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Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Cloud and Data Center Security (5th), Container Security (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (3rd)
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (1st), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (4th), Microsegmentation Software (2nd)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (8th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew W - PeerSpot reviewer
Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues
Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.
Matthias Kropf - PeerSpot reviewer
The tool's most valuable feature is visibility but needs improvement in Kubernetes
We use the product in the production environment of server infrastructure.  The tool's most valuable feature is its visibility.  Kubernetes is not installed in the way we need it.  I have been using the product since October.  We faced some minor issues, but overall, the product is stable. I…
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Atlas security graph is pretty cool. It maps out relationships between components on AWS, like load balancers and servers. This helps visualize potential attack paths and even suggests attack paths a malicious actor might take."
"The features that stand out are threat detection using advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning, helping to identify and respond to threats in real-time."
"The multi-cloud support is valuable. They are expanding to different clouds. It is not restricted to only AWS. It allows us to have different clouds on one platform."
"Our previous product took a lot of man hours to manage. Once we got Singularity Cloud Workload Security, it freed up our time to work on other tasks."
"Singularity Cloud's ability to create custom correlation searches and reduce noise is highly valuable."
"We mostly use alerts. That has been pretty good. If we use the alert system from Amazon, it is much costlier to us, so we use PingSafe."
"The solution's most valuable features are its ability to detect vulnerabilities inside AWS resources and its ability to rescan after a specific duration set by the administrator."
"SentinelOne's behaviour analytics are valuable because they detect anomalies and malicious behaviour that signature-based solutions might miss."
"The tool is a complete package that offers many features like visibility. You can get a graph with real-time workflows and visibility into server-to-server communication. We get visibility into many things happening within our environment."
"Application Ring-Fencing and Deception Server, which is basically like a honeypot, are pretty useful features."
"The interface and dashboard are amazing."
"The real bonus is the fact that we can secure applications, all the way down to the individual services, on each host. It's actually more granular security than we can get out of a traditional firewall."
"We like the centralized management of the firewalls. Until we installed Guardicore Centra, we managed all our firewalls individually, so making changes was complicated, difficult, and time-consuming."
"This tool greatly helps in understanding the footprint of the attacks."
"The label-based segmentation is the most valuable feature."
"Initially, I liked the telemetry part. But later, we used the microsegmentation features that we were able to deploy and found that they really stood out from other vendors. It allows us to see microsegmentation as distributed services."
"The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has improved our security poster by at least 100 percent."
"Everything is built into Azure, and if we go for cross-cloud development with Azure Arc, we can use most of the features. While it's possible to deploy and convert third-party applications, it is difficult to maintain, whereas Azure deployments to the cloud are always easier. Also, Microsoft is a big company, so they always provide enough support, and we trust the Microsoft brand."
"Defender is user-friendly and provides decent visibility into threats."
"The pricing is 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."
"The solution is up-to-date with the latest updates and identified threats."
"Technical support is helpful."
 

