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Bitdefender GravityZone XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud 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

Bitdefender GravityZone XDR
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (21st)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (4th), 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

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Bitdefender GravityZone XDR is designed for Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and holds a mindshare of 0.6%, up 0.4% compared to last year.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP), holds 13.9% mindshare, down 17.0% since last year.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

SimonClark - PeerSpot reviewer
Good quality ransomware antivirus that provides automatic patch management
Bitdefender GravityZone XDR is a good quality ransomware antivirus product. We like it because it's an industry-quality antivirus as opposed to some of the better-known ones like Symantec or Norton. Bitdefender has a better reputation for being up-to-date and picking up more threats. Patch management is important to keeping companies secure. The solution has an automatic patch management capability. Customers never find their software or operating systems vulnerable because Bitdefender would have automatically patched them. Bitdefender sells XDR and EDR products, but we tend to stop at the EDR level. BitDefender has lots of modules if people want to pay for them. We primarily push encryption patching and antivirus and integrate that into the security operations center.
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

"I find that the auto-response capability is most valuable."
"It provides an in-depth analysis and gives recommendations, along with a historical search capability."
"The HyperDetect feature in GravityZone XDR is effective."
"I appreciate the overall utilization of AI to enhance security posture."
"I would rate GravityZone XDR more than nine out of ten."
"Scalability is pretty easy. It's easy to increase the capacity. You can just add on licenses to the existing license, and the duration of the license can be adjusted. For example, you've already bought a license for a year, and you want to add some more users. We can just add on licenses for the remaining period so that the entire organization can have the same expiry date. That makes renewal easier."
"The solution has an automatic patch management capability."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a valuable tool that integrates seamlessly with Azure Policy and our Security SIEM, simplifying implementation and enhancing security posture."
"When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard. This gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about the email, sorting out the email, or looking at it through an ITSM solution, whey they have to look at the description and use cases. Efficiency increases with this optimized, ready-made solution since you don't need to invest in something externally. You can start using the dashboard and auditing capability provided from day one. Thus, you have fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution, providing operational efficiency for your team."
"It works seamlessly on the Azure platform because it's a Microsoft app. Its setup is similar, so if you already have a Microsoft account, it just flows into it."
"It's got a lot of great features."
"The main feature is the security posture assessment through the security score. I find that to be very helpful because it gives us guidance on what needs to be secured and recommendations on how to secure the workloads that have been onboarded."
"The most valuable features are the security recommendations provided by Defender for Cloud."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable as advertised."
"Some of the most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud include its effectiveness in threat detection through unsupervised machine learning, CTI, and advanced sandboxing."
 

Cons

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The product could be improved by offering a single panel for the management of all Bitdefender products."
"The resource consumption is high for Bitdefender GravityZone XDR, nearly using one gigabyte of RAM, especially on Windows 10 and 11."
"It's not very mature, and additional costs are involved."
"The product could be improved by offering a single panel for the management of all Bitdefender products. Additionally, there might be a need to simplify the interface in the future."
"Another area of improvement is CPU utilization. CPU utilization could be improved."
"The resource consumption is high for Bitdefender GravityZone XDR, nearly using one gigabyte of RAM, especially on Windows 10 and 11."
"Defender is occasionally unreliable. It isn't 100% efficient in terms of antivirus detection, but it isn't an issue most of the time. It's also somewhat difficult to train new security analysts to use Defender."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"Integration into other third-party products, particularly those from tier three vendors like ManageEngine and Hexcode, has proven difficult."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises."
"The remediation process could be improved."
"Defender could improve how data is represented. It can be unstructured or slow to load. The recent update allowing policy grouping into control groups is beneficial, but further enhancements for speed and clarity are needed."
"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"It's not the price of the software itself that makes it expensive. It's because you have to buy a VM; you have to buy additional hardware. All those things make it slightly costlier."
"The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have."
"The solution is expensive, and I rate it a five to six out of ten."
"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."
"They have a free version, but the license for this one isn't too high. It's free to start with, and you're charged for using it beyond 30 days. Some other pieces of Defender are charged based on usage, so you will be charged more for a high volume of transactions. I believe Defender for Cloud is a daily charge based on Azure's App Service Pricing."
"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."
"Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."
"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."
"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Extended Detection and Response (XDR) solutions are best for your needs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Hospitality Company
7%
Cloud Solution Provider
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Bitdefender GravityZone XDR?
Scalability is pretty easy. It's easy to increase the capacity. You can just add on licenses to the existing license, and the duration of the license can be adjusted. For example, you've already b...
What needs improvement with Bitdefender GravityZone XDR?
The product could be improved by offering a single panel for the management of all Bitdefender products. Additionally, there might be a need to simplify the interface in the future.
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 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 higher than expected.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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 CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Wazuh and others in Extended Detection and Response (XDR). Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.