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Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

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 Container Security
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
3rd
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), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Compliance Management (3rd)
Aqua Cloud Security Platform
Ranking in Container Security
17th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
15th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (13th), Software Supply Chain Security (9th), DevSecOps (9th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Security
4th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Aqua Cloud Security Platform is 3.4%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 13.0%, down from 14.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

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.
Burak AKCAGUN - PeerSpot reviewer
A robust and cost-effective solution, excelling in scalability, on-premises support, and responsive technical support, making it well-suited for enterprises navigating stringent regulatory environment
The most crucial aspect is runtime protection, specifically image scanning before preproduction and deployment. Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar to a sandbox environment. This feature ensures that customers can identify any potential issues with the image, such as misconfigurations or vulnerabilities, before integrating it into their workloads and infrastructure. In their source pipeline, companies can identify issues before deploying changes. This is crucial because customers prefer resolving any problems or misconfigurations before the deployment process. Software change security, including GSPM Cloud, is a key feature customers seek in their infrastructure.
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

"They're responsive to feature requests. If I suggest a feature for Prisma, I will need to wait until the next release on their roadmap. Cloud Native Security will add it right away."
"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 UI is very good."
"PingSafe offers three key features: vulnerability management notifications, cloud configuration assistance, and security scanning."
"PingSafe has a dashboard that can detect the criticality of a particular problem, whether it falls under critical, medium, or low vulnerability."
"The most valuable features are automated threat response, AI detection, and static and dynamic detection."
"SentinelOne stands out with its responsiveness to feature requests for Singularity Cloud Security."
"PingSafe's integration is smooth. They are highly customer-oriented, and the integration went well for us."
"Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar to a sandbox environment."
"Valuable features include the ability to connect it to our Docker Hub where our images are stored, good integration with Slack, and the connection to the CV, to easily see which CVs are on each image."
"The most valuable feature of Aqua Security is the scanner."
"The CSPM product is great at securing our cloud accounts and I really like the runtime protection for containers and functions too."
"The most valuable feature is the security."
"Support is very helpful."
"The solution was very user-friendly."
"The container security element of this product has been very valuable to our organization."
"Technical support is helpful."
"The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very good."
"Defender lets you orchestrate the roll-out from a single pane. Using the Azure portal, you can roll it out over all the servers covered by the entire subscription."
"The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."
"I find Microsoft Defender for Cloud's KQL very flexible and powerful. It's really easy to search through with KQL queries to find the security breaches and incidents and to track down the breach itself."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable as advertised."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud monitors our entire cloud environment. It enables conditional access and incorporates features like number matching and single sign-on for all our cloud apps. It is great for protecting against ransomware and various security threats."
"DSPM is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"PingSafe can improve by eliminating 100 percent of the false positives."
"The documentation that I use for the initial setup can be more detailed or written in a more user-friendly language to avoid troubles."
"To enhance the notification system's efficiency, resolved issues should be promptly removed from the portal."
"For SentinelOne, improvements could be made in managing Internet dependency as cloud-based operations can pose challenges in environments with limited connectivity."
"Cloud Native Security's reporting could be better. We are unable to see which images are impacted. Several thousand images have been deployed, so if we can see some application-specific information in the dashboard, we can directly send that report to the team that owns the application. We'd also like the option to download the report from the portal instead of waiting for the report to be sent to our email."
"While SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers robust protection, its cost could be a barrier for some users."
"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."
"The cloud-based operations might pose challenges in areas with limited or unavailable internet connectivity."
"Aqua Security could provide more open documentation so that their learning resources can be more easily accessed and searched through online. Right now, a lot of the documentation is closed and not available to the public."
"Aqua Security lacks a lot in reporting."
"It's a bit hard to use the user roles. That was a bit confusing."
"Sometimes I got stressed with the UI."
"The solution could improve user-friendliness."
"There's room for improvement, particularly in management capabilities as it may not be comprehensive enough for all customers, and it has been lacking in the realm of cloud security posture management."
"Since we are working from home, we would like to have the proper training for Aqua."
"The user interface could be improved, especially in terms of organization and clarity."
"With the new Copilot functionality available everywhere, it is challenging to pinpoint areas for improvement. If I put in a lot of thought, I might identify things, but right now, nothing significant pops into my mind, but there is always room for more transparency, especially in pricing."
"The vulnerabilities are duplicated many times."
"The range of workloads is broad, but we'd love to add more workloads and make it a single security solution that covers all those workloads."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters. It could be cheaper."
"Most customer teams need more training on this type of product."
"Microsoft can improve the pricing by offering a plan that is more cost-effective for small and medium organizations."
"If they had an easier way to display all the vulnerabilities of the machines affected and remediation steps on one screen rather than having to dive deep into each of them, that would be a lot easier."
"The solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SentinelOne offers excellent pricing and licensing options."
"PingSafe's pricing is good because it provides us with a solution."
"The pricing is somewhat high compared to other market tools."
"It's not expensive. The product is in its initial growth stages and appears more competitive compared to others. It comes in different variants, and I believe the enterprise version costs around $55 per user per year. I would rate it a five, somewhere fairly moderate."
"Their pricing appears to be based simply on the number of accounts we have, which is common for cloud-based products."
"PingSafe is less expensive than other options."
"I am not involved in the pricing, but it is cost-effective."
"The pricing is fair. It is not inexpensive, and it is also not expensive. When managing a large organization, it is going to be costly, but it meets the business needs. In terms of what is out there on the market, it is fair and comparable to what I have seen, so I do not have any complaints about the cost"
"The pricing of this solution could be improved."
"Aqua Security is not cheap, and it's not very expensive, such as Splunk, they are in the middle."
"They were reasonable with their pricing. They were pretty down-to-earth about the way they pitched their product and the way they tried to close the deal. They were one of the rare companies that approached the whole valuation in a way that made sense for our company, for our needs, and for their own requirements as well... They will accommodate your needs if they are able to understand them and they're stated clearly."
"Dealing with licensing costs isn't my responsibility, but I know that the licenses don't depend on the number of users, but instead are priced according to your workload."
"It comes at a reasonable cost."
"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
"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."
"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."
"Pricing depends on your workload size, but it is very cheap. If you're talking about virtual machines, it is $5 or something for each machine, which is minimal. If you go for some agent-based solution for every virtual machine, then you need to pay the same thing or more than that. For an on-premises solution like this, we were paying around $30 to $50 based on size. With Defender, Microsoft doesn't bother about the size. You pay based on the number of machines. So, if you have 10 virtual machines, and 10 virtual machines are being monitored, you are paying based on that rather than the size of the virtual machine. Thus, you are paying for the number of units rather than paying for the size of your units."
"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."
"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."
"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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?
From my personal experience, the alerting system needs to be faster. If something happens in our infrastructure, the ...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...
What do you like most about Aqua Security?
Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aqua Security?
It comes at a reasonable cost. When compared to Prisma Cloud, it is more budget-friendly.
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
Aqua Security Platform, CloudSploit, Argon
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
HPE Salesforce Telstra Ellie Mae Cathay Pacific HomeAway
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 Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.