Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Initial Setup

RK
Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

It depends on the requirements. Certain requirements are really complex. The deployment itself is quite fast because MCAS is on the cloud, but there are a lot of requirements from the regulations and the bank's standards perspective.

It took us one week for the architecture and to decide things like whether we need a reverse proxy. To have all the requirements and get all the things done in an enterprise environment, typically, a simple product like MCAS can take three to six months. That's because there are a lot of governance requirements, and we need to make sure there is no PI data, and the keys are encrypted somewhere in the user ID part. 

In terms of the implementation strategy, at the high level, for Office 365 and SaaS solutions, we wanted a unified product to replace our existing one. From the strategy perspective, we wanted to go to the cloud. MCAS was able to integrate with most of our Office productivity tools. We procured the licenses and then went through the strategy of the bank and how the product can meet the needs. This was at a very high level. Of course, when we go into operations, we get operational challenges. That's why we need to have a longer time period to make a product coexist with the existing products.

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EW
Security Principal at Trifecta Cloud Security Solutions

Deploying Defender is easy. You subscribe to it and enable it within your cloud tenant. I got it deployed in one day. Defender requires no maintenance because it's a SaaS product.

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Sachin Vinay - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Administrator at Amrita

The deployment was simple, and it took around two days.

The implementation strategy was straightforward because we had some on-premise policies we needed to mirror in the cloud. We already had a set of rules for each user we needed to create in our cloud application process. We need about two people to monitor security, take necessary actions against security concerns, and modify application rules.

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Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Paarth Saarthi - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Delivery Analyst at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

I didn't deploy it, but in my experience, it takes time to learn how the features work because most things are not covered in the Knowledge Base that Microsoft has provided. They don't mention what these things are and how they work in the background. It takes an appreciable amount of time to understand how these tools work.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is only deployed through the cloud. You need to integrate your Azure AD with Cloud Apps. Once you have done that, you don't require a separate deployment model.

In terms of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, you need to onboard it to your devices through a script. To do that, you can use Intune, SCCM, or many other tools. Intune is native to Microsoft, but SCCM is a third-party tool. You can even deploy it manually.

There is some maintenance involved. The onboarding package can have communication issues and sometimes the antivirus services stop due to malfunction. There are many things that require maintenance. The number of people needed to handle the maintenance depends on the volume of devices you are maintaining.

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Anthony Alvarico - PeerSpot reviewer
Deliver Practice Director at DynTek

The initial setup is simple because it's software as a service. You don't build a server and you don't do upgrades. There is no OS. It's built into the cloud. All you have to do is purchase the license.

In terms of maintenance, it's all Microsoft. All you need it to do is configure it so that it will work for your unique environment, according to your organization's requirements. There is nothing else to worry about.

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Waseem Alchaar - PeerSpot reviewer
Security architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

The initial setup could have been done better in our organization. That was one of the reasons I was hired. I had to reset and architect the whole process. It was relatively straightforward.

The product is deployed on a hybrid cloud, including Azure, GCP, and AWS clouds. It is used across a few departments, mainly within their IT realm, marketing, and other departments. But for the most part, it's just those two groups currently using it.

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Sunil V Jainapur - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Architect at Virtusa Global

Defender is a cloud-based solution, but our deployment was complex because we have a massive environment. It took us about a month to fully deploy it, including testing and evaluation. I had a five-person team, including engineers, administrators, and management. There is no maintenance after deployment because it runs on Azure infrastructure.

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SB
Infrastructure Engineer at SBITSC

It's cloud-based and deployed through InTune. The device has to be registered, and the device also has to be in the right license period.

The initial setup is straightforward. We use InTune to roll it out. The actual component is already on the Windows PC. It's called Windows antivirus or Defender. From the business side, by putting the devices in InTune, we can gather the metrics from the PC through Defender for Cloud Apps, or the Defender Endpoint management portal. It gives you a bit more management of the PC from that perspective.

In a reasonable deployment, it takes at least a week to deploy. The PCs have to be in InTune first to roll it out, and then, it's generally a matter of just switching on the feature.

For most businesses where I worked, it took a period of time to realize its benefits from the time of deployment. As the product got developed and became more mature, it got greater functionality in the end. It's now a mature product. The initial deployment was done when I was here, but I've been involved in enabling the maturity of the product's life cycle. There were always lots of tickets for changes regarding Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. It's a very intelligent product.

In terms of the number of people, sometimes, you need one person and sometimes two. Generally, you're trying to do things in the background.

It doesn't require any maintenance in particular. It's mainly just the configuration of rules and policies and then the security department does the rest and watches it.

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SC
Manager Information Security at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees

The initial setup is not straightforward due to the numerous meetings beforehand, and the Microsoft documentation can be overwhelming. However, once we familiarized ourselves with the interface, it started making more sense. 

The deployment process took over three months. Initially, we tested the solution to become familiar with it before deploying it to a small number of users. Once we were confident that everything was working correctly, we proceeded to deploy it to all users. Two system engineers were required for the deployment.

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II
COO at Floating-Dot Technology LTD

The initial deployment was straightforward. Afterward, there were issues due to licensing issues moving from Google to Microsoft. It was not free.

It took a couple of hours to make everything work to our specifications. I tried to automate as much as I could with scripts.

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BG
CTO at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

I was involved in its deployment from an executive managerial position. It was complex. 

