AWS Identity & Access Management vs. Microsoft Defender for Identity

AWS Identity & Access Management is well suited to managing AWS application access between services. Very helpful for both third-party products and in-house developed software. Very happy with how easy it is to create access keys and then share them in our environment. AWS IAM can also be used to manage individual users, but I highly recommend using AWS SSO for that purpose instead. Much easier to deploy for console access and from a security side easier to turn off in one click from your SSO provider.

Incentivized

Microsoft Defender for Identity is a great solution for each company that has an Active Directory. It fills in the blanks for Identity related incidents that are being missed in the XDR platform. To get a full view on identity risks it is an essential component

• Customized access per key to limit scope
• Safely distributes access keys
• Provides access audits

Incentivized

• detect threats and suspicious activities
• pro-active measurements on possible breaches
• identity security posture

• Better integration with roles and policies so you don't need three windows open to create a new IAM user
• Display recommended configurations based on services being used
• Easier options to base config on existing users

Incentivized

• setup can be complicated, with AD complexity
• Sometimes the load on DCs is pretty high, leading to performance issues
• Better tuning options for preventing false-positive/bening alerts

We would be unable to manage the interconnected nature of our AWS services without AWS IAM.

Incentivized

While we do not use Microsoft Azure for our servers and other customer-facing services. If we did, we would have to use Microsoft Azure Active Directory to manage access to services appropriately. It's difficult to quantify the differences between the services as they are truly different. I would recommend choosing AWS or Azure, then using the identity management provided by the same vendor.

Incentivized

Microsoft Defender for Identity is more specialized on the Identity platform, it is a single solution compared to a multi-solution. The integration is better when using the XDR suite in combination with Sentinel. Microsoft Defender for Identity gives a better overview of the security posture

• Without IAM, it would be difficult to use AWS across services. Increased ROI

Incentivized

• Cost impact was pretty high
• Learning curve, needed time (money) for training
• Greatly improved detections and gives more insights