Cons

"If I had to pick a complaint, it would be the way the hosts are listed in the tool. You have different columns separated by endpoint name, Cloud Account, and Cloud Instances ID. I wish there was something where we could change the endpoint name and not use just the IP address. We would like to have custom names or our own names for the instances. If I had a complaint, that would be it, but so far, it meets all the needs that we have."
"We'd like to have better notifications. We'd like them to happen faster."
"We are getting reports only in a predefined form. I would like to have customized reports so that I can see how many issues are open or closed today or in two weeks."
"PingSafe takes four to five hours to detect and highlight an issue, and that time should be reduced."
"In terms of ease of use, initially, it is a bit confusing to navigate around, but once you get used to it, it becomes easier."
"The resolution suggestions could be better, and the compliance features could be more customizable for Indian regulations. Overall, the compliance aspects are good. It gives us a comprehensive list, and its feedback is enough to bring us into compliance with regulations, but it doesn't give us the specific objects."
"While SentinelOne offers robust security features, its higher cost may present a challenge for budget-conscious organizations."
"Currently, we would have to export our vulnerability report to an .xlsx file, and review it in an Excel spreadsheet, and then we sort of compile a list from there. It would be cool if there was a way to actually toggle multiple applications for review and then see those file paths on multiple users rather than only one user at a time or only one application at a time."
"Supports become difficult when it's for a big organization. For a small organization, medium organization, it still makes sense, however, for a big organization, it makes life difficult."
"Guardicore Centra should incorporate automation so that we don't require to write custom scripts and APIs. The tool also has limitations on rules where it allows only sixty thousand rules. Our clients have also commented that there are too many manual clicks and effort to do changes. I think that the incorporation of automation can help our clients make changes with confidence and without the possibility of human error."
"The long-term management of the security policies could be improved with some kind of automation platform, something like Chef or Puppet or Ansible, to help you manage the policies after day-one... to then manage the policies and changes to those policies, going forward, through some type of automation process is not turning out to be really easy."
"Clients would like to see that the security policies of GuardiCore can continue to be comparable to all the major firewall players out there."
"Kubernetes is not installed in the way we need it."
"It would be very helpful for beginners if the solution had more windows to help with the terms inside instead of going to the documentation."
"Sometimes, the speed needs improvement, especially when it comes to the generation of maps, where it can be a bit slow."
"The maps could go a bit faster. They are useful but slightly slow."
"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."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"Agent features need to be improved. They support agents through Azure Arc or Workbench. Sometimes, we are not able to get correct signals from the machines on which we have installed these agents. We are not able to see how many are currently reporting to Azure Security Center, and how many are currently not reporting. For example, we have 1,000 machines, and we have enrolled 1,000 OMS agents on these machines to collect the log. When I look at the status, even though at some places, it shows that it is connected, but when I actually go and check, I'm not getting any alerts from those. There are some discrepancies on the agent, and the agent features are not up to the mark."
"From my own perspective, they just need a product that is tailored to micro-segmentation so I can configure rules for multiple systems at once and manage it."
"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."
"I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises."
"The pricing could be better."
"Most customer teams need more training on this type of product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It was reasonable pricing for me."
"SentinelOne is relatively cheap. If ten is the most expensive, I would rate it a seven."
"It is a little expensive. I would rate it a four out of ten for pricing."
"PingSafe falls somewhere in the middle price range, neither particularly cheap nor expensive."
"We found it to be fine for us. Its price was competitive. It was something we were happy with. We are not a Fortune 500 company, so I do not know how pricing scales at the top end, but for our cloud environment, it works very well."
"The licensing is easy to understand and implement, with some flexibility to accommodate dynamic environments."
"PingSafe is not very expensive compared to Prisma Cloud, but it's also not that cheap. However, because of its features, it makes sense to us as a company. It's fairly priced."
"The tool is cost-effective."
"Compared to the pricing we were seeing from both Illumio and Edgewise, Guardicore was very competitive."
"The price is the same as other products in the market. There's no price argument to choose one or the other product, it will cost the customer approximately the same."
"Guardicore Centra provides better value for money than NSX, was the other solution that we looked at, which was too expensive for what it does."
"GuardiCore has made some new changes to the license now. We've seen monthly and annual licenses based on a subscription. We have a few clients that pay anywhere from $25,000 a year."
"This is not a cheap solution but you have to consider the bigger picture, which is what it is giving you."
"Akamai Guardicore Segmentation is expensive."
"The solution is reasonably priced and I would rate it a six out of ten. The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"The customer would complain about the cost."
"Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."
"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
"The product's pricing policy is generally favorable."
"The pricing and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud have been good for us. We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license."
"Defender's basic version is free, which is good. Many of our teams are evaluating the paid version against third-party products."
"Azure Defender is definitely pricey, but their competitors cost about the same. For example, a Palo Alto solution is the same price per endpoint, but the ground strikes cost a bit more than Azure Defender. Still, it's pricey for a company like ours. Maybe well-established organizations can afford it, but it might be too costly for a startup."
"They have a free version, but the license for this one isn't too high. It's free to start with, and you're charged for using it beyond 30 days. Some other pieces of Defender are charged based on usage, so you will be charged more for a high volume of transactions. I believe Defender for Cloud is a daily charge based on Azure's App Service Pricing."
"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing. If you have Cloud for Key Vault, the pricing is different than it is for storage. Every type has its own pricing list and rules."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?
The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?
SentinelOne is relatively cheap. If ten is the most expensive, I would rate it a seven.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
The areas with room for improvement include the cost, which is higher compared to other security platforms. The dashb...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Guardicore Centra?
I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. I know other micro-segmentation t...
What do you like most about Guardicore Infection Monkey?
Initially, I liked the telemetry part. But later, we used the microsegmentation features that we were able to deploy ...
What needs improvement with Guardicore Infection Monkey?
When we have more than one interface, we can only have one policy for both interfaces. Normally, you have assets with...
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening acros...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against ...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
Guardicore Centra, GuardiCore
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Learn More

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Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Santander, Frontier Airlines, OpenLink, Intermountain Healthcare, Cellcom, BancoBASE
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.