There were a lot of elements that were not obvious even to the point where the documentation was not keeping up with the production. So, we would hit a learning page, and the learning page would be about a prior product than the one we were looking at. It was not relevant to what was in production. My biggest recommendation for Microsoft would be that the learning pages need to be kept up-to-date and relevant to what is current in production.

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PL
SOC Analyst at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

It was more or less straightforward. 

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Sujeet Bhardwaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Security Engineer at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The initial setup is straightforward. I already have experience putting the solution into place and therefore I'm pretty adept at setting it up. The implementation simply requires understanding how the customer wants to use it and what they want to monitor. 

It's an ongoing deployment and I've been deploying the solution for almost six years now. 

I basically use authority to integrate all users and exchanges together. We have basically a Microsoft-oriented system.

When I deployed it, I applied it to around 4,000 users. I indirectly did it myself and it took around one month for me to integrate everything and to meet those policies to ensure they were in line and working as to my expectations and that I was getting the expected results that I wanted.

You only need one person to handle the deployment. Maybe two people.

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MM
Software Security Specialist at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

Deploying Defender was a little complex, but it only took a few days. Some of the documentation isn't clear, so I'm a little confused. It doesn't require any maintenance after deployment. 

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SS
Support Engineer at Microsoft

It is very easy if you know what you're doing. You just click on the Next button multiple times, and it is complete. It is well-documented in the sense that we know what we can expect from the tool. The documentation is great, and the support is also excellent. So, my experience was very smooth, and it was done in a day.

It does not work on every license. You have to be an Enterprise customer, and you have to have a specific license to have the full benefits of it. So, you require the correct license, and you also need a certain amount of time for it to propagate. It is not immediate. Based on what we were told by Microsoft a few years ago, it takes 24 to 48 hours. They might have improved upon that. It tries to capture the complete environment details, and then it gives you a cumulative experience.

We work around the clock. We have six admins at different time zones who work with this solution.

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SH
Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The initial setup process was simple. We had to merge the landing zone and part of a template. Later, we started the portal and selected resources we wanted to protect along with the level of protection. The implementation strategy is to just start using it.

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JS
Senior Solutions Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution is super easy to configure. All it requires is an admin for the various apps. Once it's authorized it can start the scans. Mainly, you need to be mindful of policies and what you're looking for. Tuning policies and making sure that your policies are set properly is important. It's very easy to do, especially the out-of-box stuff. 

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SG
Senior Cloud & Security Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The initial onboarding of Cloud App Security with Office 365 is pretty straightforward. For an organization that does not use Office 365 as its primary SaaS application, you will still have to follow a few steps, however, those are also straightforward steps.

In general, I would say, Cloud App Security implementation, within the initial adoption of an application, is very seamless. 

The time it takes to deploy depends on the use cases. If you're talking about a simple activation of Cloud App Security, and enabling and monitoring the activities of certain basic applications, it shouldn't take more than a few hours for integration. If there are more complex situations, more complex scenarios, depending on what the scenarios are, then there may be a little bit more effort and time required. Other than that, if the default integration with applications is already there, it should not take more than a few hours to have it up and running.

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MM
Cloud Security Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

As a cloud-based service, there is no installation.

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JR
Business System Analyst at a tech company with 201-500 employees

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. There were some Azure Active Directory options that we needed to tweak before we got everything running properly.

Our deployment took approximately one month to complete. Part of this time was spent adjusting for false positives.

We followed a step-by-step process for deployment where we started with the computers in our location, then moving to other devices. After our location was complete, we moved to other offices.

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SJ
Cyber Security Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The initial setup of Cloud App Security is quite straightforward. It's not complex. Microsoft's documentation around it is absolutely great. It guides you through the settings you need to configure and whatever apps you need to integrate. There is no difficulty in getting it up and running. It is more seamless than any other solution. It is even easier to run on Windows machines because the documentation is very good. They have very clearly described what needs to be done.

Once you have all the requirements, like your user account and license, a person can configure it in a day because it's a SaaS solution. But the time it will take depends on the fine-tuning, and that is determined by why you are using MCAS. That's the important part. If you're looking at user behavior, or if you're looking at data, or if you're looking at infrastructure security posture, each of these will affect the time it takes. If it's just for shadow IT, it will take one or two days to configure. If you're integrating it with AWS to help with your security posture, it will take three or four days.

One engineer who has prior experience is more than enough, but having two guys for setup might be better.

Day-to-day maintenance, again, depends on how you are going to utilize it. If you already have a SOC running with four or five people in it and your environment is small to medium in size, five people can use this tool and get value out of it. If you are talking about an organization like Walmart or Microsoft or a multinational company that has users across regions, you will need more people to support it. MCAS is a tool. It will have the data, but you will need to use it.

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it_user1318380 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director Global Strategic Alliances at Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd.

The initial setup is straightforward and absolutely fine.

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GB
Enterprise System Engineer at a government with 501-1,000 employees

Anecdotally, I believe the initial setup is quite straightforward.

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BD
Sr. Technical Engineer/ Sr. Executive at PSR

The initial setup is straightforward. You only need to set up the policies. The devices need to be compliant and particular applications have to be protected. 

It generally requires two staff members to deploy but it depends on the management. It depends if the IT staff or the customers understand the process. The only difficult part is pairing it to a mobile device. To my understanding, it's the only part that the IT staff has to handle. 

Setting up the policy is easy and then it's easy to replicate the policy. It takes maximum two hours. 

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DW
Cloud Services Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps' initial setup was quite technical but we were prepared. The time of the implementation depends on the job and how many users are being set up.

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Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.