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inside our AWS environment, and the problem is that the existing package deployed inside this EC2 instance has already outdated packages.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 integration of Amazon Inspector with other AWS services has enhanced our security. Security Hub is a major asset because it allows us to centralize data from various AWS services. We can integrate third-party tools as well. It is just a single-click option."

"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."

"The assessment reports provided by Amazon Inspector have helped me in identifying security vulnerabilities in my cloud applications by giving us a nicely designed dashboard that provides all the security information we need to work on remediation."

"The scalability of the solution itself is unparalleled."

"It is scanning the whole repository for any sort of vulnerabilities, so it allows us to be more confident in our DevSecOps and not put a lot of folks or attention to it."

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

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

"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."

More Amazon Inspector pros

"For any type of service, I would recommend the go-to solution for security on Azure is Security Center."

"The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."

"Defender for Cloud provides a prioritized list of remediations for security issues, reducing risk and improving security operations."

"When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard, which gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about emails or ITSM tools, resulting in fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution and providing operational efficiency for your team from day one."

"The solution has improved our organization in terms of benchmarking, our Secure Score has improved a lot, and we're compliant with particular benchmarks."

"Our main use cases for Microsoft Defender for Cloud involve scanning PCs."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has improved our security poster by at least 100 percent."

"Defender for Cloud is an improvement over Trend Micro, our previous solution. We like integrating our endpoints and visualizing everything in one place. It provides comprehensive coverage for endpoints, servers, and overall environmental security."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

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

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

"It has automated vulnerability assessment, yet I seek more flexibility in defining custom vulnerability checks tailored to my needs, which is more difficult."

"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."

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

"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."

More Amazon Inspector cons

"There is no perfect product in the world and there are always features that can be added."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."

"The remediation process could be improved."

"When you work with it, the only problem that we're struggling with is that we have 21 different subscriptions we're trying to apply security to. It's impossible to keep everything organized."

"Another thing is that Defender for Cloud uses more resources than for instance, CrowdStrike, which my current company uses."

"The solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge."

"I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"The pricing is very transparent and clear."

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

"Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services."

"There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."

"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."

"Understanding the costs of cloud services can be complicated at first. As with a lot of things in the cloud, it can be quite hard to understand the end cost, but it becomes clearer over time. Early on, the lack of transparency is a challenge. Microsoft does not tell you the cost when they launch something. It is clever marketing, and there is room for improvement there. There should be clarity from the start."

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

"Defender for Cloud is pretty costly for a single line. It's incredibly high to pay monthly for security per server. The cost is considerable for an enterprise with 500-plus virtual machines, and the monthly bill can spike."

"There are two different plans. We're using the secure basic plan, but we have used the end security plan as well. There are additional costs, but it gives us more functionalities compared to the basic plan."

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

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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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

Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time

Rapid7 Metasploit vs Amazon Inspector

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

More Amazon Inspector Competitors

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