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AWS Security Hub vs Microsoft Defender XDR comparison

 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Security Hub
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (14th)
Microsoft Defender XDR
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. AWS Security Hub is designed for Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and holds a mindshare of 4.0%, down 5.5% compared to last year.
Microsoft Defender XDR, on the other hand, focuses on Extended Detection and Response (XDR), holds 6.2% mindshare, down 8.2% since last year.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers best practice recommendations and supports various compliance standards
Security Hub provides insightful information about what is running and where there might be weaknesses. It offers best practice recommendations and supports various compliance standards such as ISO and PCI DSS. Enabling these compliance checks helps identify non-compliant services and suggests steps to achieve compliance. The main advantage is providing information and compliance insights rather than prevention.
Gabor Nyerd - PeerSpot reviewer
Includes four services and four products, which can help organizations a lot
We found that sometimes integrations work, but testing them can take some time. Sometimes, configurations take much longer than expected. We have a configuration in place that needs to be synchronized with another server. However, the servers are four hours apart, so this can cause delays. In general, I believe that the time it takes to configure and test a service should be shorter. Sometimes, it can take a couple of hours to test a single configuration setting. Other times, it is only ten or fifteen minutes, which is normal. However, sometimes, even immediate actions can be triggered by configuration changes, and some settings can take up to eight hours to complete. I believe that this time can be improved. Microsoft is making a lot of improvements to its services in a short period of time. This is a good thing, as it means that the services are constantly being updated and improved. However, it can be challenging for customers to keep up with the changes. For example, a customer may read about an update, understand it, and share it with their colleagues and boss. However, it may take days or weeks to test the update and get the necessary approvals. This can be especially challenging for large customers with many users or machines. In some cases, Microsoft may change a service before the customer has had a chance to implement the previous update. This can be frustrating for customers, as it means that they have to constantly learn new things and adjust their workflows. On the one hand, it is important for Microsoft to keep updating and improving its services. This helps to ensure that the services are meeting the customers' needs and that they are staying ahead of the competition. Microsoft should also be mindful of the challenges that these changes can create for customers. One way to address this challenge is to provide customers with more time to implement changes. Microsoft could also provide more information about upcoming changes so that customers can plan ahead. Ultimately, Microsoft needs to strike a balance between keeping its services up-to-date and providing customers with a smooth transition to new features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AWS Security Hub can check your infrastructure against multiple compliance frameworks. You can turn on or off specific frameworks based on your needs."
"AWS Security Hub provides comprehensive alerts about potential compliance issues with CIS standards. The integration with third-party tools is another excellent feature. All our workloads are on AWS."
"Easily integrates with third-party tools"
"The most valuable features of the solution are the scanning of all the cloud environments and most of the compliances available in the cloud."
"Currently, our organization utilizes AWS for various purposes, including SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and hosting applications in the cloud. We develop our applications and use AWS services as a platform for basic functions and secondary development needs. Additionally, we rely on PaaS for accounting services. Approximately, 50% of our applications are hosted in the cloud environment, making it a significant part of our current setup."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Security Hub is the ability to track when monitoring is not enabled on any of my resources."
"I find all of the features to be highly valuable."
"Security Hub provides insightful information about what is running and where there might be weaknesses."
"Vulnerability assessment and just-in-time access are some valuable features of Defender for server plans."
"Another noteworthy feature that I find appealing in Microsoft Defender is the credit-backed simulation. This feature enables organizations to train their users on effectively responding to phishing emails through a simulated training environment."
"Scanning, vulnerability reporting, and the dashboard are the most valuable features."
"The integration between all the Defender products is the most valuable feature."
"I like that it's fully integrated with Windows, Microsoft 365 Exchange Online, and Outlook. It is better than other antivirus solutions because it's fully integrated with all Microsoft products. It's easy to integrate them and onboard all Windows devices from SCCM."
"We also use Microsoft Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, Defender for Identity, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. They are all integrated and it was very easy to integrate them. In my experience with the integrations, it was just a click of a button and things were integrated. It's just a button."
"The best feature is probably the alert generation. When I do a security reset, the other session triggers instantly from the Defender console, and I can work on it. The policies are three times, but they are also ready to install it."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that Microsoft Defender XDR is easy to integrate with other Microsoft platforms or products."
 

