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Fortinet FortiSandbox vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

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

Fortinet FortiSandbox
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Threat Deception Platforms (7th)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiSandbox is 10.7%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 1.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Kiarash Heydari - PeerSpot reviewer
Light and powerful solution design; useful to have
My impression is that the initial setup process is quite straightforward. If you know what you're using it for, the initial setup can be quite easy and the solution is not that hard to use. When it comes to the steps taken for the implementation, you would select the OS you're using and when the files are sent to the appliance you check, and in the appliance configuration, it must be like the visual governance environment. You must set up the OS you have so that appliance can scan or analyze your file. To maintain this solution, you must always have at least one all-around person tuning this solution.
Jagadeesh Gunasekaran - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves us time, has good visibility, and a single dashboard
The solution is user-friendly and provides great visibility into threats. There are easy options available for specific workflow inspections. We can also get support by going through the Microsoft documentation, which is straightforward. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise. It covers us from a compliance perspective and protects our organization's data. Data protection is a very important aspect of any new organization, as we need to protect our data from both external attacks and insider threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us monitor for abnormal activity by insiders, which is one of the most important access points for attackers today. Additionally, the different cloud apps that Defender for Cloud Apps supports provide us with much more visibility into potential threats and activities on the internet. We have integrated Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps alerts with Sentinel. The integration is straightforward. We can find the configuration details on Microsoft's official documentation website. If we are familiar with how Microsoft products work, we will be able to follow the instructions clearly. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Sentinel work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. Our integrated Microsoft solutions provide comprehensive threat protection, covering most of the tactics and techniques relevant to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Sentinel allows us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. When implementing an SIEM solution, there are always prerequisites such as Active Directory logs, security logs, firewall logs, and DNS logs. These are important logs that need to be ingested into the environment. Sentinel has many third-party connectors available that make integrations straightforward. Microsoft provides the configuration details in the Sentinel platform. It is important to integrate all relevant log sources into the SIEM solution so that we can detect and be alerted to any type of threat factor, whether it is from an internal or external source. Integrating third-party solutions into the platform requires a separate configuration, but Microsoft provides the necessary information. However, we need to have the appropriate permissions to execute these setups. Sentinel provides a centralized dashboard that covers threat management and configuration. It gives us complete insight into what entities are accessing, as well as full details for investigation. We can see how the alerts and threats are relevant to suspicious activities, whether they are related to malicious IP addresses, suspicious ASHAs, or any other indicators of compromise. All of this relevant data can be seen in a single pane. Recently, Microsoft introduced a new investigation experience in a single pane. This means that we can now get a lot of details in a single pane, without having to go there and execute a query. There are a lot of new insights being developed in the Sentinel platform these days. It has software intelligence. They recently introduced Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, which covers almost all IOCs. This protects organizational assets from threats and suspicious traffic associated with IOCs. If a match is found, alerts are generated. This is a very interesting feature. Another great feature is automation and logic apps. We can create a number of operations, such as posting in a team's channel if a severe incident occurs or sending an email notification. There are many operations available, so we can automate a lot of tasks. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us stay compliant. It has predefined mechanisms in place to prevent attacks. For example, if an external user tries to access our SharePoint folders or files, an attack will be blocked. This is why it is important to give appropriate access to guest users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has many features and benefits. It provides a number of policies that can be configured to meet the specific needs of our security team. These policies can be used to customize cloud applications so that only authorized users can access them and perform operations that benefit the organization. In terms of safety and security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is top-notch. Using the solution's automation features, we can suppress false positive alerts. We can also close alerts, lower their severity from "high" to "low" or "informational," or close them immediately with the appropriate commands. This will depend on the configuration automation rule and the perspective from which we are testing. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps provides a single console. We are also provided with Microsoft templates to enable workbooks instantly. Alternatively, we can build our own customized workbooks to provide better insights and improve our SOC efficiency and overall performance. Consolidating all of our security data into one dashboard has saved our security operations team a significant amount of time. From an analyst's perspective, it is now much easier to correlate events, investigate alerts, and visualize specific entities. For example, an analyst can quickly see all of the alerts associated with a particular IP address, or they can view all of the activity for a specific entity over the past 24 hours or 7 days. This level of detail and insight would not be possible if our data were siloed in multiple dashboards. The single dashboard saves our operations approximately 20 hours per week by eliminating the need to access multiple consoles and tabs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps threat intelligence can help us prepare for potential threats before they happen. However, it depends on how we develop the policies for the database to block or ignore things in our environment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, it works fine. Its interface is also fine."
"Fortinet FortiSandbox is faster than other sandbox solutions."
"Performance is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable features of Fortinet FortiSandbox are the analysis options, artificial intelligence, and the many interfaces it provides."
"One of the valuable features is its ability to detect new threats."
"The solution is easy to manage."
"The most valuable feature is the protection and the way it works, the technology is what I like the most."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"Shadow IT discovery is the feature I like the most."
"The integration within the entire Defender suite is highly valuable because it allows for communication between different components and offers pretty decent correlations."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its monitoring."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very comprehensive, providing a complete 360-degree view of applications within an organization."
"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"The most effective features for data protection are data loss prevention (DLP) and data classification."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include live, up-to-date information, which provided real-time alerts, and the ability to delve into detailed metadata information."
 

