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5 min read

Microsoft Security—a Leader in 5 Gartner Magic Quadrants

  • By Dan Anderson, Senior Analyst Relations Manager, Microsoft Security

Gartner has named Microsoft Security a Leader in five Magic Quadrants. This is exciting news that we believe speaks to the breadth and depth of our security offerings. Gartner places vendors as Leaders who demonstrate balanced progress and effort in all execution and vision categories. This means that Leaders not only have the people and capabilities to deliver strong solutions today, they also understand the market and have a strategy for meeting customer needs in the future. Microsoft was identified as a Leader in the following five security areas:

Given this, Microsoft Security doesn’t just deliver strong security products in five crucial security areas only. We provide a comprehensive set of security solutions that are built to work together, from identity and access management to threat protection to information protection and cloud security.

Our products integrate easily and share intelligence from the trillions of signals generated daily on the Microsoft Intelligent Security Graph. And they work with non-Microsoft solutions too. You can monitor and safeguard your assets across clouds—whether you use Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Slack, Salesforce, or all the above.

By unifying security tools, you get visibility into your entire environment across on-premises and the cloud, to better protect all your users, data, devices, and applications. Today, we’ll review the five areas where Microsoft is recognized as a Leader in security.

A Leader in CASB

Our cloud security solutions provide cross-cloud protection, whether you use Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud Platform—or all three. We also help you safeguard your data in third-party apps like Salesforce and Slack.

Gartner named Microsoft a Leader in CASB based on the ability to execute and completeness of vision. Cloud App Security provides rich visibility into your shadow IT, enables you to identify and remediate cloud native attacks, and allows you to control how your data travels across all your cloud apps—whether they’re from Microsoft or third-party applications.

As Gartner says in the CASB Magic Quadrant, “platforms from leading CASB vendors were born in the cloud and designed for the cloud. They have a deeper understanding of users, devices, applications, transactions, and sensitive data than CASB functions designed to be extensions of traditional network security and SWG security technologies.”

We work closely with customer to improve our products, which is one of the reasons our customer base for Cloud App Security continues to grow.

Gartner graph showing Microsoft as a Leader in Cloud App Security.

A Leader in Access Management

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a universal identity and access management platform that provides the right people the right access to the right resources. It safeguards identities and simplifies access for users. Users sign in once with a single identity to access all the apps they need—whether they’re on-premises apps, Microsoft apps, or third-party cloud apps. Microsoft was recognized for high scores in market understanding and customer experience.

Gartner says, “Vendors that have developed Access Management as a service have risen in popularity. Gartner estimates that 90 percent or more of clients based in North America and approximately 65 percent in Europe and the Asia/Pacific region countries are also seeking SaaS-delivered models for new Access Management purchases. This demonstrates a preference for agility, quicker time to new features, elimination of continual software upgrades, reduction of supported infrastructure and other SaaS versus software benefits demonstrated in the market.”

Gartner graph showing Microsoft as a Leader in Access Management.

A Leader in Enterprise Information Archiving

Enterprise information archiving solutions help organizations archive emails, instant messages, SMS, and social media content. Gartner recognized us as a Leader in this Magic Quadrant based on ability to execute and completeness of vision.

Gartner estimates, “By 2023, 45 percent of enterprise customers will adopt an enterprise information archiving (EIA) solution to meet new requirements driven by data privacy regulations; this is a major increase from five percent in 2019.”

Gartner graph showing Microsoft as a Leader in Enterprise Information Archiving.

A Leader in Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)

Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) solutions provide a comprehensive solution to manage mobile devices and traditional endpoints, like PCs and Macs. Microsoft’s solution, Microsoft Intune, lets you securely support company-provided devices and bring your own device policies. You can even protect company apps and data on unmanaged devices. We have seen rapid growth in Intune deployments and expect that growth to continue.

Gartner noted that, “Leaders are identified as those vendors with strong execution and vision scores with products that exemplify the suite of functions that assist organizations in managing a diverse field of mobile and traditional endpoints. Leaders provide tools that catalyze the migration of PCs from legacy CMT management tools to modern, UEM-based management.”

Intune is built to work with other Microsoft 365 security solutions, such as Cloud App Security and Azure AD to unify your security approach across all your clouds and devices. As Gartner writes, “Achieving a truly simplified, single-console approach to endpoint management promises many operational benefits.”

Gartner graph showing Microsoft as a Leader in Unified Endpoint Management.

A Leader in Endpoint Protection Platforms

Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) is a unified endpoint security platform for preventative protection, post-breach detection, automated investigation, and response. It includes threat and vulnerability management, endpoint detection and response (EDR), incident response and alert analysis, advanced hardening tools, and monitoring and reporting. Gartner named Microsoft a Leader for Endpoint Protection Platforms, recognizing our products and our strengths and ability to execute and completeness of vision. Gartner says, “A Leader in this category will have broad capabilities in advanced malware protection, and proven management capabilities for large-enterprise accounts.”

We believe that Microsoft uniquely meets the needs of customers in the EPP space, as we are the only vendor that can provide built-in endpoint protection capabilities that are tightly integrated with the OS. We also believe that security should be from Microsoft, not just for Microsoft, which is why we are expanding our product capabilities to support heterogenous environments, such as macOS.

Gartner graph showing Microsoft as a Leader in Endpoint Protection Platforms.

Learn more

Microsoft is committed to helping our customers digitally transform while providing the security solutions that enable them to focus on what they do best. Learn more about our comprehensive security solutions across identity and access management, cloud security, information protection, threat protection, and universal endpoint management by visiting our website.

1Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Cloud Access Security Brokers,” by Steve Riley, Craig Lawson, October 2019

2Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Access Management,” by Michael Kelley, Abhyuday Data, Henrique, Teixeira, August 2019

3Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Information Archiving,” by Julian Tirsu, Michael Hoech, November 2019

4Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Unified Endpoint Management Tools,” by Chris Silva, Manjunath Bhat, Rich Doheny, Rob Smith, August 2019

5Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms,” by Peter Firstbrook, Dionisio Zumerle, Prateek Bhajanka, Lawrence Pingree, Paul Webber, August 2019

These graphics were published by Gartner, Inc. as part of larger research documents and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner documents are available upon request from Microsoft. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

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