We compared Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Netskope CASB based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Microsoft Defender is the preferred option over Netskope due to its integration with other Microsoft tools, user-friendly interface, and affordability for smaller businesses. Netskope has a large client base and impressive features like cloud app authorization and regulatory classification, but lacks integration and has reporting and support limitations. Microsoft Defender offers superior threat protection and coordination for detecting and responding to threats.
"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 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 solution is stable."
"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 most valuable feature is the seamless integration across different clouds."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of management. It's important."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related."
"Threat detection is its key feature, and that's why we use this tool. It gives an alert if a PC is attacked or there is any kind of anomaly, such as there is a spike in sending emails or we see an unauthorized website being accessed. So, it keeps us on our toes. We get to know that there is something wrong, and we can isolate the user and find any issues with it. So, threat detection is very robust in this tool."
"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."
"It is very easy to use, which is what we look for in these types of solutions."
"On-demand scanning is the most valuable feature. In addition, it's a fairly fluid product. It syncs back to the cloud and provides metrics. It's pretty intelligent."
"In Azure, we have multiple subscriptions and with every subscription, we add some kind of instance ID. We can work with the instance ID so that we allow all of the instances containing nodules. Everything else, we block. This way, if you go to outlook.com and check your email, if you log in with your company account, the instance ID will show. The network will take action according to the instance ID and say, "You are using the enterprise email. I'll let you surf. I'll let you see your email." But when you try to log in with your own email address, like Hotmail or Gmail, the instance ID will be different. This way we are not completely blocking Outlook, but we are blocking people from accessing their Outlook. We are only allowing the enterprise-level emails, and we are not allowing user-based emails."
"A feature that was valuable was the built-in website classification or safety ratings. Different websites would be rated according to analyses that the Netskope team had done, and we built policies on some of those scores. If the website scored less than a certain percentage, then we would have a different user experience around how the site would interact with the clients."
"Amazing reporting and tracking mechanisms."
"The most valuable feature of Netskope is protection."
"It has hundreds of features and many of them are useful."
"The detection capability is very nice and lightweight."
"Netskope is a really good product. I cannot segregate which features are the most valuable. We find most of the features to be valuable. It gives us what we are looking for."
"The interface is good."
"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."
"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."
"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
"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."
"I want them to enhance in-session policy."
"Defender for Cloud apps is primarily useful for Azure apps. It has limited capabilities for applications based on other cloud platforms."
"There are some features, such as user navigation content filtering, that are disabled by default, and it probably makes sense to enable them by default."
"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."
"In the future, I would like to see more plug-and-play capabilities that use AI to tell you what needs to be done. It would be helpful if it scanned our devices and made security suggestions, on a configuration basis."
"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."
"I deduced two points: one for their feature modification and one for the feature maturity of the solution."
"Support services could definitely be improved. Support is the one area that can always use improvement. It's an evolving thing, so based on demand and based on market requirement and the way market is moving towards."
"If we need to allow a process that is blocked by Netskope, we have to manually check the logs to see why it is blocked. This can be time-consuming and inefficient"
"In terms of improvements, enhancing support, particularly for OEM support with quicker response times would be beneficial."
"The dashboard performance could be much better and faster, but because it is a complicated product, it takes time for the dashboard to process."
"The solution's documentation still needs to be improved."
"Netskope needs to improve its stability."
"They could add endpoint security features."
More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Pricing and Cost Advice →
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 2nd in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 30 reviews while Netskope is ranked 4th in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 35 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is rated 8.4, while Netskope is rated 8.4. 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". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netskope writes "Network proxy that provides visibility during deployment and allows you to control PII". Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Qualys VMDR and Microsoft Defender for Identity, whereas Netskope is most compared with Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Skyhigh Security and Forcepoint ONE. See our Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Netskope report.
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