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Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Tenable Security Center comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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
7.2
Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security, reduces costs, and improves efficiency, offering proactive vulnerability identification and significant benefits.
Sentiment score
7.2
Tenable Security Center boosts ROI by reducing costs, enhancing security, ensuring compliance, and preventing breaches with comprehensive asset visibility.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
The biggest return on investment is the rapid improvement of security posture.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud support varies in quality; enterprise users report better experiences, while others face inconsistencies and delays.
Sentiment score
7.4
Tenable Security Center's support is responsive and efficient, with room for improvement, particularly in international and standard support.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is scalable and flexible, integrates easily, but may have scalability and cost concerns at large scales.
Sentiment score
8.2
Tenable Security Center is highly scalable, easily supporting large environments with proper setup, despite initial network adjustments.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
Defender won't replace our endpoint XDR, but it will likely adapt and support any growth in the Microsoft Cloud space.
There might be scalability issues as you scale up to large enterprises.
Scalability is a bit limited with Tenable Security Center.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is reliable with minor downtime and occasional portal or connectivity issues, praised for overall performance.
Sentiment score
8.0
Tenable Security Center is stable, with minor bugs and performance issues; user ratings range from eight to ten.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Cloud users seek enhanced customization, better integration, improved dashboards, automation, and clearer pricing and documentation.
Users seek easier integration, improved UI, better support, flexible reporting, and enhanced features for Tenable Security Center.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises.
It's important for Tenable to catch up on testing capabilities that are present in solutions like Qualys.
The reports and plugins for reports and scans could benefit from enhancements.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides customizable pricing options, with debated cost-effectiveness, especially for extensive or regional deployments.
Tenable Security Center is expensive, with costs from $13,000 to over $100,000, depending on asset count and license type.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters.
The product is somewhat pricey, reflecting its valuable features and status as a high-quality solution in the vulnerability management market.
The cost of Tenable Security Center is reasonable for our company.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides enhanced security, AI-driven insights, multi-cloud support, and integrates with Sentinel for proactive threat management.
Tenable Security Center offers robust vulnerability scanning, user-friendly dashboards, and seamless third-party integration with low false positives.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
Tenable Security Center provides an overall score of vulnerabilities, comparing an organization with others in the same industry.
The most effective feature of Tenable Security Center for detecting vulnerabilities is its capability for critical mapping.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
7th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (8th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
Tenable Security Center
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.3%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Security Center is 7.8%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.
JoaoManso - PeerSpot reviewer
Good dashboards, reporting, and technical support, with a low rate of errors
Parallel scanning would be a nice improvement because it would speed up the detection process. It is not possible to search for vulnerabilities and do compliance checking at the same time. Rather, they are done one after the other. The integration is very good, although it still needs to improve. For example, it would be useful to have better integration with other tools in the space of identity management (IAM). As it is now, integration with new tools has to be developed specifically, so it's not easy. We would like to see better collection capability for external data that will help to improve detection and discovery.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
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 licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against the importance of what needs covering.
What do you like most about Tenable SC?
The tool's dashboard and reporting capabilities match our company's needs since we are able to modify the basic view to create a new dashboard, and it works out very well for our needs.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable SC?
The product is somewhat pricey, reflecting its valuable features and status as a high-quality solution in the vulnerability management market.
What needs improvement with Tenable SC?
While Tenable Security Center is highly effective, there is always room for continuous improvements. The reports and plugins for reports and scans could benefit from enhancements. Overall, it is a ...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
Tenable.sc, Tenable Unified Security, Tenable SecurityCenter
 

Learn More

 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
IBM, Sempra Energy, Microsoft, Apple, Adidas, Union Pacific
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,020 professionals have used our research since 2012.