We compared Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps (MDA) and Zscaler Internet Access based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is the preferred option over Zscaler Internet Access because of its comprehensive features, integration with other Microsoft solutions, and personalized rules and policies for cloud traffic control. Zscaler Internet Access has a cloud-native proxy architecture and advanced threat protection but has faced issues with reporting functionality, pricing, and technical support according to users.
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"The solution is stable."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The solution does not affect a user's workflow."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is to stop shadow IT."
"It is very easy to use, which is what we look for in these types of solutions."
"Everything from Microsoft is integrated. You receive regular reports on them all. You can push your reports, logs, and security alerts, which are all integrated. It is crucial that these solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment."
"The most valuable feature is the seamless integration across different clouds."
"I like the alert policies because they are quite robust. It has some built-in templates that we can easily pick up. One of them is the alert for mass downloads, when a particular user is running a massive download on your SharePoint site."
"In Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, there is an option to enable files. Once you enable that, it will give you all the files in your organization and where they are located in the cloud... That feature is very useful for investigation purposes."
"I like the web GUI/the management interface. I also like the security of Microsoft. As compared to other manufacturers, it's less complex and easy to understand and work with."
"Tech support is good."
"The solution is stable."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"Zscaler Internet Access's roaming user feature is most valuable and is much better compared to other secure web gateways."
"The solution has reduced cyberattacks."
"The most valuable features of Zscaler Internet Access are it's on the cloud, high network performance, and the interception of users is very easy."
"Zscaler covers all the features needed to replace a VPN or proxy solution. They are good. They've been on the market for 15 years now, so they are mature enough."
"I like the granularity of the control of all the traffic, including SSL inspection. I also like the fact that the user interface is intuitive. The latencies with Zscaler are minimal compared to those of any other competitor. Other competitors do not really have the global scale that Zscaler has and cannot promise low latencies."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
"They should continue integration with all other Microsoft security-related products. The integration with all the other products is still ongoing."
"Sometimes, we'll get false positive alarms. For example, when a SharePoint path has no file sharing, but there is an external user, it will trigger an alarm that the file has been shared with an external user... the alerting mechanism should be more precise when giving you an alert about what activity has been done with the file..."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps' initial setup was quite technical but we were prepared. The time of the implementation depends on the job and how many users are being set up."
"I believe it's only set to be integrated with Microsoft Defender for identity and identity protection. I would like to see it available for use with something like Office 365 Defender. I don't think it's integrated with that yet."
"There could be more granular roles that are out of the box included in the product."
"We sometimes get errors when we create policies, which is somewhat annoying because some policies stop working due to misconfigurations. We find this challenging because it limits our options for troubleshooting an issue."
"The technical support team has room for improvement."
"They should enhance the audit reporting feature."
"When you have appliances, SSL inspection is always a headache due to poor performance and/or lack of ciphers implemented. "
"It also needs better integration with other applications as well. There are some restrictions."
"The tool should improve the predefined dictionaries."
"There are a few features that are not compatible with the Azure cloud."
"Another thing that I would like to see is if Zscaler could have a separate product for direct access. I looked at a private access solution, but I understand there's a separate product that isn't integrated with this."
"I would like to see the ability to choose a pool of IPs for my company, set up rules based on them, and know that those IPs are not used by other companies."
"We'd like to have more plugins and integration."
More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 2nd in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 30 reviews while Zscaler Internet Access is ranked 2nd in Secure Web Gateways (SWG) with 46 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is rated 8.4, while Zscaler Internet Access is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps writes "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Zscaler Internet Access writes "Provides integrated CASB and file sandboxing but could be less expensive ". Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Qualys VMDR and FortiSASE , whereas Zscaler Internet Access is most compared with Cisco Umbrella, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, FortiSASE and Forcepoint Secure Web Gateway.
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