Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Morphisec comparison

Microsoft Defender for Iden...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Morphisec and Microsoft Defender for Identity compete in the cybersecurity sector, offering unique approaches to threat prevention and detection. Morphisec seems to have the upper hand in zero-day threat resilience due to its deterministic prevention, while Microsoft Defender for Identity excels in integration within the Microsoft ecosystem for threat detection and comprehensive security management.

Features: Morphisec provides deterministic attack prevention by blocking in-memory attacks without relying on threat detection. It integrates easily with Microsoft Defender, offering a lightweight design and single console for threat visibility. Microsoft Defender for Identity uses behavioral analytics and machine learning for advanced threat detection and integrates across Microsoft's cloud and on-premises environments to enhance the unified security experience.

Room for Improvement: Morphisec could improve its reporting capabilities, interaction frequency with customers, and false positives resolution. It also needs enhancements in dashboard functionality and broader antivirus integration. Microsoft Defender for Identity requires a more user-friendly administrative interface, reduction in false positives, and better on-premises Android detection. Direct remediation actions within the platform and simplified licensing are also needed.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Morphisec is noted for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, although time zone differences can be challenging for some users. Microsoft Defender for Identity offers strong technical support and seamless integration within Microsoft environments, but alert verification can be time-consuming.

Pricing and ROI: Morphisec is considered cost-effective, with competitive pricing and no hidden charges, providing good ROI by reducing security management workloads. Microsoft Defender for Identity, part of the Microsoft 365 suite, offers cost benefits when bundled with other Microsoft products. Despite higher costs, its comprehensive features justify the investment for existing Microsoft ecosystem users.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Morphisec Report (Updated: June 2026).

Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Morphisec

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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

Microsoft Defender for Iden...

Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

8th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Microsoft Security Suite (5th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (3rd)

Morphisec

Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

31st

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (58th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (47th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (60th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (35th), Threat Deception Platforms (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Identity is 3.6%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Morphisec is 2.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Identity	3.6%
Morphisec	2.1%
Other	94.3%

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

Featured Reviews

Peter Arabomen

Security Engineer at Fidelity Bank Plc

Has supported hybrid identity management while integrating well with cloud directory services

The only challenge I have with Microsoft Defender for Identity is the latency. I may not put that entirely on Microsoft, because latency could be network related. At times when trying to authenticate, the prompt is delayed. We tried implementing passwordless authentication, especially for on-premises workloads, but we haven't been able to achieve that. Passwordless authentication is part of the identity functionalities, particularly when it comes to enforcing passwordless for on-premises workloads. In terms of improvements, you can't create OUs on Azure AD. Regarding giving users privileges on what they can do across different OUs, I haven't seen that feature on Microsoft Defender for Identity. Microsoft Defender for Identity needs to be able to plug into third-party applications that are not Microsoft. For instance, with a human resource application used to manage users and leave requests, when staff leaves the organization, they are first exited from that application before AD. Integration between Azure AD and third-party applications would allow automatic syncing when removing staff. The initial setup of Microsoft Defender for Identity is not hard. However, setup is one thing, and getting value from the application end-to-end is another. It can be set up and running from the first day but not functioning optimally. Initially, when we did the setup, it wasn't optimal. Over time, with continuous improvement, which we're still doing, we've gotten to a comfortable level, but there's still room for improvement.

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Rick Schibler

VP of Information Technology at Kentucky Trailer

Offers in-memory protection at a lower price than competitors

Morphisec's in-memory protection is probably the most valuable feature because it stops malicious activity from occurring. If something tries to install or act as a sleeper agent, Morphisec will detect and stop it. Morphisec's Moving Target Defense is critical to hardening our attack surface. If it detects something, it indicates whether it's valid. That means you've got a breach requiring investigation. It detects anomalies but doesn't necessarily point to what caused them. You still need to do that work. The solution is reasonably easy to administer. They made some changes last year, adding a cloud-based monitoring solution that makes deploying and monitoring our endpoints easy.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It gives companies a lot of insights that they didn't have before and has increased the security posture significantly."

"This solution has advanced a lot over the last few years."

