Amazon Inspector vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Amazon Inspector vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

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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

Amazon Inspector

Ranking in Vulnerability Management

21st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Vendor Risk Management (6th)

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Ranking in Vulnerability Management

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Container Management (7th), Container Security (6th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Inspector is 1.4%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 3.3%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	3.3%
Amazon Inspector	1.4%
Other	95.3%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Abdalla Kenawy

AWS DevOps SRE/Infrastructure Engineer at Capgemini

Automated insights streamline data security assessment

For Amazon Inspector, we have many EC2 or virtual machines deployed inside our AWS environment, and the problem is that the existing package deployed inside this EC2 instance has already outdated packages. As we progress with time, this package needs to be updated for security enhancement, which requires us to uninstall the package, install the new version, and then we should be fine. However, the challenge comes with how to scan all our EC2 instances for security vulnerabilities, which is currently managed by Amazon Inspector. Amazon Inspector can scan EC2 instances or ECR, which is the ECR registry where we can save artifacts Docker images. Amazon Inspector can also scan Docker images uploaded to ECR for Elastic Registry service, and it can scan databases and S3 based on the latest updates. I noticed this from a couple of months ago, and it provides huge benefits for security. Regarding the best features of Amazon Inspector, it gives us a list of all existing outdated packages as part of a deployed package on EC2 instances or specific Python packages that are part of the Docker file and the Docker image itself, which are causing security concerns. Amazon Inspector can list these security concerns and offer guidance on how we can remediate it by updating the package to a specific upper version or something similar.

Read full review

Shivam Dhang

IT Infrastructure & Cloud Manager at Softcell Technologies Limited

Continuous posture management has improved cloud risk visibility and accelerated remediation

The best features Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers are the CSPM, which includes continuous posture assessment with prioritized misconfiguration fixes that gives us clear visibility of cloud risk and drift across the environment. Additionally, the CWPP has strong runtime protection for VMs, containers, and PaaS, including multi-cloud visibility. The single pane for Azure, AWS plus GCP with consistent policies and recommendations is noteworthy. What stands out most is the combination of posture management plus runtime protection, which provides both preventive and detective control in one platform. Since using Microsoft Defender for Cloud, we have seen a positive impact such as improved security posture with clear visibility via secure score that helped reduce misconfiguration significantly over time. There has also been faster risk remediation, as we have prioritized recommendations plus auto remediation which has reduced fix time from days to hours for common issues. Better workload protection has resulted in earlier detection of suspicious activity on VMs or containers, preventing potential compromise and lateral movement. The biggest impact is proactive risk reduction plus faster remediation across cloud environments. From our experience, misconfiguration has been reduced to a 40 to 55% drop in critical issues such as public exposures, weak NSG, and IAM gaps within the first few months after continuous tuning. We have saved time with the remediation time reduced by 50 to 60%, or from days to a few hours using prioritized recommendations plus auto remediation. Additionally, secure score improvement has typically risen from a 50 to 55% baseline to 80 to 85% after structured remediation cycles, which were measured by tracking secure score trends, the number of open recommendations, and mean time to remediate.

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

"The most valuable feature of Amazon Inspector is the categorization of findings, which filters vulnerabilities by instance, container image, container repository, and Lambda function."

"My experience with AWS technical support is very good, I didn't face any specific challenges, and even the documentation of AWS is good for both Microsoft, which is Azure, and AWS."

"I recommend Amazon Inspector because it allows the automation of processes and requires less manual monitoring."

"Amazon Inspector is highly stable, rated ten out of ten, and this stability impacts business security and administration positively."

"It operates continuously, so as soon as resources are created, it scans them for vulnerabilities."

"The findings dashboards are neat and easy to understand, offering clear demarcations for different types of findings and detailed insights into specific vulnerabilities and their associated instances. It is not a place where everything is dumped together. It offers an easy-to-understand layout."

"The scalability of the solution itself is unparalleled."

"The vulnerability discovery is valuable, and they also rank those vulnerabilities for you. So, you could rapidly attack some of the higher, severe vulnerabilities as they pop up, if they do pop up."

