BMC Helix Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between BMC Helix Cloud Security and Microsoft Defender for Cloud based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"With Wiz, we get timely alerts for leaked data or any vulnerabilities already existing in our environment.""The CSPM module has been the most effective. It was easy to deploy and covered all our accounts through APIs, requiring no agents. Wiz provides instant visibility into high-level risks that we need to address.""The vulnerability management modules and the discovery and inventory are the most valuable features. Before using Wiz, it was a very manual process for both. After implementing it, we're able to get all of the analytics into a single platform that gives us visibility across all the systems in our cloud. We're able to correspond and understand what the vulnerability landscape looks like a lot faster.""I like Wiz's reporting, and it's easy to do queries. For example, it's pretty simple to find out how many servers we have and the applications installed on each. I like Wiz's security graph because you can use it to see the whole organization even if you have multiple accounts.""The first thing that stood out was the ease of installation and the quick value we got out of the solution.""Our most important features are those around entitlement, external exposure, vulnerabilities, and container security.""The automation roles are essential because we ultimately want to do less work and automate more. The dashboards are easy to read and visually pleasing. You can understand things quickly, which makes it easy for our other teams. The network and infrastructure teams don't know as much about security as we do, so it helps to have a tool that's accessible and nice to look at.""The solution is very user-friendly."

More Wiz Pros →

"Role-based security is a valuable feature.""It's also multi-cloud. You can look at several cloud providers: AWS, Azure, or GCP.""The features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools.""The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities.""The best feature is time to value. With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud. If you have Azure and AWS deployments, you might have multiple subscriptions in Azure and usually multiple accounts in AWS. You may even be doing some GCP work (around Google Cloud Platform). It's very difficult to manage a common set of policies, even less reporting, across multiple subscriptions, accounts, and cloud environments. What BMC Helix Cloud Security does is provide a unified view or single pane of glass as to your baseline. Then, it also facilitates the ability for Level 1 or 2 operations support to take action and report on security vulnerabilities.""The cool feature of Helix Cloud Security is that you can do all that — understand and remediate issues — in one dashboard, based on the different policies that are available for security, out-of-the-box."

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"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive.""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.""Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled.""One of the features that I like about the solution is it is both a hybrid cloud and also multi-cloud. We never know what company we're going to buy, and therefore we are ready to go. If they have GCP or AWS, we have support for that as well. It offers a single-panel blast across multiple clouds.""One important security feature is the incident alerts. Now, with all these cyberattacks, there are a lot of incident alerts that get triggered. It is very difficult to keep monitoring everything automatically, instead our organization is utilizing the automated use case that we get from Microsoft. That has helped bring down the manual work for a lot of things.""Defender lets you orchestrate the roll-out from a single pane. Using the Azure portal, you can roll it out over all the servers covered by the entire subscription.""Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful.""Technical support is helpful."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Pros →

Cons
"The remediation workflow within the Wiz could be improved.""We wish there were a way, beyond providing visibility and automated remediation, to wait on a given remediation, due to a critical aspect, such as the cost associated with a particular upgrade... We would like to see preventive controls that can be applied through Wiz to protect against vulnerabilities that we're not going to be able to remediate immediately.""The only small pain point has been around some of the logging integrations. Some of the complexities of the script integrations aren't supported with some of the more automated infrastructure components. So, it's not as universal. For example, they have great support for cloud formation and other services, but if you're using another type of management utility or governance language for your infrastructure-as-code automation components, it becomes a little bit trickier to navigate that.""The solution's container security could be improved.""Wiz's reporting capabilities could be refined a bit. They are making headway on that, but more executive-style dashboards would be nice. They just implemented a community aspect where you can share documents and feedback. This was something users had been requesting for a while. They are listening to customer feedback and making changes.""The only thing that needs to be improved is the number of scans per day.""Given the level of visibility into all the cloud environments Wiz provides, it would be nice if they could integrate some kind of mechanism to better manage tenants on multiple platforms. For example, let's say that some servers don't have an application they need, such as an antivirus. Wiz could include an API or something to push those applications out to the servers. It would be great if you could remedy these issues directly from the Wiz platform.""One significant issue is that the searches are case-sensitive, so finding a misconfigured resource can become very challenging."

More Wiz Cons →

"The UI could be more user-friendly.""We've had some with issues connectors. The connectors have seemed to have caused a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment. The only time I've had to reach out to tech support was for that. It seems it may not have been scanning correctly or I wasn't seeing data within a specific time. But we've set up a couple of connectors in the past couple of weeks and they actually scanned the AWS environment and we had data within about 10 minutes. It's working a lot faster and I think they're making improvements as they go.""BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features.""Every organization out there doesn't rely on just one control body. They use FISMA control. They may use HIPAA, CIS, PCI, or SOX, then blend them. One of the things that is now in big demand for BMC Helix Cloud Security is content. That's the next journey in its lifespan, making it easier for the community to share and collaborate on content for security controls that can be measured and remediated.""I want the role-based security feature to be improved."

