Cisco Secure Workload vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Cisco and Microsoft are both solutions in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category. Cisco is ranked #14 with an average rating of 9.5, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. Cisco holds a 2.5% mindshare in CWPP, compared to Microsoft’s 16.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Cisco Secure Workload and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are competing in the cybersecurity solutions category. While Cisco Secure Workload impresses with its user-friendly interfaces and strong customer support, Microsoft Defender for Cloud has the upper hand in advanced threat detection features, making it a favored option.

Features: Cisco Secure Workload focuses on application-centric micro-segmentation and efficient policy discovery, streamlining security processes through automation. It provides strong telemetry coverage and end-to-end visibility. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is recognized for its comprehensive security analytics, multi-cloud support, dynamic networking, and threat intelligence capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Secure Workload could enhance its integration capabilities and adaptability to rapid modifications. It may also benefit from reducing initial costs and refining automated micro-segmentation. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could improve in simplifying its deployment processes, enhancing its intuitive usability, and extending its prevention features beyond detection.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Secure Workload is known for straightforward deployment and exceptional customer support, making it highly user-friendly. Meanwhile, Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrates seamlessly with Azure services, though it may require more initial setup effort. Cisco's superior ease of use in both deployment and support provides it an advantage in customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Secure Workload can have higher initial costs but offers a strong value proposition over time. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is more cost-effective, providing robust features at competitive pricing, leading to excellent ROI. This makes Microsoft Defender for Cloud appealing due to its extensive integration and feature set, which enhances its value against cost.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

December 2025

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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...

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 3.8%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Secure Workload is 2.5%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 16.7%, up from 14.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	16.7%
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security	3.8%
Cisco Secure Workload	2.5%
Other	77.0%

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)

Featured Reviews

Satyavijay Chavan

Information Security Engineer at DataVigilant Infotech

Enables us to prioritize and effectively address critical security issues

Evidence-based reporting helps us to prioritize and solve critical security issues. The new visualization feature demonstrates how an attacker can enter the system, highlighting the potential path that can be exploited and outlining all the steps the attacker could take. With that visibility, we can ensure the perimeter is strong and attackers cannot enter, thus reducing the risk. It has helped us prioritize issues. The visibility into how an attack could happen is valuable. For example, it highlights the system vulnerability and outlines where an attack could propagate. The visualization helps me to prioritize remediation, and if I don't know where to start, I can check to see the score that enables me to prioritize issues. I am using infrastructure-as-code scanning, and it's one of the useful features. In pre-production, it identifies embedded secrets and misconfigurations, including issues with Kubernetes or some privileged containers. This feature allows us to pass the audit and secure IaC code so that it isn't easily exploitable by attackers. We can more proactively work to identify and resolve vulnerabilities by using the dashboard and the alerting system that SentinelOne provides. It helps us with audits and compliance. We can show the compliance in percentage. We can confidently say that our company or infrastructure is very secure. It has improved our security posture by 30% to 35%. It has reduced our false positives by 30%. It has helped teams collaborate better. The security team manages SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, and when it flags vulnerabilities, they are forwarded to DevOps for remediation. Previously, we needed to identify and report the issues, but there would be lapses in communication. Now, there is a centralized dashboard that anyone can look at and see the open issues and work on them.

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Raj Metkar

Director, Head of Networks at MUFG, EMEA

Discover internal application dependencies and create a dependency map

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration allows Cisco Secure Workload to learn about our networks and network tags, providing valuable insights into vulnerabilities related to the operating system and various applications installed on our servers. Recently, Cisco announced a new product called HyperShield, an AI-based autonomous micro-segmentation solution. While Cisco has not stated that HyperShield will replace Cisco Secure Workload, it represents a natural evolution for the company. HyperShield features dynamic policy discovery and enforcement; however, once policies are enforced, they do not change until a discovery occurs, requiring a re-enforcement process. This new platform operates autonomously, minimizing the need for user or security engineer intervention. I would have expected Cisco to incorporate more automatic discovery and enforcement features within the existing Cisco Secure Workload product. Instead of enhancing the current product, they have introduced a new solution. Cisco plans to honor existing Tetration licenses, allowing users to transition to HyperShield without additional costs, reflecting the investment enterprises have already made. From Cisco’s perspective, this represents a natural progression in their product line. While the product name changes, it seems more of a rebranding effort. The enhancements are greater autonomy, improved discovery, and automatic enforcement, which are now being introduced in HyperShield. Cisco Secure Workload offers automatic policy enforcement but cannot adjust policies dynamically as the application needs to change. Having used the platform for the past five years, the recent announcement has been reassuring. Cisco has confirmed that our investment in the platform will not go to waste. They will honor our existing licenses, providing a natural migration path to the new solution without any disruption

