we are not using other Microsoft Security products. We are mainly using Defender. I have previously made use of the Defender for Cloud's bidirectional sync capabilities, which I'd rate a 10 out of 10.  

Overall, I would rate it a 10 out of 10.

We help develop and mostly support applications for clients. It creates reports for clients. It works with Microsoft SQL Server and can tell clients if they need some governance standards for user security profiles. For example, if they are using Linux VM, then there are some security updates that come up. If they haven't been updated, they get a prompt telling them, "Look at this CSV security vulnerability. It should be updated as this part of your application."

We have our main office in Lagos with other offices in the UK and America. Due to COVID, we are mostly working remotely and having meetings online. There are 55 endpoints.

Due to COVID, most of my users are remote. Because of that, we need to manage their applications and let them log on from home. They also have their own personal devices that they are using. So, we have to give them access to those.

My staff uses personal devices that seem to always have issues with malware. So, it notifies me if there is an issue. I can check their usage and the audit logs, e.g., when people logged in last and if they are logged onto a tenant, to see where the issues are. We might tell them to change their login details or reset their two-factor authentication if there is an issue.

They don't have access to the desktop Microsoft Defender Antivirus suite. I need to manage it from the cloud, where I restrict access to the account. They can download a zip file to a folder, then do whatever they want, but I don't give them freedom anymore because the users are always having issues.

When our CEO travels, someone is always trying to hack into his account. We have banned Russian IP addresses, as this is where most of the threats are coming from.

There are security settings that report and advise you on your security settings. The governance reports give you guidance on security vulnerabilities and how to remedy them.

It tells you whether something is high, middle, or low risk, giving you a risk profile. It lets you know which one to handle first.

Everything from Microsoft is integrated. You receive regular reports on them all. You can push your reports, logs, and security alerts, which are all integrated. It is crucial that these solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment.

This Microsoft security solution has helped eliminate the need to look at multiple dashboards and given us a single XDR dashboard. This is one of the main features that we like about the solution. We have one dashboard. Anybody who is a part of the security team can look at it and say, "Okay, this is what I noticed." Then, we can have a short discussion on how to remediate or enhance services.

I would give the comprehensiveness of the threat-protection that these Microsoft security products provide a high score. 

Sometimes, Microsoft sends us information and recommendations about changing all our configurations due to something they noticed. So, their reports improve our uptime availability and provide a seamless service for our clients. 

The visibility is 85%. Sometimes, it takes too long to load your page because Microsoft is having issues. There are a certain amount of hours in a day to solve and rectify issues. If you deploy this solution for a client, you need to be able to respond or rectify issues. Because if the solution goes down, your clients won't be happy with you.

We would like to get more information from the endpoint. I don't get enough detailed information right now on why something failed. There is not enough visibility.

The cost could be improved when you need to pay for anything. For example, refreshing files takes time to load, though it may be my Internet. To improve the refresh time, Microsoft says that we need to pay for a Premium license, and I don't like paying for things that help make a solution better.

I have been using it for three years.

The stability is about 95%. I have called and complained to Microsoft about the downtime.

It doesn't require any maintenance.

Sometimes it will take time for Microsoft to respond to technical issues. However, once they start working on an issue, they will try to resolve it. I would rate the technical support as eight out of 10.

Positive

We didn't use another solution prior to this one. We have always used Microsoft.

The initial deployment was straightforward. Afterward, there were issues due to licensing issues moving from Google to Microsoft. It was not free.

It took a couple of hours to make everything work to our specifications. I tried to automate as much as I could with scripts.

I migrated my clients from Google to Microsoft.

Our reaction time is now faster when eliminating problems. We see the generated reports and logs much faster than before when we have to go to different places.

It reduces support calls for internal users. For example, it reduces the number of times that internal callers contact support for password issues.

Issues that frequently used to take support an hour are now only happening every blue moon. This is largely due to the predictive trend reports from the solution.

We have seen a 35% to 45% cost reduction with this solution.

You can activate a free tier of use for a period of time.

When the SolarWinds vulnerability came up, that caused a lot of issues. Our clients got regular updates. It did a scan for them, so they didn't have to start worrying. That was the free tier. 

With the other tiers, you pay more for each feature it gives you, e.g., the security push or regulatory compliance, without you paying extra for that too, which has been advantageous.