"One of our users had the same password for every personal and company account. That was a problem because she started receiving phishing emails that could compromise all of her accounts. Defender told us that the user was not changing their password."

"We use AD Connect to sync on-premises AD to Azure AD, and so far, it has been effective."

"The most valuable aspect is its connection to Microsoft Sentinel and Defender for Endpoint, and giving exact timelines for incidents and when certain events occured during an incident."

"It automates routine testing and helps automate the finding of high-value alerts."

"In the security portfolio that we manage, Microsoft Defender for Identity is very important because it is the professional service that we sell the most."

"The solution’s alerting is fairly efficient."

More Microsoft Defender for Identity pros

"Morphisec has enabled us to become a lot less paranoid when it comes to staff clicking on things or accessing things that they shouldn't that could infect the whole system. Our original ransomware attack that happened came from someone's Google drive and then just filtered on through that. It has put our minds at ease a lot more in running it. It's also another layer of security that has been proven to be effective for us."

"Morphisec makes it very easy for IT teams of any size to prevent breaches of critical systems because of the design of their tool. When we evaluated Morphisec, the CIO and I sat and listened. What attracted us to them is the fact that it stops activity at the point of detection. That saves a lot of time because now we are not investigating and trying to trace down what to turn off. We have already prevented it, which makes it very much safer and more secure."

"We don't have to do anything as a user or as an admin. It does everything by default with its coding and inbuilt AI-based intelligence. We don't have to instruct it about what to do. It automatically takes corrective actions and quarantines or deletes a virus, malware, etc. That is the best part that I like about it."

"Morphisec Guard enables us to see at a glance whether our users have device control and disk encryption enabled properly. This is important because we are a global company operating with multiple entities. Previously, we didn't have that visibility. Now, we have visibility so we can pinpoint some locations where there are machines that are not really protected, offline, etc. It gives us visibility, which is good."

"Morphisec stops attacks without needing to know what type of threat it is, just that it is foreign. It is based on injections, so it would know when a software launches. If a software launches and something else also launches, then it would count that as anomalous and block it. Because the software looks at the code, and if it executes something else that is not related, then Morphisec would block it. That is how it works."

"Morphisec gives me even more than Microsoft can give me, even if I were to pay."

"It's simple, it's easy, and it works."

"Morphisec provides full visibility into security events from Microsoft Defender and Morphisec in one dashboard. Defender and Morphisec are integrated. It's important because it lowers the total cost of maintenance on the engineer's time, more or less. So the administrative time is dramatically reduced in maintaining the product. This saves an engineer around four to five hours a week."

More Morphisec pros

Cons

"We observe a lot of false positives. Sometimes, when we go for a coffee break, we lock our screens. Locking the screen has a separate Windows event ID and sometimes I see it is detected as a failed login."

"There is no option to remedy an issue directly from the console. If we see an alert, we can't fix it from the console. Instead, we must depend on other Microsoft products, such as MDE. That is a significant drawback. It simply works as a scanner, which can sometimes put enough load on the sensors. Immediate actions should be possible from the dashboard because. It can prevent issues from spreading further."

"They should improve the automation for impossible travel detection. When connected to Wi-Fi and then to VPN, the system sometimes interprets the IP address change as impossible travel."

"I can't say that I've seen a return on investment since we have Microsoft Defender for Identity because we also have another security solution in place."

"The technical support needs significant improvement. Documentation for more minor issues in the form of guides or walkthroughs could help to resolve this issue. The number of tickets raised would decrease, removing some pressure from the support team and making it easier to clear the remaining tickets."

"When the data leaves the cloud, there are security issues."

"Microsoft Defender for Identity does not save me time, but I think it is the way that I secure the data."

"Defender for Identity gives us visibility, but we often get false positives from Azure that take us down the garden path. We go through 30 incidents each day and most of those are false positives or benign positive alerts. Occasionally, we get true positive alerts."

More Microsoft Defender for Identity cons

"The dashboard is the area that requires the most improvement."

"Sometimes it generates false positive alerts. They need to continue working on that. They have provided solutions for it and have fixed issues with updated versions. The service is quite good but they need to work on it more so that there are no false positive alerts."

"Right now, it's just their auto-update feature. I know they are currently working on that."