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David Birhange

Director, Cloud and Modern Workplace at Informanix Technology Group

Brings together cloud security insights through a unified view and supports agentless protection for virtual machines

Copilot and similar features are already being used, though not necessarily for Microsoft Defender for Cloud specifically. We are trying to get more experience before rolling out most of Microsoft Defender for Cloud's AI capabilities. This is definitely on our to-do list, and the priority is urgent as we seek to learn more about these capabilities. The GenAI threat protection from Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not been enabled yet. There are many unknowns with AI applications. AI agents will operate while you're not present, whether you are sleeping or awake, and it's unclear whether there would be any exfiltration of data or how data is being managed. Microsoft Purview is being used extensively, and there is significant development going on with DSPM that will be rolled out to address security concerns. Data labeling and proper demarcation for sensitivity of data before it is received are being actively pursued.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Singularity Cloud Security offers autonomous response capabilities, automatically remediating threats and restoring affected files without manual intervention."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to gain deep visibility into the workloads inside containers."

"Overall, I would rate it a ten on ten for cloud security."

"The offensive security where they do a fix is valuable. They go to a misconfiguration and provide detailed alerts on what could be there. They also provide a remediation feature where if we give the permission, they can also go and fix the issue."

"For Singularity, the task capability is easy to use and it has a very intuitive dashboard, which streamlines the processes."

"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."

"The features that stand out are threat detection using advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning, helping to identify and respond to threats in real-time."

"It is pretty easy to integrate with this platform. When properly integrated, it monitors end-to-end."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is security."

"Scalability is its most valuable feature."

"The product provides multiple-device integration."

"The only use case I can see that makes sense is micro-segmentation. I think there are other use cases for it. The main purpose of the product is to do micro-segmentation by collecting IP. That could be done by installing an agent, and then you have all the communication coming in and out. You could also use some flow sensors installed in the network that receive a copy of the traffic and then report that back to the system."

"The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which is the most important with respect to visibility."

"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."

"By using Tetration insight, we are able to get the latency on our level accounts and we can determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"It takes very little effort to integrate it. It also gives very good visibility into what exactly is happening."

"I have not experienced any difficulties or issues with the stability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."

"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a ten out of ten."

"It has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem."

"The solution is quite good and addresses many security gaps."

"Technical support is helpful."

"The UX and UI are very good. Users have more of a taste for Microsoft UI."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"Some of the navigation and some aspects of the portal may be a little bit confusing."

"We can customize security policies but lack auditing capabilities."

"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."

"I export CSV. I cannot export graphs. Restricting it to the CSV format has its own disadvantages. These are all machine IP addresses and information. I cannot change it to the JSON format. The export functionality can be improved."

"The cost has the potential for improvement."

"Whenever I view the processes and the process aspect, it takes a long time to load."

"In the Analytics section, there is a tab for showing the severity of open issues by day. There are three options: by week, by month, and for more than thirty days. However, despite being aware of many issues open for more than thirty days, it shows no data available."

"I believe the UI/UX updates for SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security have room for improvement."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security cons

"The product must be integrated with the cloud."

"There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and I need to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools."

"There's room for improvement when it comes to Cisco Secure Workload. A couple of internal areas could be refined a little bit. They are trying to solve it, depending on where you suppose the agent is. Suppose you have the agent on both the server and the client, which could be the front-end server or web server connecting to the. In that case, if those two are communicating on RPC, the server can look into its configuration. It could go down and find the configuration file on the FTP server and then set the policies to it. But there are a lot of different FTP servers out there. It's also a complex case for the tool to support all FTP servers."

