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Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Sweet Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.5
Qualys TotalCloud boosts efficiency, reduces manual effort, decreases risk, and offers significant cost savings with a notable ROI.
Sentiment score
4.8
Microsoft Defender for Identity enhances threat detection, reduces efforts, minimizes risks, and optimizes costs despite varied ROI assessments.
Sentiment score
6.1
Sweet Security boosts incident response and reduces alert fatigue with improved visibility, prioritizing threats for informed tool investments.
It has saved about 90% of our time.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
TotalCloud has generated overall savings of 30 to 40 percent across various departments.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
CallStream helps us integrate and automate tasks.
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
The ROI is that we are not waiting for a breach but being proactive rather than reactive.
Partner Account Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Qualys TotalCloud support is praised for efficiency and staff knowledge but criticized for delays and inconsistent quality.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Defender for Identity offers knowledgeable support, yet response times can vary, especially with complex issues or initial contacts.
Sentiment score
9.0
Sweet Security provides exceptional customer service and technical support, with quick issue resolution and strong customer relationships.
They are helpful, respond to my queries, and can answer any question.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys's tech support is highly responsive, providing multiple ways to interact with them.
Service Manager, Security Operations at CDA IT SOLUTIONS
Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Generally, the support is more effective than other providers like Oracle.
Owner at Alopex ONE UG
The quality of support is very good, but troubleshooting can take time due to complex setups and the need to provide many logs.
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The people I normally use for support are very knowledgeable, especially when they help remote in and get to where I need to go and show me much faster and help me understand what I should be doing.
Technology Coordinator at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
They are there immediately, providing us with the best technical people, solving any issue we had.
Director of Security Operations at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
They gave me a trial period, did multiple follow-ups, and were reviewing themselves the findings to actually understand how their product is performing.
Infrastructure & Dev Ops Lead at Babylon Labs
I would rate customer support a nine out of ten because they maintain a competitive price, offer trial periods, provide follow-up, are very responsive, and are effectively hands-on in assisting and offering prompt service and support.
Partner Account Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Qualys TotalCloud excels in scalability, efficiently supporting diverse environments and business sizes, though it may require skilled management.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Defender for Identity is highly scalable and adaptable, excelling in large enterprises with efficient cloud-based processing.
Sentiment score
7.3
Sweet Security scales well for small to medium businesses but faces mixed reviews for large enterprise scalability and performance.
We started our organization about nine months back. We started with about 30 users, and we now have more than 100 users.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Our organization currently uses it to manage over 1200 web applications.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is absolutely scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
retired at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
In a Microsoft-centric organization, especially with Azure infrastructure and Office 365, Microsoft Defender for Identity is scalable.
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
We don't need to scale it since it's all SaaS.
Cloud and compute team leader at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We are a robust enterprise with thousands of assets in the cloud or tens of thousands.
Director of Security Operations at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
The user interface that I see doesn't make me very confident that I will be able to extract information in case I had hundreds or thousands of Kubernetes clusters or hundreds or thousands of hosts.
Infrastructure & Dev Ops Lead at Babylon Labs
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Qualys TotalCloud is highly stable with reliable support, 99.9% uptime, minimal bugs, and effective maintenance communication.
Sentiment score
7.1
Microsoft Defender for Identity is highly stable, reliable, with minimal downtime; occasional issues require support for agent redeployment.
Sentiment score
8.5
Sweet Security is highly stable, with users rating it 9-10/10 for reliability and quick issue resolution.
Overall, the support provided has been excellent.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is a stable solution, which is why we chose it.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Continuous monitoring is crucial to ensure system stability and avoid vulnerabilities or threats.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Microsoft Defender for Identity is quite robust and built on Azure hyperscale infrastructure, with a 99% availability.
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
We do not see any issues with the stability of Microsoft Defender for Identity.
Deputy Manager at Servion Global Solutions
Having recently started using it, reliability is affirmed, but manual investigation is often performed to verify if alerts identified by auto-remediation are accurate.
Instrumentation Engineer at Toyo Engineering Corp
I would rate the stability of Sweet Security a ten out of ten.
Works at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
We have never had any issues with stability.
Director of Security Operations at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Sweet Security is stable, as I find that user experience does not tend to reveal many production problems, and when they do occur, they are resolved quickly.
Partner Account Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest enhancing Qualys TotalCloud with clearer reports, better integration, intuitive UI, AI risk assessments, and improved documentation.
Microsoft Defender for Identity needs improvements in alert accuracy, UI/UX, asset integration, automation, anomaly detection, and third-party integration.
Sweet Security needs improved integration, UI, and automation, with concerns over complexity, customization, and market position risks.
Ideally, the scanner should automatically detect and scan all subdomains, even if not explicitly defined, ensuring comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
Our goal is to integrate all these functions into Qualys, creating a single dashboard for comprehensive security monitoring and management.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
If Microsoft could develop a feature that indicates when impossible travel is caused by VPN connections, it would prevent unnecessary password resets and session disruptions, especially for VIP users in organizations.
