We performed a comparison between AWS (AWS GuardDuty) 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.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Microsoft Defender for Cloud comes out ahead of AWS GuardDuty. AWS GuardDuty’s initial setup and integrations are more complex. It as well has less comprehensive features and a less straightforward pricing model.
"What we found most valuable in Amazon GuardDuty is its threat detection feature, especially because we were monitoring a huge number of AWS accounts, so we needed a solution that would monitor for any kind of malicious activity. The monitoring aspect of the solution was great because it gave us timely notifications if and when anything happened, and Amazon GuardDuty helped keep us on our toes to make sure we took action right away."
"Deployment is great, and we didn't face any big challenges."
"It kinda just gives us another layer of security. So it does provide some sort of comfort that we do have something that is monitoring for abnormal behavior."
"One of the advantages of cloud services is the ability to use them on demand. There's minimal installation involved; you can check the latest offerings and make new deployments while dismantling the previous ones. This approach keeps you ahead of potential services, showcasing the agility of AWS."
"It helps us detect brute-force attacks based on machine learning."
"The out-of-band malware detection from the EBS volumes. It's really cool. No agents or anything needed, it automatically finds and correlates based on malware."
"The most valuable features are the single system for data collection and the alert mechanisms."
"It is a highly scalable solution since it is a service by AWS. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"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."
"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."
"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 product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."
"The security policy is the most valuable feature for us. We can go into the environment settings and attach any globally recognized framework like ISO or any benchmark."
"It's quite a good product. It helps to understand the infections and issues you are facing."
"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."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
"AWS GuardDuty needs to be more customer-oriented."
"The solution has to be integrated with new services that AWS adds like QuickSight, Managed Airflow, AppFlow and MWAA."
"Improvement-wise, Amazon GuardDuty should have an overall dashboard analytics function so we could see what's in the current environment, and then in addition to that, provide best practices and recommendations, particularly to provide some type of observability, and then figure out the login side of it, based on our current environment, in terms of what we're not monitoring and what we should monitor. The solution should also give us a sample code configuration to implement that added feature or feature request. What I'd like to see in the next release of Amazon GuardDuty are more security analytics, reporting, and monitoring. They should provide recommendations and additional options that answer questions such as "Hey, what can we see in our environment?", "What should we implement within the environment?", What's recommended?" We know that cost will always be associated with that, but Amazon GuardDuty should show us the increased costs or decreased costs if we implement it or don't implement it, and that would be a good feature request, particularly with all products within AWS, just for cloud products in general because there are times features are implemented, but once they're deployed, they don't tell you about costs that would be generated along with those features. After features are deployed, there should a summary of the costs that would be generated, and projected based on current usage, so they would give us the option to figure out how long we're going to use those features and the option to keep those on or turn those off. If more services were like that, a lot more people would use those on the cloud."
"There is currently no consolidated dashboard for AWS GuardDuty. It would be helpful if they could provide a dashboard based on severity levels (high, medium, low) and offer insights account-wise, especially for users utilizing automation structures."
"AWS GuardDuty sometimes shows false positives and should have better detection accuracy."
"One improvement I would suggest for AWS GuardDuty is the ability to assign findings to specific users or groups, facilitating better communication and follow-up actions."
"For me, I would say just the presentation of findings, like the dashboards and other stuff, could be improved a bit."
"Because it's a threat detection service, they need to keep up with the various threat factors because new threat factors and attack factors come up all the time."
"Microsoft can improve the pricing by offering a plan that is more cost-effective for small and medium organizations."
"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."
"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."
"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 product was a bit complex to set up earlier, however, it is a bit streamlined now."
"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."
"It needs to be simplified and made more user-friendly for a non-technical person."
"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."
AWS GuardDuty is ranked 4th in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 19 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 2nd in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 46 reviews. AWS GuardDuty is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of AWS GuardDuty writes "A stellar threat-detection service that has helped bolster security against malicious threats". 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". AWS GuardDuty is most compared with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, Wiz, Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP and Lacework, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Wiz, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Sentinel. See our AWS GuardDuty vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
See our list of best Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) 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.
