These Microsoft Defender solutions focus on cloud security and target different aspects. They are complementary solutions, working together for a comprehensive cloud security strategy.
Defender for Cloud Focuses on securing your entire cloud environment, including infrastructure, workloads, and platforms. It offers Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and DevSecOps functionalities, identifying vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and recommending remediation steps. It can extend beyond Azure to AWS, GCP, and on-premises environments.
Defender for Cloud Apps primarily secures user access and data within SaaS applications. It offers features like Data Loss Prevention (DLP), User and Entity Behavior Analytics (UEBA), and Adaptive Access Control (AAC). It integrates with Microsoft Defender XDR for a broader security view.
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"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."
"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 solution is very easy to deploy."
"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."
"One important security feature is the incident alerts. Now, with all these cyberattacks, there are a lot of incident alerts that get triggered. It is very difficult to keep monitoring everything automatically, instead our organization is utilizing the automated use case that we get from Microsoft. That has helped bring down the manual work for a lot of things."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the vulnerability assessments and the glossary of compliance."
"When we started out, our secure score was pretty low. We adopted some of the recommendations that Security Center set out and we were able to make good progress on improving it. It had been in the low thirties and is now in the upper eighties."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce."
"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."
"The solution does not affect a user's workflow."
"Better logging allows us to find problems and take appropriate steps to lock them out."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of management. It's important."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is its policy implementation."
"The most valuable feature is the seamless integration across different clouds."
"The general usability of the solution is very straightforward."
"The product was a bit complex to set up earlier, however, it is a bit streamlined now."
"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."
"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."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
"From a compliance standpoint, they can include some more metrics and some specific compliances such as GDPR."
"The documentation could be much clearer."
"Sometimes it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or a special kind of product."
"The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome."
"I would like for it to be available on Mac and for it to support all of the features of Microsoft financing products. It is really for Windows."
"We would like to get more information from the endpoint. I don't get enough detailed information right now on why something failed. There is not enough visibility."
"There are challenges with detection and there are challenges with false-positive rates."
"The technical support team has room for improvement."
"I want them to enhance in-session policy."
"They need to improve the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules. In the latest version, you can implement ASR rules, which are quite useful, but you have to enable those because if they're not enabled, they flag false positives. In the Defender portal, it logs a block for WMI processes and PowerShell. Apparently, it's because ASR rules are not configured. So, you generally have to enable them to exclude, for example, WMI queries or PowerShell because they have a habit of blocking your security scanners. It's a bit weird that they have to be enabled to be configured, and it's not the other way around."
"I would prefer to have filtering options incorporated within the policies, enabling the solution to perform tasks beyond mere blocking or allowing."
"There could be more granular roles that are out of the box included in the product."
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Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 2nd in Microsoft Security Suite with 46 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 10th in Microsoft Security Suite with 30 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps 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 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". 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, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Qualys VMDR. See our Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps report.
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