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.
"We like the platform and its response time. We also like that its console is user-friendly as well as modern and sleek."
"We like PingSafe's vulnerability assessment and management features, and its vulnerability databases."
"My favorite feature is Storyline."
"The most valuable feature of PingSafe is its integration with most of our technology stack, specifically all of our cloud platforms and ticketing software."
"When creating cloud infrastructure, Cloud Native Security evaluates the cloud security parameters and how they will impact the organization's risk. It lets us know whether our security parameter conforms to international industry standards. It alerts us about anything that increases our risk, so we can address those vulnerabilities and prevent attacks."
"Cloud Native Security is a tool that has good monitoring features."
"PingSafe offers comprehensive security posture management."
"Cloud Native Security offers a valuable tool called an offensive search engine."
"This is a platform as a service provided by Azure. We don't need to install or maintain Azure Security Center. It is a ready-made service available in Azure. This is one of the main things that we like. If you look at similar tools, we have to install, maintain, and update services. Whereas, Azure Security Center manages what we are using. This is a good feature that has helped us a lot."
"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive."
"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."
"The solution's robust security posture is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the vulnerability assessments and the glossary of compliance."
"It's got a lot of great features."
"The solution is very easy to deploy."
"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."
"The visibility Orca provides into my environment is at the highest level... When I dropped them into the environment, from the very get-go I had more insight into the risks in my environment than I had had during the entire two and a half years I had been here."
"Orca Security has patented technologies. It's an agentless solution, so you don't need to install an agent. Instead, it contacts your account provider and fetches metadata, eliminating the need for snapshots or reserved space to copy client infrastructure."
"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."
"Orca provides X-ray vision into everything within the cloud properties, whereas normally, this would require multiple tools."
"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."
"Another valuable feature with Orca, something that's not talked about enough, is its ability to rank your gaps and your tasks... You can get visibility with agents and there are a lot of ways to do that. But the ranking and the context across the entire environment, that is what is unique about Orca."
"The reporting and automated remediation capabilities are valuable to me. They're real game-changers."
"The cost has the potential for improvement."
"PingSafe can be improved by developing a comprehensive set of features that allow for automated workflows."
"I would like PingSafe's detections to be openly available online instead of only accessible through their portal. Other tools have detections that are openly available without going through the tool."
"The categorization of the results from the vulnerability assessment could be improved."
"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."
"When you find a vulnerability and resolve it, the same issue will not occur again. I want PingSafe to block the same vulnerability from appearing again. I want something like a playbook where the steps that we take to resolve an issue are repeated when that issue happens again."
"We can customize security policies but lack auditing capabilities."
"The resolution suggestions could be better, and the compliance features could be more customizable for Indian regulations. Overall, the compliance aspects are good. It gives us a comprehensive list, and its feedback is enough to bring us into compliance with regulations, but it doesn't give us the specific objects."
"Microsoft sources most of their threat intelligence internally, but I think they should open themselves up to bodies that provide feel intelligence to build a better engine. There may be threats out there that they don't report because their team is not doing anything on that and they don't have arrangements with another party that is involved in that research."
"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."
"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."
"Customizing some of the compliance requirements based on individual needs seems like the biggest area of improvement. There should be an option to turn specific controls on and off based on how your solution is configured."
"The most significant areas for improvement are in the security of our identity and endpoints and the posture of the cloud environment. Better protection for our cloud users and cloud apps is always welcome."
"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."
"There is no perfect product in the world and there are always features that can be added."
"Microsoft Defender could be more centralized. For example, I still need to go to another console to do policy management."
"It's not all clouds that they are currently onboarded with. For instance, they are not yet with public cloud and many other private clouds."
"I would like to see better customization options for security frameworks and better integration with reporting tools like Power BI or Grafana dashboards."
"As with all software, the user interface can always be made simpler to use. It would be helpful for people with very little knowledge, like somebody sitting behind the SOC, to allow them to be able to drill down into things a little bit easier than it is currently."
"Another improvement would be that, in addition to focusing on endpoint compliance, they would focus on general compliance."
"They can expand a little bit in anti-malware detection. While we have pretty good confidence that it's going to detect some of the static malware, some of the detections are heuristics. There could be a growth in the library from where they're pulling their information, but we don't get a lot of those alerts based on the design of our products. In general, that might be an area that needs to be filled since they offer it as a service within it."
"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."
"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."
"I would be happy if they offered more automatic remediation options. They're working on that, but the more the better. For example, if they want you to harden a server, they would offer a hardening script that would be more aware of what's going on."
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Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 46 reviews while Orca Security is ranked 8th 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, Tenable Vulnerability Management, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security and Qualys VMDR. 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.
