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Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.0
SentinelOne Singularity boosts efficiency, cuts costs, automates threat mitigation, and integrates smoothly, enhancing security and reducing manual efforts.
Sentiment score
8.1
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) offers varying financial outcomes, with users experiencing cost savings and positive returns, depending on use cases.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers cost-effective security, enhancing efficiency and preventing breaches through seamless Azure integration and proactive features.
The detailed information PingSafe gives about how to fix vulnerabilities reduces the time spent on remediation by about 70 to 80 percent.
After implementing SentinelOne, it takes about five to seven minutes.
Our ability to get in and review our vulnerability stance, whether daily, monthly, weekly, or whatever it might be, has drastically improved over our prior provider.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
The biggest return on investment is the rapid improvement of security posture.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.7
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is praised for prompt, courteous support, despite occasional delays and variable agent expertise.
Sentiment score
6.0
Azure Kubernetes Service support receives mixed reviews, with helpful assistance praised but delays and complex processes noted by users.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud support is effective, but satisfaction varies based on support tier and representative expertise.
When we send an email, they respond quickly and proactively provide solutions.
They took direct responsibility for the system and could solve queries quickly.
Having a reliable team ready and willing to assist with any issues is essential.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers scalable, seamless agent expansion and high user satisfaction across diverse environments and organizational needs.
Sentiment score
8.1
Azure Kubernetes Service excels in scalability, offering strong auto-scaling, adaptability, and global distribution, despite noted high costs.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is praised for its scalability, supporting diverse organization sizes and efficient handling of workloads.
As soon as we need to add somebody, we just add them to NinjaOne, and then we have a script set up where it automatically deploys and adds them to whichever group we need.
I would rate it a 10 out of 10 for scalability.
Scalability is no longer a concern because Cloud Native Security is a fully cloud-based resource.
AKS offers excellent scalability due to its adaptation from Kubernetes.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
Defender won't replace our endpoint XDR, but it will likely adapt and support any growth in the Microsoft Cloud space.
There might be scalability issues as you scale up to large enterprises.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud is praised for its stability, receiving high ratings despite occasional UI lag and minor issues.
Sentiment score
7.4
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is reliable, stable, with minor issues, offering self-healing and effective monitoring capabilities.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable, with minor issues in portal access and agent deployment noted.
In my experience, there has been 100 percent uptime.
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud is incredibly reliable.
The cloud console is very resilient.
From my usage, I would rate its stability as eight to nine out of ten.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
 

Room For Improvement

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud needs better search, firewall, integration, and user experience, with cost and support improvements for smaller businesses.
Azure Kubernetes Service needs enhanced alerting, support, and usability with better cost, integration, logging, and documentation for improvements.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud needs improvements in usability, integration, customization, pricing, and comprehensive documentation to enhance its utility.
If I had to ask for anything to make it easier, it would be signed images that are GPG signed and a public repository where we can get the bits from.
If they can merge Kubernetes Security with other modules related to Kubernetes, that would help us to get more modules in the current subscription.
As organizations move to the cloud, a cloud posture management tool that offers complete cloud visibility becomes crucial for maintaining compliance.
The costs are rising rapidly, and we have not seen any cost reductions by moving to Azure.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
It would be beneficial to streamline recommendations to avoid unnecessary alerts and to refine the severity of alerts based on specific environments or environmental attributes.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
 

Setup Cost

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers flexible, competitive pricing, though perceptions vary, especially among smaller businesses.
Azure Kubernetes Service's costs are perceived as high but offer reasonable licensing with flexible payment plans and manageability advantages.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers competitive pricing but may incur hidden costs, affecting budgeting and cost-effectiveness evaluations.
With very little negotiation involved, we just let them know what we could pay and they were willing to meet us at slightly above what we paid with Sophos, which was still very fair for what we were looking at.
The price was very, very important to us, and it came down to the price when we were doing our evaluations WatchGuard and SentinelOne.
Covering our 50,000 endpoints would have nearly bankrupted most security programs, even well-funded ones like ours.
Transitioning to Azure did not bring cost reductions; in fact, costs are rising rapidly.
The pricing for Azure Kubernetes Service seems to be around the average, which I would rate as a five out of ten.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters.
 

Valuable Features

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud offers intuitive management, real-time threat detection, automated remediation, and seamless integrations for efficient cybersecurity management.
Azure Kubernetes Service offers robust security, scalability, and integration features, excelling in orchestration and efficiency for large workloads.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security with AI-driven detection, multi-cloud support, compliance management, and seamless integration with Microsoft Sentinel.
The real-time detection and response capabilities of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud impressive because it is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to determine what is normal and what is abnormal and can lock down any virus it may encounter.
We were shown how ransomware can be immediately stopped in real-time. That was huge.
Our previous product took a lot of man hours to manage. Once we got Singularity Cloud Workload Security, it freed up our time to work on other tasks.
The most valuable features of Azure Kubernetes Service are its integration with Kubernetes, offering similar features for a seamless experience.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
 

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
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Ranking in Container Security
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Cloud and Data Center Security (5th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (4th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Ranking in Container Security
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Security
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is 0.7%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 7.2%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Security
 

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.
Raymond De Rooij - PeerSpot reviewer
Scalability and flexibility but needs better support
We are using Azure Kubernetes Service as a customer. I cannot detail all the products and technologies we are using There isn't one specific feature of Azure Kubernetes Service that I can name as most valuable. It's part of a strategic solution yet I don't see an advantage compared to our…
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
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?
It is cost-effective compared to other solutions in the market.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
In version 2, a lot of rules have been deployed for Kubernetes security and CDR, which makes a lot of issues of criti...
What do you like most about Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
The platform's high scalability is one of its biggest advantages.
What needs improvement with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
One improvement I'd like to see is a better user interface for developers, enabling easier operation without relying ...
What is your primary use case for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?
My primary use case is building and deploying solutions using multiple Azure services. I combine these services to bu...
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?
Initially, the cost was reasonable, but additional services from Microsoft sometimes incur extra expenses that seem h...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
No data available
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
Information Not Available
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 Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.