We also use Microsoft Defender for Cloud. With other models, you need to pay for an agent, and there is a cost. I don't like spending money. So, we use the free ones a lot. We evaluate the solutions that we need to pay for on a case-by-case basis, then we can decide if we really need them at all.

Sentinel would probably be the cheapest of all SIEM and SOAR solutions. I am not paying for everything because it is hosted by Microsoft. I am not paying the infrastructure costs. The app of this solution is updated regularly. I don't have to worry about that. So, the cost is very cheap for me, except when I have to pay for specific agents. Then, I have to think about the cost.

There are costs associated with SQL Server and Linux as well as their agents.

Microsoft makes sense because it integrates with many applications and provides. However, it depends on your infrastructure.

Endpoint Security is part of the Microsoft Defender suite. We use it to manage systems and force them to update. They can also revoke access to a tenant.

Microsoft Sentinel logs all our reports. This gives us better visibility. This enables us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. It also allows us to provide security posture reports to our clients. Before starting a contract with a business, we create a report and give that to clients, showing how we handle and solve problems. The report shows our environment and uptime. 

Sentinel enables us to investigate threats and respond holistically from one place. From there, we can now troubleshoot where the issue is coming from. This is for our endpoint or when my external users are trying to access the service. This is very important to us because it makes life easier. We don't have to start running around checking this interface with another interface and a third or fourth interface. It is a single interface and we can get more raw data than what we configured Sentinel to ingest.

The comprehensiveness of Sentinel’s security protection is very high. We don't really use other providers. We use it to connect to AWS or Google Cloud Platform infrastructure to get information on how deployed loads are performing.

I would rate them as nine out of 10.

We use Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for discovery, data exfiltration, and sensitive data exposure.

Some organizations with E5 or E3 licenses enable Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for their users, often with default settings. These organizations typically use OneDrive and SharePoint. With Defender for Cloud Apps, especially when integrated with Defender for Endpoint, they want to monitor which SaaS applications their users are accessing. The primary goal is to discover and track the types of SaaS apps their users use.

Microsoft makes setting up discovery and visibility into cloud app usage easy. I also appreciate its full integration with other Defender and XDR products, such as Defender for Identity, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Endpoint. You can ingest data from all these endpoints. I especially like the feature that allows you to discover which SaaS applications users access.

Microsoft has been high on implementing Copilot. If it is already integrated for using Copilot for security, that would be great.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for three years.

It's pretty stable.

 It has been reliable. I haven't seen it fail. There can be some confusing configuration issues sometimes, but it's quite dependable overall.

It is used by small, large, and government entities.

Improved communication and follow-up would be helpful. Sometimes, we don’t hear back after creating a ticket for a day or two. Even when an engineer is assigned, responding can still take a while despite providing all the necessary logs and information upfront.

Neutral

The deployment process is quick, taking two to three days. The implementation and customization require more time. We need to adjust the setup to fit the client's needs, which involves fine-tuning notifications and alerts to avoid overwhelming them.

First, you need the appropriate licensing. Once you have that, go to security.microsoft.com and integrate with Defender for Endpoints to receive information. While you can ingest logs from different firewalls, such as Palo Alto or Cisco, we usually implement them with Defender for Endpoints. Once a laptop or desktop is set up in Defender for Endpoints, integrating Cloud Apps with the endpoints allows us to collect the data easily.

I rate the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

Taking a proactive approach to keeping your environment secure and informed is key. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps you monitor what applications your users use and ensures they aren't using any sanctioned by your organization. This proactive control is a significant return on investment.

It's relatively low-cost, especially since it's often bundled with Microsoft 365.

It is also tied to data management. Since it's integrated, it can notify us of potential data exfiltration, like when large amounts of data are leaving the system or the Microsoft Cloud. This feature helps protect intellectual property and sensitive information subject to regulations and compliance standards, such as SOX or NIST. It plays a key role in ensuring data compliance and security.

It's fully integrated with other Microsoft security features. You can even connect it to Microsoft Sentinel, their SIEM product. The integration makes everything work better together, with less deployment effort and a single portal for managing your applications, eliminating the need to switch between different platforms.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine-point out of ten.

We primarily use Defender for Cloud Apps to authenticate users of our cloud applications. Defender validates the identity and allows the user to access the application. 

Defender helps us automate routine tasks. We can use templates to deploy various security solutions. It also consolidates our dashboards, so we can view everything from one console. 

