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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Threat Stack Cloud Security Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

iboss
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (13th), Internet Security (4th), Web Content Filtering (4th), Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (8th), ZTNA as a Service (13th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (10th)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (12th), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Threat Stack Cloud Security...
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (24th), Container Security (33rd), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (30th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (34th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Jack Hamm - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 20, 2024
We experienced benefits immediately but the report generation is lagging
iboss excels on the networking side but lags slightly behind competitors like Zscaler and Netskope in terms of security feature parity. I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention. Using iboss for DLP instead of traditional endpoint solutions is preferable, but its current feature set requires some clunky workarounds. I'd also like to see better integration of DLP into the platform. Additionally, while it's improving, reporting can be slow at times. This is problematic when generating reports for executives who expect them immediately. I'd like to see further improvements in reporting speed and efficiency.
Anthony Alvarico - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 9, 2024
Provides discovery, data exfiltration, and sensitive data exposure at low cost
The deployment process is quick, taking two to three days. The implementation and customization require more time. We need to adjust the setup to fit the client's needs, which involves fine-tuning notifications and alerts to avoid overwhelming them. First, you need the appropriate licensing. Once you have that, go to security.microsoft.com and integrate with Defender for Endpoints to receive information. While you can ingest logs from different firewalls, such as Palo Alto or Cisco, we usually implement them with Defender for Endpoints. Once a laptop or desktop is set up in Defender for Endpoints, integrating Cloud Apps with the endpoints allows us to collect the data easily. I rate the initial setup a nine out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.
SC
Sep 26, 2021
SecOps program for us, as a smaller company, is amazing; they know what to look for
They could give a few more insights into security groups and recommendations on how to be more effective. That's getting more into the AWS environment, specifically. I'm not sure if that's Threat Stack's plan or not, but I would like them to help us be efficient about how we're setting up security groups. They could recommend separation of VPCs and the like - really dig into our architecture. I haven't seen a whole lot of that and I think that's something that, right off the bat, could have made us smarter. Even as part of the SecOps Program, that could be helpful; a quick analysis. They're analyzing our whole infrastructure and saying, "You have one VPC and that doesn't make a lot of sense, that should be multiple VPCs and here's why." The architecture of the servers in whatever cloud-hosting provider you're on could be helpful. Other than that, they should continue to expand on their notifications and on what's a vulnerability. They do a great job of that and we want them to continue to do that. It would be cool, since the agent is already deployed and they know about the server, they know the IP address, and they know what vulnerability is there, for them to test the vulnerability and see if they can actually exploit it. Or, once we patch it, they could double-check that it can't be. I don't know how hard that would be to build. Thinking on it off the top off my head, it could be a little challenging but it could also be highly interesting. It would also be great if we could test a couple of other features like hammering a server with 100 login attempts and see what happens. Real test scenarios could be really helpful. That is probably more something close to what they do with the SOC 2 audit or the report. But more visualization of that, being able to test things out on our infrastructure to make sure we can or can't hit this box could be interesting.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"iboss is easy to use despite its complexity. Multiple engineers manage it, but it's significantly more straightforward to administer than traditional VPNs and web proxies."
"Its initial setup was straightforward."
"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent. That's something that really helped us out. It's not just a simple proxy that just blocks the insights of potential threats that come on behind it. They do malware detection and that helps us a lot."
"Valuable features: Within the filter: Controls (Web categories, applications, and Allow/Block list) and Network (local Subnets). Within the reporter: Logs (Event Log) and Reports."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"I like the web GUI/the management interface. I also like the security of Microsoft. As compared to other manufacturers, it's less complex and easy to understand and work with."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"There are a lot of features with benefits, including discovery, investigation, and putting controls around things. You can't say that you like the investigation part but not the discovery. Everything is correlated; that's how the tool works."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of management. It's important."
"The most valuable feature is its policy implementation."
"The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows MCAS to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly."
"I like the alert policies because they are quite robust. It has some built-in templates that we can easily pick up. One of them is the alert for mass downloads, when a particular user is running a massive download on your SharePoint site."
"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"An important feature of this solution is monitoring. Specifically, container monitoring."
"There has been a measurable decrease in the meantime to remediation... because we have so many different tech verticals already collated in one place, our ability to respond is drastically different than it used to be."
"The rules are really great. They give us more visibility and control over what's being triggered. There's a large set of rules that come out-of-the-box. We can customize them and we can create our own rules based on the traffic patterns that we see."