CyberSecurity Engineer | Information Security Management at Self Employed
One improvement I would recommend is the integration of an admin application within Teams, allowing easy access to attack information on a mobile platform.
Owner at Alopex ONE UG
Reducing false positives is something we've been working on with Microsoft.
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The next great thing that Sweet Security can do is to turn toward IAC, how it is handled and enforced, to tackle potential breaches of policy before they really happen.
Director of Security Operations at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Maybe they can just show the actual signal and not show that there is a lot of vulnerabilities, but indicate which are important.
Infrastructure & Dev Ops Lead at Babylon Labs
The main areas for improvement are related to how Sweet Security needs to be customized.
Works at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is high yet justified by comprehensive features and flexibility, benefiting larger enterprises seeking robust security.
Microsoft Defender for Identity pricing aligns with E5 licenses, offering value in hybrid setups but can be costly at scale.
Sweet Security offers cost-effective pricing with fair value, integration benefits, and excellent support, ideal for enterprise-level businesses.
Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is managed by our finance team; however, Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches.
Vice President at Inspira Enterprise
If they can reduce the costs, organizations will be happy, and it will compensate for using the Azure environment, which is more expensive on the infrastructure as a service side.
CyberSecurity Engineer | Information Security Management at Self Employed
Ensuring a fair price according to market standards.
Owner at Alopex ONE UG
From an organization perspective, using E5 licenses is value for money, especially if Azure and Office 365 are already in use.
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
They're not cheap, but they're not as expensive compared to other companies.
Works at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Sweet Security contains very similar features at a much better pricing.
Infrastructure & Dev Ops Lead at Babylon Labs
Sweet Security's pricing is quite fair and cost-effective by many users.
Partner Account Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud offers comprehensive vulnerability detection, cloud security management, and automation with insightful dashboards for efficient threat management.
Microsoft Defender for Identity enhances threat detection and security integration, offering streamlined investigation with automated alerts and behavioral analytics.
Sweet Security offers deep runtime visibility, unifying security with real-time insights, threat detection, and customizable dashboards for APIs.
This view of risk helps reduce the work we would have to do to combine multiple sources to prioritize risk.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It will help cybersecurity professionals monitor the cloud and find vulnerabilities.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We receive an advance report of risky users, allowing us to take preemptive action before an attack causes damage to organization details.
Instrumentation Engineer at Toyo Engineering Corp
The most valuable feature is its hybrid artificial intelligence, which gathers forensic data to track and counteract security threats, much like the CSI series in effect.
Owner at Alopex ONE UG
The advanced threat protection is one of the strengths of Microsoft Defender for Identity, as it utilizes user and entity analytics and can detect indicative attacks.
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Sweet Security's reporting tools enhance our insights into potential vulnerabilities and threats as they serve as our eyes and ears inside AWS, telling us what we are doing wrong so we can fix it.
Cloud and compute team leader at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sweet Security enabled teams to see each detection of activity upon every request made from the application level towards the infrastructure, making it much easier and reducing the time for an analyst to understand what is really happening.
Partner Account Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
I really love the feature within Sweet Security platform that allows you to visualize the specific packages or functions that are being loaded to the memory and are actually being executed by the operational system.
Director of Security Operations at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (8th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Microsoft Defender for Iden...
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (8th), Microsoft Security Suite (5th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (3rd)
Sweet Security
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (31st), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (15th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (19th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (14th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (9th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
Peter Arabomen - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2805510 - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner Account Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 51-200 employees
Runtime-first security has transformed real-time threat detection and reduced alert fatigue
Sweet Security can be improved in terms of product maturity and ecosystem. It has a smaller market presence, so we do not have as many large enterprise deployments. Sweet Security is less mature than competitors such as Wiz or Palo Alto Networks. Some competitors provide better integrations and workflow tooling. Additionally, as a new vendor, there is a new market perception and higher perceived risk, which relates to trust of the product. Some competitors are seen as safer and more established choices. Since Sweet Security operates in the production live environment, there have been a couple of problems reported where issues occurred in production environments. However, these have been resolved within about an hour or two. Having that risk is always going to be a negative. As a cloud-native platform solution, Sweet Security is really good overall. There are only a couple of areas for improvement, such as not being fully 100% production safe, and the reality that its competitors are global, well-known companies such as Palo Alto and Wiz.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Wellness & Fitness Company
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal appli...
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 sto...
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 r...
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. ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sweet Security?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that Sweet Security's pricing is quite fair and cost-e...
What needs improvement with Sweet Security?
Sweet Security can be improved in terms of product maturity and ecosystem. It has a smaller market presence, so we do...
What is your primary use case for Sweet Security?
My main use case for Sweet Security as a distributor is to distribute to our partners within the UK channel, and they...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Azure ATP, MS Defender for Identity
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Defender for Identity is trusted by companies such as St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and more.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Identity vs. Sweet Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.