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Drata vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

 

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

Drata
Ranking in Compliance Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Compliance Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Compliance Management category, the mindshare of Drata is 8.0%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 17.2%, up from 13.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Compliance Management
 

Featured Reviews

Johnny Chen - PeerSpot reviewer
Collects and stores compliance evidence and documentation for you using native integrations with your tech stack.
There is room for improvement in Drata. The core features are solid, but some new features are in a very MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage. They work, but the user experience isn't always smooth. While the core features are well-developed compared to the market, the new features need more polish. They could benefit from more user feedback and iterations to make them more useful. Some of these new features look promising buthave flaws, so we can’t fully adopt them or justify paying extra for them now. The user interface is clean and intuitive. However, you'll need some specific knowledge if you're a security policy manager or need to set updifferent integrations.
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 way the tool's controls are linked to the framework, specifically with SAST and HIPAA frameworks or any other frameworks, is really good."
"Drata helped us publish our ISO and SOC reports, which was essential for the acquisition. The challenge now is whether Drata can scale up to meet the needs of a larger company, which already has tools like Intune to enforce laptop encryption. Drata is excellent for startups and small—to medium-sized companies but may face challenges in larger organizations with multiple environments."
"Drata offers APIs for every clause so that it can integrate into various platforms."
"Drata keeps adding new features, allowing us to build our entire InfoSec program within it. Adding new components and evidence for different audits is easy. Drata also integrates with various software, like ticketing systems, source code control, and cloud platforms, continuously pulling evidence from these integrations. Without a GRC tool with these integrations, we used to gather evidence from different software during audits manually. Drata has a significant impact on our security posture management. Previously, Drata had features for security posture management, primarily through integration with AWS. For example, it would scan AWS for specific security requirements, like ensuring all S3 buckets are private. It will be reported on the Drata platform if it finds a public bucket. Recently, Drata introduced a new feature that uses an infrastructure-as-code approach. This feature detects issues and provides AI-generated suggestions for fixing them. If an organization uses infrastructure-as-code solutions like Terraform, Drata will suggest changes to the Terraform code to address the issues. You can then review and apply these changes to fix the problems. This is particularly useful when dealing with many topics, as it helps automate and speed up the process of implementing fixes. However, this AI-generated code feature is part of Drata’s upsell options. The basic version of Drata offers limited capabilities compared to the advanced features available with a paid upgrade. Even without this new feature, Drata's security posture management is valuable, as it scans cloud environments for deviations from defined security baselines. Many tools offer similar capabilities, but Drata’s new feature that translates issues into actionable fixes is a notable advancement. This benefits teams with the capability and resources to use this tool effectively."
"The product is 100 percent friendly to use."
"Drata helps eliminate evidence gathering and makes assigning different activities to different team members easier, simplifying compliance and audit processes. In Pennsylvania, we're putting in thousands of hours. Drata improves our security posture by reducing extra work, allowing us to focus on other security directives. I like the control editing and task management features the most. It's easy to use, but it's also easy for people to think they don't need security experts if they have it."
"This is a platform as a service provided by Azure. We don't need to install or maintain Azure Security Center. It is a ready-made service available in Azure. This is one of the main things that we like. If you look at similar tools, we have to install, maintain, and update services. Whereas, Azure Security Center manages what we are using. This is a good feature that has helped us a lot."
"It helps you to identify the gaps in your solution and remediate them. It produces a compliance checklist against known standards such as ISO 27001, HIPAA, iTrust, etc."
"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."
"My favorite part of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the compliance features. Defender covers a wide range of workloads, on par with competing products on the market."
"I find Microsoft Defender for Cloud's KQL very flexible and powerful. It's really easy to search through with KQL queries to find the security breaches and incidents and to track down the breach itself."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce."
"One important security feature is the incident alerts. Now, with all these cyberattacks, there are a lot of incident alerts that get triggered. It is very difficult to keep monitoring everything automatically, instead our organization is utilizing the automated use case that we get from Microsoft. That has helped bring down the manual work for a lot of things."
"Defender is user-friendly and provides decent visibility into threats."
 

Cons

"In terms of improvements, I'd suggest better marketing since the industry tends to market these tools as security experts, which isn't true."
"The existing features of Drata are already extensive and costly to integrate."
"There is room for improvement in Drata. The core features are solid, but some new features are in a very MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage. They work, but the user experience isn't always smooth. While the core features are well-developed compared to the market, the new features need more polish. They could benefit from more user feedback and iterations to make them more useful. Some of these new features look promising buthave flaws, so we can’t fully adopt them or justify paying extra for them now. The user interface is clean and intuitive. However, you'll need some specific knowledge if you're a security policy manager or need to set updifferent integrations."
"One of the challenges with Drata is that if you're paying for a subscription to ISO 27001, you must undergo a risk assessment. You should have access to all necessary modules on the platform to achieve your compliance posture and certification."
"The thing with Drata is you cannot open multiple tabs on the same interface or the same desktop,"
"The product can improve in its API documentation area."
"The solution is quite costly."
"However, some Copilot features aren't available in the GCP environment. This is something we hope will be addressed in the future."
"Support needs to be highly responsive, especially in large enterprise environments."
"There are challenges with the licensing policies, which are quite complicated."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
"The vulnerabilities are duplicated many times."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is not compatible with Linux machines."
"It's hard to reach someone who understands my problems. I haven't had many issues, so I haven't called them."
"It's hard to reach someone who understands my problems. I haven't had many issues, so I haven't called them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I remember that my company used to pay 25,000 USD to use the product...The product's cost is really high, but it is a powerful tool."
"It's one of the more expensive options, but I think it's worth the money if you can afford it."
"Drata's pricing is quite reasonable. Compared to other tools in the market, including its biggest competitor, Vanta, Drata is much cheaper. Even compared to other tools like AuditBoard, which aren’t as good, Drata’s price remains competitive."
"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
"I am not involved much with the pricing but the bundle offering is good."
"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."
"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."
"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."
"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Drata?
The existing features of Drata are already extensive and costly to integrate. It requires a certain level of development understanding from companies. Improvements could be in the area of reducing ...
What is your primary use case for Drata?
I have been deploying all the services to Australia and USA. These are for customer compliance on HIPAA, ISO 27001, SOC 2, and similar standards.
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 across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
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 the importance of what needs covering.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 Drata vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,672 professionals have used our research since 2012.