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 offers a valuable tool called an offensive search engine."
"We noted immediate benefits from using the solution."
"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."
"It's positively affected the communication between cloud security, application developers, and AppSec teams."
"The ease of use of the platform is very nice."
"Cloud Native Security is user-friendly. Everything in the Cloud Native Security tool is straightforward, including detections, integration, reporting, etc. They are constantly improving their UI by adding plugins and other features."
"The cloud misconfiguration is the most valuable feature."
"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 product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."
"The integration with Logic Apps allows for automated responses to incidents."
"Everything is built into Azure, and if we go for cross-cloud development with Azure Arc, we can use most of the features. While it's possible to deploy and convert third-party applications, it is difficult to maintain, whereas Azure deployments to the cloud are always easier. Also, Microsoft is a big company, so they always provide enough support, and we trust the Microsoft brand."
"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the vulnerability assessments and the glossary of compliance."
"Defender is user-friendly and provides decent visibility into threats."
"When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard. This gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about the email, sorting out the email, or looking at it through an ITSM solution, whey they have to look at the description and use cases. Efficiency increases with this optimized, ready-made solution since you don't need to invest in something externally. You can start using the dashboard and auditing capability provided from day one. Thus, you have fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution, providing operational efficiency for your team."
"It takes very little effort to integrate it. It also gives very good visibility into what exactly is happening."
"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 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."
"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 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."
"The initial setup is very easy."
"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."
"There are so many valuable features that I could list, but one that I appreciate is the PCI DSS compliance report."
"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."
"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."
"Customized queries should be made easier to improve PingSafe."
"PingSafe's current documentation could be improved to better assist customers during the cluster onboarding process."
"I would like additional integrations."
"We are experiencing problems with Cloud Native Security reporting."
"Their search feature could be better."
"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."
"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."
"From my own perspective, they just need a product that is tailored to micro-segmentation so I can configure rules for multiple systems at once and manage it."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
"Agent features need to be improved. They support agents through Azure Arc or Workbench. Sometimes, we are not able to get correct signals from the machines on which we have installed these agents. We are not able to see how many are currently reporting to Azure Security Center, and how many are currently not reporting. For example, we have 1,000 machines, and we have enrolled 1,000 OMS agents on these machines to collect the log. When I look at the status, even though at some places, it shows that it is connected, but when I actually go and check, I'm not getting any alerts from those. There are some discrepancies on the agent, and the agent features are not up to the mark."
"Microsoft Defender could be more centralized. For example, I still need to go to another console to do policy management."
"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."
"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."
"The remediation process could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The presentation of the data in the dashboard is a little bit chaotic."
"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."
"In the future, I'd like to see Orca work better with third-party vendors. Specifically, being able to provide sanitized results from third parties."
"Another improvement would be that, in addition to focusing on endpoint compliance, they would focus on general compliance."
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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.
