We performed a comparison between Lacework and Microsoft Defender for Cloud based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud focuses on regulatory compliance, ransomware protection, and incident alerts. On the other hand, Lacework prioritizes alerts based on severity, utilizes machine learning anomaly detection, and provides insights into the attacker's perspective. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could benefit from enhancements in various areas such as customization, integration, and transparency. On the other hand, Lacework could improve its offerings by providing better visibility, data governance, remediation features, and FedRAMP moderate authorization.
Service and Support: Microsoft Defender for Cloud's customer service has been criticized for outsourcing support and being difficult to reach the right level of support. Users also reported long wait times. However, Lacework's customer service is highly praised for being proactive, responsive, and providing helpful feedback and suggestions.
Ease of Deployment: Microsoft Defender for Cloud's initial setup requires some prior knowledge, but is generally straightforward. Deployment time depends on the number of subscriptions. Lacework's setup can be done quickly with Terraform scripts. Maintenance is manageable for both, but Microsoft Defender for Cloud may require users to create their own policies.
Pricing: Microsoft Defender for Cloud has flexible pricing options based on license and metrics, while Lacework has a fixed licensing fee per year. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is generally viewed as reasonable and competitive, while Lacework's pricing is rated moderately affordable.
ROI: For managed security service providers, Microsoft Defender for Cloud has resulted in positive ROI. On the other hand, Lacework has been successful in reducing monitoring time and effort for certain users.
Comparison Results: Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the preferred option over Lacework, as it offers more comprehensive features such as regulatory compliance, ransomware protection, and access controls. Although Lacework has some valuable features, it lacks visibility, data governance, and remediation features.
"The user interface is well-designed and easy to navigate."
"The visibility is the best part of the solution."
"PingSafe's most valuable feature is its unified console."
"Cloud Native Security helps us discover vulnerabilities in a cloud environment like open ports that allow people to attack our environment. If someone unintentionally opens a port, we are exposed. Cloud Native Security alerts us so we can remediate the problem. We can also automate it so that Cloud Native Security will fix it."
"We use the infrastructure as code scanning, which is good."
"Cloud Native Security is user-friendly. Everything in the Cloud Native Security tool is straightforward, including detections, integration, reporting, etc. They are constantly improving their UI by adding plugins and other features."
"There's real-time threat detection. It can show threats and find issues based on their severity and helps us with real-time monitoring."
"The most valuable features of PingSafe are the asset inventory and issue indexing."
"The most valuable feature is Lacework's ability to distill all the security and audit logs. I recommend it to my customers. Normally, when I consult for other customers that are getting into the cloud, we use native security tools. It's more of a rule-based engine."
"The most valuable aspects are identifying vulnerabilities—things that are out there that we aren't aware of—as well as finding what path of access attackers could use, and being able to see open SSL or S3 buckets and the like."
"Polygraph compliance is a valuable feature. In our perspective, it delivers significant benefits. The clarity it offers, along with the ability to identify and address misconfigurations, is invaluable. When such issues arise, we promptly acknowledge and take action, effectively collaborating with our teams and the responsible parties for those assets. This enables us to promptly manage problems as soon as they arise."
"The most valuable feature, from a compliance perspective, is the ability to use Lacework as a platform for multiple compliance standards. We have to meet multiple standards like PCI, SOC 2, CIS, and whatever else is out there. The ability to have reports generated, per security standard, is one of the best features for me."
"There are many valuable features that I use in my daily work. The first are alerts and the event dossier that it generates, based on the severity. That is very insightful and helps me to have a security cap in our infrastructure. The second thing I like is the agent-based vulnerability management, which is the most accurate information."
"For the most part, out-of-the-box, it tells you right away about the things you need to work on. I like the fact that it prioritizes alerts based on severity, so that you can focus your efforts on anything that would be critical/high first, moderate second, and work your way down, trying to continue to improve your security posture."
"The compliance reports are definitely most valuable because they save time and are accurate. So, instead of relying on a human going through and checking or providing me with a report, I could just log into Lacework and see for myself."
"Lacework is helping a lot in reducing the noise of the alerts. Usually, whenever you have a tool in place, you have a lot of noise in terms of alerts, but the time for an engineer to look into those alerts is limited. Lacework is helping us to consolidate the information that we are getting from the agents and other sources. We are able to focus only on the things that matter, which is the most valuable thing for us. It saves time, and for investigations, we have the right context to take action."
"The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."
"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."
"Good compliance policies."
"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."
"One of the features that I like about the solution is it is both a hybrid cloud and also multi-cloud. We never know what company we're going to buy, and therefore we are ready to go. If they have GCP or AWS, we have support for that as well. It offers a single-panel blast across multiple clouds."
