We performed a comparison between Lacework 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.
Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud focuses on regulatory compliance, ransomware protection, and incident alerts. On the other hand, Lacework prioritizes alerts based on severity, utilizes machine learning anomaly detection, and provides insights into the attacker's perspective. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could benefit from enhancements in various areas such as customization, integration, and transparency. On the other hand, Lacework could improve its offerings by providing better visibility, data governance, remediation features, and FedRAMP moderate authorization.
Service and Support: Microsoft Defender for Cloud's customer service has been criticized for outsourcing support and being difficult to reach the right level of support. Users also reported long wait times. However, Lacework's customer service is highly praised for being proactive, responsive, and providing helpful feedback and suggestions.
Ease of Deployment: Microsoft Defender for Cloud's initial setup requires some prior knowledge, but is generally straightforward. Deployment time depends on the number of subscriptions. Lacework's setup can be done quickly with Terraform scripts. Maintenance is manageable for both, but Microsoft Defender for Cloud may require users to create their own policies.
Pricing: Microsoft Defender for Cloud has flexible pricing options based on license and metrics, while Lacework has a fixed licensing fee per year. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is generally viewed as reasonable and competitive, while Lacework's pricing is rated moderately affordable.
ROI: For managed security service providers, Microsoft Defender for Cloud has resulted in positive ROI. On the other hand, Lacework has been successful in reducing monitoring time and effort for certain users.
Comparison Results: Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the preferred option over Lacework, as it offers more comprehensive features such as regulatory compliance, ransomware protection, and access controls. Although Lacework has some valuable features, it lacks visibility, data governance, and remediation features.
"PingSafe's graph explorer is a valuable tool that lets us visualize all connected services."
"PingSafe offers comprehensive security posture management."
"My favorite feature is Storyline."
"I did a lot of research before signing up and doing the demo. They have a good reputation as far as catching threats early on."
"The mean time to detect has been reduced."
"The most valuable features of PingSafe are the asset inventory and issue indexing."
"They're responsive to feature requests. If I suggest a feature for Prisma, I will need to wait until the next release on their roadmap. Cloud Native Security will add it right away."
"With PingSafe, it's easy to onboard new accounts."
"The most valuable feature, from a compliance perspective, is the ability to use Lacework as a platform for multiple compliance standards. We have to meet multiple standards like PCI, SOC 2, CIS, and whatever else is out there. The ability to have reports generated, per security standard, is one of the best features for me."
"Polygraph compliance is a valuable feature. In our perspective, it delivers significant benefits. The clarity it offers, along with the ability to identify and address misconfigurations, is invaluable. When such issues arise, we promptly acknowledge and take action, effectively collaborating with our teams and the responsible parties for those assets. This enables us to promptly manage problems as soon as they arise."
"For the most part, out-of-the-box, it tells you right away about the things you need to work on. I like the fact that it prioritizes alerts based on severity, so that you can focus your efforts on anything that would be critical/high first, moderate second, and work your way down, trying to continue to improve your security posture."
"Lacework is helping a lot in reducing the noise of the alerts. Usually, whenever you have a tool in place, you have a lot of noise in terms of alerts, but the time for an engineer to look into those alerts is limited. Lacework is helping us to consolidate the information that we are getting from the agents and other sources. We are able to focus only on the things that matter, which is the most valuable thing for us. It saves time, and for investigations, we have the right context to take action."
"The most valuable feature is Lacework's ability to distill all the security and audit logs. I recommend it to my customers. Normally, when I consult for other customers that are getting into the cloud, we use native security tools. It's more of a rule-based engine."
"The compliance reports are definitely most valuable because they save time and are accurate. So, instead of relying on a human going through and checking or providing me with a report, I could just log into Lacework and see for myself."
"The best feature, in my opinion, is the ease of use."
"The most valuable aspects are identifying vulnerabilities—things that are out there that we aren't aware of—as well as finding what path of access attackers could use, and being able to see open SSL or S3 buckets and the like."
"It's got a lot of great features."
"It has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem."
"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."
"Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful."
"The dashboard is very good. It gives our clients a lot of information and allows them to have a complete overview of the system. Everything is visible in one glance."
"Defender is user-friendly and provides decent visibility into threats."
"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."
"The solution's robust security posture is the most valuable feature."
"Sometimes the Storyline ID is a bit wacky."
"The Kubernetes scanning on the Oracle Cloud needs to be improved. It's on the roadmap. AWS has this capability, but it's unavailable for Oracle Cloud."
"Currently, we would have to export our vulnerability report to an .xlsx file, and review it in an Excel spreadsheet, and then we sort of compile a list from there. It would be cool if there was a way to actually toggle multiple applications for review and then see those file paths on multiple users rather than only one user at a time or only one application at a time."
