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Lacework vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
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Ranking in Vulnerability Management
6th
Ranking in Container Security
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
4th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
3rd
Ranking in Compliance Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (5th)
Lacework
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
16th
Ranking in Container Security
13th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
12th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
15th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
11th
Ranking in Compliance Management
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
7th
Ranking in Container Security
5th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
4th
Ranking in Compliance Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
66
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (10th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd)
 

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.
Robert Croteau - PeerSpot reviewer
It provides a good overview of our security posture
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. They have to go in and put their policies in place. It's hard for them to implement that, especially if they don't have a real security team. The team's policymakers don't do anything. Lacework takes out all the noise and gives them bits of things that actually matter with the application after it learns the behavior.
Javier_Rodriguez - PeerSpot reviewer
Unified security management enhances threat detection and streamlines user experience
At the moment, we work with Sophos, SentinelOne, or Microsoft Defender. Most of our customers have Microsoft infrastructure, and they are cloud-only customers with Microsoft business licensing. I primarily recommend Microsoft Defender for customers who already have Microsoft infrastructure The…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of PingSafe are cloud misconfiguration, Kubernetes, and IaC scanning."
"I like CSPM the most. It captures a lot of alerts within a short period of time. When an alert gets triggered on the cloud, it throws an alert within half an hour, which is very reasonable. It is a plus point for us."
"Atlas security graph is pretty cool. It maps out relationships between components on AWS, like load balancers and servers. This helps visualize potential attack paths and even suggests attack paths a malicious actor might take."
"We like the platform and its response time. We also like that its console is user-friendly as well as modern and sleek."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security has significantly improved our risk posture."
"It integrates very well. We sell different products from different vendors. We know that the SentinelOne Singularity platform can be integrated with several different solutions from different vendors."
"SentinelOne stands out with its responsiveness to feature requests for Singularity Cloud Security."
"Cloud Native Security offers attack path analysis."
"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."
"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 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."
"The best feature, in my opinion, is the ease of use."
"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."
"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."
"I find the cloud configuration compliance scanning mature. It generates a lot of data and supports major frameworks like ISO 27001 or SOC 2, providing reports and datasets. Another feature I appreciate is setting custom alerts for specific events. Additionally, I value the agent-based monitoring and scanning for compute nodes. It gives us deeper insights into our workloads and helps identify vulnerabilities across our deployed assets."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable as advertised."
"The technical support is very good."
"The solution is used for risks, vulnerabilities, and compliance."
"The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud can find potential phishing links and malicious code in data at rest."
"My favorite part of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the compliance features. Defender covers a wide range of workloads, on par with competing products on the market."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce."
"I've seen benefits since implementing Microsoft Defender for Cloud. It's easy to manage for our large organization as an endpoint security solution. It integrates well with Office 365 and Windows 11, which is better than before. Patching, updates, and threat protection are all handled together now. Its AI features help predict threats."
 

Cons

"We can customize security policies but lack auditing capabilities."
"There's room for improvement in the graphic explorer."
"The Infrastructure as Code service available in PingSafe and the services available in AWS cloud security can be merged so that we can get the security data directly from AWS cloud in PingSafe. This way, all the data related to security will be in one single place. Currently, we have to check a couple of things on PingSafe, and we have to validate that same data on the AWS Cloud to be sure. If they can collaborate like that, it will be great."
"PingSafe takes four to five hours to detect and highlight an issue, and that time should be reduced."
"When we get a new finding from PingSafe, I wish we could get an alert in the console, so we can work on it before we see it in the report. It would be very useful for the team that is actively working on the PingSafe platform, so we can close the issue the same day before it appears in the daily report."
"I believe the UI/UX updates for SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security have room for improvement."
"The cost has the potential for improvement."
"A two-month grace period for extended searches would be a valuable improvement."
"A feature that I have requested from them is the ability to sort alerts and policies based on a security framework. Right now, when you go into alerts, you have hundreds and hundreds of them that you have to manually pick. It would be useful to have categories for CIS Benchmark or SOC 2 and be able to display all the alerts and policies for one security framework."
"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."
"The solution lacks a cohesive data model, making extracting the necessary data from the platform challenging. It uses its own LQL query language, and each database across different layers and modules is structured differently, complicating correlation efforts. Consequently, I had to create extensive custom reports outside Lacework because their default dashboards didn't communicate risk metrics. They're addressing these issues by redesigning their tools, including introducing the dashboard, which is a step closer to actionable insights but still needs refinement."
"I would like to see a remote access assistance feature. And the threat-hunting platform could be better."
"Its integrations with third-party SIEMs can be better. That is one of the things that we discussed with them."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"No possibility to write or edit any capability."
"I would like to see better automation when it comes to pushing out security features to the recommendations, and better documentation on the step-by-step procedures for enabling certain features."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."
"There are challenges with the licensing policies, which are quite complicated."
"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its pricing is okay. It is in line with what other providers were providing. It is not cheap. It is not expensive."
"Its pricing was a little less than other providers."
"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."
"PingSafe is priced reasonably for our workload."
"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."
"It's not expensive. The product is in its initial growth stages and appears more competitive compared to others. It comes in different variants, and I believe the enterprise version costs around $55 per user per year. I would rate it a five, somewhere fairly moderate."
"The licensing is easy to understand and implement, with some flexibility to accommodate dynamic environments."
"Pricing is based on modules, which was ideal for us."
"My smaller deployments cost around 200,000 a year, which is probably not as expensive as Wiz."
"The pricing has gotten better. That scenario was somewhat unstable. They have a rather interesting licensing structure. I believe you get 200 resources per "Lacework unit." It was difficult, in the beginning, to figure out exactly what a "resource" was... That was a problem until about a year or so ago. They have improved it and it has stabilized quite a bit."
"The licensing fee was approximately $80,000 USD, per year."
"It is slightly expensive. It depends on how big your environment is, but it is expensive. Right now, we are spending a lot of money. We have covered all of the cloud providers and most of our colocation facilities as well, so we cannot complain, but it is slightly expensive. It is not super expensive."
"Understanding the costs of cloud services can be complicated at first. As with a lot of things in the cloud, it can be quite hard to understand the end cost, but it becomes clearer over time. Early on, the lack of transparency is a challenge. Microsoft does not tell you the cost when they launch something. It is clever marketing, and there is room for improvement there. There should be clarity from the start."
"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."
"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
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?
SentinelOne provided competitive pricing compared to other vendors, and we are satisfied with the deal.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
Sometimes, I am not able to see the flow when there is an issue. When anyone complains and I have to troubleshoot it,...
What do you like most about Lacework?
Polygraph compliance is a valuable feature. In our perspective, it delivers significant benefits. The clarity it offe...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Lacework?
My smaller deployments cost around 200,000 a year, which is probably not as expensive as Wiz.
What needs improvement with Lacework?
The solution lacks a cohesive data model, making extracting the necessary data from the platform challenging. It uses...
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
Polygraph
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Learn More

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Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
J.Crew, AdRoll, Snowflake, VMWare, Iterable, Pure Storage, TrueCar, NerdWallet, and more.
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 Lacework vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
817,354 professionals have used our research since 2012.