To protect and secure your critical data no matter where it lives, data security solutions (like us!) work hard to expand the number of workloads that we support. A while ago (June 2024) we introduced support for Entra ID, a free and fully managed solution to safeguard and recover Microsoft Entra ID objects. Incidentally, Veeam recently (December 2024) launched their paid and do-it-yourself Entra ID protection. There are a growing number of solutions in the market that are adding EntraID data protection, but it's important to understand the differences when selecting a solution.
So, how do you decide which solution you should use? In this blog, we’ll first help you understand why it’s important to protect Entra ID data and then walk you through the key factors to consider when deciding between two data security solutions with similar features.
Why Is Protecting Entra ID Data Non-Negotiable?
Microsoft Entra data shows attempted password attacks increased more than tenfold in 2023, from around 3 billion per month to over 30 billion. This translates to an average of 4,000 attempted attacks per second targeting Microsoft Cloud identities. If Entra ID isn’t available, your users can't work in Microsoft 365 or Azure Cloud. To ensure resilience against Entra ID outages, compromises, and misconfigurations, your organization must have reliable access to its data.
The Two Factors You NEED to Consider
While there are multiple things to consider when selecting a solution for a crucial objective such as data security, two questions stand out beyond just feature/function:
How quickly can you get the solution up and running?
How much does the solution cost?
Ease of Deployment
Non-SaaS data security solutions require a lot of planning, provisioning, configuring, and installing even before you can start using the solution. Just to prepare your environment to deploy the product, multiple people might need to work on it for days. These solutions also require a huge amount of effort in upkeep and maintenance. It’s important to remember that any delay in deploying a solution means your data is unprotected and susceptible to attacks.
True Cost of the Solution
Cost is key when evaluating a solution's effectiveness. Sometimes the listed price of a solution is not the only expense associated with installing and operating the solution.
Don't overlook hidden costs—non-SaaS software pricing usually covers only licensing. Deployment often requires extra resources, significantly raising the total cost of ownership of the solution.
Challenges with Veeam’s Entra ID Solution
As with many things, at first glance, Veeam’s solution might look just fine, which is why it's always important to take a second, deeper look into what you're actually getting.
Veeam Backup for Microsoft Entra ID is the latest product to be added to the “Veeam Data Platform” portfolio. This is not a standalone product either as it must be deployed alongside Veeam’s Backup & Replication product where it shares some integrations with that core software platform. On top of the software requirements, there is still the need to manage, maintain, scale, and secure the underlying servers, storage, and other infrastructure needed to actually run said software. There is currently no SaaS option available for EntraID backup from Veeam. For a workload that’s in the cloud, the lack of SaaS can eliminate the efficiency, cost advantage, and elasticity that SaaS provides.
In a previous blog, Comparing Microsoft 365 Setup, we explained how complex and complicated it is to start backing up just Microsoft 365 data with non-SaaS approaches to software like Veeam’s traditional software stack. You can imagine how the complexities will multiply when you have to deploy several loosely connected products to address your needs. Not only that, the DIY approach of Veeam means you need to regularly install security patches and upgrades to ensure that your solution is up-to-date and free of known security vulnerabilities.
The cost of the solution is another challenge. To protect your Entra ID data with Veeam, you must pay $14.10 USD per user, per year. Now, that’s just the licensing costs. To this, you must add the cost of deployment, software, management, and data center elements and you will quickly realize that the pricing mentioned does not cover the entire cost of operating the software. As IT leaders continue to be under constant stress to reduce costs and CIO budgets keep shrinking, justifying additional costs becomes difficult when there are free alternatives.
The Advantages of Druva’s Entra ID Solution
Druva's SaaS data security solution takes away the burden of managing hardware, installation, patches, and upgrades. Because there is no provisioning involved, you can start backing up your data in just a few clicks.
Druva for Entra ID is also FREE for all Druva customers. It’s not only easy to start protecting your Entra ID data with Druva, it’s also free.
Druva not only eliminates the need for purchasing, managing, hardening, or maintaining hardware or software but also offers significant cost savings of up to 40% compared to legacy solutions like Veeam. Its cloud-native design, continuously optimized for scale, capacity efficiency, and security, ensures efficient resource utilization without the requirement of static infrastructure both on-prem and in the cloud.