Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 5, 2023

We performed a comparison between Aqua Security Platform and Microsoft Defender for Cloud based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Features: Aqua Security Platform is praised for its image scanning, malware detection, and container security features. Users also liked the automated patching and sandboxing service. Microsoft Defender for Cloud was lauded for its automation, threat analysis, incident alerts, ransomware protection, and compliance capabilities. Aqua Security Platform could make reporting and log forwarding more automated. Some users mentioned resource consumption and integration as another area of improvement. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be better integrated with older systems and leverage collaboration for improved threat intelligence.
  • Service and Support: Reviewers said the customer service for Aqua Security Platform is usually prompt and supportive, but some users have had to resolve problems themselves. Microsoft Defender for Cloud users with enterprise SLAs generally expressed satisfaction, but other users were unhappy with initial interactions and response times.
  • Ease of Deployment:  Some users said Aqua Security Platform was simple to set up, but it presented challenges for others. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is generally considered easy to deploy and configure. 
  • Pricing: Aqua Security Platform is moderately priced compared to other options. Some users found Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricey. However, other users said the licensing cost per server for Microsoft Defender is fair.

Comparison Results: Aqua Security Platform is generally preferred over Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Users value Aqua Security's ability to identify security threats in images, detect malware, and scan containers. Additionally, they praise the user-friendly interface, on-demand patching, and sandboxing. Although Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers automation and threat analysis capabilities, the Aqua Security Platform stands out due to its extensive features and excellent customer support.

To learn more, read our detailed Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Atlas security graph is pretty cool. It maps out relationships between components on AWS, like load balancers and servers. This helps visualize potential attack paths and even suggests attack paths a malicious actor might take.""PingSafe offers comprehensive security posture management.""PingSafe's graph explorer is a valuable tool that lets us visualize all connected services.""My favorite feature is Storyline.""Cloud Native Security has helped us with our risk posture and securing our agenda. It has been tremendous in terms of supporting growth.""PingSafe released a new security graph tool that helps us identify the root issue. Other tools give you a pass/fail type of profile on all misconfigurations, and those will run into the thousands. PingSafe's graphing algorithm connects various components together and tries to identify what is severe and what is not. It can correlate various vulnerabilities and datasets to test them on the back end to pinpoint the real issue.""The multi-cloud support is valuable. They are expanding to different clouds. It is not restricted to only AWS. It allows us to have different clouds on one platform.""It is advantageous in terms of time-saving and cost reduction."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Pros →

"Their sandboxing service is also really good.""We use Aqua Security for the container security features.""The container security element of this product has been very valuable to our organization.""Valuable features include the ability to connect it to our Docker Hub where our images are stored, good integration with Slack, and the connection to the CV, to easily see which CVs are on each image.""From what I understand, the initial setup is simple.""The most helpful feature of Aqua Security is Drift Prevention, which is a feature that allows images to be immutable. In addition, one of the main reasons we went with Aqua Security is because it provides strong protection when it comes to runtime security.""The CSPM product is great at securing our cloud accounts and I really like the runtime protection for containers and functions too.""The most valuable feature of Aqua Security is the scanner."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform Pros →

"It has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem.""The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites.""The security alerts and correlated alerts are most valuable. It correlates the logs and gives us correlated alerts, which can be fed into any security information and event management (SIEM) tool. It is an analyzed correlation tool for monitoring security. It gives us alerts when there is any kind of unauthorized access, or when there is any malfunctioning in multifactor authentication (MFA). If our Azure is connected with Azure Security Center, we get to know what types of authentication are happening in our infra.""When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard. This gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about the email, sorting out the email, or looking at it through an ITSM solution, whey they have to look at the description and use cases. Efficiency increases with this optimized, ready-made solution since you don't need to invest in something externally. You can start using the dashboard and auditing capability provided from day one. Thus, you have fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution, providing operational efficiency for your team.""The technical support is very good.""The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths.""The vulnerability reporting is helpful. When we initially deployed Defender, it reported many more threats than we currently see. It gave us insight into areas we had not previously considered, so we knew where we needed to act.""Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Pros →

Cons
"If I had to pick a complaint, it would be the way the hosts are listed in the tool. You have different columns separated by endpoint name, Cloud Account, and Cloud Instances ID. I wish there was something where we could change the endpoint name and not use just the IP address. We would like to have custom names or our own names for the instances. If I had a complaint, that would be it, but so far, it meets all the needs that we have.""I used to work on AWS. At times, I would generate a normal bug in my system, and then I would check PingSafe. The alert used to come after about three and a half hours. It used to take that long to generate the alert about the vulnerability in my system. If a hacker attacks a system and PingSafe takes three to four hours to generate an alert, it will not be beneficial for the company. It would be helpful if we get the alert in five to ten minutes.""The Kubernetes scanning on the Oracle Cloud needs to be improved. It's on the roadmap. AWS has this capability, but it's unavailable for Oracle Cloud.""Whenever I view the processes and the process aspect, it takes a long time to load.""I would like PingSafe's detections to be openly available online instead of only accessible through their portal. Other tools have detections that are openly available without going through the tool.""PingSafe takes four to five hours to detect and highlight an issue, and that time should be reduced.""I export CSV. I cannot export graphs. Restricting it to the CSV format has its own disadvantages. These are all machine IP addresses and information. I cannot change it to the JSON format. The export functionality can be improved.""One area for improvement could be the internal analysis process, specifically the guidance provided for remediation."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Cons →