"It has been quite helpful to have the daily alerts coming to my email, as well as the Sev 1 Alerts... We just went through a SOX audit and those were pivotal."
"With Threat Stack, we quickly identified some AWS accounts which had services that would potentially be exposed and were able to remediate them prior to release of products."
"Every other security tool we've looked is good at containers, or at Kubernetes, is good at AWS, or at instance monitoring. But nobody is good at tying all of those things together, and that's really where Threat Stack shines."
"We like the ability of the host security module to monitor the processes running on our servers to help us monitor activity."
"Threat Stack has connectivity."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"The solution could be stronger on the integration side and offer more cloud applications like G Suite or Oracle."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"SSL decryption: We had issues with learners using apps instead of using web browsers. This type of encryption is tough for any appliance in a BYOD environment."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"The integration with macOS operating systems needs to be better."
"There could be more granular roles that are out of the box included in the product."
"There are challenges with detection and there are challenges with false-positive rates."
"Sometimes the support is actually lacking."
"The response time could be better. It will be helpful if the alerts are even more proactive and we can see more data. Currently, the data is a little bit weak. It is not complete. I can't just see it and completely know which user or which device it is. It takes some effort and time on my part to investigate and isolate a user. It would be great if it is more user-friendly or easy for people to understand."
"It takes some time to scan and apply the policies when there is some sensitive information. After it applies the policies, it works, but there is a delay. This is something for which we are working with Microsoft."
"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
"We would like to get more information from the endpoint. I don't get enough detailed information right now on why something failed. There is not enough visibility."
"I would like further support of Windows endpoint agents or the introduction of support for Windows endpoint agents."
"It shoots back a lot of alerts."
"Some features do not work as expected."
"The reports aren't very good. We've automated the report generation via the API and replaced almost all the reports that they generate for us using API calls instead."
"The compliance and governance need improvement."
"The user interface can be a little bit clunky at times... There's a lot of information that needs to be waded through, and the UI just isn't great."
"The one thing that we know they're working on, but we don't have through the tool, is the application layer. As we move to a serverless environment, with AWS Fargate or direct Lambda, that's where Threat Stack does not have the capacity to provide feed. Those are areas that it's blind to now..."
"The API - which has grown quite a bit, so we're still learning it and I can't say whether it still needs improvement - was an area that had been needing it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"The pricing is fair."
"Its pricing is on the higher side. Its price is definitely very high for a small-scale company. As an enterprise client, we do get benefits from Microsoft. We get a discounted price because of the number of users we have in our company. We have a premier package, and with that, we do get a lot of discounts. There are no additional costs. It only comes in the top-tier packages. Generally, the top-tier license is the best license that you can get for your organization. If you want, you can buy it separately, but that's not a good idea."
"The pricing is in the middle. It isn't too cheap or expensive compared to other antivirus or security products. It is priced according to industry standards."
"This product is not expensive."
"It is a little bit expensive. When you want to have the complete package with Office 365, Defender, and everything else, it is expensive."
"The cost could be improved when you need to pay for anything. For example, refreshing files takes time to load, though it may be my Internet. To improve the refresh time, Microsoft says that we need to pay for a Premium license, and I don't like paying for things that help make a solution better."
"It has pretty good pricing."
"It has fair pricing. You pay for what you get. As far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"It came in cheaper than Trend Micro when we purchased it a few years ago."
"I'm happy with the amount that we spend for the product that we get and the overall service that we get. It's not cheap, but I'm still happy with the spend."
"We find the licensing and pricing very easy to understand and a good value for the services provided."
"It is a cost-effective choice versus other solutions on the market."
"What we're paying now is somewhere around $15 to $20 per agent per month, if I recall correctly. The other cost we have is SecOps."
"Pricing seems to be in line with the market structure. It's fine."
"It is very expensive compared to some other products. The pricing is definitely high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about iboss?
Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss.
What needs improvement with iboss?
A positive improvement would be to expand into more areas for product monitoring. You have an agent that resides on t...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We use it for URL filtering to enforce our enterprise Internet use policy. We use it for our current initiatives in a...
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-nat...
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 notificatio...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
It's relatively low-cost, especially since it's often bundled with Microsoft 365.
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Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
Threat Stack, CSP,
 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
StatusPage.io, Walkbase, Spanning, DNAnexus, Jobcase, Nextcapital, Smartling, Veracode, 6sense
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Zscaler and others in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB). Updated: October 2024.
814,763 professionals have used our research since 2012.