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Microsoft Defender for Identity vs Veritas Alta SaaS Protection comparison

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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)
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Microsoft Security Suite (6th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (1st)
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
27th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (20th), SaaS Management Platforms (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Identity is 3.6%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is 1.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Identity3.6%
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection1.7%
Other94.7%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

CM
Technology Coordinator at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
Helps detect threats faster and prioritize critical security tasks with increased visibility
The feature I value most about Microsoft Defender for Identity is the ability to see where people are attempting to log in from. 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. I can see where everything is at. Microsoft Defender for Identity helps me prioritize important tasks. If I get an alert for a user who downloaded an application that is not sanctioned, I normally go straight to that user's computer device to find the device name and the user. Now I can get to them much faster. Microsoft Defender for Identity saves me time overall. I can quantify the time saved by Microsoft Defender for Identity as maybe 25 minutes, or if expressed as a percentage, maybe 20 to 25%. Some of the learning curve and actually learning what these products do takes time to figure out. Microsoft Defender for Identity definitely helps decrease the time of detection and response.
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 is a big company."
"This solution has advanced a lot over the last few years."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Identity are the simulations; whenever something happens, it provides complete step-by-step process details, including the hierarchy, how it happens in the environment, and the lateral movement, which is amazing."
"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 solution’s alerting is fairly efficient."
"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."
"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."
"It gives companies a lot of insights that they didn't have before and has increased the security posture significantly."
"The solution's hardware appliance is very scalable and very useful."
"It excels in performance and delivery but they are quiet on the market."
"We're comfortable using this kind of technology. It's user-friendly."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and the ease of configuration."
"It offers general business continuity and disaster recovery for the industry."
"The most valuable feature is that it is simple to use."
"Some of the tool's best features include an enhanced dashboard and strong security features compared to native Veritas. Our environment is entirely automated."
"I think the most important feature is the ability of SaaS Backup to cover all modules proposed by Office 365, because competing solutions don't cover the total scope."
 

Cons

"The configuration process is time-consuming, with installation taking two minutes but prerequisites requiring two hours."
"Microsoft Defender for Identity does not save me time, but I think it is the way that I secure the data."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"An area for improvement is the administrative interface. It's basic compared to other administrative centers. They could make it more user-friendly and easier to navigate."
"The impact of the sensors on the domain controllers can be quite high depending on your loads. I don't know if there's any room for improvement there, but that's one of the things that might be improved."
"For users operating in mixed environments, while Defender for Identity offers robust protection for on-premises AD, additional solutions or configurations might be necessary to ensure seamless security management across Azure and on-premises AD systems."
"Other people will prefer this solution because they're used to it. However, from my point of view, you have more breaks, more failures on it than you will with Commvault."
"Licensing has been a struggle."
"The tool can be improved in terms of maintainability and flexibility, especially as companies grow larger. In these aspects, I feel Veeam is better for cloud and operational purposes."
"Currently, it isn't possible to use anything other than Veritas cloud to back up to. I think today it's important to cover the three major cloud provider: GCP, Azure and AWS."
"The solution does lack a lot of features, and we're considering switching."
"Technical support can be improved."
"The usability of the solution isn't the best."
"In the future, we would like to see support for virtualized machines."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Defender for Identity is a little more expensive than other Microsoft products. Identity and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are both a bit costly."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Identity comes as part of the Microsoft E5 licensing stack."
"The program is quite expensive."
"I would rate this solution's pricing as five out of five."
"This solution is not cheap and not expensive but priced in the mid-range."
"The tool is expensive compared to Veeam."
"SaaS Backup isn't the most expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise15
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: September 2026.
914,394 professionals have used our research since 2012.