"The only area that really needs improvement is the reporting functionality. Gathering the detailed information that is in the system for an executive, or for me as a director, could be better. Some of the interface and reporting aspects are a little bit dated. They're working on it."

"The only area that really needs improvement is the reporting functionality."

"It would be useful for them if they had some kind of network discovery. That kind of functionality I think would give IT administrators a little bit more confidence that they have 100 percent coverage, and it gives them something to audit against. Network discovery would be one area I would definitely suggest that they put some effort into."

"It would be useful for them if they had some kind of network discovery."

"Overall, I don't know 100% if it's increasing our security posture, but it does give us a nice peace of mind."

More Morphisec cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is very affordable considering that other SIEM solutions are much more expensive and have many more licensing restrictions and fees."

"Defender for Identity is a little more expensive than other Microsoft products. Identity and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are both a bit costly."

"You won't be able to change your tenants from where you deploy them. For example, if you select Canada, they will charge you based on Canadian pricing. If you are also in London, when you deploy in Canada, the pound is higher than Canadian dollars, but your platform resources are billable in Canadian dollars. Using your pounds to pay for any of these things will be cheaper. Or, if you deploy in London, they will charge you based on your local currency."

"Microsoft Defender for Identity comes as part of the Microsoft E5 licensing stack."

"The product is costly, and we had multiple discussions with accounting to receive a discounted rate. However, on the open market, the tool is expensive."

"It is a little bit more expensive than other security products that we use, but it does provide us good protection. So, it is a trade-off."

"It does not have multi-tenants. If South Africa wants to show only the machines that they have, they need their own cloud incidence. It is not possible to have that in a single cloud incidence with multiple tenants in it, instead you need to have multiple cloud incidences. Then, if you have that, it will be more expensive. However, they are going to change that, which is good."

"Licenses are per endpoint, and that's true for the cloud version as well. The only difference is that there is a little extra charge for the cloud version."

"It is priced correctly for what it does. They end up doing a good deal of discounting, but I think it is priced appropriately."

"Price-wise, it's on the higher side. A traditional antivirus solution is cheaper, but in terms of security and manageability, its ROI is better than a traditional antivirus. I would recommend it to anybody evaluating or considering an antivirus solution. If your system gets compromised, the cost of ransom would be a lot more. This way, it saves a lot of cost."

"Our licensing is tied into our contract. Because we have a long-term contract, our pricing is a little bit lower. It is per year, so we don't get charged per endpoint, but we do have a cap. Our cap is 80 endpoints. If we were to go over 80, when we renewed our contract, which is not until three years are over. Then, they would reevaluate, and say, "Well, you have more than 80 devices active right now. This is going to be the price change." They know that we are installing and replacing computers, so the numbers will be all over the place depending on whether you archive or don't archive, which is the reason why we just have to keep up on that stuff."

"Morphisec is reasonably priced because our parent company's other subsidiaries use different products like CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is four or five times more expensive than Morphisec. The competitive pricing saves us money in our overall security stack."

"We are still using a separate tool. I know for our 600 or I think we're actually licensed for up to 700 users, it runs me 23 or $24,000 a year. When you're talking to that many users plus servers being protected, that's well worth the investment for that dollar amount."

More Morphisec pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Outsourcing Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Construction Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Identity?

I really would have to sit down to think about how Microsoft Defender for Identity can be improved. I didn't take stock in what needs to be improved because I appreciated having the tools right the...

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What is your primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Identity?

My main use cases for Microsoft Defender for Identity include Conditional Access, checking risky users, remediating risky users, and user sign-ins. I can easily remediate or determine what the user...

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What advice do you have for others considering Microsoft Defender for Identity?

I don't really use Microsoft Defender for Identity a lot because my new role doesn't allow me to take time to do so. I don't really use the threat intelligence feature of Microsoft Defender for Ide...

