Drata vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

"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."

"The product is 100 percent friendly to use."

"Drata offers APIs for every clause so that it can integrate into various platforms."

"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."

"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 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 valuable features include the ability to manage devices and the fact that Defender can replace other security tools like SCCM."

"The dashboard is very good. It gives our clients a lot of information and allows them to have a complete overview of the system. Everything is visible in one glance."

"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."

"The main feature is the security posture assessment through the security score. I find that to be very helpful because it gives us guidance on what needs to be secured and recommendations on how to secure the workloads that have been onboarded."

"The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud can find potential phishing links and malicious code in data at rest."

"The solution is very easy to deploy."

"DSPM is the most valuable feature."

"The thing with Drata is you cannot open multiple tabs on the same interface or the same desktop,"

"The existing features of Drata are already extensive and costly to integrate."

"The product can improve in its API documentation area."

"The solution is quite costly."

"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."

"In terms of improvements, I'd suggest better marketing since the industry tends to market these tools as security experts, which isn't true."

"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 most significant areas for improvement are in the security of our identity and endpoints and the posture of the cloud environment. Better protection for our cloud users and cloud apps is always welcome."

"The product must improve its UI."

"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 would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."

"Defender could improve how data is represented. It can be unstructured or slow to load. The recent update allowing policy grouping into control groups is beneficial, but further enhancements for speed and clarity are needed."

"There are challenges with the licensing policies, which are quite complicated."

"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."

"Early on, the lack of transparency is a challenge. Microsoft does not tell you the cost when they launch something."

"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 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."

"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."

"I am not involved much with the pricing but the bundle offering is good."

"Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."

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

"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."

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

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