We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Orca Security based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud focuses on regulatory compliance, ransomware protection, and incident alerts. On the other hand, Orca Security excels in container posture and cloud security posture management, ranking gaps and tasks, and non-intrusive vulnerability management and attack detection. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could improve in consistency, customization, integration, collaboration, and resource usage. On the other hand, Orca Security could improve in risk assessment, coverage, and dashboard descriptions.
Service and Support: The customer service for Microsoft Defender for Cloud has received mixed feedback, including reports of outsourced support, lengthy wait times, and difficulty in reaching the appropriate level of assistance. Conversely, Orca Security has garnered positive reviews for its customer service, which has been described as highly responsive and competent.
Ease of Deployment: Microsoft Defender for Cloud's setup is straightforward but may require some knowledge prerequisites, while Orca Security's setup is incredibly easy and agentless, taking only a few minutes to deploy. Both require minimal maintenance, but Orca Security's agentless nature reduces overhead and saves time.
Pricing: Microsoft's pricing varies depending on the license type and metrics used, while Orca's pricing includes standard licensing fees with no additional costs for networking or computing. Orca's pricing is aligned with market demand and discounts are available, but it may be expensive for smaller organizations. On the other hand, Microsoft Defender for Cloud is usually packaged with other Microsoft solutions, while Orca's licensing is per-VM and offers discounts for potential strategic partners.
ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud has basic security features and its ROI varies depending on the company's context. On the other hand, Orca Security provides significant ROI, replaces multiple solutions, and requires minimal IT knowledge to use.
Comparison Results: Users prefer Orca Security over Microsoft Defender for Cloud due to its agentless approach, simple setup, and thorough visibility into cloud environments, particularly container posture and cloud security posture management. Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers important features like regulatory compliance and ransomware protection but has mixed reviews for customer support and requires more technical expertise.
"Cloud Native Security has helped us with our risk posture and securing our agenda. It has been tremendous in terms of supporting growth."
"It is pretty easy to integrate with this platform. When properly integrated, it monitors end-to-end."
"It used to guide me about an alert. There is something called an alert guide. I used to click on the alert guide, and I could read everything. I could read about the alert and how to resolve it. I used to love that feature."
"Cloud Native Security is a tool that has good monitoring features."
"The real-time detection and response capabilities overall are great."
"The management console is highly intuitive to comprehend and operate."
"The most valuable feature of PingSafe is its integration with most of our technology stack, specifically all of our cloud platforms and ticketing software."
"PingSafe can integrate all your cloud accounts and resources you create in the AWS account, We have set it up to scan the AWS transfer services, EC2, security groups, and GitHub."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the vulnerability assessments and the glossary of compliance."
"Microsoft Defender has a lot of features including regulatory compliance and attaching workbooks but the most valuable is the recommendations it provides for each and every resource when we open Microsoft Defender."
"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."
"The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce."
"It works seamlessly on the Azure platform because it's a Microsoft app. Its setup is similar, so if you already have a Microsoft account, it just flows into it."
"One of the features that I like about the solution is it is both a hybrid cloud and also multi-cloud. We never know what company we're going to buy, and therefore we are ready to go. If they have GCP or AWS, we have support for that as well. It offers a single-panel blast across multiple clouds."
"It takes very little effort to integrate it. It also gives very good visibility into what exactly is happening."
"There are so many valuable features that I could list, but one that I appreciate is the PCI DSS compliance report."
"With its Cloud Security Posture Management capability, we have the ability to read across all of our cloud-based environments, which includes AWS and Azure. We have visibility into those environments. Seeing all vulnerabilities and configurations is really powerful for us, but ultimately, the ability to use the API to query across the fleet to understand what is the current state, what is the patch level, which ones are potentially exposed for a new CVE that just came out is even more valuable. It allows us to gather really specific intelligence through simple queries."
"It's for protection. It's an agentless tool. We don't need to install anything at a customer's premises. We can just scan the entire assets in the cloud."
"The reporting and automated remediation capabilities are valuable to me. They're real game-changers."
"Orca's dashboard is excellent. My team needs to be able to focus on specific areas for improvement in our cloud environment. And most recently, we've started to get good use out of sonar, the search capabilities, and the alert creation."
"The most valuable feature of Orca Security is the automated scanning tool, user-friendliness, and ease of use."
"The vulnerability management does not require network scanning or agent technology, so I don't need to modify any of my products in order to do vulnerability assessments."
"Orca Security has updated its interface, making it more user-friendly. I find it particularly useful as it allows me to easily navigate the dashboard and prioritize actions based on severity and criticality."
"We are getting reports only in a predefined form. I would like to have customized reports so that I can see how many issues are open or closed today or in two weeks."
"It would be really helpful if the solution improves its agent deployment process."
"I'd like to see better onboarding documentation."
"Whenever I view the processes and the process aspect, it takes a long time to load."
"While it is good, I think the solution's console could be improved."
"The Automation tab is an add-on that doesn’t work properly. They provide a list of scripts that don’t work and I have asked support to assist but they won’t help. When running on various endpoints the script doesn’t work and if it does, it’s only a couple. There are a lot of useful scripts that would be beneficial to run forensics, event logs, and process lists running on the endpoint."
"We'd like to have better notifications. We'd like them to happen faster."
"They could generally give us better comprehensive rules."
"I would like to have the ability to customize executive reporting."
"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."
"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."
"The initial setup is not actually so complex but it feels complex because there are many add-ons. There are many options and my team needs to be aware of all of these changes happening on the backend which is a distraction."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."
"I would suggest building a single product that addresses endpoint server protection, attack surface, and everything else in one solution. That is the main disadvantage with the product. If we are incorporating some features, we end up in a situation where this solution is for the server, and that one is for the client, or this is for identity, and that is for our application. They're not bundling it. Commercially, we can charge for different licenses, but on the implementation side, it's tough to help our end-customer understand which product they're getting."
"I think Orca could give me more alerts. It could give me a dashboard with all the specific types of alerts I want to see for the day. It should just be one click."
"There were a couple of times when Orca was down when I was trying to access it. I work strange hours because all of my team is in the UK right now. It was 2 a.m. on a Saturday and I was trying to log in but it wasn't working. But relative to my other security tools, Orca is definitely the most stable that I've seen."
"The interface can be a bit cranky and sometimes takes a lot of time to load."
"I would like to see an option to do security checks on a code level. This is possible because they have access to all of the code running in the cloud provider, and combining their site-scanning solution with that would be a nice add-on."
"The solution could improve by making the dashboards more elaborative and more descriptive."
"We are PCI DSS compliant, so we need to scan our environment externally with tools vetted by the PCI DSS organization. Orca doesn't scan the environment externally. It only scans what's currently in the cloud."
"The main drawback in an agentless approach is that if the solution detects a virus or malware in the environment, we need to manually remove it. But from my experience with other production environments, it's not straightforward to install agents in the hope they will automatically remediate viruses, even from production environments... Ultimately, the ability to auto-remediate is something that I would like to see."
"The presentation of the data in the dashboard is a little bit chaotic."
More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 46 reviews while Orca Security is ranked 9th in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 15 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0, while Orca Security is rated 9.4. 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 Orca Security writes "Allows agentless data collection directly from the cloud". Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Wiz and Check Point Harmony Email & Collaboration, whereas Orca Security is most compared with Wiz, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, Tenable Vulnerability Management and XM Cyber. See our Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Orca Security report.
See our list of best Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) vendors, best Vulnerability Management vendors, and best Container Security vendors.
We monitor all Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) 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.
