We performed a comparison between Microsoft 365 Defender and Microsoft Defender for Cloud based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: 365 Defender has a slight edge over Defender for Cloud in this comparison since it is the more user-friendly solution. Defender for Cloud does come out on top in the pricing and ROI categories, however.
"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."
"Good compliance policies."
"We can create alerts that trigger if there is any malicious activity happening in the workflow and these alerts can be retrieved using the query language."
"Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."
"It's quite a good product. It helps to understand the infections and issues you are facing."
"The technical support is very good."
"Defender is a robust platform for dealing with many kinds of threats. We're protected from various threats, like viruses. Attacks can be easily minimized with this solution defending our infrastructure."
"Most importantly, it's an integrated solution. We not only have Defender for Cloud, but we also have Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Identity. It's an integrated, holistic solution."
"In Microsoft 365 vendor products, monitoring and connectivity across all Microsoft and third-party connectors enable viewing of all activity within those environments."
"The solution is well integrated with applications. It is easy to maintain and administer."
"The timeline feature is excellent. I also like the phishing simulation. We have phishing campaigns to educate employees and warn them about these threats."
"Microsoft 365 Defender is a stable solution."
"The common and advanced security policies for threat hunting and blocking attacks are valuable."
"The attack simulation is excellent; initially, this feature wasn't very robust, but Microsoft improved what we could achieve with it. We can now customize our practice phishing emails and include our company logo, for example. Attack simulation also helps integrate with third-party solutions where applicable and provides an overview of our security architecture through testing. The summary includes areas for improvement in our protection and what steps we need to take to get there."
"Among the most valuable features are the alert timeline, the alert story, which is pretty detailed. It gives us complete insight into what exactly happened on the endpoint. It doesn't just say, "Malware detected." It tells us what caused that malware to be detected and how it was detected. It gives us a complete timeline from beginning to end."
"I like that it's stable. It's been stable for a long time, and Microsoft Defender has done a good job there."
"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."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender could be more centralized. For example, I still need to go to another console to do policy management."
"It needs to be simplified and made more user-friendly for a non-technical person."
"Defender is occasionally unreliable. It isn't 100% efficient in terms of antivirus detection, but it isn't an issue most of the time. It's also somewhat difficult to train new security analysts to use Defender."
"No possibility to write or edit any capability."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."
"Intrusion detection and prevention would be great to have with 365 Defender."
"Stability could be improved by avoiding frequent changes to the interface."
"The mobile app support for Android and iOS is difficult and needs improvement."
"The support team is not competent or responsive."
"Offboarding latency should be reduced. Even after a device has been successfully offboarded using a particular offboarding script, it still shows up as onboarded."
"There could be a way to proactively monitor unusual activity ."
"For some scenarios, it provides good visibility into threats, and for some scenarios, it doesn't. For example, sometimes the URLs within the emails have destinations, and you do get a screenshot and all further details, but it's not always the case. It would be good if they did a better job of enabling that for all the emails that they identified as malicious. When you get an email threat, you can go into the email and see more details, but the URL destination feature doesn't always show you a screenshot of the URL in that email. It also doesn't always give you the characteristics relating to that URL. It would be quite good if the information is complete where it says that we identified this URL, and this is what it looks like. There should be some threat intel about it. It should give you more details."
"The solution does not offer a unified response and standard data."
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 2nd in Microsoft Security Suite with 46 reviews while Microsoft Defender XDR is ranked 1st in Microsoft Security Suite with 80 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender XDR is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender XDR writes "Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot". Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Wiz, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Sentinel, whereas Microsoft Defender XDR is most compared with CrowdStrike Falcon, Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager, Wazuh, Trend Vision One and Microsoft Sentinel. See our Microsoft Defender XDR vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
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We monitor all Microsoft Security Suite 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.