"It is highly scalable, but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices."

"Secure Workload is a little complicated to use, and the dashboard isn't intuitive, so it takes a while to learn how to use it."

"It has an uninviting interface."

"The interface is really helpful for technical people, but it is not user-friendly."

"I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"There are many unknowns with AI applications. AI agents will operate while you're not present, whether you are sleeping or awake, and it's unclear whether there would be any exfiltration of data or how data is being managed."

"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."

"For improvements, I'd like to see more use cases integrated with Microsoft Sentinel and support for multi-cloud environments beyond just Azure."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

"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."

"It's really hard to get ahold of Microsoft support. When you buy a product, with the M365 portal, you're given the option to chat with somebody, and normally you don't hear back immediately."

"The product's advanced analytics and reporting features could be improved."

"It's hard to reach someone who understands my problems. I haven't had many issues, so I haven't called them."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"PingSafe's pricing is good because it provides us with a solution."

"Its pricing is okay. It is in line with what other providers were providing. It is not cheap. It is not expensive."

"As a partner, we receive a discount on the licenses."

"PingSafe falls somewhere in the middle price range, neither particularly cheap nor expensive."

"It was reasonable pricing for me."

"It's not cheap, but it is worth the price."

"SentinelOne provided competitive pricing compared to other vendors, and we are satisfied with the deal."

"The features included in PingSafe justify its price point."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pricing and cost advice

"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."

"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."

"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."

"Regarding price, Cisco Secure Workload can be expensive if you don't have a budget. If you're not doing micro-segmentation, every extra security measure or enforcement you're putting on top of your existing environment will be an extra cost. It's not a cheap solution at all. But from my point of view, if you need to do micro-segmentation, this is one of the best tools I've seen for it. I can't compare that to Microsoft's solution because I haven't looked into it. I've looked into VMware and Cisco. Those are the only two that I know of. I didn't know that Microsoft could do micro-segmentation at all. Maybe they can, but I haven't heard anything about it."

"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."

"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."

"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."

"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."

"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters."

"The tool is pretty expensive."

"Azure Defender is definitely pricey, but their competitors cost about the same. For example, a Palo Alto solution is the same price per endpoint, but the ground strikes cost a bit more than Azure Defender. Still, it's pricey for a company like ours. Maybe well-established organizations can afford it, but it might be too costly for a startup."

"I am not involved in this area. However, I believe its price is okay because even small customers are using Azure Security Center. I don't think it is very expensive."

"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."

"There are improvements that have to be made to the licensing. Currently, for servers, it has to be done by grouping the servers on a single subscription... We don't have an option whereby, if all those resources are in one subscription, we can have each of the individual servers subject to different planning."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	48
Midsize Enterprise	20
Large Enterprise	54

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	27
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	49

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?

I think the pricing of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is a bit high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with PingSafe?

We did not try to use the threat investigations feature from SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security.Drift detection w...

See all answers

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?

The product provides multiple-device integration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Secure Workload?

CloudStrike offers antivirus capabilities and firewall features for servers and VDI but lacks automatic policy discov...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

We actively seek improvements in integrating the Infoblox DDI platform with Cisco Secure Workload. This integration a...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud was pretty straightforward. We...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

Microsoft Defender for Cloud can be improved. An additional feature that should be included in the next release is Ze...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 10% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 10% of the time

AWS GuardDuty vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 6% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 4% of the time

Orca Security vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 3% of the time

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Competitors

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 18% of the time

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 14% of the time

VMware NSX vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 10% of the time

Panoptica vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 37% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

AWS Security Hub vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

January 2026

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security report

Download SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload

January 2026

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

January 2026

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Also Known As

PingSafe

Cisco Tetration

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

SentinelOne

Demo not available

Cisco

Microsoft

Overview

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers a streamlined approach to cloud security with intuitive operation and strong integration capabilities for heightened threat detection and remediation efficiency.

