Find out in this report how the two Microsoft Security Suite solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Report (Updated: May 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

May 2024

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Helped 787,061 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Busi...

Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite

20th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (45th)

Microsoft Defender for Clou...

Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite

10th

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (2nd), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (12th)

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the market share of Microsoft Defender for Business is 1.7% and it decreased by 35.2% compared to the previous year. The market share of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 1.3% and it decreased by 24.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Microsoft Security Suite

Unique Categories:

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)

1.5%

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)

14.5%

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

1.1%

Featured Reviews

reviewer1728189

CIO at Alaska Air

Dec 6, 2023

Quicker response time, improved security posture, and reduced alerts

A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is going on. We have a footprint across all of North America, Canada, and Mexico, so we want to make sure that all our endpoints are protected and we are able to look for any anomalous activity. It provides alerts not only to the end users but also to my team to track that so that we can quickly isolate a security threat and lock the bad guys out.

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reviewer2315772

Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Nov 28, 2023

Provides good stability and a valuable SQL database

I am not sure if the product has improved our organization yet. However, it certainly gives another level of confidence that the assets are secure. We are aware of the activity in the tenant The product’s most valuable feature is SQL database. It notifies us even in case of false positives when…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Microsoft Defender for Business is good for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers solid security flexibility and integration with tools like Microsoft Lighthouse and some other software. It takes some of the features of Defender for Endpoint EDR and provides those services for small and medium-sized business environments."

"It is scalable."

"The interface is quite user-friendly."

"A few things are valuable. One is the alerting we see when any kind of intrusion is happening, any kind of malware is being deployed across the endpoints, or any kind of suspicious activity is going on. We have a footprint across all of North America, Canada, and Mexico, so we want to make sure that all our endpoints are protected and we are able to look for any anomalous activity."

"If you're an Intune user, you can bring in certain capabilities like system-hardening policies, which further enhances the security."

"Better logging allows us to find problems and take appropriate steps to lock them out."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its monitoring."

"Shadow IT discovery is the feature I like the most."

"On-demand scanning is the most valuable feature. In addition, it's a fairly fluid product. It syncs back to the cloud and provides metrics. It's pretty intelligent."

"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."

"Everything from Microsoft is integrated. You receive regular reports on them all. You can push your reports, logs, and security alerts, which are all integrated. It is crucial that these solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment."

"There are a lot of features with benefits, including discovery, investigation, and putting controls around things. You can't say that you like the investigation part but not the discovery. Everything is correlated; that's how the tool works."

"The most valuable feature is the ease of management. It's important."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps pros

Cons

"The security could always be improved."

"We faced some issues while running some applications on Mac."

"Defender's threat protection should be fine-tuned to reduce false positives. It could be more targeted, reflecting a continuous evolution in detecting. Also, it could be easier to integrate into other environments."

"Defender's reporting is rather scattered, and its URL filtering mechanism doesn't really work."

"The biggest one is that Defender needs to be more proactive to the emerging threats. There can be tighter integration with email, especially how it integrates with our email system, which is the Microsoft Outlook suite. There should be the ability to react a lot quicker to emerging threats because sometimes, it takes a few days before some of these new threats are fully identified, and we need that to be a few hours."

"There are some features, such as user navigation content filtering, that are disabled by default, and it probably makes sense to enable them by default."

"Sometimes the support is actually lacking."

"The integration with macOS operating systems needs to be better."

"Defender for Cloud Apps could come with more configured policies out of the box. Also, integration could be easier. Integration is moderately difficult because Microsoft hasn't developed a solution that unifies device onboarding and management. You have to use Intune to manage devices and Defender for Endpoint to enforce policies. They need to fix their integration, but I believe they will straighten it out by the end of the year."

"Defender for Cloud apps is primarily useful for Azure apps. It has limited capabilities for applications based on other cloud platforms."

