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Fortinet FortiAnalyzer vs Microsoft Purview Audit comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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

Fortinet FortiAnalyzer
Ranking in Log Management
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Purview Audit
Ranking in Log Management
31st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (29th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is 1.6%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Audit is 0.9%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortinet FortiAnalyzer1.6%
Microsoft Purview Audit0.9%
Other97.5%
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Manikandan Kannan - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Technology at Techfruits
Simplifying log management by displaying detailed access information
The most valuable feature of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer is its ability to simplify and display logs clearly, providing details like which IPs are accessing the system, the destination, and the policies applied. This visualization and detail make managing logs more straightforward. In conjunction with our VMware setup, Fortinet FortiAnalyzer enhances organizational efficiency, meeting the standard log retention period for up to a year.
OK
Cloud Solution Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Integrated auditing has strengthened data retention and improved incident investigations
I have seen areas for improvement, specifically in Microsoft Purview Audit or in general about Microsoft. I have had a situation with documentation. I had a customer who wanted to create alerts and they had Microsoft 365 Business Premium. In the documentation, it was noted that this license is enough for creating alerts. When we tried to make them, we noticed they cannot do it with Microsoft 365 E3 because the customer had limited features to manage alerts. The customer had to buy E3. We created Microsoft support requests, and they confirmed that the documentation displayed not the real situation and they have been going to update documentation. The same situation occurred now with implementing Microsoft Purview Audit in the last autumn. eDiscovery was combined with search and content search, and the documentation was not clear at the beginning. It was a little difficult to describe to customers that now it is a part of eDiscovery. Content search is a very simple functionality, while eDiscovery is a little difficult. I am not entirely sure why Microsoft is going in the way of combining these services because they are the same. However, for a customer who has never seen these services, it is difficult to understand quickly. The same situation occurs with litigation holds and some other holds. For any mail, I am trying to keep data. For example, emails are held for a year or two years, ten years, it does not matter. It is difficult to understand where to find this data and where these emails are being held. I need to use eDiscovery to find out all deleted data that was kept somewhere in some hidden folders of the mailbox. Regular customers and regular administrators know that on-premises Exchange, for example, allows them to find the data in some repository and review the list of kept data. However, with this hold, we do not have any functionality to review the list of kept data. It is difficult to understand for customers how to work with this. I had a case where I spent three or four hours working deeply with a customer to explain how to work with eDiscovery, why Content Search is not there when it was before, what is an eDiscovery case, and why we are talking about all of this just to review a list of kept emails. This is difficult.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The installation process for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer was very smooth, taking around two to three hours to deploy."
"We have the most data visibility."
"The scalability is good. It is also good in the cluster nodes. You can make multiple FortiAnalyzer clusters groups, and you can distribute the logs between these FortiAnalyzer nodes. In other words, you can expand the scale."
"The report templates are valuable. It works very well, and integrations also work well."
"Special notifications about compromised phones are valuable because we have some guest networks, and sometimes, people are connecting phones that are connected to compromised websites. We want to be informed about it. We sometimes have some cases where we want to analyze the connection from inside to outside ports. So, it helps with a lot of things. It depends on our needs."
"There are customizable workflows that you can work with. You can automate certain tasks in FortiAnaylzer in the incidents and events sections."
"FortiAnalyzer has a robust ability to find a compromised host on your network, and when you identify a compromised host, you can address it."
"Based on the logs of Fortinet FortiAnalyzer you can have it trigger actions. For example, if the log has a word or a sentence you specified it can send an alert or Syslog to an email address."
"The platform has significantly enhanced our operational insight into the overall Microsoft 365 environment."
"The main Microsoft feature is that it offers common integration of services, of data, of identity, meaning user accounts, user access, and privileged access."
"The overall user experience with Microsoft Purview Audit is of higher quality than when it was branded as Compliance Center, and Microsoft consistently updates and evolves functionalities and the overall experience."
"We're easily saving at least one hour per day using this solution."
 

Cons

"The pricing could be better. They could work to make it more competitive on the market."
"Sometimes, there is a problem with CPU consumption, where one process consumes 100%, and I need to restart FortiAnalyzer to fix this."
"The deployment is complex and has room for improvement."
"When it comes to pushing logs to a SIEM, most of the time we have some issues when it comes to filtering."
"The solution lacks business intelligence features. It's much too basic."
"Fortinet FortiAnalyzer could improve the user interface, and the experience of users receiving the reports and tracking could be better."
"They could improve the user interface a bit."
"FortiAnalyzer is a good product; but, I keep thinking that FortiAnalyzer isn't really what I'm looking for which is why I am looking to acquire a SIEM solution."
"We do have a Denial of Access happening."
"We are still in the early stages of leveraging Microsoft Purview Audit. Currently, it's primarily used for the audit function."
"I had a case where I spent three or four hours working deeply with a customer to explain how to work with eDiscovery, why Content Search is not there when it was before, what is an eDiscovery case, and why we are talking about all of this just to review a list of kept emails."
"Areas for product improvement include enhancing customization options and integrating more comprehensive compliance features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have several products including Fortinet Wireless, FortiGate Firewalls, and FortiAnalyzer, which are bundled together and cost approximately $50,000 USD annually."
"The price is quite expensive. Fortinet products are very expensive. That is something which they should also look at, because if you compare Fortinet product to, say, Sophos for example, Fortinet is really high and that's the only thing which is a drawback for most users."
"We pay approximately $11,000 for a three-year license to use Fortinet FortiAnalyzer. When we compared the price of this solution to others it is not expensive. Palo Alto is a more expensive solution."
"The product's prices are a bit higher than the other solutions available in the market, but I would say that the tool's quality and support are areas that are good."
"We have around 12 devices and yearly we spend approximately $14,000."
"I won't say the solution is too costly since it is available at a fair price."
"The cost and pricing should be in accordance with the calculation of log storage capacity for a time period required for historical analysis."
"The company's choice to utilize Fortinet FortiAnalyzer was based on the overall security strategy and compatibility with existing solutions. It was deemed the best fit as it provided a centralized point of visibility for all of their security solution, including Fortinet FortiGate firewall, FortiClient, Forti EMS, and FortiAP. The company conducted a thorough evaluation of various solutions in the market but found that none of them could fully integrate and manage all their solutions as effectively as Fortinet FortiAnalyzer."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiAnalyzer?
I think technical support should be better. Sometimes support from Fortinet does not help with creating policies or configuration issues and directly routes to the service integrator. A little more...
What is your primary use case for Fortinet FortiAnalyzer?
I am using Fortinet FortiAnalyzer along with the analyzer for traffic monitoring and event checking. It is effective for analyzing traffic purposes.I use Fortinet FortiAnalyzer for event monitoring...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Audit?
It is not so expensive in comparison with other products, but I can tell you about an example.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Audit?
I have seen areas for improvement, specifically in Microsoft Purview Audit or in general about Microsoft. I have had a situation with documentation. I had a customer who wanted to create alerts and...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Audit?
I work with Defender for IoT by chance because I see that we have enough reviews for Defender for Office 365 today, and we need reviews for some Azure products. I work with Azure products such as L...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

General Directorate of Information Technology
Information Not Available
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