Defender saves us time when responding to critical incidents. Typically, it takes about two or three days to find the root cause, but we can do this in four or five hours with Microsoft security solutions. Our detection time remains unchanged, but the response time is much faster. 

Defender's integration with our Identity solutions is critical in our current setup. It also integrates with Microsoft Sentinel to provide threat visibility. However, there's a delay of about 10 to 15 minutes from when Sentinel detects an incident, and it appears in Defender. We're trying to fix that. 

Defender allows us to prioritize threats across our enterprise, which is crucial. It's easy to integrate Defender with other Microsoft solutions. For example, we use Defender with Sentinel and set conditional access policies in Azure Active Directory. We're currently participating in Microsoft training to learn how to utilize these solutions better.

Defender could integrate better with multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It requires some additional configuration to ingest data from non-Azure environments and integrate it with Sentinel.

We have used Defender for Cloud Apps for a year.

Defender is stable.

Defender is scalable.

I rate Microsoft support eight out of 10. 

Positive

Defender is a cloud-based solution, but our deployment was complex because we have a massive environment. It took us about a month to fully deploy it, including testing and evaluation. I had a five-person team, including engineers, administrators, and management. There is no maintenance after deployment because it runs on Azure infrastructure.

We haven't saved money, but we save time because the integration with Microsoft products is seamless. 

Defender is costly. Still, we get a lot of features, and it's easier to integrate with our other solutions, so it's worth what we pay for it.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps nine out of 10. As a security architect, I would generally recommend a multi-vendor solution with a zero-trust model. However, if you are mostly using Microsoft products, it might make sense to use the Microsoft security suite because of the native integration.

We utilize Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps in conjunction with Defender for Endpoint. This enables the Cloud App to effectively block unauthorized websites for users. Additionally, it allows us to prevent users from accessing malicious sites, and we can restrict user access based on their device compliance status.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers visibility into the usage of enterprise applications and the connections established from both authorized and unauthorized locations and devices.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, in conjunction with Defender for Endpoint, helps prioritize threats throughout our enterprise by reviewing them, identifying devices with vulnerabilities, and providing us with criticality assessments and recommendations on resolving the issues.

We utilize the complete Microsoft Defender suite, which includes Defender for Endpoint as well as Defender 365. The integration is seamless; we only need to onboard Defender for Endpoint, and it functions exceptionally well.

The integrated solutions work natively together to provide coordinated detection and response across our environment. If Defender detects a malicious email, it will notify me of the detection, block the email, and apply the same actions to all the emails that match the same criteria.

I appreciate the comprehensiveness of the threat protection offered by Microsoft security products due to their functionality and ability to integrate, which other products may not offer.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has helped improve our visibility and response time.

It helps automate the discovery of high-value alerts. The solution can identify malicious threats and subsequently block the threats while disabling the compromised account automatically.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has helped us save time through the visibility it provides.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has significantly reduced our time to detect and respond by several hours through its integration with the rest of the Microsoft Defender suite, thereby reducing our troubleshooting time.

The most valuable feature is its policy implementation. Even public websites are directed to the Microsoft Net proxy, where we can establish policies to determine whether to block, authorize, or manage devices.

Currently, we are only able to utilize the policies for blocking threats. I would prefer to have filtering options incorporated within the policies, enabling the solution to perform tasks beyond mere blocking or allowing.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for one year.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has been stable thus far.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is scalable. We are not limited by Microsoft in terms of the number of users or devices.

The initial setup is not straightforward due to the numerous meetings beforehand, and the Microsoft documentation can be overwhelming. However, once we familiarized ourselves with the interface, it started making more sense. 

The deployment process took over three months. Initially, we tested the solution to become familiar with it before deploying it to a small number of users. Once we were confident that everything was working correctly, we proceeded to deploy it to all users. Two system engineers were required for the deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have seen a return on investment with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps.

We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly. Furthermore, there are supplementary expenses associated with add-on modules.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps an eight out of ten.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps promptly generates an alert upon detecting a threat. However, I do not believe it has the capability to proactively defend against potential threats.

It is deployed in one environment with 50-plus users.

No maintenance is required from our end.

I recommend that anyone evaluating Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps should read through all of the documentation first.

We use the product mainly to manage the accounts for Single-Sign-On purposes.

Microsoft Entra ID has improved privilege access management for our organization. We can manage who has access to which account.

