Cisco Secure Workload vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Download the complete report

Helped 831,997 peers since 2012

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...

Featured Reviews

Andrew W

VP - Information Technology at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

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.

Read full review

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

Read full review

Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the infrastructure as code scanning, which is good."

"The most valuable feature of PingSafe is its integration with most of our technology stack, specifically all of our cloud platforms and ticketing software."

"It gives me the information I need."

"Cloud Native Security's most valuable features include cloud misconfiguration detection and remediation, compliance monitoring, a robust authentication security engine, and cloud threat detection and response capabilities."

"We like the platform and its response time. We also like that its console is user-friendly as well as modern and sleek."

"PingSafe stands out for its user-friendly interface and intuitive software, making it easy to navigate and use."

"It integrates very well. We sell different products from different vendors. We know that the SentinelOne Singularity platform can be integrated with several different solutions from different vendors."

"Cloud Native Security has helped us with our risk posture and securing our agenda. It has been tremendous in terms of supporting growth."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pros

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

"It's stable."

"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 product provides multiple-device integration."

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

"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."

"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."

"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."

More Cisco Secure Workload pros

"The most valuable feature is the regulatory compliance aspect, where we utilize predefined initiatives like NIST. Alert management is another useful feature. Alerts are directly integrated with our email or DevOps board for easy viewing, allowing us to identify problem areas efficiently."

"It is very intuitive when it comes to policy administration, alerts and notifications, and ease of setting up roles at different hierarchies. It has also been good in terms of the network technology maps. It provides a good overview, but it also depends on the complexity of your network."

"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."

"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."

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

"The most valuable features are the monitoring of users, endpoint detection and response, and the adaptability of the AI threat intelligence engine, which quickly adapts to customizations."

"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."

"It alerts us to our vulnerabilities and ensures compliance by marking off a compliance tool checklist."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"SentinelOne currently lacks a break glass account feature, which is critical for implementing Single Sign-On."

"PingSafe can improve by eliminating 100 percent of the false positives."

"In terms of ease of use, initially, it is a bit confusing to navigate around, but once you get used to it, it becomes easier."

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

"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 resolution suggestions could be better, and the compliance features could be more customizable for Indian regulations. Overall, the compliance aspects are good. It gives us a comprehensive list, and its feedback is enough to bring us into compliance with regulations, but it doesn't give us the specific objects."

"I would like PingSafe's detections to be openly available online instead of only accessible through their portal. Other tools have detections that are openly available without going through the tool."

"Maybe container runtime security could be improved."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security cons

"It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge."

"The multi-tenancy, redundancy, backup and restore functionalities, as well as the monitoring aspects of the solution, need improvement. The solution offers virtually no enterprise-grade possibility for monitoring."

"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."

"They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes."

"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."

"The product must be integrated with the cloud."

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

"There was a controversy when Cisco reduced the amount of data they kept, and the solution became quite cost-intensive, which made its adoption challenging….Although they have modified it now, I preferred the previous version, and I wish all the functionality were back under the same product."

More Cisco Secure Workload cons

"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."

"From my own perspective, they just need a product that is tailored to micro-segmentation so I can configure rules for multiple systems at once and manage it."

"Another thing is that Defender for Cloud uses more resources than CrowdStrike, which my current company uses. Defender for Cloud has two or three processes running simultaneously that consume memory and processor time. I had the chance to compare that with CrowdStrike a few days ago, which was significantly less. It would be nice if Defender were a little lighter. It's a relatively large installation that consumes more resources than competitors do."

"If a customer is already using Okta as an SSO in its entire environment, they will want to continue with it. But Security Center doesn't understand that and keeps making recommendations. It would help if it let us resolve a recommendation, even if it is not implemented."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be improved by adding capabilities for NetApp files and more PaaS resources from other vendors, not just Microsoft."

"With the new Copilot functionality available everywhere, it is challenging to pinpoint areas for improvement. If I put in a lot of thought, I might identify things, but right now, nothing significant pops into my mind, but there is always room for more transparency, especially in pricing."

"Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts."

"Defender could improve how data is represented. It can be unstructured or slow to load."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not that expensive. There are some tools that are double the cost of PingSafe. It is good on the pricing side."

"For pricing, it currently seems to be in line with market rates."

"While SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers robust protection, its high cost may be prohibitive for small and medium-sized businesses."

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

"It is a little expensive. I would rate it a four out of ten for pricing."

"The tool is cost-effective."

"The cost for PingSafe is average when compared to other CSPM tools."

"Its pricing was a little less than other providers."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"The pricing model for most plans is generally good, but the cost of the new Defender for Storage plan is high and should be revisited, as it could lead to disabling desirable security features due to cost."

"This solution is more cost-effective than some competing products. My understanding is that it is based on the number of integrations that you have, so if you have fewer subscriptions then you pay less for the service."

"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."

"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."

"We only use the free tier, so we haven't faced any pricing, setup costs, or licensing challenges."

"Pricing is difficult because each license has its own metrics and cost."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

28%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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...

What do you like most about Cisco Secure Workload?

The product provides multiple-device integration.

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...

What needs improvement with Cisco Secure Workload?

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

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 ...

Wiz vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Comparisons

Compared 27% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 23% of the time

AWS GuardDuty vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 8% of the time

Orca Security vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 6% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 5% of the time

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Competitors

Akamai Guardicore Segmentation vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 20% of the time

Illumio vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 18% of the time

Cisco Hypershield vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 14% of the time

Cisco ACI vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 12% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Cisco Secure Workload

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco Secure Workload Competitors

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 21% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Firewall vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Download SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security product report

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security report

Cisco Secure Workload

Download Cisco Secure Workload product report

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

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 protects cloud workloads, offering advanced threat detection and automated response. It integrates seamlessly with cloud environments and secures containerized applications and virtual machines against vulnerabilities.

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is renowned for its efficiency in mitigating threats in real-time. The platform integrates effortlessly with existing cloud environments, ensuring robust cloud security management with minimal manual intervention. Securing containerized applications and virtual machines, it excels in threat intelligence and endpoint protection. However, improvements are needed in performance during high workload periods, and more integrations with third-party tools and better documentation would be beneficial. Users often find the installation process complex, support response times slow, and the dashboard's navigation unintuitive.

What are the key features of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security?

Real-time Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats as they occur.
Automated Response: Automatically responds to threats to minimize impact.
Ease of Deployment: Simple setup process with scalable options.
Machine Learning Insights: AI-driven insights enhance threat prevention.
Seamless Integration: Integrates with cloud environments for unified security management.

What are the primary benefits or ROI to expect from SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security?

Enhanced Threat Mitigation: Improved security against real-time threats.
Reduced Manual Intervention: Automated processes save time and resources.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing security requirements.
Centralized Management: Manage security across platforms from a single console.
Advanced Threat Intelligence: Provides in-depth analysis and protection.

In specific industries, SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is implemented to safeguard critical data and infrastructure. Organizations in finance, healthcare, and technology depend on its real-time threat detection and automated response to protect sensitive information. Its ability to secure containerized applications and virtual machines is particularly valuable in dynamic environments where rapid scaling is necessary.

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.

Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud