Cisco Secure Workload vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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3,184 views|2,120 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Microsoft Logo
16,154 views|12,350 comparisons
95% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Secure Workload and Microsoft Defender for Cloud based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: March 2024).
770,292 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
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network.""The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility.""Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations. It saves an enormous, enormous amount of time.""By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself.""A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution.""Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack.""Scalability is its most valuable feature.""The product provides multiple-device integration."

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"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.""Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful.""The dashboard is very good. It gives our clients a lot of information and allows them to have a complete overview of the system. Everything is visible in one glance.""The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites.""It isn't a highly complex solution. It's something that a lot of analysts can use. Defender gives you a broad overview of what's happening in your environment, and it's a great solution if you're a Microsoft shop.""It is very intuitive when it comes to policy administration, alerts and notifications, and ease of setting up roles at different hierarchies. It has also been good in terms of the network technology maps. It provides a good overview, but it also depends on the complexity of your network.""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.""When we started out, our secure score was pretty low. We adopted some of the recommendations that Security Center set out and we were able to make good progress on improving it. It had been in the low thirties and is now in the upper eighties."

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Cons
"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools.""The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions.""Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it.""It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices.""The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved.""I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications.""The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly.""It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge."

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"I would like to have the ability to customize executive reporting.""Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government.""The product must improve its UI.""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.""The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome.""The remediation process could be improved.""For Kubernetes, I was using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). To see that whatever is getting deployed into AKS goes through the correct checks and balances in terms of affinities and other similar aspects and follows all the policies, we had to use a product called Stackrox. At a granular level, the built-in policies were good for Kubernetes, but to protect our containers from a coding point of view, we had to use a few other products. For example, from a programming point of view, we were using Checkmarx for static code analysis. For CIS compliance, there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, we had to use other plugins to see that the CIS benchmarks are compliant. There are CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes on AWS and GCP, but there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product. We ended up with two different dashboards. We had Azure Security Center, and we had Stackrox that had its own dashboard. The operations team and the security team had to look at two dashboards, and they couldn't get an integrated piece. That's a drawback of Azure Security Center. Azure Security Center should provide APIs so that we can integrate its dashboard within other enterprise dashboards, such as the PowerBI dashboard. We couldn't get through these aspects, and we ended up giving Reader security permission to too many people, which was okay to some extent, but when we had to administer the users for the Stackrox portal and Azure Security Center, it became painful.""The product was a bit complex to set up earlier, however, it is a bit streamlined now."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
  • "The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
  • "Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
  • "It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
  • "The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
  • "The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
  • More Cisco Secure Workload 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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    770,292 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The product provides multiple-device integration.
    Top Answer:The product must be integrated with the cloud.
    Top Answer:Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a… 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 doing to their detriment is simply lowering the amount of log retention we're… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    3,184
    Comparisons
    2,120
    Reviews
    1
    Average Words per Review
    235
    Rating
    7.0
    Views
    16,154
    Comparisons
    12,350
    Reviews
    20
    Average Words per Review
    1,073
    Rating
    8.0
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Cisco Tetration
    Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
    Learn More
    Interactive Demo
    Cisco
    Demo Not Available
    Overview

    Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

    Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

    Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

    Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

    When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

    Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

    Reviews from Real Users

    The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

    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
    ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
    Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider44%
    Media Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company29%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Government6%
    Insurance Company5%
    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 Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise20%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise62%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    770,292 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco Secure Workload is ranked 20th in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 13 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 46 reviews. Cisco Secure Workload is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco Secure Workload writes "A solution that provides good technical support but its high cost makes it challenging for users to adopt it". 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". Cisco Secure Workload is most compared with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Illumio, VMware NSX, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Wiz, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Wiz and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. See our Cisco Secure Workload 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.