The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long.

There could be more granular roles that are out of the box included in the product. I guess it would help people who aren't as savvy. Right now, I have to create many custom models for different use cases. It would be great if roles were more geared towards specific use cases to cover multiple aspects. In a case where a role is for a security admin, it could grant roles that are needed and not too many unnecessary roles. For example, it gives the security admin some access to the compliance portal, but the executive may not need that access. So it could be more granular.

We have been using Microsoft Entra ID for three to four years.

The product's stability is pretty good. We never really encountered outages. They are very rare.

We have approximately 1000 Microsoft Entra ID users in our organization. The product has great scalability. That's why we moved to the cloud. We need more roles. It will help us a lot as it grows. Microsoft is already adding more roles within the PIM environment, but the more they add, the more users will go to the cloud.

Microsoft's support services are good. They responded quickly whenever I had questions and sent emails or reached out for anything.

Neutral

We have used Azure AD groups initially. Then, we continued grouping within the security groups and only had a designated cloud once we moved to PIM.

The initial setup could have been done better in our organization. That was one of the reasons I was hired. I had to reset and architect the whole process. It was relatively straightforward.

The product is deployed on a hybrid cloud, including Azure, GCP, and AWS clouds. It is used across a few departments, mainly within their IT realm, marketing, and other departments. But for the most part, it's just those two groups currently using it.

I implemented the product myself.

The product's pricing seems fair.

I rate Microsoft Entra ID an eight out of ten.

Set up your environment correctly first. Take your time to figure out how you want to use it, such as PIM and other use cases. Ensure you set it up properly and then create custom roles when needed. Don't overaccess people; that'd be the main advice. It keeps being upgraded by Microsoft. There are constantly new features getting added. If there's some feature you don't see now, it could be there later. We initially wanted a few features that were added later on. Thus, there's always room for growth.

The product provides a single pane of glass for managing user access for the most part. It helps manage the roles better in one area. It becomes easier to use that way. I don't know if we necessarily use verified IDs. But we typically use HRID just to enforce MFA and other processes.

Initially, the product saved a lot of time because we could create dynamic roles for people with the right access. However, as we move more to the cloud, creating more custom roles saves less time. It still has pros in terms of granular roles.

It easily saves two or three daily tasks per person or user we're onboarding. Let's say it's a good amount of time, especially with the dynamic groups. Each PIM role gets activated as well. I would say it saves 20 to 30 minutes per user account activation.

We use it in our company for threat detection. My company is into manufacturing, and our IT support is within premises. We don't do client services.

It is a SaaS solution. It is not supported on-premises. The deployment that we have is purely cloud-based.

Cloud App Security is an ever-evolving technology. It is based on artificial intelligence. It uses some data sets that capture all the tools within Office 365 package. It collects all the data majorly in the Office 365 space, and it understands the usage. Across the globe, there might be millions of Microsoft users, and it tries to capture all the data cumulatively and see any anomalies. That is how Microsoft gives you the data. They study different types of organizations in terms of how they behave, what kind of security loopholes can be found in them, and then they give you recommendations. You just implement these recommendations to secure the environment. So, what you get is a tailor-made solution where you can find all recommendations because it is based on artificial intelligence. They give you a tailor-made recommendation to improve your environment. They might recommend multifactor authentication, role-based access, etc. They provide you the classical representation on which users we can target and safeguard more.  All these things are very useful. That's how this tool is helping Microsoft customers, and this is how we have also been using it.

My company relies upon this technology. For us, it is very critical to know any attack beforehand and be prepared for it. In our environment, there are many endpoints, and many devices interact. We have an email system, a storage system, and other systems. The beauty of Cloud App Security is that it can learn data from different applications. For example, Adobe is an application that I'm integrating with Office 365. So, I can expand my horizon of search to that tool and see how that interacts with us. I will get more real-time data, and I will know more use cases about it.

Threat detection is its key feature, and that's why we use this tool. It gives an alert if a PC is attacked or there is any kind of anomaly, such as there is a spike in sending emails or we see an unauthorized website being accessed. So, it keeps us on our toes. We get to know that there is something wrong, and we can isolate the user and find any issues with it. So, threat detection is very robust in this tool.

We can integrate any SaaS-based application with it. It can scan your network and physical devices and the software that you're using. It tries to fetch cumulative data when there are any authentication-related attacks or any network-related attacks and gives us some kind of intimation. We get real-time graphical data, and then we need to do our work to solve the problems.

