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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 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
103
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)
23rd
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
7.0
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC Helix Cloud Security is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 13.0%, down from 14.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

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.
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

"Its performance impact on the systems is low, which means there is a minimal impact on system performance compared to traditional antivirus solutions."
"Cloud Native Security's best feature is its ability to identify hard-coded secrets during pull request reviews."
"The user-friendly dashboard offers both convenience and security by providing quick access to solutions and keeping us informed of potential threats."
"Singularity Cloud Security offers autonomous response capabilities, automatically remediating threats and restoring affected files without manual intervention."
"The most valuable features of PingSafe are cloud misconfiguration, Kubernetes, and IaC scanning."
"I did a lot of research before signing up and doing the demo. They have a good reputation as far as catching threats early on."
"It is advantageous in terms of time-saving and cost reduction."
"Cloud Native Security has helped us with our risk posture and securing our agenda. It has been tremendous in terms of supporting growth."
"Role-based security is a valuable feature."
"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 features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools."
"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."
"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."
"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."
"The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available."
"Most importantly, it's an integrated solution. We not only have Defender for Cloud, but we also have Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Identity. It's an integrated, holistic solution."
"The most valuable feature is the comprehensive overview across different workloads. It allows us to see protection not just across one workload, such as virtual machines, containers, infrastructure, or data, but across all our workloads. This overall visibility is really helpful."
"The most valuable feature is the regulatory compliance aspect, where we utilize predefined initiatives like NIST."
"The solution is quite good and addresses many security gaps."
"This is a platform as a service provided by Azure. We don't need to install or maintain Azure Security Center. It is a ready-made service available in Azure. This is one of the main things that we like. If you look at similar tools, we have to install, maintain, and update services. Whereas, Azure Security Center manages what we are using. This is a good feature that has helped us a lot."
"The solution is up-to-date with the latest updates and identified threats."
 

Cons

"It took us a while to configure the software to work well in this type of environment, as the support documents were not always clear."
"One potential drawback is the cost of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, which may be prohibitive for smaller businesses or startups, particularly those in regions with lower average incomes, such as India."
"There's an array of upcoming versions with numerous features to be incorporated into the roadmap. Customers particularly appreciate the service's emphasis on intensive security, especially the secret scanning aspect. During the proof of concept (POC) phase, the system is required to gather logs from the customer's environment. This process entails obtaining specific permissions, especially in terms of gateway access. While most permissions for POC are manageable, the need for various permissions may need improvement, especially in the context of security."
"here is a bit of a learning curve. However, you only need two to three days to identify options and get accustomed."
"There is no break-glass account feature. They should implement this as soon as possible because we can't implement SSO without a break-glass feature."
"It does not bring much threat intel from the outside world. All it does is scan. If it can also correlate things, it will be better."
"There's room for improvement in the graphic explorer."
"The could improve their mean time to detect."
"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."
"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."
"BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features."
"Defender could improve how data is represented. It can be unstructured or slow to load."
"Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts."
"I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets."
"Early on, the lack of transparency is a challenge. Microsoft does not tell you the cost when they launch something."
"Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government."
"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."
"However, some Copilot features aren't available in the GCP environment. This is something we hope will be addressed in the future."
"The overview provides you with good information, but if you want more details, there is a lot more customization to do, which requires knowledge of the other supporting solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing is okay. It is in line with what other providers were providing. It is not cheap. It is not expensive."
"PingSafe's pricing is good because it provides us with a solution."
"Singularity Cloud Security by SentinelOne is cost-efficient."
"For pricing, it currently seems to be in line with market rates."
"The cost for PingSafe is average when compared to other CSPM tools."
"The features included in PingSafe justify its price point."
"It's a fair price for what you get. We are happy with the price as it stands."
"I would rate the cost a seven out of ten with ten being the most costly."
"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."
"I am not involved much with the pricing but the bundle offering is good."
"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."
"The price of the solution is good for the features we receive and there is an additional cost for Microsoft premier support. However, some of my potential customers have found it to be expensive and have gone on to choose another solution."
"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."
"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."
"There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."
"Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
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?
SentinelOne is relatively cheap. If ten is the most expensive, I would rate it a seven.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
From my personal experience, the alerting system needs to be faster. If something happens in our infrastructure, the ...
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?
The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against ...
 

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: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.