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Cisco Secure Workload vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (4th), Cloud and Data Center Security (3rd), Container Security (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd), AI Software Development (1st), AI Observability (2nd)
Cisco Secure Workload
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (8th), Microsegmentation Software (4th), Cisco Security Portfolio (7th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Container Management (7th), Container Security (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)
 

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
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud16.7%
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security3.8%
Cisco Secure Workload2.5%
Other77.0%
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

SC
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.
Raj Metkar - PeerSpot reviewer
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
David Birhange - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers comprehensive security posture management."
"With SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, I appreciate the monitoring features and the report with the compliance score."
"It's helped free up staff time so that they can work on other projects."
"Singularity Cloud's ability to create custom correlation searches and reduce noise is highly valuable."
"Singularity Cloud Security's most valuable features are its ease of scalability and comprehensive security measures."
"The most valuable feature is the notification system, providing real-time alerts and comparisons crucial for maintaining security."
"As a frequently audited company, we value SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security's compliance monitoring features. They give us a report with a compliance score for how well we meet certain regulatory standards, like HIPAA. We can show our compliance as a percentage. It's also a way to show that we are serious about security."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network."
"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."
"Scalability is its most valuable feature."
"The product provides multiple-device integration."
"The product offers great visibility into the network so we can enforce security measures."
"A complete and powerful micro-segmentation solution."
"Secure Workload's best feature is that it's an end-to-end offering from Cisco."
"Generally speaking, Cisco support is considered one of the best in the networking products and stack."
"The solution is used for risks, vulnerabilities, and compliance."
"The features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud that I like the most are the regulatory compliance capabilities; these features have benefited my organization by improving our overall security posture."
"The solution's coordinated detection and response across devices and identities is impressive because it is complete."
"The security policy is the most valuable feature for us. We can go into the environment settings and attach any globally recognized framework like ISO or any benchmark."
"The feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud that I have found most valuable is the alerts, which are pretty standard for security."
"It isn't a highly complex solution. It's something that a lot of analysts can use. Defender gives you a broad overview of what's happening in your environment, and it's a great solution if you're a Microsoft shop."
"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."
"The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications."
 

Cons

"While SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers robust protection, its cost could be a barrier for some users."
"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."
"I request that SentinelOne investigate this false positive, as SentinelOne has a higher false positive rate than other XDR solutions."
"Whenever I view the processes and the process aspect, it takes a long time to load."
"I want SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security to integrate additional third-party resources. For example, SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is compatible with Azure and AWS, but Azure AD isn't integrated with AWS. If SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security had that ability, it would enrich the data because how users interact with our AWS environment is crucial. All the identity-related features require improvement."
"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."
"The Infrastructure as Code service available in SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security and the services available in AWS cloud security can be merged so that we can get the security data directly from AWS cloud in SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security. This way, all the data related to security will be in one single place. Currently, we have to check a couple of things on SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, and we have to validate that same data on the AWS Cloud to be sure. If they can collaborate like that, it will be great."
"We don't get any notifications from SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security when the clusters are down."
"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 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."
"The emailed notifications are either hard to find or they are not available. Search capabilities can be improved."
"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."
"The integration could be better, especially with different types of solutions."
"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."
"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."
"The pricing could be better."
"My experience with Microsoft Defender for Cloud has been largely negative due to a poor user experience."
"Microsoft sources most of their threat intelligence internally, but I think they should open themselves up to bodies that provide feel intelligence to build a better engine. There may be threats out there that they don't report because their team is not doing anything on that and they don't have arrangements with another party that is involved in that research."
"I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets."
"The amount billed for the amount of terabytes you're scanning is too high and will lead into security risks if somebody is limiting the amount of data to be scanned based on the cost, so this is something I would prefer to be changed."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"If they had an easier way to display all the vulnerabilities of the machines affected and remediation steps on one screen rather than having to dive deep into each of them, that would be a lot easier."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cost-effective."
"I would rate the cost a seven out of ten with ten being the most costly."
"For pricing, it currently seems to be in line with market rates."
"I am not involved in the pricing, but it is cost-effective."
"Its pricing is constant. It has been constant over the previous year, so I am happy with it. However, price distribution can be better explained. That is the only area I am worried about. Otherwise, the pricing is very reasonable."
"Pricing is based on modules, which was ideal for us."
"Singularity Cloud Security by SentinelOne is cost-efficient."
"It is a little expensive. I would rate it a four out of ten for pricing."
"The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated."
"The cost for the hardware is around 300k."
"The price is based on how many computers you're going to install it on."
"Pricing depends on the scope of the application and the features. Larger installations save more."
"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."
"It is not cheap and pricing may limit scalability."
"The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it."
"The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have."
"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."
"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."
"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"The tool is pretty expensive."
"The product's pricing policy is generally favorable."
"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing. If you have Cloud for Key Vault, the pricing is different than it is for storage. Every type has its own pricing list and rules."
"Pricing is difficult because each license has its own metrics and cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business48
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise49
 

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?
I think the pricing of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is a bit high.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
We did not try to use the threat investigations feature from SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security.Drift detection w...
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 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...
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...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
Cisco Tetration
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
ADP, University of North Carolina Charlotte (UNCC)
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 Cisco Secure Workload vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,176 professionals have used our research since 2012.