We performed a comparison between FortiSASE and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."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 solution is stable."
"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 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 is easy to deploy and simple to manage."
"I feel that it is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The integration with the company's existing security infrastructure enhanced our security posture since it was a straightforward process."
"Deep packet inspection is easier to deploy in the FortiSASE environment. It's much simpler to configure one-touch deployment. It was considerably more convoluted to get that to work using FortiClient. All that processing horsepower is happening in Fortinet's cloud infrastructure, reducing the load on our local routers and on-prem FortiGate firewalls."
"The product can scale."
"We have become more aware of what services our users are using, how often they are using them, and what data is being sent out of the organization and to which services. So, it is really a lot about visibility and helping us make decisions based on that. It drives some of our policy decisions for adding extra security controls."
"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 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."
"It is very easy to use, which is what we look for in these types of solutions."
"The general usability of the solution is very straightforward."
"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"The solution does not affect a user's workflow."
"The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows MCAS to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly."
"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."
"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"
"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."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"FortiSASE is a work in progress. One area where there is room for improvement is the ability to use FortiSASE on an endpoint that doesn't have the client on it. Other solutions do that by building a VPN tunnel from their on-prem router into the SASE environment. FortiSASE doesn't have that feature yet, but it is on the roadmap for Q3 of this year. I've seen it in their development environment."
"The GUI and connectivity, along with the support offered, are some of the areas of concern in the product where improvements are required."
"Security and support are two areas with certain shortcomings in the product where improvements are required."
"They need to have more concise or precise ways to come up with the return on investment for convincing or presenting this to customers."
"Some of the solution's back-end connectivity and visibility are not robust and could be improved."
"I would like to see them include more features in the older licenses. There are some features that are not available, such as preventing or analyzing cloud attacks."
"The response time could be better. It will be helpful if the alerts are even more proactive and we can see more data. Currently, the data is a little bit weak. It is not complete. I can't just see it and completely know which user or which device it is. It takes some effort and time on my part to investigate and isolate a user. It would be great if it is more user-friendly or easy for people to understand."
"It takes some time to scan and apply the policies when there is some sensitive information. After it applies the policies, it works, but there is a delay. This is something for which we are working with Microsoft."
"Defender for Cloud apps is primarily useful for Azure apps. It has limited capabilities for applications based on other cloud platforms."
"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..."
"It doesn't actually decrease the time to respond. This has been an issue with Microsoft recently. Sometimes, there is a delay when it comes to getting an alert policy email... Sometimes it takes two or three hours for that email to be sent."
"Defender could integrate better with multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It requires some additional configuration to ingest data from non-Azure environments and integrate it with Sentinel."
"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
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FortiSASE is ranked 14th in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) with 5 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 2nd in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 30 reviews. FortiSASE is rated 7.4, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of FortiSASE writes "An easy to deploy and simple to manage solution that can be used for remote worker access". On the other hand, 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". FortiSASE is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Umbrella, Zscaler Zero Trust Exchange and Axis Security, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft Defender for Identity. See our FortiSASE vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps report.
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