We performed a comparison between CrowdStrike Falcon 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: CrowdStrike Falcon stands out for its minimal impact on system performance, optimal resource utilization, and precise detection of threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is highly regarded for its automated processes, advanced threat analysis, and extensive security measures, including protection against ransomware and access controls. CrowdStrike Falcon could benefit from adding a sandbox feature and more detailed firewall management options. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could use enhancements in automation and ease of use.
Service and Support: CrowdStrike Falcon's customer service has been commended for its promptness and assistance. Some Defender for Cloud users reported positive experiences with Microsoft, while others complained that the solution's outsourced support lacked technical knowledge.
Ease of Deployment: CrowdStrike Falcon's setup is considered to be simple and efficient, with varying deployment times ranging from a few days to a month. While there may be some challenges during installation, they are generally manageable. The initial setup of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is described as straightforward, but the deployment time may vary depending on specific requirements.
Pricing: Some users find CrowdStrike Falcon costly and think the price should be lowered to make it more competitive. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is in the mid-to-high pricing tier. While some users find it expensive, others believe it offers good value.
ROI: CrowdStrike Falcon offers cost savings by decreasing the required number of engineers and eliminating the necessity for onsite servers. Microsoft Defender for Cloud streamlines security tasks and saves users money by consolidating various solutions.
Comparison Results: Users prefer CrowdStrike Falcon over Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Users like CrowdStrike Falcon's effortless setup process and lightweight design. It provides an in-depth analysis of endpoint devices, precise threat detection, and robust defense against cyberattacks.
"The features that I have found most valuable are the ability to customize it and to reduce its size. It lets you run in a very small window in terms of memory and resources on legacy cash registers."
"Fortinet is very user-friendly for customers."
"Additionally, when it comes to EDR, there are more tools available to assist with client work."
"Fortinet FortiEDR's firewalling, rule creation, monitoring, and inspection profiles are great."
"Having all monitoring, response, tracking, and mitigation tools in one dashboard provides our analysts and SOC team with a comprehensive view at a glance."
"It notifies us if there's any suspicious file on any PC. If any execution or similar kind of thing is happening, it just alerts us. It doesn't only alert. It also blocks the execution until we allow it. We check whether the execution is legitimate or not, and then approve it or keep it blocked. This gives us a little bit of control over this mechanism. Fortinet FortiEDR is also very straightforward and easy to maintain."
"The product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls."
"We have FortiEDR installed on all our systems. This protects them from any threats."
"The automatic alert feature is the most important feature of the solution."
"Overall, what I found most valuable in CrowdStrike Falcon is its good mechanism. It also has a good reporting feature. CrowdStrike Falcon is an invaluable tool because, through it, you can take quick action, for example, when an OS is missing specific patches."
"It has definitely minimized resources. When everything was on-prem, there was a lot more work maintaining it. One of the big value tickets: I don't have lists of hundreds of exceptions for certain applications that I have to maintain, add, delete, and move. The very nature of the product has lessened my workload considerably."
"The solution is silent and sits on your system as one single agent."
"Among CrowdStrike Falcon's most valuable capabilities are its UEBA and SOAR functionalities, along with its seamless integration with any other SIEM solution."
"Falcon's best feature is its detection and blocking of threats."
"The most useful feature is that we do not need to install or keep signature files. Regular scanning that consumes a lot of computer resources is not needed."
"The features we showcase to potential customers are prevention, malware protection, zero-day protection, and application scripting. Vulnerability assessment is another valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce."
"The solution is very easy to deploy."
"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."
"Technical support is helpful."
"It's quite a good product. It helps to understand the infections and issues you are facing."
"The security policy is the most valuable feature for us. We can go into the environment settings and attach any globally recognized framework like ISO or any benchmark."
"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."
"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive."
"The solution's installation from a central installation server could be improved because the engineers had a little bit of trouble getting it installed from a central location."
"The EDR console should have more extensive reporting. You shouldn't need to purchase FortiAnalyzer. It should be included in the EDR part. The security adviser cloud platform could be improved with more options for exclusive or intensive rules for devices."
"They can include the automation for the realtime updates. We have a network infrastructure with remote sites. Whenever they send updates, they are not automated. We have to go into the console and push those updates. I wish it was more automated. The update file is currently around 31 MB. It could be smaller."
"The solution should address emerging threats like SQL injection."
"Cannot be used on mobile devices with a secure connection."
"FortiEDR could add a separate scanning dashboard. In incident management, we prefer to remove the endpoint system from the environment and scan the system. We typically use Symantec for that, but if we want to use FortiEDR for that, then we need a scanning tab to clarify things."
"We'd like to see more one-to-one product presentations for the distribution channels."
"The amount of usage, the number of details we get, or the number of options that can be tweaked is limited in comparison to that with other EDR solutions"
"It is cloud-based, and this does make some weary of the data being held on the cloud. Privacy requirements must be taken into account."
"I would like to see equal support across all versions. Aside from that, I would say most of the features are there."
"I would rate it an eight out of ten. It does what it needs to do but there's always room for improvement."
"If we have a dashboard capability to uninstall agents, I think that would be great."
"This solution is relatively expensive."
"The technical support could improve because I am in India and the support I receive is from the UK or Australia. It is difficult to manage the time difference. The service could be faster. However, when we do have the support they are knowledgeable."
"We'd like to see more integration capabilities."
"The solution could improve by providing more types of reports because it's in the detection span you cannot re-export anything. If it could be exported to a CSV file directly there it would help a lot. I currently need to do this by API to get what I need."
"Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government."
"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."
"Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
"The solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge."
"No possibility to write or edit any capability."
"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 must improve its UI."
CrowdStrike Falcon is ranked 3rd in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) with 107 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 46 reviews. CrowdStrike Falcon is rated 8.8, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of CrowdStrike Falcon writes "Easy to set up with good behavior-based analysis but needs a single-click recovery option". 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". CrowdStrike Falcon is most compared with Microsoft Defender XDR, Darktrace, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Trend Micro Deep Security and VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Wiz and AWS Security Hub. See our CrowdStrike Falcon vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
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