More Amazon Inspector pros

"It improves the transparency and visibility of the traffic in and out of the network of each workload on my system."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has significantly enhanced our overall security posture by approximately 20 to 25 percent."

"Since using Microsoft Defender for Cloud, we have seen a positive impact such as improved security posture with clear visibility via secure score that helped reduce misconfiguration significantly over time."

"The feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud that I appreciate most is the ability to view logs of applications, as I find it much clearer to understand what is running."

"The solution has also simplified management of endpoints and servers and gives us visibility in a single pane of glass."

"The solution is quite good and addresses many security gaps."

"The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications."

"The pricing is good."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"It has a limited scope. So, AWS Inspector primarily focuses on the security of the EC2 instance. So, if your architecture includes other AWS services, then you may need to use additional tools for your comprehensive security assessment. So that is one con. Another is, like, we have a dependency on agents."

"There are challenges associated with the interdependencies in AWS services, like requiring an Active Directory for other services, resulting in additional charges."

"There isn't too much to improve right now. Scanning on demand or as a part of the pipeline versus a post pipeline solution would be good, but it is not a deal breaker by any means."

"The other point is that the reporting features of Inspector need improvement. For example, I am in an organization with millions of CVEs, and getting an overview of all this is challenging."

"One major area for improvement is remediation. My team works on remediating findings over time, likely using available patches. However, easier integration with Amazon's patching services would be very helpful."

"The false positive rate of Amazon Inspector is a little high, and it is not covering all different applications and scanning."

"One area for improvement in Amazon Inspector is the automation aspect."

"The most challenging aspect I faced with Amazon Inspector during integration was automating the remediation process."

More Amazon Inspector cons

"I would like to have the ability to customize executive reporting."

"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a six out of 10 due to its lack of necessary features to operate as a standalone solution."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud could improve with more granular policy customization and better noise reduction in alerts to minimize false positives."

"I don't know what the issue is but when we do the agent deployment, sometimes it works, and sometimes it fails and we need to go inside the virtual machine and manually install the agent."

"To improve Microsoft Defender for Cloud, I think pricing-wise, the license price is a little bit higher from an ingestion cost perspective."

"If a customer is already using Okta as an SSO in its entire environment, they will want to continue with it. But Security Center doesn't understand that and keeps making recommendations. It would help if it let us resolve a recommendation, even if it is not implemented."

"Sometimes, it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or certain kinds of products. That's not an issue directly with the product, though."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very transparent and clear."

"It is scaled as you go. There are probably a certain number of scans per month, and there are tiers. If you're under a certain tier, it is free. The second level is pennies, and then all the way up to like a million. So, it has a tiered pricing program. They're pretty good with your initial scanning, and there is room to scale based on being affordable, but it is fairly cheap. There are no additional costs. They pretty much think about it as a pay-per-scan type model."

"It's priced according to market standards for its services."

"The lowest cost would be around $10 for a few small accounts, however, for thousands of accounts, it could be around $5000 to $6000 dollars per month."

"Defender's basic version is free, which is good. Many of our teams are evaluating the paid version against third-party products."

"There are improvements that have to be made to the licensing. Currently, for servers, it has to be done by grouping the servers on a single subscription... We don't have an option whereby, if all those resources are in one subscription, we can have each of the individual servers subject to different planning."

"The product's pricing policy is generally favorable."

"Pricing is difficult because each license has its own metrics and cost."

"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."

"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."

"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."

"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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892,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	49

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Inspector?

I am not honestly sure about the pricing side of Amazon Inspector, but that is taken care of by a separate team. I believe it's cheaper than the other third-party solutions.

What needs improvement with Amazon Inspector?

They might launch support for third-party environments in the next version regarding the best features in Amazon Inspector from my perspective. The false positive rate of Amazon Inspector is a litt...

What is your primary use case for Amazon Inspector?

I mostly use Amazon Inspector for vulnerability scanning on AWS native applications. For hybrid applications, we have different security scanners.

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 across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...

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

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was that the license cost was the only consideration. Setup and support had no issues.