Singularity Cloud Security stands out for its real-time detection and response, effectively minimizing detection and remediation timelines. Its automated remediation integrates smoothly with third-party tools enhancing operational efficiency. The comprehensive console ensures visibility and support for forensic investigations. Seamless platform integration and robust support for innovation are notable advantages. Areas for development include improved search functionality, affordability, better firewall capabilities for remote users, stable agents, comprehensive reporting, and efficient third-party integrations. Clarity in the interface, responsive support, and real-time alerting need enhancement, with a call for more automation and customization. Better scalability and cost-effective integration without compromising capabilities are desired.

What are SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security's standout features?

Ease of Use: Intuitive operation simplifies navigation across platforms.
Real-Time Detection: Quick identification and response to threats.
Automated Remediation: Streamlines recovery processes with integration capabilities.
Forensic Visibility: Aids in thorough threat analysis and prevention strategies.
Comprehensive Console: Offers full visibility and historical data tracking.
Platform Integration: Supports seamless operation across cloud and hybrid environments.

What benefits should users expect from SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security?

Enhanced Efficiency: Automation and third-party integration improve threat response.
Improved Detection: Reduces mean time to detect and respond to threats.
Operational Support: Comprehensive visibility and forensic tools aid operational decisions.
Cost Efficiency: Affordable integration with scaling capabilities without high overhead.

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is deployed in industries needing robust cloud security posture management, endpoint protection, and threat hunting. Utilized frequently across AWS and Azure, it assists in monitoring, threat detection, and maintaining compliance in diverse environments while providing real-time alerts and recommendations for proactive threat management.

SentinelOne

Cisco Secure Workload is a cloud and data security solution that offers a zero-trust policy of keeping an organization’s application workloads safe and secure throughout the entire on-premise and cloud data center ecosystems.

Cisco Secure Workload will consistently provide protection by discovering workload process anomalies, stopping threats immediately, minimizing the risk threat surface, and aborting any lateral movement.

Today’s ecosystems are very elastic, and in the application-focused dynamic of today’s aggressive marketplace, Cisco Secure Workload delivers a robust security solution that works effectively with today’s most popular applications. The solution uniquely surrounds each and every workload to ensure organizations are able to keep their data, network, and applications safe and secure at all times. Cisco Secure Workload ensures that enterprise organizations can maintain secure applications by consistently building firewalls around every workload level throughout the entire ecosystem. The solution can manage applications that are deployed on containers, virtual machines, or bare-metal servers.

Cisco Secure workload is able to meet an organization's busy needs and offers flexible options such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and on-premises options. Using the Secure Workload SaaS options, users receive all the benefits of Cisco Secure Workload protection without the hassle of having to deploy and maintain the platform on premises. Users are responsible for acquiring the necessary software licensing and deploying software agents. Using SaaS, Secure Workload runs in the cloud and is operated and maintained by Cisco. This option offers the ability to scale easily and is a popular choice for SaaS-first and SaaS-only clients. Many organizations find they get the best TCO and achieve the best productivity and profitability using the SaaS options.

When choosing on-premises options, organizations choose between hardware-based appliance models (large or small form factors). Platform selection is dependent on scalability goals, the desired fidelity level of flow telemetry, and the actual number of workloads. When a user chooses to configure Cisco Secure Workload for a conversation-only flow telemetry for all workloads, each platform has the capability to scale up vertically twice the default platform scale. Additionally, with Secure Workload, it is possible for the platform to be scaled horizontally in order to satisfy the demands of extra large widely distributed enterprise environments using federation capabilities.

Cisco Secure Workload also provides a robust disaster recovery (DR) tool, which helps to make it a complete, comprehensive solution. The DR allows for continuous restore and backup capabilities that enable users to quickly remediate operations and data to a standby cluster in the event of a drastic failure or disaster.

Reviews from Real Users

“The solution offers 100% telemetry coverage. The telemetry you collect is not sampled, it's not intermittent. It's complete. You see everything in it, including full visibility of all activities on your endpoints and in your network. Other valuable features include vast support for annotations, flexible user applications, machine learning, automatic classification, and hierarchical policies.” - CTO at a tech vendor

Cisco

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

December 2025

Free Report: Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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