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"One of the main challenges that we have been facing with Azure Security Center is the cost. The costs are really a complex calculation, e.g., to calculate the monthly costs. Azure is calculating on an hourly basis for use of the resource. Because of this, we found it really complex to promote what will be our costs for the next couple of months. I think if Azure could reduce the complex calculation and come up with straightforward cost mapping that would be very useful from a product point of view.""They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower.""No possibility to write or edit any capability.""Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts.""Sometimes, it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or certain kinds of products. That's not an issue directly with the product, though.""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.""You cannot create custom use cases.""The overview provides you with good information, but if you want more details, there is a lot more customization to do, which requires knowledge of the other supporting solutions."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The pricing seems pretty simple. We don't have to do a lot of calculations to figure out what the components are. They do it by enabling specific features, either basics or advanced, which makes it easy to select."
  • "The pricing is fair. Some of the more advanced features and functionalities and how the tiers are split can be somewhat confusing."
  • "The pricing is fair and comparable to their competitors. The cost seems to be going up, which is a concern. There are potential savings from consolidating tools, but we're uncertain how Wiz's pricing will change over time."
  • "I wish the pricing was more transparent."
  • "The cost of the other solutions is comparable to Wiz."
  • "Wiz is a moderately priced solution, where it is neither cheap nor costly."
  • More Wiz Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It is a subscription model with term licensing that is usually yearly. This includes, not only the product, but support and maintenance. It is based on cloud assets. Therefore, if you have 100 cloud assets, those cloud assets are measured based on evaluation or transactions. For example, if I'm evaluating that cloud asset for CIS compliance, PCI compliance, and AWS best practices, that asset gets evaluated three times, as those are three transactions. However, the license model is based on peak asset usage. So, over a year, if you deploy 100, 1000, 500, and then 2000 assets, you will be charged for the 2000 peak of assets managed by Helix Cloud Security."
  • "The pricing is based on an annual subscription, upfront, and it's based on cloud assets. Whether your assets are in Azure and AWS combined, the tool tells you how many assets are being scanned and that's the number used for pricing."
  • More BMC Helix Cloud Security Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
  • "We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."
  • "Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
  • "This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
  • "Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."
  • "There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."
  • "Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."
  • "I am not involved in this area. However, I believe its price is okay because even small customers are using Azure Security Center. I don't think it is very expensive."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) solutions are best for your needs.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Wiz and Lacework sucks... Buy Orca. 
    Top Answer:Whether or not the cost of third-party Cloud Security tools is justified would depend on your specific needs and budget… more »
    Top Answer:With Wiz, we get timely alerts for leaked data or any vulnerabilities already existing in our environment.
    Top Answer:The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities.
    Top Answer:I would rate the price of BMC Helix Cloud Security as a seven in terms of costliness. It is not the cheapest option… more »
    Top Answer:BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists of… more »
    Top Answer:Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across… more »
    Top Answer:The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
    Top Answer:Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Microsoft needs to bring the cost down. What we're… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    TrueSight Cloud Security, SecOps Policy Service
    Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
    Learn More
    Interactive Demo
    Wiz
    Demo Not Available
    BMC
    Demo Not Available
    Overview

    Wiz is a highly efficient solution for data security posture management (DSPM), with a 100% API-based approach that provides quick connectivity and comprehensive scans of platform configurations and workloads. The solution allows companies to automatically correlate sensitive data with relevant cloud context, such as public exposure, user identities, entitlements, and vulnerabilities.This integration enables them to understand data accessibility, configuration, usage, and movement within their internal environments.

    Wiz's Security Graph delivers automated alerts whenever risks emerge, allowing teams to prioritize and address the most critical issues before they escalate into breaches. Furthermore, Wiz ensures rapid and agentless visibility into critical data across various repositories, enabling organizations to easily determine the location of their data assets.

    Wiz Features

    Wiz provides various features in the following categories:

    • Agentless Scanning: The solution can scan every layer of a cloud environment without requiring agents, managing the entire process and providing comprehensive visibility.

    • Workflow Integration: Users can create customized workflows within Wiz to identify and assign actions based on urgency, integrating them with ticketing systems for quick and efficient remediation.

    • Vulnerability Management: Wiz's vulnerability management modules provide detailed analytics and visibility across cloud systems, streamlining the manual process of vulnerability discovery. The automated attack path analysis helps identify risks and trace potential points of exposure, allowing users to understand and mitigate them effectively and proactively.

    • CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management): Wiz's CSPM module offers instant visibility into high-level risks to an enterprise’s cloud environment, covering all accounts without the need for agents.

    • Out-of-the-Box Reporting and Custom Queries: The service supports comprehensive reporting with asset context, allowing users to perform complex custom queries on the solution’s user-friendly interface.

    • Automation Roles and Dashboards: The solution facilitates automation by providing essential roles and dedicated dashboards that enable teams to understand security information quickly, even those with limited expertise.

