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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Microsoft Purview Data Governance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps increases ROI with enhanced security, cost efficiency, seamless integration, and proactive application monitoring.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Purview Data Governance enhances data management, reduces risks, and boosts reputations, offering long-term advantages across industries.
The biggest return on investment so far has been visibility, knowing what we have in our environment.
As a small team, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps allowed us to manage systems with just one or two people.
Clients benefit from using a one-stop-shop solution, increasing their visibility across different platforms.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps support is knowledgeable but inconsistent, with delays and first-level engineers lacking problem-solving skills.
Sentiment score
5.8
Microsoft Purview support varies; quick and knowledgeable or delayed and less informed, rating six to ten overall.
Their customer service is pretty good, but it's frustrating to go through three or four channels before reaching the right person.
The support is excellent, and the speed of response is commendable.
There were instances where the engineers were knowledgeable and helpful, but at other times it felt like a ping pong game, with unnecessary transfers until the right person was found.
Overall, it doesn't meet our expectations.
They're skillful people who know what they're doing in their space.
The support could be better, particularly with consulting.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers excellent scalability and integration, enhancing security and interoperability in diverse corporate environments.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Purview offers scalable data management, seamlessly integrates with Azure, handles numerous sources efficiently, but may incur high costs.
For what I know about the log collector and how much data it can take in, it is super scalable and capable of handling high workloads.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very scalable, provided you have the right subscription.
In my experience, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is good enough for small to medium businesses.
With automation, you can label five documents or 50,000 with the same amount of clicks.
The product is scalable and works across multi-cloud and multi-platform environments.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is praised for stability, reliability, minimal downtime, and user satisfaction despite rare external issues.
Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Purview Data Governance is stable with minimal issues, requires careful patch management, and supports a 99.9% SLA.
I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps.
Like any other Microsoft product, the uptime is good.
The current stability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is quite good.
It can take seven days to 24 hours to determine whether a policy is effective.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps requires better integration, user-friendliness, pricing, and improved features like reporting, support, and threat detection.
Microsoft Purview needs improved integration, functionality, and support in data lineage, API, compliance, notifications, and third-party connections.
For data loss prevention, it would be useful to be able to drill down into the kind of data being transferred over CloudApp.
A significant improvement I would like to see is the integration into a single pane of glass.
Specifically, integration with CASB for on-premise and cloud did not work as anticipated back in 2019.
It's essential to know if a feature isn't working due to missing licenses.
There are some problems with DLP rules, and it would be great if the security around DLP could be expanded.
A watermark feature or similar tools to help enhance security for end users could be added.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is cost-effective and competitive due to integration with Microsoft 365, despite pricing concerns.
Microsoft Purview Data Governance is cost-effective with flexible pricing but may require additional licenses for certain features.
The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is acceptable.
My organization is currently revisiting pricing, but previously, the cost was a bit expensive, yet comparable to other solutions with similar functionalities and features.
It's not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive, placing it in the mid-level range.
The feature might be available in the console, but it won't work without the proper license, creating confusion.
The experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was smooth, as most Purview functionalities were included in the e5 licenses we migrated to for other reasons.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers seamless integration, real-time threat detection, and enhanced security monitoring across platforms and applications.
Microsoft Purview Data Governance enhances data protection, classification, and compliance across multi-cloud environments with intuitive tools and automation features.
The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very comprehensive, providing a complete 360-degree view of applications within an organization.
The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include live, up-to-date information, which provided real-time alerts.
It provides a comprehensive view of the entire ecosystem's threats and compliance in real time.
The sensitivity labeling is the most valuable feature because it is the foundation for automating the encryption process and ensuring proper data handling across the organization.
The feature that I find most valuable is its ability to block unintended data sharing, like forcing unencrypted emails to be encrypted.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (14th)
Microsoft Purview Data Gove...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Data Governance (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 2.7%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Governance is 4.9%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite
 

