Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Tenable Security Center comparison

Microsoft and Tenable are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while Tenable is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.5. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Tenable users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Tenable Security Center and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are prominent competitors in the security software category. Based on feature comparisons, Tenable has the upper hand in vulnerability scanning, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud excels in integration with Azure and compliance management.

Features: Tenable Security Center focuses on vulnerability scanning and utilizes Nessus technology for comprehensive asset discovery, customizable scanning policies, and detailed dashboards. Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers seamless integration with Azure, providing broad visibility across environments, enhanced compliance management, and valuable security score capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Tenable Security Center could enhance flexibility in report configuration and integration, as well as improve the speed of scanning. Risk acceptance management could also be streamlined for larger environments. Microsoft Defender for Cloud would benefit from better management of false positive alerts, increased granularity in policy application across subscriptions, and simplified pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tenable Security Center is generally deployed on-premises, which suits organizations preferring local data management. Its technical support is responsive but could benefit from more consistency. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is cloud-based, offering scalability for those utilizing cloud infrastructure. Support is good, but experiences can vary with differences between tier-one and premium levels.

Pricing and ROI: Tenable Security Center's pricing based on assets can be more expensive than competitors like Rapid7, but it offers adaptable compliance solutions that reduce security breaches and manpower costs, delivering significant ROI. Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers flexible pricing options, with a mix of free and paid features, although it may become costly with full feature usage. Its integration with Azure services provides cost-effectiveness for organizations heavily invested in Microsoft ecosystems.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center

February 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Zafran Security

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at Novartis

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

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.

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OndrejKOVAC

Solution engineer at EXPERTience

Empower clients with risk-based vulnerability management through continuous workflow and valuable insights

Tenable Security Center could improve by implementing more dynamic data displays and translating reports into European languages. This is especially relevant in Central Eastern Europe, where clients often require reports in local languages. Additionally, the licensing model could be more flexible for managed security providers, similar to a pay-as-you-go model.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"DSPM is the most valuable feature."

"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."

"It helps you to identify the gaps in your solution and remediate them. It produces a compliance checklist against known standards such as ISO 27001, HIPAA, iTrust, etc."

"Scalability is great, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a nine out of 10."

"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."

"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."

"When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard. This gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about the email, sorting out the email, or looking at it through an ITSM solution, whey they have to look at the description and use cases. Efficiency increases with this optimized, ready-made solution since you don't need to invest in something externally. You can start using the dashboard and auditing capability provided from day one. Thus, you have fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution, providing operational efficiency for your team."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"The most important features are the dashboard and reporting. The dashboard provides statistics with graphs and bar charts for our management."

"The solution is completely stable and operation is user-friendly."

"Support is knowledgeable."

"The scanning part, the agent part – that's the valuable aspect."

"Tenable's most valuable features are the credential scan, vulnerability reports, and vulnerability ratings (VPR)."

"I think that this is a good solution for evaluating vulnerability in the network."

"We really love the Security Center dashboard. It basically performs vulnerability scanning and then outputs a vulnerability data."

"The usability is really good. It's very easy to use and a good platform. It is scalable and very stable. The technical support is fine and the setup is super easy."

More Tenable Security Center pros

Cons

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"For improvements, I'd like to see more use cases integrated with Microsoft Sentinel and support for multi-cloud environments beyond just Azure."

"However, some Copilot features aren't available in the GCP environment. This is something we hope will be addressed in the future."

"The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome."

"The range of workloads is broad, but we'd love to add more workloads and make it a single security solution that covers all those workloads. Covering more would allow us to see and protect more workloads from a single pane of glass. Additional features should include protection for more AI workloads as it currently focuses primarily on OpenAI."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

"We would like to have better transparency as to how the security score is calculated because as it is now, it is difficult to understand."

"My experience with Microsoft Defender for Cloud has been largely negative due to a poor user experience."

"I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"The user interface can be improved."

"It's important for Tenable to catch up on testing capabilities that are present in solutions like Qualys."

"The dashboard templates are limited."

"There's a lot of information being streamed out of the reports. What would be nice, and maybe we just haven't found it, would be more of an executive-type view. We still expect it to collect all this information, but we would like a feature that would allow us to show it to an executive or a director or someone like that and give them some type of high-level overview but not get into the nitty-gritty."

"Additional costs are associated with using the solution, as additional scanners are required for different endpoints connected to the Tenable Security Center. If Tenable Security Center could extract information from these scanners automatically rather than manually, it would enhance user-friendliness for customers."

"The solution's user interface has some issues."

"The solution needs to improve its support. I would like to see a bird's eye view of my network architecture. I would also like to see the continuous view feature in the tool."

"At times we have had the typical bugs."

More Tenable Security Center cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."

"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters."

"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."

"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."

"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."

"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."

"The pricing and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud have been good for us. We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

"I use a local license to perform penetration testing and I'm pretty happy with everything when it comes to pricing and licensing."

"The pricing is more than Nexpose."

"Costing is pretty reasonable compared to the competition."

"The licensing costs for this solution are approximately $100,000 US, and I think that covers everything."

"Tenable SC is priced per asset, with the basic solution starting around US$12,000 for 500 assets."

"We're happy with the licensing cost and find it affordable."

"The tool provides competitive pricing."

"I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten, where ten is expensive. It is the most expensive tool my company is using."

More Tenable Security Center pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

21%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Pricing for Zafran Security is not expensive. We have a contract for five years, and the cost is lower than other too...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

I would like to see an integration with Check Point firewalls. It's essential for us and they are currently working o...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

We use Zafran Security for threat prioritization. We establish priority to understand which risks should be patched o...

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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...

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What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

Initially, the cost was reasonable, but additional services from Microsoft sometimes incur extra expenses that seem h...

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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 ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable SC?

Tenable Security Center is quite expensive, particularly for the CEE region, causing us to lose cases due to its pric...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tenable SC?

Tenable Security Center could improve by implementing more dynamic data displays and translating reports into Europea...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dazz.io vs Zafran Security

Compared 53% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 21% of the time

ServiceNow Security Operations vs Zafran Security

Compared 16% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 10% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 21% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Orca Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

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Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 16% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 12% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 11% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 10% of the time

Forescout Platform vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 3% of the time

More Tenable Security Center Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

March 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

March 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Tenable Security Center

March 2025

Download Tenable Security Center product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

Tenable.sc, Tenable Unified Security, Tenable SecurityCenter

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Microsoft

Demo not available

Tenable

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Get a risk-based view of your IT, security and compliance posture so you can quickly identify, investigate and prioritize your most critical assets and vulnerabilities.

Managed on-premises and powered by Nessus technology, the Tenable Security Center (formerly Tenable.sc) suite of products provides the industry’s most comprehensive vulnerability coverage with real-time continuous assessment of your network. It’s your complete end-to-end vulnerability management solution.

Tenable

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center

February 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.

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