    • Contextual Risk Evaluation: The service contextualizes the various components contributing to an issue, providing a risk evaluation framework that helps prioritize remediation efforts.

    • Security Graph and Visibility: Wiz's security graph offers visibility across the entire organization, even with multiple accounts, enabling users to understand their environment and assets effectively.

    The Benefits of Wiz

    Wiz offers the following benefits:


    • Comprehensive agentless scanning

    • Effective identification and mitigation of vulnerabilities

    • Streamlined vulnerability management

    • Robust reporting capabilities and customizable queries

    • Enhanced automation and role-based access control

    • Prioritized risk evaluation for efficient remediation

    • Security posture across multiple accounts

    Reviews from Real Users

    Kamran Siddique, VP Information Security at boxed.com, remarks his company has seen a ROI while using Wiz, as it simplifies the process by integrating multiple useful tools into one solution.

    According to a Senior Security Architect at Deliveroo, Wiz has given their company a fresh approach to vulnerability management, as Wiz's native integrations are extremely useful and paramount to the operational success of their platform.



    Get a demo | Wiz

    BMC Helix Cloud Security is a SaaS tool designed to help organizations reduce compliance and security lapses resulting from next-gen container and cloud technologies. The solution offers a fully transparent, user-friendly view of all compliance data gathered throughout container resources, cloud, and data centers. BMC Helix Cloud Security can be used to insert compliance inquiries precisely in DevOps workflows for immediate assessment in relation to critical “go, no-go” conclusions throughout  the entire workflow. 

    BMC Helix Cloud Security offers enterprise organizations a unique compliance solution with robust functionalities to concentrate on numerous use processes that may interfere with digital transfigurations, such as:

    • Discovering resources, accounts, and configurations that are non-compliant with standard regulations or the organization's own policies and protocols.

    • Multi-source cloud compliance for PaaS service infrastructures, networks, storage, and containers.

    • DevOps workflows with melded security and compliance for WebApp application blueprints and weaknesses, and all application libraries.

    • Out-of-box capabilities for immediate compliance integration for DevOps workflows.

    BMC Helix Cloud Security is SaaS, which makes it a very flexible solution. It is able to integrate seamlessly with many of today’s enterprises’ demands. BMC Helix Cloud Security can easily perform as a policy-as-code (YAML) based protocol language, open RESTful APIs, or by seamlessly compiling extensible data connectors.

    Many of today's enterprise organizations must comply with numerous policies and regulations to maintain effective operations. BMC Helix Cloud Security ensures an enterprise organization is able to satisfy regulatory standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act, Defense Information System Agency (DISA), or any other stringent government or internal organizational compliance standards. The solution has a comprehensive compliance policy that utilizes mode-two capabilities and will ensure that an enterprise organization will greatly minimize or even negate the threat of ransomware and data breaches throughout its network. 

    BMC Helix Cloud Security will also see that container and container hosts are configured correctly and will then regularly audit to ensure compliance at the three important levels of compliance - images, daemon configuration, and host configuration.

    BMC Helix Cloud Security is designed to identify vulnerabilities by dissecting and thoroughly investigating compliance data for container and cloud resources and delivering the outcomes through a friendly, easy-to-understand dashboard. The solution can also provide support for unique or custom sources, provided that data is in a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format.

    BMC Helix Cloud security is also able to help discover and minimize vulnerabilities created by new services, objects, and resources instituted by containers and public clouds. These can sometimes be forgotten, creating a tremendous risk to an organization. BMC Helix Cloud Security will ensure these new services will be carefully and continually monitored to ensure industry and government standards and regulations are not being compromised. The solution is continually dissecting data and then will deliver outcomes in a dynamic, easy-to-understand dashboard.

    BMC Helix Cloud Security offers a user-friendly, robust, complete compliance strategy to ensure organizations maintain the highest levels of productivity and profitability while negating the risk of any type of compliance vulnerabilities.

    Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

    The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

    Sample Customers
    Wiz is the fastest growing software company ever - $100M ARR in 18 months: Wiz becomes the fastest-growing software company ever | Wiz Blog  Discover why companies, including Salesforce, Morgan Stanley, Fox, and Bridgewater choose Wiz as their cloud security partner. Read their success stories here: Customers | Wiz
    NHS, Vodafone, Kansas City Life, SKY Italia, Cybera
    Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company29%
    Retailer14%
    Outsourcing Company14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    Real Estate/Law Firm6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Agriculture10%
    Recruiting/Hr Firm10%
    Consumer Goods Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business10%
    Midsize Enterprise30%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise65%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise8%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise62%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    BMC Helix Cloud Security is ranked 30th in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 5 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 46 reviews. BMC Helix Cloud Security is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of BMC Helix Cloud Security writes "A highly scalable and straightforward solution with a knowledgeable support team". 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". BMC Helix Cloud Security is most compared with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes, CloudBolt, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler Internet Access and VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Microsoft Defender XDR, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. See our BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.

    See our list of best Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) vendors and best CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platforms) 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.