Microsoft Defender for Business vs Microsoft Sentinel comparison

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2,945 views|1,892 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Microsoft Logo
5,766 views|3,145 comparisons
92% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Business and Microsoft Sentinel 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Sentinel Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Microsoft Defender for Business is good for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers solid security flexibility and integration with tools like Microsoft Lighthouse and some other software. It takes some of the features of Defender for Endpoint EDR and provides those services for small and medium-sized business environments.""A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is going on. We have a footprint across all of North America, Canada, and Mexico, so we want to make sure that all our endpoints are protected and we are able to look for any anomalous activity.""The interface is quite user-friendly.""It is scalable.""If you're an Intune user, you can bring in certain capabilities like system-hardening policies, which further enhances the security."

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"One of the most valuable features is that it creates a kind of a single pane of glass for organizations that already use Microsoft software. So, when they have things like Microsoft 365, it is very easy for them to kind of plug in or enroll those endpoints into the Azure Sentinel service.""The initial setup is very simple and straightforward.""Sentinel pricing is good""The machine learning and artificial intelligence on offer are great.""The standout feature of Sentinel is that, because it's cloud-based and because it's from Microsoft, it integrates really well with all the other Microsoft products. It's really simple to set up and get going.""Sentinel's most important feature is the ability to centralize all the logs in one place. There's no need to search multiple systems for information.""The data connectors that Microsoft Sentinel provides are easy to integrate when we work with a Microsoft agent.""I like the KQL query. It simplifies getting data from the table and seeing the logs. All you need to know are the table names. It's quite easy to build use cases by using KQL."

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Cons
"Defender's threat protection should be fine-tuned to reduce false positives. It could be more targeted, reflecting a continuous evolution in detecting. Also, it could be easier to integrate into other environments.""We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac.""The security could always be improved.""The biggest one is that Defender needs to be more proactive to the emerging threats. There can be tighter integration with email, especially how it integrates with our email system, which is the Microsoft Outlook suite. There should be the ability to react a lot quicker to emerging threats because sometimes, it takes a few days before some of these new threats are fully identified, and we need that to be a few hours.""Defender's reporting is rather scattered, and its URL filtering mechanism doesn't really work."

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"The reporting could be more structured.""Sentinel provides decent visibility, but it's sometimes a little cumbersome to get to the information I want because there is so much information. I would also like to see more seamless integration between Sentinel and third-party security products.""Improvement-wise, I would like to see more integration with third-party solutions or old-school antivirus products that have some kind of logging capability. I wouldn't mind having that exposed within Sentinel. We do have situations where certain companies have bought licensing or have made an investment in a product, and that product will be there for the next two or three years. To be able to view information from those legacy products would be great. We can then better leverage the Sentinel solution and its capabilities.""If their UI was a bit more streamlined and easy to find when I need it, then that would be a great improvement.""The on-prem log sources still require a lot of development.""There is some relatively advanced knowledge that you have to have to properly leverage Sentinel's full capabilities. I'm thinking about things like the creation of workbooks, how you do threat-hunting, and the kinds of notifications you're getting... It takes time for people to ramp up on that and develop a familiarity or expertise with it.""When we pass KPIs to the governance department, there's no option to provide rights to the data or dashboard to colleagues. We can use Power BI for this, but it isn't easy or convenient. They should just come up with a way to provide limited role-based access to auditing personnel""The product can be improved by reducing the cost to use AI machine learning."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."
  • "It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Business Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It comes with a Microsoft subscription which the customer has, so they don't have to invest somewhere else."
  • "It is a consumption-based license model. bands at 100, 200, 400 GB per day etc. Azure Sentinel Pricing | Microsoft Azure"
  • "Good monthly operational cost model for the detection and response outcomes delivered, M365 logs don't count toward the limits which is a good benefit."
  • "I have had mixed feedback. At one point, I heard a client say that it sometimes seems more expensive. Most of the clients are on Office 365 or M365, and they are forced to take Azure SIEM because of the integration."
  • "It is kind of like a sliding scale. There are different tiers of pricing that go from $100 per day up to $3,500 per day. So, it just kind of depends on how much data is being stored. There can be additional costs to the standard license other than the additional data. It just kind of depends on what other services you're spinning up in Azure, or if you're using something like Azure log analytics."
  • "I am just paying for the log space with Azure Sentinel. It costs us about $2,000 a month. Most of the logs are free. We are only paying money for Azure Firewall logs because email logs or Azure AD logs are free to use for us."
  • "Sentinel is a bit expensive. If you can figure a way of configuring it to meet your needs, then you can find a way around the cost."
  • "Azure Sentinel is very costly, or at least it appears to be very costly. The costs vary based on your ingestion and your retention charges."
  • More Microsoft Sentinel Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is going… more »
    Top Answer:It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is… more »
    Top Answer:The biggest one is that Defender needs to be more proactive to the emerging threats. There can be tighter integration with email, especially how it integrates with our email system, which is the… more »
    Top Answer:Yes, Azure Sentinel is a SIEM on the Cloud. Multiple data sources can be uploaded and analyzed with Azure Sentinel and its Threat Hunting functionality with AI available as templates or customized by… more »
    Top Answer:It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log… more »
    Top Answer:We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will… more »
    Ranking
    20th
    Views
    2,945
    Comparisons
    1,892
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    453
    Rating
    8.0
    5th
    Views
    5,766
    Comparisons
    3,145
    Reviews
    58
    Average Words per Review
    1,662
    Rating
    8.4
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Azure Sentinel
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Defender for Business is a new endpoint security solution that was designed especially for the small and medium-sized business (up to 300 employees). With this endpoint security solution, your company's devices are better protected from ransomware, malware, phishing, and other threats.

    Microsoft Sentinel is a scalable, cloud-native, security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR) solution that lets you see and stop threats before they cause harm. Microsoft Sentinel delivers intelligent security analytics and threat intelligence across the enterprise, providing a single solution for alert detection, threat visibility, proactive hunting, and threat response. Eliminate security infrastructure setup and maintenance, and elastically scale to meet your security needs—while reducing IT costs. With Microsoft Sentinel, you can:

    - Collect data at cloud scale—across all users, devices, applications, and infrastructure, both on-premises and in multiple clouds

    - Detect previously uncovered threats and minimize false positives using analytics and unparalleled threat intelligence from Microsoft

    - Investigate threats with AI and hunt suspicious activities at scale, tapping into decades of cybersecurity work at Microsoft

    - Respond to incidents rapidly with built-in orchestration and automation of common tasks

    To learn more about our solution, ask questions, and share feedback, join our Microsoft Security, Compliance and Identity Community.

    Sample Customers
    Information Not Available
    Microsoft Sentinel is trusted by companies of all sizes including ABM, ASOS, Uniper, First West Credit Union, Avanade, and more.
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Retailer6%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Company Size
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise41%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise59%
    Buyer's Guide
    Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Sentinel
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Sentinel and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Microsoft Defender for Business is ranked 20th in Microsoft Security Suite with 5 reviews while Microsoft Sentinel is ranked 5th in Microsoft Security Suite with 86 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Business is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Sentinel is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Business writes "Quicker response time, improved security posture, and reduced alerts". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Sentinel writes "Gives a comprehensive and holistic view of the ecosystem and improves visibility and the ability to respond". Microsoft Defender for Business is most compared with HP Wolf Security, Microsoft Defender for Office 365, Microsoft Intune and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Sentinel is most compared with AWS Security Hub, IBM Security QRadar, Wazuh, Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Elastic Security. See our Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Sentinel report.

    See our list of best Microsoft Security Suite vendors.

    We monitor all Microsoft Security Suite reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.