What is our primary use case?
The main use cases for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management among my customers are endpoint protection, identity protection, and vulnerability assessment of software.
My customers mostly use this tool in the IT and ITES industries.
What is most valuable?
The most useful feature in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is asset discovery.
Regarding Threat Intelligence in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, people should subscribe separately as it is an add-on. I have not applied it to Threat Intelligence but we refer to it as vulnerability exploits; CV priority will be present.
The main advantage of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is that it can locate and prevent most threats even when the endpoints are not connected to the corporate network, as long as the internet is available.
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is capable of continuously monitoring and assessing vulnerabilities without requiring periodic scans.
Risk prioritization in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management will be very useful for large organizations and large deployments because they prioritize the risk, allowing me to apply the patches in a very structured and more important way. I can keep the less important patches on hold for a time period, but for most important, critical patches, the risk is prioritized, and I will be able to address that first.
The benefits my customers have gained from Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management include a single point of visibility of entire risk exposure, complete assessment of risk assessment from the cloud, real-time assessment, and the ability to immediately remediate the risk by applying patches.
What needs improvement?
I have not thought about improvements for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management as of now, but this is typically an operational maintenance process.
The operational maintenance process refers to these products being part of day-to-day operations. Threats keep coming almost daily, and we need to run it, prioritize the risk, and apply the patches. I am not able to think of many features for improvement at this point in time.
There should be risk scoring added to Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management; specifically, they call it quantification of the risk. If they can provide peer site reviews or risk scoring, such as how my organization in the healthcare industry fares against my peers on average, it would be valuable information.
This scoring should be for specific industries as well. If I belong to the healthcare industry using Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, it should provide me with a risk score and show how I fare against the risk score of my industry. If there are guidelines or insights on this, it will compel customers to reduce risk levels or improve their risk scores.
The application block capabilities in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management are effective and up to the standards, as everybody is looking at open OSINT and open-source security packages. I think on CV scoring, they are aligned with the industry.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working as an integrator with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management for the last two years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
The deployment of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is very easy; I would say not more than three to four hours to start off the implementation. Setting the policies and pushing if the agent is already there may take some time, based on the number of hosts and the organization's size, but typically a thousand users should be able to do it in about ten to fifteen days.
What was our ROI?
I do not have inputs on the ROI for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management; it might be a global decision or enterprise-wide agreement they already have with Microsoft. What the cost for ROI or ROC is remains unclear to me.
What other advice do I have?
I am familiar with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management and several security tools: Intune, Defender ATP review, and others are also in the picture.
Defender for Identity is not one I work with, but with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management and Intune, we support customers in malware, anti-malware, anti-spyware, and other segments.
Microsoft has made integration very easy, and Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management has matured itself, so integration is not a big challenge as of now.
I am familiar with agent-based scans only. I would recommend agent-based scans only for continuous monitoring and for more granular insight and telemetry.
My customers usually use Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management on the cloud.
The license usage for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is available on the website; however, customers should have certain Microsoft licenses as entry points, such as the E1 plan. This solution is meant for enterprise customers only.
For Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, customers must subscribe to Microsoft E1 or E3 plans as a prerequisite for embracing these solutions; other dependencies are required for this product to work, as it will not work in silos.
My customers have seen value in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management as they made a global decision to buy it because they already have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, along with all the tools and SKUs. So, Intune, BitDefender, and Microsoft Defender all become their native choice.
If you are already a Microsoft shop and you are under an EA, it is better to consider Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management.
I rate Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?