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BMC Helix Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
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Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Cloud and Data Center Security (5th), Container Security (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (3rd)
BMC Helix Cloud Security
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
24th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (10th), Container Security (5th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
 

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.
GregoireSoukiassian - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively addresses security concerns but could use enhancement in terms of integration
BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists of separate point solutions that don't flow together as seamlessly as they could. This lack of integration, unlike platforms like ServiceNow, may be due to historical factors. Enhancing this integration would make it a more compelling choice from a business perspective and offer a smoother user experience. In the next release of BMC Helix Cloud Security, I would like to see additional features, particularly AI integration, which has already been announced. AI integration could bring more precision to the platform, making it even more interesting and effective.
Javier_Rodriguez - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified security management enhances threat detection and streamlines user experience
At the moment, we work with Sophos, SentinelOne, or Microsoft Defender. Most of our customers have Microsoft infrastructure, and they are cloud-only customers with Microsoft business licensing. I primarily recommend Microsoft Defender for customers who already have Microsoft infrastructure The…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspect of Singularity Cloud Security is its unified dashboard."
"Cloud Native Security helps us discover vulnerabilities in a cloud environment like open ports that allow people to attack our environment. If someone unintentionally opens a port, we are exposed. Cloud Native Security alerts us so we can remediate the problem. We can also automate it so that Cloud Native Security will fix it."
"Singularity Cloud Native Security provides us with a platform to scan instances when they are getting created, and the dashboard helps us to identify the critical issues."
"PingSafe's most valuable feature is its unified console."
"We use the infrastructure as code scanning, which is good."
"The offensive security feature is valuable because it publicly detects the offensive and vulnerable things present in our domain or applications. It checks any applications with public access. Some of the applications give public access to certain files or are present over a particular domain. It detects and lets us know with evidence. That is quite good. It is protecting our infrastructure quite well."
"The mean time to detect has been reduced."
"The UI is very good."
"The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities."
"It's also multi-cloud. You can look at several cloud providers: AWS, Azure, or GCP."
"Role-based security is a valuable feature."
"The features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools."
"The cool feature of Helix Cloud Security is that you can do all that — understand and remediate issues — in one dashboard, based on the different policies that are available for security, out-of-the-box."
"The best feature is time to value. With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud. If you have Azure and AWS deployments, you might have multiple subscriptions in Azure and usually multiple accounts in AWS. You may even be doing some GCP work (around Google Cloud Platform). It's very difficult to manage a common set of policies, even less reporting, across multiple subscriptions, accounts, and cloud environments. What BMC Helix Cloud Security does is provide a unified view or single pane of glass as to your baseline. Then, it also facilitates the ability for Level 1 or 2 operations support to take action and report on security vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the insights, meaning the remediation suggestions, as well as the incident alerts."
"The vulnerability reporting is helpful. When we initially deployed Defender, it reported many more threats than we currently see. It gave us insight into areas we had not previously considered, so we knew where we needed to act."
"The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications."
"The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."
"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a nine out of 10."
"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the vulnerability assessments and the glossary of compliance."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the map feature improve. It's good, but it isn't fully developed. It lets us use custom resources and policies but does not allow us to perform some actions. I would also like more custom integration and runtime security for Kubernetes."
"The categorization of the results from the vulnerability assessment could be improved."
"The application module focuses on the different codes and libraries that can be run on the machines. It is very important for Singularity EDR to detect what type of codes and what type of libraries can run in the machine. If they can implement a white list or a black list of codes or libraries that can be used in the machine, it would be very helpful. They can focus more on the application module."
"I believe the UI/UX updates for SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security have room for improvement."
"The documentation that I use for the initial setup can be more detailed or written in a more user-friendly language to avoid troubles."
"The recommended actions aren't always specific, so it might suggest recommendations that don't apply to the particular infrastructure code I'm reviewing."
"PingSafe is an excellent CSPM tool, but the CWPP features need to improve, and there is a scope for more application security posture management features. There aren't many ASPM solutions on the market, and existing ones are costly. I would like to see PingSafe develop into a single pane of glass for ASPM, CSPM, and CWPP. Another feature I'd like to see is runtime protection."
"While it is good, I think the solution's console could be improved."
"I want the role-based security feature to be improved."
