Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Tenable Vulnerability Management 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 #5 with an average rating of 7.9. Microsoft holds a 5.6% mindshare in VM, compared to Tenable’s 6.9% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Tenable users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Tenable Vulnerability Management and Microsoft Defender for Cloud compete in the domain of cybersecurity solutions focused on vulnerability management and threat protection. Microsoft Defender for Cloud appears to have an upper hand due to its strong threat intelligence, regulatory compliance features, and integration within the Azure ecosystem.

Features: Tenable Vulnerability Management emphasizes comprehensive visibility across traditional and cloud environments, robust vulnerability scanning, and seamless integrations, particularly for enterprise organizations. It offers traditional and container scanning supported by real-time scanning through agents. Microsoft Defender for Cloud highlights threat intelligence and regulatory compliance, along with a holistic security view and advanced threat protection. It integrates well within the Azure ecosystem, managing multi-cloud environments with real-time alerts.

Room for Improvement: Tenable Vulnerability Management users note the need for improvement in customization of dashboards, reporting capabilities, and the clarity of licensing options, alongside better integration with other tools and customer support. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could enhance UI consistency, improve integration with third-party tools, and provide more user-friendly documentation, with noted areas for improvement in pricing clarity and configuration granularity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tenable Vulnerability Management offers flexible deployment options ranging from on-premises to hybrid clouds, with customer support described as generally positive but having slower response times. Microsoft Defender for Cloud primarily deploys in public and hybrid clouds with tight integration within the Microsoft ecosystem. Its support is strong, with efficient responses and comprehensive guidance, though training and better integration can be enhanced.

Pricing and ROI: Tenable Vulnerability Management is viewed as costly, with recommendations for a more flexible pricing model, yet it offers good ROI by managing vulnerabilities effectively. Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers competitive pricing within the Microsoft suite, with flexibility in module selection contributing to favorable ROI, despite occasional views of high pricing.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Vulnerability Management Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Vulnerability Management

April 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

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.4%. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.6%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Vulnerability Management is 6.9%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management

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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Mani Bommisetty

Infrastructure patching Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Streamlines vulnerability management with excellent reporting and potential AI integration

Tenable is user-friendly and excels in reporting. It allows me to easily fetch and schedule reports. The software's discovery feature aids in strengthening our security posture. The single-sensor installation process on various operating systems is smooth, unlike Rapid7, which requires different versions for separate systems. Furthermore, Tenable enables vulnerability management through potential AI integration that consolidates efforts and resolves multiple vulnerabilities simultaneously.

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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

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

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

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

"When we started out, our secure score was pretty low. We adopted some of the recommendations that Security Center set out and we were able to make good progress on improving it. It had been in the low thirties and is now in the upper eighties."

"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."

"The most valuable feature is the comprehensive overview across different workloads. It allows us to see protection not just across one workload, such as virtual machines, containers, infrastructure, or data, but across all our workloads. This overall visibility is really helpful."

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

"The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available."

"The dashboard is very good. It gives our clients a lot of information and allows them to have a complete overview of the system. Everything is visible in one glance."

"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 solution is quite friendly."

"Tenable.io, in particular, is quite a powerful product. It looks at your traditional environment, which is pretty much anything that is on-premises, and it also goes a step ahead and covers your modern assets, which is anything that is currently sitting in the cloud. You get complete visibility of your entire environment and tech operation. The ability to give you visibility across the entire tech surface is one of the biggest advantages that Tenable.io has."

"The price of Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is reasonable as it is ten times cheaper than other options."

"The solution provides seamlessness, a perfect UI, and identity management for office operations. We are most vulnerable to users. Therefore, it is crucial to implement the right solution to ensure proper user access and resource management."

"The vulnerability scanning is the most important aspect of the solution for us."

"Tenable is user-friendly and excels in reporting."

"There is no burden of updating or upgrading this solution."

"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

More Tenable Vulnerability Management 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."

"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."

"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."