Cons

"Shortening the response time for support tickets, particularly in production issues, could make the service more efficient."
"The solution will only give you insight if you have configure rule enabled. It should work more like Prisma Cloud and Dome9 which have a better approach."
"Whenever my team gets some alarms from the central team, my team needs to initiate whether it's a real or false trigger. The central team needs to keep adjusting to the parameters or at least the concerned IPs, whether it's really from the company's pool of IPs, so the trigger process can be improved. In the next release of AWS Security Hub, I'd like a better dashboard that could result in better alert visibility."
"The support must be quicker."
"Adding SIEM features would be beneficial because of the limited customization of AWS Security Hub."
"From an improvement perspective, there is a need to add more compliance since, right now, AWS Security Hub only provides four to five compliances to control the tool."
"Although AWS Security Hub does a periodic scan of your overall infrastructure, it doesn't do it in real time."
"We need more granular-level customizations to enable or disable the rules in AWS Security Hub."
"One of the biggest downsides of Microsoft products, in general, is that the menus are often difficult to find, as they tend to move from place to place between versions."
"The abundance of sub-dashboards and sub-areas within the main dashboard can be confusing, even if it all technically makes sense."
"The licensing process needs improvement and clarification, as it is currently difficult to understand which features are licensed to which users."
"Microsoft support is not very good. You get stuck in low-level support for way longer than you should, instead of them escalating the issue up the chain."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is not a full-fledged EDR or XDR."
"The message trace feature for investigating mail flow issues should add more detailed information to the summary report... if they could extend the summary report a little bit, make it more descriptive, ordinary administrators could understand what happened and that the emails failed at this or that point. That way they would know the location to go to try to correct it and to prevent it from occurring again."
"Automated playbooks and automated dashboards would be preferable to the way the data is currently being presented."
"Microsoft frequently changes the names of its products, sometimes even renaming entire portals or features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Security Hub's pricing is pretty reasonable."
"The price of AWS Security Hub is average compared to other solutions."
"The pricing is fine. It is not an expensive tool."
"The price of the solution is not very competitive but it is reasonable."
"AWS Security Hub is not an expensive tool. I would consider it to be a cheap solution. AWS Security Hub follows the PAYG pricing model, meaning you will have to pay for whatever you use."
"There are multiple subscription models, like yearly, monthly, and packaged."
"The cost is based on the number of compliances, core checks, and services required, and for more than 10,000 recommendations, the charge is just one dollar."
"Security Hub is not an expensive solution."
"All I can say again is the E5 gives you all the capabilities that it offers. It also gives Office 365 and one terabyte of storage. All in all, the E5 license model makes sense. There are some people who say it's quite costly, but rather than paying different vendors, it makes sense to go all in with Microsoft if you've got that licensing. From that perspective, it's cost-effective, but I can't comment much on that."
"Microsoft Defender XDR is priced high."
"The solution is affordable, and we haven't been hit with any hidden costs. The subscription model is straightforward, and it's easy to understand how much additional features cost. If we need to cancel a license or feature, we do that well in advance to avoid being charged for it, but overall, the pricing and licensing are simple and easy."
"I find the pricing to be quite competitive, especially considering its inclusion in our E5 subscription, which provides a comprehensive set of functionalities."
"They have moved from a licensing model to pay-per-use... The question is: What happens if, for any reason, there's not enough budget to accept this model? That could be a great problem."
"It is fairly priced because we get complete integrated services with the E5 license."
"There are no issues with pricing, but sometimes, the clarity in licensing is a concern."
"For Defender, they have Endpoint Plan 1 and Endpoint Plan 2, but I don't know on what basis they have classified Endpoint Plan 1 and Plan 2, but it has given me enough pain to pick and design Endpoint Plan 1 or Endpoint Plan 2 for my organization. In fact, we are still struggling with it. Too many SKUs are confusing. There should not be too many SKUs, and they shouldn't charge for every new feature."
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Comparison Review

it_user186927 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 16, 2015
Cybereason vs. Interset vs. SQRRL
Capture DB - they all use NoSQL db and hence solve the ad hoc query and 'go back in time' problem with current best of breed SIEM and DLP solutions that rely on real time analysis of incoming logs (and don't store them). This means deeper and quicker iterative threat analysis and assessment…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel is auto-scaling - you will not have to worry about performance impact, you will...
What do you like most about AWS Security Hub?
The most valuable features of the solution are the scanning of all the cloud environments and most of the compliances available in the cloud.
What needs improvement with AWS Security Hub?
There is room for improvement in implementing AI capabilities. It would be beneficial for Security Hub to implement preventative measures and to directly apply recommendations instead of just sugge...
What do you like most about Microsoft 365 Defender?
Microsoft Defender XDR provides strong identity protection with comprehensive insights into risky user behavior and potential indicators of compromise.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft 365 Defender?
The pricing for Microsoft Sentinel operates on a pay-as-you-go model based on data ingestion. I recall that Defender XDR pricing is based on the number of endpoints.
What needs improvement with Microsoft 365 Defender?
For Microsoft Defender XDR ( /categories/extended-detection-and-response-xdr ), there is currently no ability to reset passwords for on-premises accounts, which is a key challenge. Incident managem...
 

Also Known As

SQRRL
Microsoft 365 Defender, Microsoft Threat Protection, MS 365 Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edmunds, Frame.io, GoDaddy, Realtor.com
Accenture, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Security Hub vs. Microsoft Defender XDR and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.