"We wanted it to provide us with something like Claroty Hub in AWS for lateral movement. For example, if an EC2 instance or a virtual machine is compromised in a public subnet based on a particular vulnerability, such as Log4j, we want it to not be able to reach some of our databases. This kind of feature is not supported in PingSafe."
"They could generally give us better comprehensive rules."
"There's an array of upcoming versions with numerous features to be incorporated into the roadmap. Customers particularly appreciate the service's emphasis on intensive security, especially the secret scanning aspect. During the proof of concept (POC) phase, the system is required to gather logs from the customer's environment. This process entails obtaining specific permissions, especially in terms of gateway access. While most permissions for POC are manageable, the need for various permissions may need improvement, especially in the context of security."
"In addition to our telecom and Slack channels, it would be helpful to receive Cloud Native Security security notifications in Microsoft Teams."
"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."
"There are a couple of the difficulties we encounter in the realm of cybersecurity, or security as a whole, that relate to potentially limited clarity. Having the capacity to perceive the configuration aspect and having the ability to contribute to it holds substantial advantages, in my view. It ranks high, primarily due to its role in guaranteeing compliance and the potential to uncover vulnerabilities, which could infiltrate the system and introduce potential risks. I had been exploring a specific feature that captured my interest. However, just yesterday, I participated in a product update session that announced the imminent arrival of this feature. The feature involves real-time alerting. This was something I had been anticipating, and it seems that this capability is now being integrated, possibly as part of threat intelligence. While anomaly events consistently and promptly appear in the console, certain alerts tend to experience delays before being displayed. Yet, with the recent product update, this issue is expected to be resolved. Currently, a comprehensive view of all policies is available within the console. However, I want a more tailored display of my compliance posture, focusing specifically on policies relevant to me. For instance, if I'm not subject to HIPAA regulations, I'd prefer not to see the HIPAA compliance details. It's worth noting that even with this request, there exists a filtering mechanism to control the type of compliance information visible. This flexibility provides a workaround to my preference, which is why it's challenging for me to definitively state my exact request."
"Visibility is lacking, and both compliance-related metrics and IAM security control could be improved."
"Lacework has not reduced the number of alerts we get. We've actually had to add resources as a result of using it because the application requires a lot of people to understand it to get the value out of it properly."
"The configuration and setup of alerts should be easier. They should make it easier to integrate with systems like Slack and Datadog. I didn't spend too much time on it, but to me, it wasn't as simple as the alerting that I've seen on other systems."
"Lacework lacks remediation features, but I believe they're working on that. They're focused on the reporting aspect, but other features need to improve. They're also adding some compliance features, so it's not worth saying they need to get better at it."
"Its integrations with third-party SIEMs can be better. That is one of the things that we discussed with them."
"The biggest thing I would like to see improved is for them to pursue and obtain a FedRAMP moderate authorization... I don't believe they have any immediate plans to get FedRAMP moderate authorized, which is a bit of a challenge for us because we can only use Lacework in our commercial environment."
"I would like to see a remote access assistance feature. And the threat-hunting platform could be better."
"Consistency is the area where the most improvement is needed. For example, there are some areas where the UI is not uniform across the board."
"If a customer is already using Okta as an SSO in its entire environment, they will want to continue with it. But Security Center doesn't understand that and keeps making recommendations. It would help if it let us resolve a recommendation, even if it is not implemented."
"We would like to have better transparency as to how the security score is calculated because as it is now, it is difficult to understand."
"Another thing that could be improved was that they could recommend processes on how to react to alerts, or recommend best practices based on how other organizations do things if they receive an alert about XYZ."
"Most of the time, when we log into the support, we don't get a chance to interact with Microsoft employees directly, except having it go to outsource employees of Microsoft. The initial interaction has not been that great because outsourced companies cannot provide the kind of quality or technical expertise that we look for. We have a technical manager from Microsoft, but they are kind of average unless we make noise and ask them to escalate. We then can get the right people and the right solution, but it definitely takes time."
"Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts."
"No possibility to write or edit any capability."
"I would like to see better automation when it comes to pushing out security features to the recommendations, and better documentation on the step-by-step procedures for enabling certain features."
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Lacework is ranked 10th in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 9 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 46 reviews. Lacework is rated 8.8, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Lacework writes "Makes us aware of vulnerabilities and provides a lot of data but it's not easily understood at first look". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". Lacework is most compared with Wiz, AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Snyk and Orca Security, whereas 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. See our Lacework vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
See our list of best Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) vendors, best Vulnerability Management vendors, and best Container Security vendors.
We monitor all Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) 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.
