Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Avanan vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 enhances security, reduces costs, integrates effectively with Microsoft tools, and boosts productivity, offering significant ROI.
Sentiment score
8.4
Avanan improved email security, reduced phishing, increased user trust, enhanced mobile protection, and boosted ROI and revenue growth.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps delivers 35%-60% cost savings through enhanced security, operational efficiency, and seamless integration with Microsoft products.
It has also decreased our time to detection and response by about 15 to 20 percent.
The biggest return on investment so far has been visibility, knowing what we have in our environment.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 support is praised for responsiveness, though some users note templated responses and outdated documentation.
Sentiment score
8.1
Avanan's customer service is highly responsive, professional, and proactive, with excellent communication and extensive support staff knowledge.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps support is generally positive, but users experience varying response times and expertise levels.
Customer service and support have been fantastic.
Their customer service is pretty good, but it's frustrating to go through three or four channels before reaching the right person.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is highly scalable and easily accommodates thousands of users without performance issues, simplifying growth.
Sentiment score
8.2
Avanan integrates with Office 365 and Google, praised for scalability, admin capabilities, and efficient email protection across diverse organizations.
Sentiment score
8.3
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers scalability and flexibility, easily integrating apps and managing large enterprises' security needs.
For what I know about the log collector and how much data it can take in, it is super scalable and capable of handling high workloads.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is reliable and stable, boasting 99.9% availability and prompt resolutions to minor bugs.
Sentiment score
8.5
Avanan is highly praised for its stability, efficiency, security, minimal maintenance, seamless Microsoft 365 integration, and reliable AI-based scanning.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers reliable performance with minimal downtime, overcoming occasional external issues and network-related latency.
I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps.
Like any other Microsoft product, the uptime is good.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 requires enhancements in virus blocking, phishing detection, integration, scalability, support, and pricing transparency.
Users feel Avanan needs improvements in Active Directory dependency, email quarantining, AI logic, training, UI, performance, pricing, mobile app, and integrations.
Users suggest better integration, pricing, and UI for Apple and Microsoft tools, with enhancements in reporting, support, and threat protection.
I would reduce the cost.
For data loss prevention, it would be useful to be able to drill down into the kind of data being transferred over CloudApp.
We are having trouble with our continuous reporting configuration and struggling with configuring the collector properly with our log parsing.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is cost-effective for large enterprises but perceived as expensive for smaller businesses.
Avanan provides flexible pricing for Office 365, with straightforward setup and costs between $4 to $8 per user.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is cost-effective with Microsoft 365 bundles but pricey separately, with varied licensing complexity.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 provides comprehensive protection with seamless integration, simplifying security management and safeguarding remote work environments.
Avanan provides advanced malware and phishing detection, 24/7 cloud protection, easy integration with Microsoft 365, and ensures secure communications.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers integrated security, real-time alerts, and strong threat detection for comprehensive enterprise cloud protection.
It ranks the threats and allows us to prioritize those hitting us the hardest, such as email threats.
The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial.
We have also locked down our consent apps, so users can no longer consent on their own behalf to create apps in our environment.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Offi...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (1st), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Avanan
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (14th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (10th)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (13th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Email Security
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

