We performed a comparison between FortiSASE and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"The solution is stable."
"I feel that it is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The integration with the company's existing security infrastructure enhanced our security posture since it was a straightforward process."
"The product can scale."
"Deep packet inspection is easier to deploy in the FortiSASE environment. It's much simpler to configure one-touch deployment. It was considerably more convoluted to get that to work using FortiClient. All that processing horsepower is happening in Fortinet's cloud infrastructure, reducing the load on our local routers and on-prem FortiGate firewalls."
"The solution is easy to deploy and simple to manage."
"Better logging allows us to find problems and take appropriate steps to lock them out."
"We have become more aware of what services our users are using, how often they are using them, and what data is being sent out of the organization and to which services. So, it is really a lot about visibility and helping us make decisions based on that. It drives some of our policy decisions for adding extra security controls."
"The ability to prevent users from using certain applications is one of the most valuable features. It doesn't require any configuration for implementation from the client perspective. It just works right away and gives you the information you need."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"I like the alert policies because they are quite robust. It has some built-in templates that we can easily pick up. One of them is the alert for mass downloads, when a particular user is running a massive download on your SharePoint site."
"The general usability of the solution is very straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is to stop shadow IT."
"The product’s most valuable feature is SQL database."
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"The GUI and connectivity, along with the support offered, are some of the areas of concern in the product where improvements are required."
"FortiSASE is a work in progress. One area where there is room for improvement is the ability to use FortiSASE on an endpoint that doesn't have the client on it. Other solutions do that by building a VPN tunnel from their on-prem router into the SASE environment. FortiSASE doesn't have that feature yet, but it is on the roadmap for Q3 of this year. I've seen it in their development environment."
"Security and support are two areas with certain shortcomings in the product where improvements are required."
"They need to have more concise or precise ways to come up with the return on investment for convincing or presenting this to customers."
"Some of the solution's back-end connectivity and visibility are not robust and could be improved."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"Sometimes the support is actually lacking."
"It doesn't actually decrease the time to respond. This has been an issue with Microsoft recently. Sometimes, there is a delay when it comes to getting an alert policy email... Sometimes it takes two or three hours for that email to be sent."
"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps’s technical support services needs improvement."
"They need to improve the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules. In the latest version, you can implement ASR rules, which are quite useful, but you have to enable those because if they're not enabled, they flag false positives. In the Defender portal, it logs a block for WMI processes and PowerShell. Apparently, it's because ASR rules are not configured. So, you generally have to enable them to exclude, for example, WMI queries or PowerShell because they have a habit of blocking your security scanners. It's a bit weird that they have to be enabled to be configured, and it's not the other way around."
"The technical support team has room for improvement."
"I would like more customization of notifications. Currently, you either get everything or you get limited information. I would like to have something in between where we can customize the data that is included in notifications."
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FortiSASE is ranked 14th in Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) with 5 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 2nd in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 30 reviews. FortiSASE is rated 7.4, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of FortiSASE writes "An easy to deploy and simple to manage solution that can be used for remote worker access". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps writes "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need". FortiSASE is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Cisco Umbrella, Cato SASE Cloud Platform and Axis Security, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Obsidian CDR Platform. See our FortiSASE vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps report.
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