Cons

"It would be better if it had support for Mac and Linux."
"The area I would like this solution to be improved in is the integrations for Sandbox with AI and big data ML mechanisms. I think this would be a practical improvement."
"It should be easier to import custom virtual machines. Some of the VMs that are in FortiSandbox don't have the applications that we have in our environment. We need to import a VM with specific applications that we use in our environment. Have all the licenses because this is a real environment. You need a license for the Windows client you run on it. It's possible to import custom VMs, but it's a pain to do it. I would like a tool that simplifies the process."
"The product is good but it could be speedier. In addition, it's quite complex."
"Product could include a user interface and be made simpler for customers to configure."
"Sometimes, there are issues upgrading the version of the firewall or the SD-LAN box. After we upgrade to the latest version of the software, we still have the same box. I think it's the same for every vendor."
"It would be better if we could integrate FortiSandbox with endpoint security solutions."
"The licensing can be very confusing. It needs to be simplified."
"I would like for it to be available on Mac and for it to support all of the features of Microsoft financing products. It is really for Windows."
"The response time could be better. It will be helpful if the alerts are even more proactive and we can see more data. Currently, the data is a little bit weak. It is not complete. I can't just see it and completely know which user or which device it is. It takes some effort and time on my part to investigate and isolate a user. It would be great if it is more user-friendly or easy for people to understand."
"Currently, reporting is not very straightforward and it needs to be enhanced. Specific reports are not included and you need to run a query, drill down, and then export it and share it. I would love to have reports with more fine-tuning or granularity, and more predefined reports."
"Defender for Cloud apps is primarily useful for Azure apps. It has limited capabilities for applications based on other cloud platforms."
"In the future, I would like to see more plug-and-play capabilities that use AI to tell you what needs to be done. It would be helpful if it scanned our devices and made security suggestions, on a configuration basis."
"We would like to get more information from the endpoint. I don't get enough detailed information right now on why something failed. There is not enough visibility."
"There are certain areas where the product could improve, such as some functionalities that did not work as expected."
"The product is very good so far, however, it would be better if it could include more up-to-date threat protection."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The license for Fortinet FortiSandbox depends on the use case."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution is unavailable at a lower cost and can be difficult to deploy."
"The solution is affordable."
"We are on an annual license to use the solution. We have an additional feature that is integrated with S5, which is working well."
"The price of Fortinet FortiSandbox is not expensive."
"Altogether, it is about €10,000 for the Sandbox and Email Gateway."
"There are additional costs, which isn't included in the licensing fee."
"Where we are right now, this is an acceptable pricing. I would like to see more transparency given to the end user. The end user given to us is via the cloud service provider. There are different programs and license models. Some include this, and some include that. It is all over the place. There can be a little more consistency or simplification in the pricing so that your parts list is not ten pages long, and you are not trying to determine, "If I have an E3, does this cover that?", or "Do I need to pay separately for the license?" Simplification would probably be better."
"It has pretty good pricing."
"The cost could be improved when you need to pay for anything. For example, refreshing files takes time to load, though it may be my Internet. To improve the refresh time, Microsoft says that we need to pay for a Premium license, and I don't like paying for things that help make a solution better."
"The pricing is in the middle. It isn't too cheap or expensive compared to other antivirus or security products. It is priced according to industry standards."
"Its pricing is on the higher side. Its price is definitely very high for a small-scale company. As an enterprise client, we do get benefits from Microsoft. We get a discounted price because of the number of users we have in our company. We have a premier package, and with that, we do get a lot of discounts. There are no additional costs. It only comes in the top-tier packages. Generally, the top-tier license is the best license that you can get for your organization. If you want, you can buy it separately, but that's not a good idea."
"It has fair pricing. You pay for what you get. As far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"We have an educational licensing agreement. It's a customer agreement for multiple years."
"We are an MST and we do not pay for the solution. However, the price of the solution could be better."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiSandbox?
The real-time analysis capability of FortiSandbox is beneficial for email analysis.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSandbox?
I think it's affordable. For the six to seven months of usage, the cost has been reasonable.
What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSandbox?
We sometimes face a delay in email scanning due to not having multiple virtual machines. Improvements could be made in dynamic scanning, scanning all email components such as URLs and attachments, ...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?
It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notifications are pretty good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is acceptable. If a product is of high quality, it justifies the expense.
 

Also Known As

FortiSandbox
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortinet FortiSandbox vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
846,617 professionals have used our research since 2012.