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

To improve Microsoft Defender for Cloud, I think pricing-wise, the license price is a little bit higher from an ingestion cost perspective. Depending on what license you choose, you might have to p...

Tenable Nessus vs Amazon Inspector

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 6% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 4% of the time

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AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 30% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Amazon Inspector

Download Amazon Inspector product report

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft

Overview

Amazon Inspector offers automated vulnerability detection, scanning AWS workloads and recommending remediation, ensuring enhanced security without constant supervision.

Amazon Inspector provides advanced automated vulnerability assessments, specifically designed for AWS environments. It scans EC2 instances, ECR, and container images for vulnerabilities, ranking them by priority. With capabilities like integration with CloudTrail and CloudWatch, adherence to compliance benchmarks, and a comprehensive view for diverse resources, it supports continuous detection and detailed reporting. Users can schedule regular scans, maintaining strong security oversight. Current feedback highlights a need for improved scanning of EBS, S3, and EFS, as well as expanded databases and better patch integration.

What features make Amazon Inspector stand out?

Automated Vulnerability Assessments: Detects and prioritizes vulnerabilities in AWS workloads.
Continuous Detection: Keeps an eye on EC2, ECR, and container images for ongoing risk management.
Integration Capabilities: Works with CloudTrail and CloudWatch to centralize oversight and alerts.
Compliance Adherence: Aligns with industry benchmarks for strengthened regulatory compliance.
Detailed Reporting: Provides comprehensive reports with findings and CVEs.

What benefits do users gain from Amazon Inspector?

Enhanced Security: Automates vulnerability detection, reducing manual efforts.
Efficiency: Identifies and prioritizes threats, streamlining resource allocation.
Comprehensive Oversight: Detailed reports improve understanding and response strategies.
Regulatory Compliance: Aligns with compliance standards, aiding legal adherence.

Amazon Inspector is utilized across industries, including finance, healthcare, and tech, assisting with robust security management in cloud-native environments. By integrating with services like Security Hub and SIEM, businesses maintain compliance and streamline alert management. This solution supports broader security frameworks, often paired with third-party tools to enhance protection strategies.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security platform offering integration with Microsoft services, multi-cloud capability, AI-driven threat detection, compliance, and unified visibility for improved security operations.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud manages security operations by integrating with Microsoft services and supporting multi-cloud environments. Its features include AI-driven threat detection, compliance oversight, and advanced threat protection. It simplifies processes with unified visibility, threat intelligence, and automated workflows, enhancing security posture across various workloads. Despite its robust capabilities, improvements are needed in third-party tool integration, comprehensive AI-driven remediation, and a more intuitive dashboard. Users report complexity in licensing, inadequate documentation, and high costs, with room for enhancements in compliance reporting and multi-cloud support.

What are the key features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

Integration with Microsoft Services: Seamlessly integrates with Microsoft platforms for streamlined operations.
Multi-Cloud Capability: Supports various cloud environments for broader coverage.
AI-Driven Threat Detection: Uses AI to identify and counter security threats effectively.
Compliance Features: Offers regulatory compliance tools to ensure adherence to standards.
Unified Visibility: Provides a comprehensive view of security operations for better management.
Endpoint Management: Manages and secures endpoint devices efficiently.
Advanced Threat Protection: Delivers enhanced defense against complex threats.
Vulnerability Management: Identifies and addresses vulnerabilities proactively.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Enhanced Security Posture: Strengthens security across multiple environments.
Unified Threat Intelligence: Centralizes threat data for informed decision-making.
Automated Processes: Streamlines security operations with automated workflows.
Prioritized Remediation: Offers prioritized actions to address security challenges efficiently.

Industries leverage Microsoft Defender for Cloud for security posture management and endpoint protection. Many companies integrate it with Office 365 for enhanced functionality. It provides comprehensive security overviews by monitoring cloud vulnerabilities, limiting unauthorized access, and replacing existing tools with its extensive capabilities from network security to compliance checks, securing Azure infrastructure, and enhancing client security.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

betterment, caplinked, flatiron, university of nutri dame

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Amazon Inspector vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud