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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...
Sponsored
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), Container Security (2nd), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (4th), Compliance Management (3rd)
Google Cloud Security Comma...
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
25th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
19th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
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), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (3rd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.4%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Security Command Center is 1.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 10.7%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
 

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.
Nishant_Mishra - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides visibility, address cloud misconfiguration and prevent threats
In terms of identifying, the solution is pretty good. It takes care of all the layers. We have Cloud, Kubernetes cluster, instances running, and network. We have identities, permissions, and access. It provides pictures of everything in GCP. There's no such integration required. There are Google APIs that you need to enable. The compliance reporting feature helped us maintain a baseline of compliance within the information security policies. It's pretty stable and scalable. However, visibility can be improved along with automation. SCC to provide an option to fix those things, perhaps by clicking a button. For example, if a firewall rule allows an application to accept HTTP traffic, I should be able to address that specific issue directly within the interface. It's just a regular call to action button. There are no prerequisites for the solution. It's a requirement to have good security visibility into your Google Cloud Infrastructure. Cloud Security Command Center could be a good product to consider. There are other open-source solutions available. There are solutions from Aqua that are pretty decent. I would recommend that if somebody is opting for SCC, they should also explore open-source solutions. Open-source solutions can be very beneficial, especially if they are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy. You won't need additional security tools for platforms like AWS or others. Whenever a security issue pops up, a generative AI backend provides a summary of what happened. The information provided is quite detailed. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
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

"You not only get to know about vulnerabilities and misconfigurations but also some of the actual"
"PingSafe offers comprehensive security posture management."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security has saved up to 50 percent in engineering time."
"We like the platform and its response time. We also like that its console is user-friendly as well as modern and sleek."
"The UI is responsive and user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to gain deep visibility into the workloads inside containers."
"It used to guide me about an alert. There is something called an alert guide. I used to click on the alert guide, and I could read everything. I could read about the alert and how to resolve it. I used to love that feature."
"The solution helped free other staff to work on other projects or other tasks. We basically just had to do a bunch of upfront configuring. With it, we do not have to spend as much time in the console."
"The compliance reporting feature helped us maintain a baseline of compliance within the information security policies."
"Most people use the threat detection dashboard."
"It simplifies compliance efforts."
"Defender is a robust platform for dealing with many kinds of threats. We're protected from various threats, like viruses. Attacks can be easily minimized with this solution defending our infrastructure."
"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
"The most valuable features offer the latest threat detection and response capabilities."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has made our environment more secure."
"The integration with Logic Apps allows for automated responses to incidents."
"Technical support is helpful."
"Scalability is great, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"While it is good, I think the solution's console could be improved."
"The resolution suggestions could be better, and the compliance features could be more customizable for Indian regulations. Overall, the compliance aspects are good. It gives us a comprehensive list, and its feedback is enough to bring us into compliance with regulations, but it doesn't give us the specific objects."
"They can add more widgets to its dashboard. A centralized dashboard with numerous metrics would improve user understanding."
"From my personal experience, the alerting system needs to be faster. If something happens in our infrastructure, the alert appears on the dashboard, but I have to log in to the dashboard and refresh it."
"For SentinelOne, improvements could be made in managing Internet dependency as cloud-based operations can pose challenges in environments with limited connectivity."
"Sometimes the Storyline ID is a bit wacky."
"A few YouTube videos could be helpful. There isn't a lot of information out there to look at."
"There's room for improvement in the graphic explorer."
"Visibility can be improved along with automation."
"The AI capabilities have been heavily promoted, but I haven't seen a significant impact."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"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. Covering more would allow us to see and protect more workloads from a single pane of glass. Additional features should include protection for more AI workloads as it currently focuses primarily on OpenAI."
"It's hard to reach someone who understands my problems. I haven't had many issues, so I haven't called them."
"My experience with Microsoft Defender for Cloud has been largely negative due to a poor user experience."
"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."
"Another thing that could be improved was that they could recommend processes on how to react to alerts, or recommend best practices based on how other organizations do things if they receive an alert about XYZ."
"One of the main challenges that we have been facing with Azure Security Center is the cost. The costs are really a complex calculation, e.g., to calculate the monthly costs. Azure is calculating on an hourly basis for use of the resource. Because of this, we found it really complex to promote what will be our costs for the next couple of months. I think if Azure could reduce the complex calculation and come up with straightforward cost mapping that would be very useful from a product point of view."
"For Kubernetes, I was using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). To see that whatever is getting deployed into AKS goes through the correct checks and balances in terms of affinities and other similar aspects and follows all the policies, we had to use a product called Stackrox. At a granular level, the built-in policies were good for Kubernetes, but to protect our containers from a coding point of view, we had to use a few other products. For example, from a programming point of view, we were using Checkmarx for static code analysis. For CIS compliance, there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, we had to use other plugins to see that the CIS benchmarks are compliant. There are CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes on AWS and GCP, but there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product. We ended up with two different dashboards. We had Azure Security Center, and we had Stackrox that had its own dashboard. The operations team and the security team had to look at two dashboards, and they couldn't get an integrated piece. That's a drawback of Azure Security Center. Azure Security Center should provide APIs so that we can integrate its dashboard within other enterprise dashboards, such as the PowerBI dashboard. We couldn't get through these aspects, and we ended up giving Reader security permission to too many people, which was okay to some extent, but when we had to administer the users for the Stackrox portal and Azure Security Center, it became painful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I understand that SentinelOne is a market leader, but the bill we received was astronomical."
"While SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers robust protection, its high cost may be prohibitive for small and medium-sized businesses."
"It is cheap."
"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."
"The price depends on the extension of the solution that you want to buy. If you want to buy just EDR, the price is less. XDR is a little bit more expensive. There are going to be different add-ons for Singularity."
"While I'm slightly out of touch with pricing, I know SentinelOne is much cheaper than other products."
"The cost for PingSafe is average when compared to other CSPM tools."
"I am not involved in the pricing, but it is cost-effective."
"Initially, it used to be relatively expensive, starting at around four or five hundred dollars."
"Pricing depends on your workload size, but it is very cheap. If you're talking about virtual machines, it is $5 or something for each machine, which is minimal. If you go for some agent-based solution for every virtual machine, then you need to pay the same thing or more than that. For an on-premises solution like this, we were paying around $30 to $50 based on size. With Defender, Microsoft doesn't bother about the size. You pay based on the number of machines. So, if you have 10 virtual machines, and 10 virtual machines are being monitored, you are paying based on that rather than the size of the virtual machine. Thus, you are paying for the number of units rather than paying for the size of your units."
"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."
"The pricing model for most plans is generally good, but the cost of the new Defender for Storage plan is high and should be revisited, as it could lead to disabling desirable security features due to cost."
"The product's pricing policy is generally favorable."
"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
"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."
"The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have."
"Pricing is difficult because each license has its own metrics and cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Retailer
7%
Media 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
No data available
 

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 Google Cloud Security Command Center?
The compliance reporting feature helped us maintain a baseline of compliance within the information security policies.
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud Security Command Center?
The primary use case is to monitor the Google Cloud infrastructure across all projects for security-related alerts. T...
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?
The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against ...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
No data available
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
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 Google Cloud Security Command Center vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,466 professionals have used our research since 2012.