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Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Veritas Alta SaaS Protection comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 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

Microsoft Defender for Iden...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (5th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (3rd)
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (20th), SaaS Management Platforms (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Identity is 4.1%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is 1.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Identity4.1%
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection1.5%
Other94.4%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

OA
CyberSecurity Engineer | Information Security Management at Self Employed
Automation and threat intelligence streamline threat response and user management
In Microsoft Defender for Identity, I would appreciate improvements in providing information on conditional access. They have added more control that can be put in place, which was not present years ago. They have also integrated Azure Information Protection where policies can be configured. The Self-Service Password Reset (SSPR) allows users to reset their passwords, which is a valuable tool for remote workers. They have added more features into conditional access that integrate with other components, including SSPR and Identity Information Protection, trusted IPs, and locations. These configurations in trusted IP addresses are integrated into conditional access and control the applications I want to secure. Regarding impossible travel scenarios, I can either block the user or grant access while requesting multi-factor authentication. 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. 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.
SG
Technical Manager at Rigor Systems Limited
Experience with offsite backup enhances data integrity and reduces on-premise reliance
One of the features of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection that customers are looking for is immutability. This is the most important feature. With the cloud, Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is actually in the cloud, which means they have unlimited space to do their backups. They can expand on a need-to-need basis. The automated recovery feature of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection makes the recovery much easier, as opposed to earlier methods where we were using scripts to do the restore. Currently, it's automated so you just do a click. You select the feature in a graphical interface, making it easy to use even for a newbie.

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 Identity helps me automate routine tasks and find alerts that I set up to receive, so it helps me get where I'm trying to go easier and faster."
"The feature I like most is that you can create your own customized detection rules. It has a lot of default alerts and rules, but you can customize them according to your business needs."
"We do not see any issues with the stability of Microsoft Defender for Identity. I can say it is 100% stable."
"The solution offers excellent visibility into threats."
"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."
"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."
"The feature I like the most about Defender for Identity is the entity tags. They give you the ability to identify sensitive accounts, devices, and groups. You also have honeytoken entities, which are devices that are identified as "bait" for fraudulent actors."
"The integration into the Microsoft Defender ecosystem is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Identity."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and the ease of configuration."
"I would recommend this solution because it covers the total scope of Office 365."
"It offers general business continuity and disaster recovery for the industry."
"I would recommend anybody to buy this solution and use it."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and the ease of configuration."
"What I like most about Veritas SaaS Backup is that it is easy to work on and has compatible features."
"What I like most about Veritas SaaS Backup is that it is easy to work on."
"The solution is stable; I haven't experienced any bugs or glitches on it."
 

Cons

"The solution could be better at using group-managed access and they could replace it with broad-based access controls."
"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."
"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."
"One improvement I would recommend is the integration of an admin application within Teams, allowing easy access to attack information on a mobile platform to promptly alert affected users and their friends."
"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."
"When the data leaves the cloud, there are security issues."
"The impact of the sensors on the domain controllers can be quite high depending on your loads."
"I would like to be able to do remediation from the platform because it is just a scanner right now. If you onboard a device, it shows you what is happening, but you can't use it to fix things. You need to go into the system to fix it instead."
"The technical team wasn't very helpful."
"The backup reports and the dashboard need improvement."
"The program is quite expensive and I am not impressed by their technical support."
"The implementation could be improved. The server setup is very easy, but some specific client implementation, for example, Oracle or SQL servers, are a little bit complicated. they should offer a bit more assistance with the setup for these particular items."
"The go-between is a Veritas partner, so the customer support was not that good."
"The go-between is a Veritas partner, so the customer support was not that good. The solution is fine except when there is a purchasing crisis where you have to remake the ecosystem. It causes a lot of issues. The support was a problem, but we're okay with it as long as we have someone to communicate with."
"When you finish a project, the client should have the opportunity to browse the files rather than simply ending the contract. Also, it's not possible to recover earlier versions. It should be possible to have a database for recovering files after you finish a contract. There's no solution for this from Veritas."
"An area for improvement is the product's performance, especially how long it takes to do a job."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 very affordable considering that other SIEM solutions are much more expensive and have many more licensing restrictions and fees."
"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."
"Defender for Identity is a little more expensive than other Microsoft products. Identity and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are both a bit costly."
"SaaS Backup isn't the most expensive solution."
"The program is quite expensive."
"This solution is not cheap and not expensive but priced in the mid-range."
"I would rate this solution's pricing as five out of five."
"The tool is expensive compared to Veeam."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

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...
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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is slightly expensive, but they can do more on it. The exact figure for Veritas Alta SaaS Protection depends on the size of data being stored, the region, and the type ...
What needs improvement with Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
For Veritas Alta SaaS Protection, the only challenge is downtime and the impact of time synchronization whereby different customers are on different time zones, and Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is ...
What is your primary use case for Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
For the customers that I'm dealing with, they are using Veritas Alta SaaS Protection for long-term retention and offline backups. This means they don't have to constrain their on-premise resources....
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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. Veritas Alta SaaS Protection and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,286 professionals have used our research since 2012.