"The solution could improve user-friendliness.""They want to release improvements to their product to work with other servers because now there are more focused on the Kubernetes environment. They need to improve the normal servers. I would like to have more options.""Sometimes I got stressed with the UI.""Aqua Security lacks a lot in reporting.""There's room for improvement, particularly in management capabilities as it may not be comprehensive enough for all customers, and it has been lacking in the realm of cloud security posture management.""Since we are working from home, we would like to have the proper training for Aqua.""The integrations on CICD could be improved. If Aqua had more plugins or container images to integrate and automate more easily on CICD, it would be better.""The user interface could be improved, especially in terms of organization and clarity."

More Aqua Cloud Security Platform Cons →

"Customizing some of the compliance requirements based on individual needs seems like the biggest area of improvement. There should be an option to turn specific controls on and off based on how your solution is configured.""Another thing is that Defender for Cloud uses more resources than CrowdStrike, which my current company uses. Defender for Cloud has two or three processes running simultaneously that consume memory and processor time. I had the chance to compare that with CrowdStrike a few days ago, which was significantly less. It would be nice if Defender were a little lighter. It's a relatively large installation that consumes more resources than competitors do.""The solution is quite complex. A lot of the different policies that actually get applied don't pertain to every client. If you need to have something open for a client application to work, then you get dinged for having a port open or having an older version of TLS available.""Microsoft Defender could be more centralized. For example, I still need to go to another console to do policy management.""There is no perfect product in the world and there are always features that can be added.""We would like to have better transparency as to how the security score is calculated because as it is now, it is difficult to understand.""Azure's system could be more on point like AWS support. For example, if I have an issue with AWS, I create a support ticket, then I get a call or a message. With Azure support, you raise a ticket, and somebody calls back depending on their availability and the priority, which might not align with your business priority.""Microsoft can improve the pricing by offering a plan that is more cost-effective for small and medium organizations."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "As a partner, we receive a discount on the licenses."
  • "It's a fair price for what you get. We are happy with the price as it stands."
  • "I wasn't sure what to expect from the pricing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little less than I thought."
  • "Singularity Cloud Workload Security's pricing is good."
  • "Singularity Cloud Workload Security's licensing and price were cheaper than the other solutions we looked at."
  • "I understand that SentinelOne is a market leader, but the bill we received was astronomical."
  • "It's not expensive. The product is in its initial growth stages and appears more competitive compared to others. It comes in different variants, and I believe the enterprise version costs around $55 per user per year. I would rate it a five, somewhere fairly moderate."
  • "The pricing is fair. It is not inexpensive, and it is also not expensive. When managing a large organization, it is going to be costly, but it meets the business needs. In terms of what is out there on the market, it is fair and comparable to what I have seen, so I do not have any complaints about the cost"
  • More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "They were reasonable with their pricing. They were pretty down-to-earth about the way they pitched their product and the way they tried to close the deal. They were one of the rare companies that approached the whole valuation in a way that made sense for our company, for our needs, and for their own requirements as well... They will accommodate your needs if they are able to understand them and they're stated clearly."
  • "Aqua Security is not cheap, and it's not very expensive, such as Splunk, they are in the middle."
  • "Dealing with licensing costs isn't my responsibility, but I know that the licenses don't depend on the number of users, but instead are priced according to your workload."
  • "The pricing of this solution could be improved."
  • "It comes at a reasonable cost."
  • More Aqua Cloud Security Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
  • "We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."
  • "Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
  • "This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
  • "Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."
  • "There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."
  • "Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."
  • "I am not involved in this area. However, I believe its price is okay because even small customers are using Azure Security Center. I don't think it is very expensive."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) solutions are best for your needs.
    772,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best… more »
    Top Answer:When I joined my organization, I saw that PingSafe was already implemented. I started to use the tool's alerting… more »
    Top Answer:Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very… more »
    Top Answer:Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar to… more »
    Top Answer:It comes at a reasonable cost. When compared to Prisma Cloud, it is more budget-friendly.
    Top Answer:Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across… more »
    Top Answer:The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
    Top Answer:Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Microsoft needs to bring the cost down. What we're… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    PingSafe
    Aqua Security Platform, CloudSploit, Argon
    Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
    Learn More
    Interactive Demo
    SentinelOne
    Demo Not Available
    Aqua Security
    Demo Not Available
    Overview

