Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Sponsored
 

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 Vulnerability Management
6th
Ranking in Container Security
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
4th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
3rd
Ranking in Compliance Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (5th)
Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
8th
Ranking in Container Security
6th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
6th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
5th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
5th
Ranking in Compliance Management
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (9th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (4th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
7th
Ranking in Container Security
4th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
4th
Ranking in Compliance Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (8th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

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.
Yokesh Mani - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to write custom rules and policies in the UI with limited coding knowledge
The user interface could be improved. Sometimes, the visibility is not immediately available for the environment. We have the native servers that come with the solutions, but we cannot see them in the Check Point log. Another issue is with the integrated file monitoring. It would make sense to have stuff like file integrity monitoring and malware scanning available within this module because we don't want to integrate another product. For example, let's say it's showing a process violation. It should be able to do some additional malware scanning in that particular bucket to get some additional information. I don't want to integrate with another third-party tool or go to the native server to check something. It would be helpful to have integrated monitoring and malware scanning for the file types. There are a few flaws with the security management portal where I have limited visibility into the workload protection features. There is no error visibility where I can see the communication and workflow between services. Some of the dashboards need to be fine-tuned if they are not customized. For example, I cannot customize anything on the effective risk management dashboard. Some of the information is not correct for my tenant. With respect to passwords and user management, there are no policies I can measure at the user level. If the user was created more than six months ago, you don't need to worry about that password or do anything like two-factor authentication associated with that user. They can still log in after six months or one year. It's also a challenge to use CloudGuard's agentless workload posture with AWS. An Azure storage is summed up with a CNAPP encryption by default. We tried onboarding this data, but the problem is the attachment is not done. After a few days, we identified that it was impossible to do the encryption detection. But CloudGuard's default rules say that this has to be encrypted. The AWS module says that we cannot access this volume with this encryption, so we cannot use an agentless workload posture with AWS because of this. It is a best practice to ensure that all the volumes are being encrypted. Without the encryption, how can I do this? It is a big challenge for CloudGuard.
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

"Cloud Native Security's evidence-based reporting allows us to prioritize issues by understanding their impact, helping us resolve the most important problems first."
"Singularity Cloud Workload Security provides us with better security detection and more visibility. It is another resource that we can use to detect vulnerabilities in our company's systems. For example, it can help us detect new file processes that we are not familiar with, which could be used by attackers to exploit our systems. Singularity Cloud Workload Security can also help us diagnose and analyze data to determine whether it is malicious or not. Singularity Cloud Workload Security is like another pair of eyes that can help us protect our systems from cyberattacks."
"It is fairly simple. Anybody can use it."
"I would definitely recommend SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security for infrastructure security."
"It is pretty easy to integrate with this platform. When properly integrated, it monitors end-to-end."
"The user interface is well-designed and easy to navigate."
"The most valuable features of PingSafe are cloud misconfiguration, Kubernetes, and IaC scanning."
"It's positively affected the communication between cloud security, application developers, and AppSec teams."
"The Compliance engine has helped put our auditors and senior executives at ease, as we can quickly and accurately measure ourselves against hundreds of compliance checks to include CIS benchmarks, PCI, and other best practices."
"It has an analytics service that does research for us."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to apply common tools across all accounts."
"It presents great visibility of the traffic flow of our cloud, providing information on what data and users are circulating and in the event of a threat, it immediately identifies them by providing detailed and granular information from our entire environment."
"The initial setup is easy and not complex at all."
"The new scanning function is a valuable feature that wasn't available until recently."
"Overall, it provides good security."
"We like the GSL Builder feature. When you're running a security operations center, you spend a lot of time monitoring endpoint activity to ensure there is no malicious traffic or anonymous access in the environment. The GSL Builder is helpful for deep investigations of a particular reason for an incident. You can use it to get more information."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has significantly enhanced our overall security posture by approximately 20 to 25 percent."
"The pricing is good."
"The integration with Logic Apps allows for automated responses to incidents."
"The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites."
"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 recommendations provided on how to improve security. It has made the cloud environment more secure, thanks to all the recommendations we can get."
"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security."
"Everything is built into Azure, and if we go for cross-cloud development with Azure Arc, we can use most of the features. While it's possible to deploy and convert third-party applications, it is difficult to maintain, whereas Azure deployments to the cloud are always easier. Also, Microsoft is a big company, so they always provide enough support, and we trust the Microsoft brand."
 

