We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Entra ID based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Microsoft Security Suite solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."This is a very go, proactive solution to threat protection using advanced analysis."
"Defender provides useful alerts and groups them. It sends an alert to your portal if it detects any malicious activity, and you can group multiple alerts to form an incident."
"I like Defender's reporting and logging features. The email alerts are also helpful. It's hard sometimes to sift through the email, especially if you're an IT firm managing hundreds if not thousands of endpoints, but we find email reporting useful. For example, last Tuesday, we learned of new vulnerabilities that were discovered as a result of the previous patches. The endpoints without those patches triggered alerts in Defender."
"It's really stable. I've used a lot of stuff, a lot of products, like ESET and Kaspersky. None of them are comparable with this one. This one is much better."
"The most valuable features are the Windows Firewall and the regular virus definition updates. These features are very helpful and have helped to improve our security."
"The solution's latest features for threat analysis are updated to provide us with future protection against the latest threats worldwide."
"It is easy to install and use requiring little maintenance but applying updates."
"It's pretty easy to scale."
"When logging on to Azure AD it's pretty quick."
"The solution has some great features, such as identity governance, and user self-service. The Outlook application is very good and is used by a lot of people even if they are using Google services."
"It's not intuitive and we use it mainly for our Office 365 files. The integration between the two is interesting. However, the learning curve is high."
"The solution has a variety of tools. Two of the most valuable features are the ability to create users and to replicate the user account from on-premise to the cloud."
"With Azure Active Directory we were able to manage with different options the access for different users."
"It also has features that help improve security posture. The most important of these features include multifactor authentication, which is very useful for connecting to the organization, especially from outside the boundaries of the organization. That is very helpful when it comes to user security."
"We can centralize and manage everything much more effectively with this tool."
"We can have an audit and we can easily audit logs."
"This solution needs to move beyond relying on virus definitions alone and protect the system using behavioral analysis of the processes that are running."
"The scalability could be improved - I would rate it between a seven and an eight."
"We would like to see more tools for managing on-premises security... Sometimes, we have the tools, like Defender, to manage security in the cloud, but because we are so focused on the cloud, we forget the fact that we need to be sure about the security of the on-premises environment, specifically Active Directory."
"Its interface can be improved a little bit. We would like to have some sort of centralization. It should have something like a central server that is managing all the other clients. There are solutions from Kaspersky or ESET NOD32 that are really doing this kind of thing currently. We would like to see something similar from Microsoft."
"The product development team makes frequent changes that affect the stability of the solution."
"I have accounts for administrators and corporate employees, but I also have accounts for students. I can't split these types of accounts. I need a separate configuration for both... I need to research how I can get alerts for only the administrative machines."
"I would like to see improvements made to how it secures activities on web pages."
"Microsoft Defender for Endpoint should have more transparency. In the latest edition of Windows, Windows 11, it is a compulsory requirement to connect to a Microsoft account, which in turn has implications for Defender. This should be removed."
"The ability to manage and authenticate against on-premises solutions would be beneficial."
"It would be good to have more clarity around licensing."
"I think something that is key would be the group policies replication over the cloud, in order to prevent or to avoid relying on the on-premise Active Directory servers and to manage group policies."
"Many people believe that the Azure Active Directory is overly complicated and antiquated."
"Certain aspects of the user interface can be rather clunky and slow. It can sometimes be circular in terms of clicking a link for a risky user sign-in and seeing what the risky login attempts were. It takes you in a circle back to where you started, so drilling down into details, especially if you are not in it every day and it is one of many tools that you use, can be difficult. It can be difficult to track down the source of an issue."
"Entra ID is not battle-tested or stable enough to support a business of our size. There are some design issues specifically around support for legacy services."
"The SSO MyApps interface is very basic and needs better customization capabilities."
"Transitioning to the cloud is very difficult. They need the training to make it easier."
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Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is ranked 5th in Microsoft Security Suite with 182 reviews while Microsoft Entra ID is ranked 4th in Microsoft Security Suite with 190 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Entra ID is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint writes "Eliminates the need to look at multiple dashboards by automatically providing one XDR dashboard to show the security score of each subscription". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Entra ID writes "Allows users to authenticate from home and has excellent integrations in a simple, stable solution". Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is most compared with Symantec Endpoint Security, Intercept X Endpoint, SentinelOne Singularity Complete, CrowdStrike Falcon and Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks, whereas Microsoft Entra ID is most compared with Microsoft Intune, Google Cloud Identity, CyberArk Privileged Access Manager, Cisco Duo and Okta Workforce Identity. See our Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs. Microsoft Entra ID report.
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In recent years Microsoft has really upped its game with Defender and Intune. As core cyber-security for an SME, keeping just to Microsoft is now a real option. The challenge is understanding the gaps / cyber security service weaknesses (if they exist) in comparison with other vendors such as ESET, Malwarebytes, Trend Micro, etc.
Azure AD Services, Defender for Endpoint, and Intune are all Microsoft products, but it is important to understand how each product works as they may not be compatible and there may be some limitations.
Devices managed through Intune may not have all of the Defender for Endpoint features. Some advanced features such as automated investigation and remediation may only be available for devices that are enrolled in Defender for Endpoint standalone.
In addition, Azure AD and Intune have different requirements for device enrollment and management. Intune requires devices to be enrolled and managed through an MDM solution, while Azure AD provides basic device management capabilities but may not support all of the features available in Intune.
Lastly, there may be limitations to how user identities and access are managed between Azure AD and Intune. Some features that are available in Azure AD, such as conditional access policies, may not suit Intune, and additional configuration may be required to ensure that user identities and access are properly managed across both services.
If anyone out there has other experiences, please let me know!
It depends on your company's infrastructure. Check with your cyber team whether you can sync your endpoints to Cloud using Azure AD as Azure Registered/ Azure Hybrid AD join/ Azure AD join, etc.
1. So, if the ask is only to enroll them in Intune to leverage defender/BitLocker services - go directly to Azure AD's join approach.
2. If you still want to manage patch management/mcm BitLocker but Defender via cloud, the approach should be Azure Hybrid AD join.
3. You can still use autopilot using both of these approaches.
I believe it is a good first step, and I would say even a requirement, but in no way is it a comprehensive security solution, even for endpoints.
There are many things that need to be addressed for security. In addition to this, there is XDR, MDR, more comprehensive AV for endpoints & Servers that stop attacks, Threat Hunting, Mitigation, PEN Testing, Security Training for end users, Multi-Factor Authentication (Microsoft's MFA is good but only for Microsoft products), Patch Management for Endpoints, Servers and Cloud Workloads, Network Access Control, Firewalls for On-Premise and Cloud server workloads, Network Segmentation, Password Management, Data Backups (3-2-1-1 Rule) with Immutable Backups, Power Backups, Physical Security, Monitoring, NOC/SOC services, and working towards a Zero Trust architecture...
But there are no single-point solutions that will make you secure, so don't get complacent. And you can outspend your profits if you do everything. Just remember it's best to have a layered approach that works together and looks at everything from a security perspective and how it integrates with your overall security plans and objectives to help identify holes and possible mitigations.
Healthcare must do Risk Assessments by law, but I recommend that all companies of all sizes do at least annual risk assessments since there is so such thing as being too small or inconspicuous to be hit with malware or have a cyber security attack since much of the delivery is automated and not just by the script-kiddies of years gone by... Nation States are actively engaging in cyber warfare daily, along with terrorists, and opportunists looking to make big money from you...