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Illumio vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
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Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Cloud and Data Center Security (5th), Container Security (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (3rd)
Illumio
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (3rd), Microsegmentation Software (3rd)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (10th), Container Security (5th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew W - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 29, 2024
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.
Vincent TOH - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 15, 2024
Offers real-time application dependency mapping that is useful
The product's initial setup phase is not difficult. We are using a cloud version of the tool. Picking up the PC for the setup was difficult because Illumio's service provider took care of it. In our company, we only installed the tool on our devices, so it wasn't much of a difficult process. On a scale of one to ten, one is difficult, and ten is easy, I rate the setup phase as nine. I didn't deploy Illumio. My company uses the cloud version of the tool. I created my account and paired my device, which was all that was required.
Anurag Awasthi - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 26, 2022
Offers excellent firewall management and visibility into threats in a stable, integrated security suite
The solution's robust security posture is the most valuable feature. We have a lot of firewalls, and we can manage them in the solution through the firewall manager. We can set up an Azure firewall and centralize the management policy. The solution provides excellent visibility into threats, and it's a cloud-based integrated solution, so we don't have to worry about any third-party products or services. Microsoft provides so many options, and that's great. Defender for Cloud generates reports we can use as an assessment, as it allows us to see the services in our environment and our points of highest risk. The solution's threat intelligence helps us prepare for threats before they hit and take proactive steps, which is very useful for analysis.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We really appreciate the Slack integration. When we have an incident, we get an instant notification. We also use Joe Sandbox, which Singularity can integrate with, so we can verify if a threat is legitimate."
"It gives me the information I need."
"The offensive security feature is valuable because it publicly detects the offensive and vulnerable things present in our domain or applications. It checks any applications with public access. Some of the applications give public access to certain files or are present over a particular domain. It detects and lets us know with evidence. That is quite good. It is protecting our infrastructure quite well."
"We use the infrastructure as code scanning, which is good."
"We liked the search bar in PingSafe. It is a global search. We were able to get some insights from there."
"It is fairly simple. Anybody can use it."
"Our organization is growing steadily, so our infrastructure is expanding, and we're managing more technical resources. Singularity Cloud Security helps us track our resources so that we don't get lost in the overwhelming volume of things and ensures we follow best practices. The solution gives us better visibility into our resources and enables faster resolution."
"You not only get to know about vulnerabilities and misconfigurations but also some of the actual"
"It has helped us to understand internal network visibility and firewall policy implementation. We use the product to simplify firewall policy implementation."
"The features that I have found most useful is the ability to centralize all the rules and then distribute them across various locations. However, I've encountered challenges related to tagging policies, which can be complex to devise. It's a matter that requires careful consideration and stakeholder involvement before implementing such policies."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of Illumio Adaptive Security Platform is monitoring. When I have no requirement from the other application, I can use the web block traffic to build."
"The solution helps to maintain logs and monitor activities. It also helps us with access management. The tool helps us to secure organizational data that include files."
"The flexibility of the solution is its most valuable feature."
"The tool helps with my company's security posture."
"The product provides visibility into how the applications communicate and how the network protocols are being used."
"DSPM is the most valuable feature."
"The security policy is the most valuable feature for us. We can go into the environment settings and attach any globally recognized framework like ISO or any benchmark."
"Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful."
"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 takes very little effort to integrate it. It also gives very good visibility into what exactly is happening."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the vulnerability assessments and the glossary of compliance."
"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."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its support for cloud-native services like Kubernetes, containers, managed storage, and databases. Protecting these without Microsoft Defender for Cloud would be extremely challenging. For threat protection specifically, I find the signature-based detection and heuristic detection features very effective."
 

Cons

"PingSafe's current documentation could be improved to better assist customers during the cluster onboarding process."
"Cloud Native Security's reporting could be better. We are unable to see which images are impacted. Several thousand images have been deployed, so if we can see some application-specific information in the dashboard, we can directly send that report to the team that owns the application. We'd also like the option to download the report from the portal instead of waiting for the report to be sent to our email."
"We had a glitch in PingSafe where it fed us false positives in the past."
"The reporting works well, but sometimes the severity classifications are inaccurate. Sometimes, it flags an issue as high-impact, but it should be a lower severity."
"When you find a vulnerability and resolve it, the same issue will not occur again. I want PingSafe to block the same vulnerability from appearing again. I want something like a playbook where the steps that we take to resolve an issue are repeated when that issue happens again."
"Once all components, including the cloud piece and container runtime piece, integrate further and incorporate an AI layer for better comprehension, it will greatly enhance the utility of Singularity Cloud Security."
"Maybe container runtime security 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."
"The solution is very basic and doesn't do anything other than the orchestration of layer four endpoint firewall rules."
"Some of the features that can be improved is offer additional guidance on creating an effective and risk-free tagging policy would be highly beneficial."
"The interaction we've had with the support team hasn't been ideal. Technical support should be improved."
"We need more details on areas where there is an error or a traffic blockage. I would like the tool to offer a more detailed view."
"It requires a low-level re-architecting of the product."
"I would like to see better data security in the product."
"The customer service is lagging a bit. It could be better."
"The product’s agents don't work very well in OT environments."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
"The solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge."
"There is no perfect product in the world and there are always features that can be added."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome."
"Customizing some of the compliance requirements based on individual needs seems like the biggest area of improvement. There should be an option to turn specific controls on and off based on how your solution is configured."
"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."
"The pricing could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"PingSafe is cost-effective for the amount of infrastructure we have. It's reasonable for what they offer compared to our previous solution. It's at least 25 percent to 30 percent less."
"The pricing for PingSafe in India was more reasonable than other competitors."
"I wasn't sure what to expect from the pricing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little less than I thought."
"I am personally not taking care of the pricing part, but when we moved from CrowdStrike to PingSafe, there were some savings. The price of CrowdStrike was quite high. Compared to that, the price of PingSafe was low. PingSafe is charging based on the subscription model. If I want to add an AWS subscription, I need to pay more. It should not be based on subscription. It should be based on the number of servers that I am scanning."
"It is not that expensive. There are some tools that are double the cost of PingSafe. It is good on the pricing side."
"Pricing is based on modules, which was ideal for us."
"The cost for PingSafe is average when compared to other CSPM tools."
"The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis."
"There is a subscription needed to use Illumio Adaptive Security Platform and we pay every three years. Overall the solution is expensive."
"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."
"Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."
"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
"I am not involved much with the pricing but the bundle offering is good."
"Although I am outside of the discussion on budget and costing, I can say that the importance of security provided by this solution is of such importance that whatever the cost is, it is not a factor."
"It is bundled with our enterprise subscription, which makes it easy to go for it. It is available by default, and there is no extra cost for using the standard features."
"They have a free version, but the license for this one isn't too high. It's free to start with, and you're charged for using it beyond 30 days. Some other pieces of Defender are charged based on usage, so you will be charged more for a high volume of transactions. I believe Defender for Cloud is a daily charge based on Azure's App Service Pricing."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
I am personally not taking care of the pricing part, but when we moved from CrowdStrike to Singularity Cloud Native S...
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
They can provide some kind of alert when a new type of risk is there. There can be a specific type of alert showing t...
What do you like most about Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
The features that I have found most useful is the ability to centralize all the rules and then distribute them across...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis.
What needs improvement with Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
The log collection part needs improvement, and the tool should offer more details about the logs. We need more detail...
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 pricing is good. It is license-based, and we are not utilizing all of the features, like API and other functional...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
Illumio Adaptive Security Platform, Illumio ASP
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
Plantronics, NTT Innovation Institute Inc.
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 Illumio vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.