Cons

"Bugs need to be disclosed quickly."
"We recently adopted a new ticket management solution, so we've asked them to include a connector to integrate that tool with Cloud Native Security directly. We'd also like to see Cloud Native Security add a scan for personally identifying information. We're looking at other tools for this capability, but having that functionality built into Cloud Native Security would be nice. Monitoring PII data is critical to us as an organization."
"With Cloud Native Security, we can't selectively enable or disable alerts based on our specific use case."
"The area of improvement is the cost, which is high compared to other traditional endpoint protections."
"PingSafe can be improved by developing a comprehensive set of features that allow for automated workflows."
"Currently, we would have to export our vulnerability report to an .xlsx file, and review it in an Excel spreadsheet, and then we sort of compile a list from there. It would be cool if there was a way to actually toggle multiple applications for review and then see those file paths on multiple users rather than only one user at a time or only one application at a time."
"One of our use cases was setting up a firewall for our endpoints, specifically for our remote users... We were hoping to utilize SentinelOne's firewall capabilities, but there were limitations on how many URLs we could implement. Because of those limitations on the number of URLs, we weren't able to utilize that feature in the way we had hoped to."
"They can work on policies based on different compliance standards."
"In general, for the product to be successful, they need to improve security, and configuration detection."
"I strongly advise that the multi-layered security system of Check Point often undergoes updates and new versions keep coming."
"The main issue that we found with Dome9 is that we have a default rule set with better recommendations that we want to use. So, you do a clone of that rule set, then you do some tweaks and customizations, but there is a problem. When they activate the default rule set with the recommendations and new security measures, it doesn't apply the new security measures to your clones profile. Therefore, you need to clone the profile again. We are already writing a report to Check Point."
"I would like to see improvements in the vulnerability assessments in terms of how the solution discovers vulnerabilities or compromised workloads. Also, customizable reports would be nice."
"Almost all features are good, however, they still require improvements to the code security portion on which integration with the major source code repository is required."
"Currently, I would like this solution extended to cellular devices or tablets."
"The support it provides is not very good. They should improve it since we have had several setbacks due to support issues."
"Timely updates and upgrades to meet modern technological changes could help improve performance and limit the chances of downtime."
"I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets."
"The documentation could be much clearer."
"While we are satisfied with Defender for Cloud's features, an AI enhancement could potentially provide better advice and adapt more effectively to our environment."
"The pricing could be better."
"Sometimes it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or a special kind of product."
"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."
"Customizing some of the compliance requirements based on individual needs seems like the biggest area of improvement. There should be an option to turn specific controls on and off based on how your solution is configured."
"There is no perfect product in the world and there are always features that can be added."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While I'm slightly out of touch with pricing, I know SentinelOne is much cheaper than other products."
"I wasn't sure what to expect from the pricing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little less than I thought."
"PingSafe falls within the typical price range for cloud security platforms."
"For pricing, it currently seems to be in line with market rates."
"I am not involved in the pricing, but it is cost-effective."
"It's a fair price for what you get. We are happy with the price as it stands."
"Pricing is based on modules, which was ideal for us."
"Its pricing is okay. It is in line with what other providers were providing. It is not cheap. It is not expensive."
"The license for CloudGuard Posture Management is about $80 a year, and it's based on your cloud footprint, not the number of users. So you could have a million users, and it doesn't matter."
"Licensing and costs are straightforward, as they have a baseline of 100 workloads within one license and no additional charges."
"I would advise taking into account the existing number of devices and add a forecast of the number of devices to be added in the coming year or two, to obtain better pricing."
"The pricing is tremendous and super cheap. It is shockingly cheap for what you get out of it. I am happy with that. I hope that doesn't get reported back and they increase the prices. I love the pricing and the licensing makes sense. It is just assets: The more stuff that you have, the more you pay."
"The licensing and costs are straightforward, as they have a baseline of 100 workloads (number of instances) within one license with no additional nor hidden charges. If you want to have 200 workloads under Dome9, then you need to take out two licenses for that. Also, it does not have any impact on cloud billing, as data is shared using the API call. This is well within the limit of free API calls provided by the cloud provider."
"The licensing part still needs some work. The issue that I have is that we do not use all the services in the cloud, but sometimes, CloudGuard identifies them as an asset."
"Its price is very fair."
"Everything in this field is very expensive."
"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."
"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."
"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
"The product's pricing policy is generally favorable."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters."
"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."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) solutions are best for your needs.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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?
SentinelOne is relatively cheap. If ten is the most expensive, I would rate it a seven.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
The areas with room for improvement include the cost, which is higher compared to other security platforms. The dashb...
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
Check Point CloudGuard Posture Management, Dome9, Check Point CloudGuard Workload Protection, Check Point CloudGuard Intelligence
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Symantec, Citrix, Car and Driver, Virgin, Cloud Technology Partners
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 Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.