"Sometimes, we'll get false positive alarms. For example, when a SharePoint path has no file sharing, but there is an external user, it will trigger an alarm that the file has been shared with an external user... the alerting mechanism should be more precise when giving you an alert about what activity has been done with the file..."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps’s technical support services needs improvement."

"They should continue integration with all other Microsoft security-related products. The integration with all the other products is still ongoing."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is probably a little higher than the competitors."

"Defender for Business is included by default with an Office 365 premium subscription."

"The price could be better and should be reconsidered."

"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."

"The cost could be improved when you need to pay for anything. For example, refreshing files takes time to load, though it may be my Internet. To improve the refresh time, Microsoft says that we need to pay for a Premium license, and I don't like paying for things that help make a solution better."

"It is a little bit expensive. When you want to have the complete package with Office 365, Defender, and everything else, it is expensive."

"The pricing is fair."

"Microsoft offers bundle discounts and a pay-as-you-go option."

"Its pricing is on the higher side. Its price is definitely very high for a small-scale company. As an enterprise client, we do get benefits from Microsoft. We get a discounted price because of the number of users we have in our company. We have a premier package, and with that, we do get a lot of discounts. There are no additional costs. It only comes in the top-tier packages. Generally, the top-tier license is the best license that you can get for your organization. If you want, you can buy it separately, but that's not a good idea."

"It has pretty good pricing."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Business?

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Business?

It has to get more competitive because we are starting to see some of the competitors providing better pricing, and some of it, of course, is to gain market share. The Defender product pricing is p...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Business?

The biggest one is that Defender needs to be more proactive to the emerging threats. There can be tighter integration with email, especially how it integrates with our email system, which is the Mi...

See all answers

Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?

Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?

It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notifications are pretty good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?

Where we are right now, this is an acceptable pricing. I would like to see more transparency given to the end user. The end user given to us is via the cloud service provider. There are different p...

See all answers

Comparisons

HP Wolf Security vs Microsoft Defender for Business

Compared 21% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Microsoft Defender for Business

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Intune vs Microsoft Defender for Business

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Defender for Business

Compared 10% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Complete vs Microsoft Defender for Business

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Business Competitors

Zscaler Internet Access vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 23% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 20% of the time

Netskope vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 11% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP)

June 2024

Download Microsoft Defender for Business product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

May 2024

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps report

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps product report

Also Known As

No data available

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security

Learn More

Microsoft

Overview

Microsoft Defender for Business is a new endpoint security solution that was designed especially for the small and medium-sized business (up to 300 employees). With this endpoint security solution, your company's devices are better protected from ransomware, malware, phishing, and other threats.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is a comprehensive security solution that provides protection for cloud-based applications and services. It offers real-time threat detection and response, as well as advanced analytics and reporting capabilities. With Defender for Cloud Apps, organizations can ensure the security of their cloud environments and safeguard against cyber threats. Whether you're running SaaS applications, IaaS workloads, or PaaS services, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps can help you secure your cloud environment and protect your business from cyber threats.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Benefits:

Provides comprehensive security for cloud applications
Integrates with other Microsoft security tools
Easy to use and deploy
Provides real-time threat detection and response
Strong protection against phishing attacks and other common threats
Highly customizable to meet specific needs of different organizations

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Use Cases:

Governance, authentication, security, and compliance.
Detects shadow IT and anomalous user behavior
Controls access to applications
Provides auditing and filtering setups
Used for end-user compute devices, file monitoring, user investigation, and activity
Used for data governance, threat detection, and getting visibility over cloud applications
Used to identify information about applications beyond organizational boundaries
Prevent exfiltration and data filtration of corporate data
Used to deal with spam emails and detect shadow IT

Reviews from Real Users

Ram-Krish, Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm, says that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need".

PeerSpot user, Senior Cloud & Security Consultant at a tech services, writes that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps "Great for monitoring user activity and protecting data while integrating well with other applications".

Simon Burgess,Infrastructure Engineer at SBITSC, states that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is "A fluid, intelligent product for great visibility, centralized management, and increased uptime".

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

May 2024

Free Report: Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Business vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.

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