"I rate Microsoft support five out of 10. It gets better once you're escalated past the first and second levels. It's difficult to get the necessary support when tickets are first opened."

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

"Integration into other third-party products, particularly those from tier three vendors like ManageEngine and Hexcode, has proven difficult."

"Sometimes, it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or certain kinds of products. That's not an issue directly with the product, though."

"Another thing is that Defender for Cloud uses more resources than CrowdStrike, which my current company uses. Defender for Cloud has two or three processes running simultaneously that consume memory and processor time. I had the chance to compare that with CrowdStrike a few days ago, which was significantly less. It would be nice if Defender were a little lighter. It's a relatively large installation that consumes more resources than competitors do."

"From my own perspective, they just need a product that is tailored to micro-segmentation so I can configure rules for multiple systems at once and manage it."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"The tool's reports are bad. They're not very customizable or flexible. During audits, we often have to exclude things that aren't relevant to our organization, but we can't do that easily with the reports. They come in HTML or PDF format, and we can't compare current results with previous ones in Excel because we never receive reports in Excel."

"Tenable.io Vulnerability Management could be improved with an increased number of dashboards and MSSP integration."

"AI integration for reporting in Tenable would be beneficial."

"The initial setup is complex and has room for improvement."

"I would rate it four out of ten. For startups, freelancers, or companies between startup and midsize, Tenable is recommended. However, for midsize or enterprise-level companies, I would not prefer it."

"t needs additional reporting and intelligence features, as well as enhancements in AI-driven detection, which is still in its early stages."

"Tenable could improve visibility into assets, including automated asset tagging. You should be able to automatically tag assets based on location, function, ownership, etc. That would help us because we spend a lot of time identifying and tagging assets by hand."

"The product is a bit expensive."

More Tenable Vulnerability Management cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"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."

"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."

"Azure Defender is definitely pricey, but their competitors cost about the same. For example, a Palo Alto solution is the same price per endpoint, but the ground strikes cost a bit more than Azure Defender. Still, it's pricey for a company like ours. Maybe well-established organizations can afford it, but it might be too costly for a startup."

"Defender's basic version is free, which is good. Many of our teams are evaluating the paid version against third-party products."

"Defender for Cloud is pretty costly for a single line. It's incredibly high to pay monthly for security per server. The cost is considerable for an enterprise with 500-plus virtual machines, and the monthly bill can spike."

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

"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

"Tenable.io is not known for being a cheap product."

"There are additional features that can be licensed for an additional cost."

"The total cost we pay for this solution is over 45K. This is for a large education organization."

"The tool is reasonably priced."

"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. It is in the middle."

"A yearly payment has to be made toward the solution's licensing costs."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high price, I rate the pricing an eight. So, it is a pretty expensive solution."

"Compared to other VM solutions, Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is expensive."

More Tenable Vulnerability Management pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

University

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Educational Organization

27%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Government

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?

I find that the pricing for Zafran aligns well with the comprehensive features it offers. The asset and user-based li...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even ...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

Our primary use case for Zafran involves leveraging it to enhance our vulnerability risk scoring methodology. In toda...

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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.

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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's the difference between Tenable Nessus and Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?

Tenable Nessus is a vulnerability assessment solution that is both easy to deploy and easy to manage. The design of ...

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What do you like most about Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?

The tool has an easy-to-use interface.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?

I would suggest HP WebInspect as a better option than Tenable.io. My current client doesn't have access to it. Howeve...

See all answers

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Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 24% of the time

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Tenable Vulnerability Management

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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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 Vulnerability Management

March 2025

Download Tenable Vulnerability Management product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Tenable.io

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

Managed in the cloud and powered by Tenable Nessus, Tenable Vulnerability Management (formerly Tenable.io) provides the industry's most comprehensive vulnerability coverage with real-time continuous assessment of your organization. Built-in prioritization, threat intelligence and real-time insight help you understand your exposures and proactively prioritize remediations.

Tenable

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Global Payments AU/NZ

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Vulnerability Management

April 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Vulnerability Management

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Vulnerability Management and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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