"Every organization out there doesn't rely on just one control body. They use FISMA control. They may use HIPAA, CIS, PCI, or SOX, then blend them. One of the things that is now in big demand for BMC Helix Cloud Security is content. That's the next journey in its lifespan, making it easier for the community to share and collaborate on content for security controls that can be measured and remediated."
"BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features."
"We've had some with issues connectors. The connectors have seemed to have caused a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment. The only time I've had to reach out to tech support was for that. It seems it may not have been scanning correctly or I wasn't seeing data within a specific time. But we've set up a couple of connectors in the past couple of weeks and they actually scanned the AWS environment and we had data within about 10 minutes. It's working a lot faster and I think they're making improvements as they go."
"The UI could be more user-friendly."
"Microsoft Defender could be more centralized. For example, I still need to go to another console to do policy management."
"It needs to be simplified and made more user-friendly for a non-technical person."
"The most significant areas for improvement are in the security of our identity and endpoints and the posture of the cloud environment. Better protection for our cloud users and cloud apps is always welcome."
"Sometimes, it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or certain kinds of products. That's not an issue directly with the product, though."
"Defender could provide more in-depth visibility into vulnerabilities and services. For instance, we wanted to scan Azure NetApp for sensitive data, but they didn't have that feature. It was only for storage accounts. I want Azure Defender features to cover all Azure resources rather than a few."
"The initial setup is not actually so complex but it feels complex because there are many add-ons. There are many options and my team needs to be aware of all of these changes happening on the backend which is a distraction."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
"The vulnerabilities are duplicated many times."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for PingSafe in India was more reasonable than other competitors."
"PingSafe falls within the typical price range for cloud security platforms."
"PingSafe's pricing is good because it provides us with a solution."
"It is cheap."
"I am personally not taking care of the pricing part, but when we moved from CrowdStrike to PingSafe, there were some savings. The price of CrowdStrike was quite high. Compared to that, the price of PingSafe was low. PingSafe is charging based on the subscription model. If I want to add an AWS subscription, I need to pay more. It should not be based on subscription. It should be based on the number of servers that I am scanning."
"Its pricing is constant. It has been constant over the previous year, so I am happy with it. However, price distribution can be better explained. That is the only area I am worried about. Otherwise, the pricing is very reasonable."
"PingSafe is not very expensive compared to Prisma Cloud, but it's also not that cheap. However, because of its features, it makes sense to us as a company. It's fairly priced."
"PingSafe is cost-effective for the amount of infrastructure we have. It's reasonable for what they offer compared to our previous solution. It's at least 25 percent to 30 percent less."
"It is a subscription model with term licensing that is usually yearly. This includes, not only the product, but support and maintenance. It is based on cloud assets. Therefore, if you have 100 cloud assets, those cloud assets are measured based on evaluation or transactions. For example, if I'm evaluating that cloud asset for CIS compliance, PCI compliance, and AWS best practices, that asset gets evaluated three times, as those are three transactions. However, the license model is based on peak asset usage. So, over a year, if you deploy 100, 1000, 500, and then 2000 assets, you will be charged for the 2000 peak of assets managed by Helix Cloud Security."
"The pricing is based on an annual subscription, upfront, and it's based on cloud assets. Whether your assets are in Azure and AWS combined, the tool tells you how many assets are being scanned and that's the number used for pricing."
"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."
"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"It is bundled with our enterprise subscription, which makes it easy to go for it. It is available by default, and there is no extra cost for using the standard features."
"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."
"Although I am outside of the discussion on budget and costing, I can say that the importance of security provided by this solution is of such importance that whatever the cost is, it is not a factor."
"While we pay for any additional features, the pricing seems competitive, though I am not involved in the specific cost details."
"Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
19%
Real Estate/Law Firm
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
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 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?
The pricing is somewhat high compared to other market tools. This cost can be particularly prohibitive for small busi...
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
To enhance the notification system's efficiency, resolved issues should be promptly removed from the portal. Currentl...
What do you like most about BMC Helix Cloud Security?
The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Cloud Security?
I would rate the price of BMC Helix Cloud Security as a seven in terms of costliness. It is not the cheapest option a...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Cloud Security?
BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists...
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?
I don't have visibility into the specific costs, but it seems to be a significant concern for our organization. Every...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
TrueSight Cloud Security, SecOps Policy Service
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
NHS, Vodafone, Kansas City Life, SKY Italia, Cybera
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 BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.