The product is great. The major benefit is that it is a Microsoft tool. So, if you're in a Microsoft ecosystem, this is the best tool that you can get in the market. In terms of experience, it is unlike any other tool. It is good enough to do all the jobs that other tools are doing. So, you don't need any other tool if you are using it in a Microsoft ecosystem. 

The response time could be better. It will be helpful if the alerts are even more proactive and we can see more data. Currently, the data is a little bit weak. It is not complete. I can't just see it and completely know which user or which device it is. It takes some effort and time on my part to investigate and isolate a user. It would be great if it is more user-friendly or easy for people to understand.

If it is an Office 365 product, I expect it to be in the admin center. That way I would know that this is a part of Office 365. It feels like there is a mismatch, or they are trying to separate the product or do something like that. They should have streamlined the product.

It is not always accurate. Sometimes, there could be some hiccups, and you see false positives, but security is not always reliable, and you cannot depend on one tool to give you all accurate results. It gives me a report that I can see, and if needed, I can act proactively on something. If it is a false positive, it is fine. If it is not, we know that we have done something about it.

We implemented it probably in 2019.

It is a new thing for Microsoft, and it still has a lot of room to improve.

It is completely scalable out-of-the-box. It is completely in interaction with Office 365 services. It can go up to as many users as you have. So, if you have 100,000 users, it is capable of supporting them. I have some 50,000 users, and I'm happy that it is capable of doing that. We have implemented it 100%, and we are happy with what we have got.

It is good for an enterprise company. It is not for a small-scale business. 

We don't require support frequently. I would rate them a seven out of 10. If you have a critical situation, you cannot expect them to give you a call immediately. My experience has not been so great with their paid support in terms of time. Sometimes, they don't even call you back, but when you do get support from them, they are excellent. So, you can't rely on them, and their response time can be improved, but their documentation is good enough. We can read the documentation and help ourselves.

Before this, my company had some tools, but I'm not sure about them. They probably heavily relied upon Splunk and other APM tools. They have had this tool from the time I have been here. Personally, I haven't worked on technologies outside of Microsoft.

It is very easy if you know what you're doing. You just click on the Next button multiple times, and it is complete. It is well-documented in the sense that we know what we can expect from the tool. The documentation is great, and the support is also excellent. So, my experience was very smooth, and it was done in a day.

It does not work on every license. You have to be an Enterprise customer, and you have to have a specific license to have the full benefits of it. So, you require the correct license, and you also need a certain amount of time for it to propagate. It is not immediate. Based on what we were told by Microsoft a few years ago, it takes 24 to 48 hours. They might have improved upon that. It tries to capture the complete environment details, and then it gives you a cumulative experience.

We work around the clock. We have six admins at different time zones who work with this solution.

Its pricing is on the higher side. Its price is definitely very high for a small-scale company.

As an enterprise client, we do get benefits from Microsoft. We get a discounted price because of the number of users we have in our company. We have a premier package, and with that, we do get a lot of discounts. There are no additional costs. It only comes in the top-tier packages. Generally, the top-tier license is the best license that you can get for your organization. If you want, you can buy it separately, but that's not a good idea.

This tool alone is not a great investment, but when you get it as a part of the package from Microsoft, it is good. Along with Microsoft Teams, Office, Exchange, SharePoint, and other solutions, this added feature of an extra layer of security makes a lot of sense. If you are only using this tool, and it is not in a Microsoft ecosystem, then it is not worth it.

For Office 365 environments, there is a great add-on benefit that comes with the Microsoft licensing package. If you have a Microsoft ecosystem, you can get it, and there is no need for any other tool. If you're not in a Microsoft ecosystem, don't bother buying it. It is a good competitor to other products such as Splunk. 

It has not affected our end-user experience in any way. The reason being this is an admin-oriented program, and it does not involve any end user. It just collects data from end-users and gives it to us. After that, it is up to us to act upon it. It does not do anything on its own. It is a threat detection tool, and it doesn't do anything on its own. We have to act to resolve a problem. For example, it will only say, "There is a user who is doing this. Do you want to act upon it? Yes or no?" Based on that, as an admin, we can do certain tasks remotely. The end-user will not know about it. We will see if there is a real threat, and we'll act upon it.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. It is improving, but it still needs more improvements.

Positive