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Comparisons

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Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID Protection vs Microsoft Defender for Identity

Compared 5% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Identity vs Microsoft Defender for Identity

Compared 4% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Microsoft Defender for Identity

Compared 4% of the time

Huntress Managed ITDR vs Microsoft Defender for Identity

Compared 4% of the time

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CrowdStrike Falcon vs Morphisec

Compared 5% of the time

FortiCNAPP vs Morphisec

Compared 5% of the time

Halcyon vs Morphisec

Compared 4% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Endpoint vs Morphisec

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Microsoft Defender for Identity

Download Microsoft Defender for Identity product report

Download Morphisec product report

Also Known As

Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Azure ATP, MS Defender for Identity

Morphisec, Morphisec Moving Target Defense

Overview

Microsoft Defender for Identity offers real-time threat detection and protection for hybrid Active Directory environments. It integrates with Microsoft 365 components for seamless security and monitors advanced behaviors, enhancing identity protection across cloud and on-premises environments.

Microsoft Defender for Identity provides detailed threat insights and user behavior analytics to detect unauthorized access and notify anomalies. It allows setting custom detection rules, enhancing threat response automation. While it needs improvements in cloud security, SIEM integration, and access controls, users leverage its ability to mitigate identity threats like suspicious logins and ransomware. Enhanced integration with Microsoft security products ensures a coordinated threat response for identity control and privilege management.

What are the key features of Microsoft Defender for Identity?

Active Directory Federation: Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft 365 for comprehensive security.
Real-time Security Monitoring: Provides immediate insights into advanced user behaviors and potential threats.
Threat Insights: Delivers detailed analysis of threats with the ability to customize detection rules.
User Behavior Analytics: Analyzes user activities to detect anomalies and potential risks.
Identity Protection: Offers comprehensive protection in both cloud and on-premises environments.

What benefits should users expect from reviews of Microsoft Defender for Identity?

Unauthorized Access Prevention: Identifies potential unauthorized activities with advanced detection mechanisms.
Anomaly Notification: Alerts users to unexpected activities within their environments.
Threat Response Automation: Facilitates rapid response to threats with automated solutions.
Enhanced Cloud Security: Strengthens identity management across hybrid and cloud frameworks.

In specific industries, organizations implement Microsoft Defender for Identity to secure on-premises and hybrid Active Directory environments through user and entity behavior analytics, malicious activity detection, and integration with Microsoft security tools. This approach enhances security posture assessment and helps mitigate identity threats like identity harvesting and unauthorized access.

Microsoft

Morphisec enhances security with its signatureless attack prevention, integrating smoothly with Microsoft Defender. Users benefit from real-time threat detection and seamless system integration, protecting against zero-day threats and ransomware across networks.

Morphisec's security solution focuses on preventing cyber threats without requiring threat signatures or user action. Its integration with Microsoft Defender offers simplified visibility and management while delivering quick responses. Lightweight in nature, Morphisec ensures zero performance degradation and employs in-memory protection along with Moving Target Defense. This approach effectively counters zero-day threats and ransomware, maintaining a user-centric dashboard that eases administrative workloads. Morphisec's easy deployment also enables small teams to manage risks and uphold robust security measures efficiently.

What are Morphisec's key features?

Signatureless Threat Prevention: Stops attacks without threat signatures or user interaction.
Microsoft Defender Integration: Provides unified management and quick response capabilities.
In-Memory Protection: Shields against zero-day and ransomware threats efficiently.
Moving Target Defense: Minimizes exposure to in-memory attacks.
User-Friendly Dashboard: Simplifies administration by reducing burdens.
Easy Deployment: Facilitates straightforward setup for small teams.

What benefits and ROI should be considered in user reviews?

Real-Time Detection: Immediate identification of threats enhances proactive threat management.
Seamless Integration: Compatible with existing systems, reducing delay risks.
Cloud-Based Updates: Ensures current protection with minimal manual input.
Multi-Layered Security: Adds a solid last defense layer, supplementing other antivirus solutions.

Morphisec is widely used across industries like financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing to bolster defenses against malware and ransomware. Its deployment spans workstations and servers, integrating efficiently into existing infrastructures. Industries value real-time threat detection, ease of deployment, and cloud-based updates, noting its ability to identify threats missed by other antivirus solutions.

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Identity is trusted by companies such as St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and more.

Lenovo/Motorola, TruGreen, Covenant Health, Citizens Medical Center

Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Morphisec