    Singularity Cloud Security is SentinelOne’s comprehensive, cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP). It combines the best of agentless insights with AI-powered threat protection, to secure and protect your multi-cloud infrastructure, services, and containers from build time to runtime. SentinelOne’s CNAPP applies an attacker’s mindset to help security practitioners better prioritize their  remediation tasks with evidence-backed Verified Exploit Paths™. The efficient and scalable runtime protection, proven over 5 years and trusted by many of the world’s leading cloud enterprises, harnesses local, autonomous AI engines to detect and thwart runtime threats in real-time. CNAPP data and workload telemetry is recorded to SentinelOne’s unified security lake, for easy access and investigation.

    Singularity Cloud Security includes both agentless and AI-powered cloud security controls, which represent two halves of our strategy to keep public cloud and container environments safe. Radically reduce your cloud attack surface with Singularity Cloud Native Security, formerly PingSafe, with agentless insights and evidence-based prioritization; protect runtime compute and container with Singularity Cloud Workload Security, SentinelOne’s real-time CWPP, with AI-powered machine-speed blocking of threats.

    Aqua Security stops cloud native attacks, preventing them before they happen and stopping them when they happen. Dedicated cloud native threat research and the most loved cloud native security open source community in the world put innovation at your fingertips so you can transform your business. Born cloud native, The Aqua Platform is the most integrated Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), securing from day one and protecting in real-time. Aqua has been stopping real cloud native attacks on hundreds of thousands of production nodes across the world since 2015.

    Aqua Security Features

    Aqua Security has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Vulnerability scanning
    • Dynamic threat analysis
    • Automates DevSecOps
    • CI/CD integrations
    • Cloud security posture management
    • Kubernetes security
    • Hybrid and multi-cloud
    • Container security
    • Serverless security
    • VM security
    • Cloud workloads protection

    Aqua Security Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Aqua Security. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Designed for scale and performance: The Aqua Security platform was designed to scale to the largest environments in order to protect huge clusters and massive DevOps pipelines.
    • Empowers DevOps to detect issues early and fix them fast: The solution was designed to help you solve issues immediately - before they cause greater damage to your organization. It helps you gain insight into your vulnerability posture and prioritize remediation and mitigation according to contextual risk.
    • Automated compliance and security posture: Aqua Security checks your cloud services, Infrastructure-as-code templates, and Kubernetes setup against best practices and standards. This way, you can ensure the infrastructure you run your applications on is securely configured and in compliance.
    • Artifact scanning: The Aqua Security platform scans artifacts for vulnerabilities, malware, and other risks during development and staging. It allows you to set flexible and dynamic policies to control deployment into your runtime environments.
    • Minimizes false positives: Aqua Security relies on a variety of sources and proprietary research to curate and present vulnerabilities in the most accurate way, which helps to minimize false positives and unnecessary noise in the pipeline.
    • Automated security testing: The Aqua Security platform automates security testing in your CI/CD pipeline, and continuously scans registries and serverless function stores to detect emerging risks. By implementing the platform, you can get actionable feedback within your CI environments to empower your organization’s developers to fix issues rapidly.
    • Granular controls: The solution provides protection for your VM, container, and serverless workloads using granular controls with instant visibility and real-time detection and response.
    • Sandboxed environment: With Aqua Security, you can run images in a secure sandboxed environment that traces indicators of compromise (IOCs) such as container escapes, reverse shell backdoors, malware drops, code injection backdoors, and network anomalies.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Lizeth Z., Cloud Security Specialist at Telstra, says, “Aqua Security is the most advanced solution in the market for container security. Aqua Security allows us to check for vulnerabilities in the CI/CD pipeline, so application teams can remediate issues before going into production. Aqua Security helps us to check the vulnerability of image assurance and check for malware.”

    Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

    The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

    Sample Customers
    Information Not Available
    HPE Salesforce Telstra Ellie Mae Cathay Pacific HomeAway
    Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company27%
    Construction Company13%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Insurance Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company21%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Insurance Company4%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company43%
    Insurance Company14%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm23%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Agriculture10%
    Recruiting/Hr Firm10%
    Consumer Goods Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise41%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise61%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise6%
    Large Enterprise56%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise62%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Aqua Cloud Security Platform is ranked 11th in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 16 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 46 reviews. Aqua Cloud Security Platform is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Aqua Cloud Security Platform writes "Reliable with good container scanning and a straightforward setup". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". Aqua Cloud Security Platform is most compared with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Wiz, Snyk, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes and Tenable.io Container Security, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Wiz and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. See our Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.

    See our list of best Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) vendors, best Container Security vendors, and best Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) vendors.

    We monitor all Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.