IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

IBM and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. IBM is ranked #49, while Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1. IBM holds a 0.5% mindshare in VM, compared to Microsoft’s 5.6% mindshare. Additionally, 50% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment and Microsoft Defender for Cloud compete in security solutions with each having specific strengths. IBM Guardium has an edge in vulnerability assessment, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrates better within Microsoft platforms.

Features: IBM Guardium offers robust data protection, regulatory compliance, and detailed monitoring. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides advanced threat protection, cloud-based security features, and seamless integration across Microsoft platforms.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender for Cloud benefits from easy deployment within the Microsoft ecosystem using Azure's infrastructure, along with effective customer support. IBM Guardium's deployment is more complex, requiring specialized knowledge, and although its support is comprehensive, deployment can be challenging.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Guardium involves higher setup costs due to its configuration needs but offers significant ROI from data protection. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is competitively priced, particularly for existing Microsoft customers, and provides effective ROI through cloud-native capabilities and subscription models.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

April 2025

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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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.4%. The mindshare of IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.6%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at Novartis

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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reviewer1714710

CTA\Owner at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Worthwhile from the regulatory requirements and analytics perspective, but is expensive and not easy to use

We are a full security base integration and application business. We help with implementation and deployments. I used Guardium to help with a cloud migration to check and do some validation for a client's data landscape and services so that they made sure that they were all secure in overall…

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Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"The reporting features are good and there are many built-in reports that can be quickly configured."

"It helped with some of the regulatory requirements. It also helped with some of the security analytics and analysis. It was worthwhile from that perspective."

"The most valuable feature is that it provides a simple English recommendation on actions that you need to take once a vulnerability is discovered."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has made our environment more secure."

"When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard. This gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about the email, sorting out the email, or looking at it through an ITSM solution, whey they have to look at the description and use cases. Efficiency increases with this optimized, ready-made solution since you don't need to invest in something externally. You can start using the dashboard and auditing capability provided from day one. Thus, you have fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution, providing operational efficiency for your team."

"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."

"Good compliance policies."

"The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications."

"Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."

"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 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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"It was not as easy to use. The user-friendliness of it was somewhat lower than what I was expecting. It was also lacking in terms of the ease of the setup. There should be an automatic agent for deployment."

"Building policies is not that easy. There are some things that are turned off by default, for example, displaying values."

"The interface could be improved by having sub-groups of tests, ultimately making the process of collecting tests faster."

"When you work with it, the only problem that we're struggling with is that we have 21 different subscriptions we're trying to apply security to. It's impossible to keep everything organized."

"Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts."

"The customer service at Microsoft has room for improvement. The first line of support is not technically adept and often requires engaging higher-level technicians to resolve issues."

"The product's advanced analytics and reporting features could be improved."

"It needs to be simplified and made more user-friendly for a non-technical person."

"The initial setup is not actually so complex but it feels complex because there are many add-ons. There are many options and my team needs to be aware of all of these changes happening on the backend which is a distraction."

"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."

"Microsoft Defender could be more centralized. For example, I still need to go to another console to do policy management."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"One thing not advantageous for it was that it was a little bit more expensive. I would rate it one out of five in terms of pricing."

"Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services."

"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."

"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 licensing cost per server is $15 per month."

"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."

"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."

"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."

"There are two different plans. We're using the secure basic plan, but we have used the end security plan as well. There are additional costs, but it gives us more functionalities compared to the basic plan."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

38%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

I find that the pricing for Zafran aligns well with the comprehensive features it offers. The asset and user-based li...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even ...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

Our primary use case for Zafran involves leveraging it to enhance our vulnerability risk scoring methodology. In toda...

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What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.

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Initially, the cost was reasonable, but additional services from Microsoft sometimes incur extra expenses that seem h...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

March 2025

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Vulnerability Management

April 2025

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment report

Download IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

March 2025

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Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Demo not available

IBM

Microsoft

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment scans data infrastructures (databases, data warehouses and big data environments) to detect vulnerabilities, and suggests remedial actions. The solution identifies exposures such as missing patches, weak passwords, unauthorized changes and misconfigured privileges.

IBM

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Buyer's Guide

IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Guardium Vulnerability Assessment vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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