"The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites."
"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."
"here is a bit of a learning curve. However, you only need two to three days to identify options and get accustomed."
"The could improve their mean time to detect."
"We can customize security policies but lack auditing capabilities."
"One of the issues with the product stems from the fact that it clubs different resources under one ticket."
"The integration with Oracle has room for improvement."
"The main area for improvement I want to see is for the platform to become less resource-intensive. Right now, it can slow down processes on the machine, and it would be a massive improvement if it were more lightweight than it currently is."
"We are getting reports only in a predefined form. I would like to have customized reports so that I can see how many issues are open or closed today or in two weeks."
"The Kubernetes scanning on the Oracle Cloud needs to be improved. It's on the roadmap. AWS has this capability, but it's unavailable for Oracle Cloud."
"Lacework lacks remediation features, but I believe they're working on that. They're focused on the reporting aspect, but other features need to improve. They're also adding some compliance features, so it's not worth saying they need to get better at it."
"The configuration and setup of alerts should be easier. They should make it easier to integrate with systems like Slack and Datadog. I didn't spend too much time on it, but to me, it wasn't as simple as the alerting that I've seen on other systems."
"Its integrations with third-party SIEMs can be better. That is one of the things that we discussed with them."
"Lacework has not reduced the number of alerts we get. We've actually had to add resources as a result of using it because the application requires a lot of people to understand it to get the value out of it properly."
"I would like to see a remote access assistance feature. And the threat-hunting platform could be better."
"Visibility is lacking, and both compliance-related metrics and IAM security control could be improved."
"The biggest thing I would like to see improved is for them to pursue and obtain a FedRAMP moderate authorization... I don't believe they have any immediate plans to get FedRAMP moderate authorized, which is a bit of a challenge for us because we can only use Lacework in our commercial environment."
"There are a couple of the difficulties we encounter in the realm of cybersecurity, or security as a whole, that relate to potentially limited clarity. Having the capacity to perceive the configuration aspect and having the ability to contribute to it holds substantial advantages, in my view. It ranks high, primarily due to its role in guaranteeing compliance and the potential to uncover vulnerabilities, which could infiltrate the system and introduce potential risks. I had been exploring a specific feature that captured my interest. However, just yesterday, I participated in a product update session that announced the imminent arrival of this feature. The feature involves real-time alerting. This was something I had been anticipating, and it seems that this capability is now being integrated, possibly as part of threat intelligence. While anomaly events consistently and promptly appear in the console, certain alerts tend to experience delays before being displayed. Yet, with the recent product update, this issue is expected to be resolved. Currently, a comprehensive view of all policies is available within the console. However, I want a more tailored display of my compliance posture, focusing specifically on policies relevant to me. For instance, if I'm not subject to HIPAA regulations, I'd prefer not to see the HIPAA compliance details. It's worth noting that even with this request, there exists a filtering mechanism to control the type of compliance information visible. This flexibility provides a workaround to my preference, which is why it's challenging for me to definitively state my exact request."
"Agent features need to be improved. They support agents through Azure Arc or Workbench. Sometimes, we are not able to get correct signals from the machines on which we have installed these agents. We are not able to see how many are currently reporting to Azure Security Center, and how many are currently not reporting. For example, we have 1,000 machines, and we have enrolled 1,000 OMS agents on these machines to collect the log. When I look at the status, even though at some places, it shows that it is connected, but when I actually go and check, I'm not getting any alerts from those. There are some discrepancies on the agent, and the agent features are not up to the mark."
"I would suggest building a single product that addresses endpoint server protection, attack surface, and everything else in one solution. That is the main disadvantage with the product. If we are incorporating some features, we end up in a situation where this solution is for the server, and that one is for the client, or this is for identity, and that is for our application. They're not bundling it. Commercially, we can charge for different licenses, but on the implementation side, it's tough to help our end-customer understand which product they're getting."
"The product was a bit complex to set up earlier, however, it is a bit streamlined now."
"I felt that there was disconnection in terms of understanding the UI. The communication for moving from the old UI to the new UI could be improved. It was a bit awkward."
"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."
"I would like to have the ability to customize executive reporting."
"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."
"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."
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Lacework is ranked 10th in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 9 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 46 reviews. Lacework is rated 8.8, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Lacework writes "Makes us aware of vulnerabilities and provides a lot of data but it's not easily understood at first look". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". Lacework is most compared with Wiz, AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Snyk and Orca Security, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Wiz and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. See our Lacework vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
See our list of best Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) vendors, best Vulnerability Management vendors, and best Container Security vendors.
We monitor all Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.