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CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
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Ranking in Container Security
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Cloud and Data Center Security (5th), Compliance Management (2nd)
CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Se...
Ranking in Container Security
6th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
7th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
8th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (13th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (2nd), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (5th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Security
4th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
4th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is 6.4%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 13.9%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew W - PeerSpot reviewer
Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues
Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.
Saif Ullah Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosts security by automatically blocking applications or activities, but query responses have been slower recently
For the past six months, we have been facing some issues. Because it is a cloud-based infrastructure, it has been getting slower. There are no bugs because they release updates continuously. We highly appreciate that, but during hunting or running a query on different logs, the time frame has increased in the past six months. It takes longer to give us the results. Another issue is the lack of proper documentation. During investigations, there is no proper documentation available. This is a problem because many people are saying there should be proper documentation explaining what CrowdStrike captures from the machine and the meaning of it.
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

"The ease of use of the platform is very nice."
"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."
"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."
"PingSafe has a dashboard that can detect the criticality of a particular problem, whether it falls under critical, medium, or low vulnerability."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security has significantly improved our risk posture."
"The mean time to detect has been reduced."
"We noted immediate benefits from using the solution."
"Our organization is growing steadily, so our infrastructure is expanding, and we're managing more technical resources. Singularity Cloud Security helps us track our resources so that we don't get lost in the overwhelming volume of things and ensures we follow best practices. The solution gives us better visibility into our resources and enables faster resolution."
"The most valuable features are the real-time response, which allows me to log into a machine to pull files and check signatures for malicious activities, and the ability to restrict USB block storage usage on endpoints by policy."
"The alerts are clearer, and the capabilities are much better than the others."
"Technical support is helpful."
"Falcon is a cloud-based technology, so its resource usage is light. You deploy the agents to your endpoints, but the processing is done on the cloud, so you're CPU utilization is only about 2 percent. Some others solutions use between 30 to 60 percent."
"The threat intelligence is the most vital feature"
"CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is its lightweight sensor, taking minimal space and not impacting server performance."
"The initial setup is easy ."
"The most valuable features are the security recommendations provided by Defender for Cloud."
"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."
"It's quite a good product. It helps to understand the infections and issues you are facing."
"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."
"The pricing is good."
"It offers virus management and addresses threats such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other critical security concerns."
"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a nine out of 10."
"The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available."
 

Cons

"When we get a new finding from PingSafe, I wish we could get an alert in the console, so we can work on it before we see it in the report. It would be very useful for the team that is actively working on the PingSafe platform, so we can close the issue the same day before it appears in the daily report."
"Implementing single sign-on requires a pre-class account feature, which is currently not available."
"We are getting reports only in a predefined form. I would like to have customized reports so that I can see how many issues are open or closed today or in two weeks."
"If I had to pick a complaint, it would be the way the hosts are listed in the tool. You have different columns separated by endpoint name, Cloud Account, and Cloud Instances ID. I wish there was something where we could change the endpoint name and not use just the IP address. We would like to have custom names or our own names for the instances. If I had a complaint, that would be it, but so far, it meets all the needs that we have."
"The main area for improvement I want to see is for the platform to become less resource-intensive. Right now, it can slow down processes on the machine, and it would be a massive improvement if it were more lightweight than it currently is."
"One potential drawback is the cost of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, which may be prohibitive for smaller businesses or startups, particularly those in regions with lower average incomes, such as India."
"Crafting customized policies can be tricky."
"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."
"The only suggestion for improvement would be the pricing."
"The CrowdStrike dashboard currently lacks a username field."
"The pricing is very high and should be improved."
"There were some integration issues with this product."
"It would be more convenient if there was an easier way to install CrowdStrike, perhaps through better integration with Active Directory."
"I think the UI could be improved, but the technical support said CrowdStrike will improve the UI in the near future. But right now, it’s so messy."
"I would not say the tool's integration capabilities were straightforward because the complexity depends on the volume of the data."
"The tool's scalability is low."
"The solution could extend its capabilities to other cloud providers. Right now, if you want to monitor a virtual machine on another cloud, you can do that. However, this cannot be done with other cloud platform services. I hope once that is available then Defender for Cloud will be a unified solution for all cloud platform services."
"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."
"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."
"For improvements, I'd like to see more use cases integrated with Microsoft Sentinel and support for multi-cloud environments beyond just Azure."
"The solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge."
"The range of workloads is broad, but we'd love to add more workloads and make it a single security solution that covers all those workloads."
"The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome."
"Defender is occasionally unreliable. It isn't 100% efficient in terms of antivirus detection, but it isn't an issue most of the time. It's also somewhat difficult to train new security analysts to use Defender."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing was a little less than other providers."
"I am not involved in the pricing, but it is cost-effective."
"PingSafe is priced reasonably for our workload."
"It was reasonable pricing for me."
"The pricing is somewhat high compared to other market tools."
"The licensing is easy to understand and implement, with some flexibility to accommodate dynamic environments."
"PingSafe falls within the typical price range for cloud security platforms."
"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."
"CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is pricy."
"CrowdStrike Falcon is very expensive."
"It's an expensive package but does what it says it will do."
"It's an expensive product"
"CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is very expensive for us. Last month, we had a big issue that took much time and money to resolve. It slowed down our business and required our management team to get involved. We had a problem similar to the "Blue Screen of Death" issue many US companies faced. This incident used up many of our IT resources in just a few months. That's why we're looking for a replacement tool now."
"It is expensive, but it adds value."
"The pricing is reasonable, neither overly expensive nor excessively cheap, making it competitive compared to other market options."
"Its price is moderate."
"The solution is expensive, and I rate it a five to six out of ten."
"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."
"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."
"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"We only use the free tier, so we haven't faced any pricing, setup costs, or licensing challenges."
"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."
"The product's pricing policy is generally favorable."
"While we pay for any additional features, the pricing seems competitive, though I am not involved in the specific cost details."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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?
It is cost-effective compared to other solutions in the market.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
In version 2, a lot of rules have been deployed for Kubernetes security and CDR, which makes a lot of issues of criti...
What do you like most about CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security?
It's easy to gather insights and conduct analysis about existing threats.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security?
It's an expensive product. The solution costs around $60 for a single user on a yearly basis. I would rate the pricin...
What needs improvement with CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security?
I am not part of the current monitoring team, so I do not know how they feel about the tool. I am sharing information...
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?
Initially, the cost was reasonable, but additional services from Microsoft sometimes incur extra expenses that seem h...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
CrowdStrike Falcon ASPM
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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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 CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.