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Microsoft Sentinel pros and cons

Vendor: Microsoft

4.1 out of 5

109 reviews
93% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Microsoft Sentinel enhances efficiency by reducing incident response time by up to 50% and streamlining threat detection with Microsoft integrations. Despite its efficacy in automation and data analysis, challenges exist, such as KQL complexity and integration issues with third-party systems. While the cost is significant, its ROI is valuable by lowering infrastructure costs. However, improvements in support and automation integration are needed to better assist IT administrators.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Microsoft Sentinel has improved efficiency, reducing incident response time by 40 to 50% and allowing faster detection of threats.

The integration capabilities of Microsoft Sentinel with other Microsoft products and external systems enhance its threat detection and response capabilities.

The automation features of Microsoft Sentinel, including built-in SOAR capabilities, reduce manual workload and improve response times to incidents.

Microsoft Sentinel offers powerful data correlation and analysis, enabling effective threat investigation and compliance reporting.

Microsoft Sentinel is cost-effective, providing ROI by reducing infrastructure costs and offering extensive integration options without enormous upfront costs.

CONS

Microsoft Sentinel's cost should be reduced, as it is considered quite expensive, particularly when additional features and services increase the overall expense.

Customers encounter integration challenges with third-party systems, lacking sufficient native connectors and sometimes causing discrepancies in data management.

The complexity of using KQL poses a challenge; a more user-friendly or alternative query language is necessary to accommodate users who are not proficient in KQL.

Microsoft Sentinel's automation capabilities need enhancement, including better integration with security products to facilitate use by IT administrators.

Technical support can be improved, specifically in responsiveness and understanding of features, as clients often face delays and obstacles in receiving effective solutions.

Microsoft Sentinel Pros review quotes

Kallamuddin Ansari

Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize

Jan 17, 2026

Microsoft Sentinel delivers ROI mainly by reducing response time, improving analysis efficiency, and simplifying audits.

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RW

Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

Apr 28, 2025

A lot of the automation inside Sentinel comes with inside actually rolling out brand new Sentinel environments. We utilize that a lot and it might go beyond just Sentinel, for example, utilizing templates in Azure and templates elsewhere to actually deploy out.

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reviewer2811318

Vice President, Sales, Cybersecurity at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Mar 24, 2026

I have seen tons of ROI with Microsoft Sentinel; that's the backbone for our security solution.

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Microsoft Sentinel

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Executive VP, Technology at Thrive

Nov 20, 2025

Being able to dictate and train efficiently and in a streamlined way is probably the most value proposition we have for something in this category.

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Abhinandan Yadav

Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd

Apr 17, 2026

With Microsoft Sentinel, I have seen clear improvement in efficiency and productivity, such as a 40 to 50% reduction in incident response time.

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reviewer2811372

CEO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Mar 24, 2026

For us, at least, the price point is justified, and we have not had any issues.

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Cloud Solution Architect at MicroAge

Nov 19, 2025

Microsoft Sentinel does give me a unified set of tools to detect, investigate, and respond to incidents, and this unified approach is important to me because in today's world with numerous tools available, it's quite important.

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reviewer2811306

Infosec at a government with 10,001+ employees

Mar 24, 2026

Microsoft Sentinel provides me with a unified set of tools to detect, investigate, and respond to incidents, which is something I greatly value.

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reviewer2778465

Senior System Administrator at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 19, 2025

Microsoft Sentinel flags when admin credentials log in from an unusual location, automatically alerting the security team so they can investigate.

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Director de Microsoft y Transformación Digital at Compucad

Nov 6, 2025

The ability of Microsoft Sentinel to correlate data from multiple sources greatly helps our threat detection capabilities because correlation enables faster threat detection, even proactively.

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Microsoft Sentinel Cons review quotes

Kallamuddin Ansari

Cyber Security Consultant at ProTechmanize

Jan 17, 2026

Cost management is still one of the biggest pain points.

Read full review

RW

Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees

Apr 28, 2025

My primary improvement request would be for auxiliary logs, as they represent our biggest need.

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reviewer2811318

Vice President, Sales, Cybersecurity at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Mar 24, 2026

Microsoft Sentinel can be improved in that the way it is built today means if you have a third party and you pay for ingestion, this is different than how some of the traditional SIEMs work.

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Microsoft Sentinel

Free Report: Microsoft Sentinel Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Sentinel. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2026.

893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Executive VP, Technology at Thrive

Nov 20, 2025

Our SIEM is only as good as the information we are ingesting. We are all human and we forget to ingest things.

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Abhinandan Yadav

Network Security Engineer at Arrow PC Network Pvt Ltd

Apr 17, 2026

Microsoft Sentinel can be improved in a few areas, such as enhancing the speed, simplifying the UI, improving faster query performance, providing better out-of-the-box rules, reducing alert noise, and facilitating easier integration setup with more plug-and-play connectors.

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reviewer2811372

CEO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees

Mar 24, 2026

I think any feature which can further help streamline the different security products Microsoft offers would be beneficial.

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Cloud Solution Architect at MicroAge

Nov 19, 2025

The costs and pricing of Microsoft Sentinel are expensive. That's my biggest complaint, especially from customers who are concerned about the significant expense.

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reviewer2811306

Infosec at a government with 10,001+ employees

Mar 24, 2026

However, I do have challenges with KQL, and I believe they could work on making the language more user-friendly.

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reviewer2778465

Senior System Administrator at a university with 5,001-10,000 employees

Nov 19, 2025

The SOC optimization feature of Microsoft Sentinel does not appear applicable at the moment in terms of data management and cost efficiency.

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Director de Microsoft y Transformación Digital at Compucad

Nov 6, 2025

Microsoft Sentinel should continue adding support for several other security brands because sometimes you have a firewall from a different brand and if you cannot correlate or integrate that seamlessly, it creates multiple points of checking information, which diminishes efficiency.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 107)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)

Microsoft Security Suite

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)

Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR)

Microsoft Security Suite

AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Intune vs Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Sentinel

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Sentinel

Wazuh vs Microsoft Sentinel

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Microsoft Sentinel

Darktrace vs Microsoft Sentinel

IBM Security QRadar vs Microsoft Sentinel

Elastic Security vs Microsoft Sentinel

Cribl vs Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Sentinel

Microsoft Purview Data Governance vs Microsoft Sentinel

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See all alternatives

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