Tolu Omolaja - PeerSpot reviewer
Great URL scanning and attachment scanning, but I would like more proactive threat analysis
The two main features that prove most beneficial for us are URL scanning and attachment scanning. URL scanning involves an automatic scan of links and emails. When a user clicks on a link within an email, the system promptly checks the link's safety. If the link is deemed safe, access is granted automatically. However, if it is flagged as unsafe, we receive feedback and notification to caution us about the potentially harmful link. At this point, we are presented with the option to proceed or return. I have personally witnessed the system identify a few unsafe links, making this the primary advantage of using the solution. The second crucial aspect is the scanning of attachments. When an email containing an attachment arrives, we receive a notification of the new email, along with information that the attachment is being scanned for threats. This additional layer of security provides peace of mind for our organization. While Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers numerous features, these two stand out as particularly impressive and valuable to us.
Robert Melendez - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhances email security and has a very simple and easy-to-use UI
Spam protection is the most valuable feature. We have implemented the tool to enhance our email security. It helps prevent phishing attacks. The anomaly detection capabilities are baked into the security platform. The product integrates wonderfully with Microsoft 365. It's built right on a cloud platform and works almost natively. The solution has a very simple and easy-to-use UI. The tool appears extremely powerful and has a good solid feature set. It catches things that are bad for my environment. The user interface is good the way it is. If the solution continues down that path, I see no problems with the way it is going. It feels like a mature product.
Jagadeesh Gunasekaran - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves us time, has good visibility, and a single dashboard
The solution is user-friendly and provides great visibility into threats. There are easy options available for specific workflow inspections. We can also get support by going through the Microsoft documentation, which is straightforward. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise. It covers us from a compliance perspective and protects our organization's data. Data protection is a very important aspect of any new organization, as we need to protect our data from both external attacks and insider threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us monitor for abnormal activity by insiders, which is one of the most important access points for attackers today. Additionally, the different cloud apps that Defender for Cloud Apps supports provide us with much more visibility into potential threats and activities on the internet. We have integrated Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps alerts with Sentinel. The integration is straightforward. We can find the configuration details on Microsoft's official documentation website. If we are familiar with how Microsoft products work, we will be able to follow the instructions clearly. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Sentinel work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. Our integrated Microsoft solutions provide comprehensive threat protection, covering most of the tactics and techniques relevant to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Sentinel allows us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. When implementing an SIEM solution, there are always prerequisites such as Active Directory logs, security logs, firewall logs, and DNS logs. These are important logs that need to be ingested into the environment. Sentinel has many third-party connectors available that make integrations straightforward. Microsoft provides the configuration details in the Sentinel platform. It is important to integrate all relevant log sources into the SIEM solution so that we can detect and be alerted to any type of threat factor, whether it is from an internal or external source. Integrating third-party solutions into the platform requires a separate configuration, but Microsoft provides the necessary information. However, we need to have the appropriate permissions to execute these setups. Sentinel provides a centralized dashboard that covers threat management and configuration. It gives us complete insight into what entities are accessing, as well as full details for investigation. We can see how the alerts and threats are relevant to suspicious activities, whether they are related to malicious IP addresses, suspicious ASHAs, or any other indicators of compromise. All of this relevant data can be seen in a single pane. Recently, Microsoft introduced a new investigation experience in a single pane. This means that we can now get a lot of details in a single pane, without having to go there and execute a query. There are a lot of new insights being developed in the Sentinel platform these days. It has software intelligence. They recently introduced Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, which covers almost all IOCs. This protects organizational assets from threats and suspicious traffic associated with IOCs. If a match is found, alerts are generated. This is a very interesting feature. Another great feature is automation and logic apps. We can create a number of operations, such as posting in a team's channel if a severe incident occurs or sending an email notification. There are many operations available, so we can automate a lot of tasks. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us stay compliant. It has predefined mechanisms in place to prevent attacks. For example, if an external user tries to access our SharePoint folders or files, an attack will be blocked. This is why it is important to give appropriate access to guest users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has many features and benefits. It provides a number of policies that can be configured to meet the specific needs of our security team. These policies can be used to customize cloud applications so that only authorized users can access them and perform operations that benefit the organization. In terms of safety and security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is top-notch. Using the solution's automation features, we can suppress false positive alerts. We can also close alerts, lower their severity from "high" to "low" or "informational," or close them immediately with the appropriate commands. This will depend on the configuration automation rule and the perspective from which we are testing. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps provides a single console. We are also provided with Microsoft templates to enable workbooks instantly. Alternatively, we can build our own customized workbooks to provide better insights and improve our SOC efficiency and overall performance. Consolidating all of our security data into one dashboard has saved our security operations team a significant amount of time. From an analyst's perspective, it is now much easier to correlate events, investigate alerts, and visualize specific entities. For example, an analyst can quickly see all of the alerts associated with a particular IP address, or they can view all of the activity for a specific entity over the past 24 hours or 7 days. This level of detail and insight would not be possible if our data were siloed in multiple dashboards. The single dashboard saves our operations approximately 20 hours per week by eliminating the need to access multiple consoles and tabs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps threat intelligence can help us prepare for potential threats before they happen. However, it depends on how we develop the policies for the database to block or ignore things in our environment.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Email Security solutions are best for your needs.
832,723 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
48%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
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 Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
Threat Explorer is an invaluable tool for me, and it plays a crucial role in helping me discern the origins of variou...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I don't have detailed specifics on pricing, setup cost, or licensing.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Office 365?
I am generally satisfied with how it currently is. If I could improve anything, I would reduce the cost.
What do you like most about Avanan?
Spam protection is the most valuable feature.
What needs improvement with Avanan?
Avanan doesn't cover certain tool segments. Barracuda provides backup and retention of emails and Microsoft 365’s bac...
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-nat...
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 notificatio...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
I'm familiar with the licensing requirements to get our job done, but not from a pricing standpoint. That is not my job.
 

Also Known As

MS Defender for Office 365
No data available
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is trusted by companies such as Ithaca College.
Bethel School District, ServiceSource, Capital Caring
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Proofpoint, Cisco and others in Email Security. Updated: January 2025.
832,723 professionals have used our research since 2012.