Featured Reviews

Jagadeesh Gunasekaran - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves us time, has good visibility, and a single dashboard
The solution is user-friendly and provides great visibility into threats. There are easy options available for specific workflow inspections. We can also get support by going through the Microsoft documentation, which is straightforward. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise. It covers us from a compliance perspective and protects our organization's data. Data protection is a very important aspect of any new organization, as we need to protect our data from both external attacks and insider threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us monitor for abnormal activity by insiders, which is one of the most important access points for attackers today. Additionally, the different cloud apps that Defender for Cloud Apps supports provide us with much more visibility into potential threats and activities on the internet. We have integrated Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps alerts with Sentinel. The integration is straightforward. We can find the configuration details on Microsoft's official documentation website. If we are familiar with how Microsoft products work, we will be able to follow the instructions clearly. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Sentinel work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. Our integrated Microsoft solutions provide comprehensive threat protection, covering most of the tactics and techniques relevant to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Sentinel allows us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. When implementing an SIEM solution, there are always prerequisites such as Active Directory logs, security logs, firewall logs, and DNS logs. These are important logs that need to be ingested into the environment. Sentinel has many third-party connectors available that make integrations straightforward. Microsoft provides the configuration details in the Sentinel platform. It is important to integrate all relevant log sources into the SIEM solution so that we can detect and be alerted to any type of threat factor, whether it is from an internal or external source. Integrating third-party solutions into the platform requires a separate configuration, but Microsoft provides the necessary information. However, we need to have the appropriate permissions to execute these setups. Sentinel provides a centralized dashboard that covers threat management and configuration. It gives us complete insight into what entities are accessing, as well as full details for investigation. We can see how the alerts and threats are relevant to suspicious activities, whether they are related to malicious IP addresses, suspicious ASHAs, or any other indicators of compromise. All of this relevant data can be seen in a single pane. Recently, Microsoft introduced a new investigation experience in a single pane. This means that we can now get a lot of details in a single pane, without having to go there and execute a query. There are a lot of new insights being developed in the Sentinel platform these days. It has software intelligence. They recently introduced Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, which covers almost all IOCs. This protects organizational assets from threats and suspicious traffic associated with IOCs. If a match is found, alerts are generated. This is a very interesting feature. Another great feature is automation and logic apps. We can create a number of operations, such as posting in a team's channel if a severe incident occurs or sending an email notification. There are many operations available, so we can automate a lot of tasks. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us stay compliant. It has predefined mechanisms in place to prevent attacks. For example, if an external user tries to access our SharePoint folders or files, an attack will be blocked. This is why it is important to give appropriate access to guest users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has many features and benefits. It provides a number of policies that can be configured to meet the specific needs of our security team. These policies can be used to customize cloud applications so that only authorized users can access them and perform operations that benefit the organization. In terms of safety and security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is top-notch. Using the solution's automation features, we can suppress false positive alerts. We can also close alerts, lower their severity from "high" to "low" or "informational," or close them immediately with the appropriate commands. This will depend on the configuration automation rule and the perspective from which we are testing. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps provides a single console. We are also provided with Microsoft templates to enable workbooks instantly. Alternatively, we can build our own customized workbooks to provide better insights and improve our SOC efficiency and overall performance. Consolidating all of our security data into one dashboard has saved our security operations team a significant amount of time. From an analyst's perspective, it is now much easier to correlate events, investigate alerts, and visualize specific entities. For example, an analyst can quickly see all of the alerts associated with a particular IP address, or they can view all of the activity for a specific entity over the past 24 hours or 7 days. This level of detail and insight would not be possible if our data were siloed in multiple dashboards. The single dashboard saves our operations approximately 20 hours per week by eliminating the need to access multiple consoles and tabs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps threat intelligence can help us prepare for potential threats before they happen. However, it depends on how we develop the policies for the database to block or ignore things in our environment.
James McDowall - PeerSpot reviewer
The sensitivity and retention options in Purview are excellent
Some of the menu headings may not be easy to understand for some people. For example, when I first used Purview, I noticed that one of the self-compliance centers had changed its name. Microsoft has done a huge amount of updates, and sometimes it's hard to keep track of what Purview can do. We almost constantly have to explore it. Maybe Microsoft could have a 365 roadmap where we can look at upcoming features, or some kind of bulletin announcement for Purview users that explains new features and what they can do in simple terms. We could also look at the menu settings. In my experience of using Purview, we've never used it as an exclusive system for IT professionals or technical staff. We were very keen that other specialists around the business made use of some of these features because we thought that some of what Purview could do was relevant to other departments as well as IT. For example, we have HR managers and financial staff who use it. I think that some of the terminology in Purview is pitched toward IT and tech professionals, and it may not be immediately understood by other specialists. This is something that could be improved.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?
It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notifications are pretty good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is acceptable. If a product is of high quality, it justifies the expense.
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Purview?
It is designed to seamlessly connect to various data sources, which is particularly beneficial for our customers who primarily use Microsoft technologies.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Purview?
The auto-tagging feature should be available at a lower licensing level.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Purview?
Auto-tagging should be available at lower levels of licensing. Right now, a high level of licensing is needed for auto-tagging, and this feature should be made available at a lower license level.
 

Also Known As

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
Microsoft Purview, MS Azure Purview
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Microsoft Purview Data Governance and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,466 professionals have used our research since 2012.