We performed a comparison between Cloudflare 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.
Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud focuses on regulatory compliance, ransomware protection, access controls, incident alerts, collaborative services, UEBA features, and a single pane of glass view. On the other hand, Cloudflare provides good load balancing, DDoS protection, a user-friendly GUI, and a proxy for hiding servers. Microsoft Defender for Cloud needs work on consistency, customization, integration, collaboration, and resource coverage. Cloudflare could use improvements in reporting, support response time, traffic routing, and on-premise solutions.
Service and Support: Microsoft Defender for Cloud's customer service has received a combination of positive and negative feedback, with some customers reporting satisfactory experiences, while others have encountered difficulties with outsourced support and slow response times. On the other hand, Cloudflare's support is generally considered good, although some users have suggested that it could be enhanced, particularly for those who are new to the service.
Ease of Deployment: Microsoft Defender for Cloud's setup requires prior knowledge and policy creation while Cloudflare's setup is easy and comes with configuration instructions. Deploying Cloudflare may take a few days if many pieces of equipment are needed.
Pricing: Microsoft Defender for Cloud is seen as a fair and cost-effective option, despite complex licensing. In contrast, Cloudflare is generally considered expensive, although some users don't pay for licensing. Both solutions are viewed as cost-effective, but Cloudflare may benefit from a customized pricing model for enterprise customers.
ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides basic security features and facilitates the management of security service providers, while Cloudflare specializes in website protection and server overload prevention.
Comparison Results: Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the preferred option when compared to Cloudflare. It has a lot more security features, such as regulatory compliance, access controls, and ransomware protection. Despite Cloudflare's decent load balancing and DDoS protection, it falls short in terms of regulatory compliance and ransomware protection.
"The first thing that stood out was the ease of installation and the quick value we got out of the solution."
"The product supports out-of-the-box reporting with context about the asset and allows us to perform complex custom queries on UI."
"With Wiz, we get timely alerts for leaked data or any vulnerabilities already existing in our environment."
"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."
"Out of all the features, the one item that has been most valuable is the fact that Wiz puts into context all the pieces that create an issue, and applies a particular risk evaluation that helps us prioritize when we need to address a misconfiguration, vulnerability, or any issue that would put our environment into risk."
"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."
"Our most important features are those around entitlement, external exposure, vulnerabilities, and container security."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"The most valuable feature of Cloudflare is that it has a free version. They give us the free version with the anti-DDoS features and also the load balancing solution."
"Cloudflare has many features."
"There are key things that are used for our enterprise customers, such as Lambda and DNS."
"Easier http to https redirect using page rules"
"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"I like Cloudflare's application gateway and DDoS protection."
"Generally, I am satisfied with this product."
"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 technical support is very good."
"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."
"Good compliance policies."
"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."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
"The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications."
"Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."
"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."
"We're looking at some of the data compliance stuff that they've got Jon offer. I know they're looking at container security, which we gonna be looking at next."
"The solution's container security could be improved."
"We would like to see improvements to executive-level reporting and data reporting in general, which we understand is being rolled out to the platform."
"One significant issue is that the searches are case-sensitive, so finding a misconfigured resource can become very challenging."
"The only thing that needs to be improved is the number of scans per day."
"The remediation workflow within the Wiz could be improved."
"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."
"Sometimes their more advanced caching tools can cause higher first-byte times and problems with JavaScript."
"The pricing could be improved."
"Cloudflare could offer a better view or maybe dashboards of the main resources used in the client."
"There are some issues with the CDN services."
"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"Technical support is lacking."
"We are a product integrator and reseller, and we would like to have a better partner relationship, similar to a channel sales relationship. Sometimes we are on our own or get diverted by Cloudflare because they have direct sales, which competes with us and makes it difficult to build a relationship with this company since we want to be an MSP or a managed service provider for the solution."
"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."
"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 remediation process could be improved."
"Consistency is the area where the most improvement is needed. For example, there are some areas where the UI is not uniform across the board."
"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."
"Sometimes it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or a special kind of product."
"I would suggest building a single product that addresses endpoint server protection, attack surface, and everything else in one solution. That is the main disadvantage with the product. If we are incorporating some features, we end up in a situation where this solution is for the server, and that one is for the client, or this is for identity, and that is for our application. They're not bundling it. Commercially, we can charge for different licenses, but on the implementation side, it's tough to help our end-customer understand which product they're getting."
"The solution could extend its capabilities to other cloud providers. Right now, if you want to monitor a virtual machine on another cloud, you can do that. However, this cannot be done with other cloud platform services. I hope once that is available then Defender for Cloud will be a unified solution for all cloud platform services."
Cloudflare is ranked 11th in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 56 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 46 reviews. Cloudflare is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cloudflare writes "It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes". 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". Cloudflare is most compared with Akamai, Azure Front Door, Imperva DDoS, Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and AWS Shield, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Sentinel. See our Cloudflare vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
See our list of best Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) 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.
