Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Reviews

It's used for data governance and security. It's a cloud security tool providing very good discovery around whatever is happening in your organization, such as what users are doing on the internet and how data is flowing out of your organization. It is then used to put controls around what information can go out, who downloads what, and how much they can download. It helps put controls around these types of things to create secure collaboration between your organization and its partners, customers, and vendors.

It's a SaaS platform. It's not like hardware or software where you install new updates or new versions. It's controlled by Microsoft in the backend.

They have made built-in templates. If you integrate your AWS account with Microsoft MCAS, using the predefined templates it will scan all the functionalities that are available or accessible after the integration. It will then provide security posture recommendations around issues such as how many buckets you have publicly available, what data is not encrypted, what is publicly available and insecure, and which devices are not backed up. It helps you to understand your security posture and to enhance it.

And when it comes to secure collaboration, if you have information that you have already restricted and you don't want it to be shared outside of your organization, with the help of MCAS session policies you can put controls around it. It's integrated with storage solutions and you can put the controls around things using labels such "classified," "restricted," or "confidential."

Another scenario where MCAS is helpful is when people are leaving your organization soon. It can happen that they hide and start downloading certain documents and files. MCAS can help identify mass downloads or mass uploads and what the user is doing. That kind of detailed analysis is available to senior management or the security team so that they can take whatever steps are necessary.

There are a lot of features with benefits, including

• discovery 
• investigation
• 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. Once the discovery of everything you feed into it is done, it gives you a nice dashboard. You can then plan what needs to be controlled and governed, and what should not be accessible in your environment.

It's quite well integrated with all Microsoft services, like Information Protection, Azure Portal, and Azure IoT, among other things. There are also integrations with AWS and Salesforce.

Although they are already doing it, I would like to see more integration with market leaders like Slack.

Another area that can be improved is to provide more reporting functionality. Currently, reporting is not very straightforward and it needs to be enhanced. Specific reports are not included and you need to run a query, drill down, and then export it and share it. I would love to have reports with more fine-tuning or granularity, and more predefined reports.

We have been using Microsoft Cloud App Security for at least the last two and a half years. We are a Microsoft partner. We do everything for their products, from design to implementation.

It's stable. It's more stable than other Microsoft services. In my two and a half years of experience with MCAS, there have only been two times that it went down and was not accessible to us. The services, policies, and controls were there. It was just that we were not able to access them. 

Whatever Microsoft has committed to in terms of stability, "99 point something," is pretty much true.

It's a SaaS solution so the scalability depends purely on the organization: How many applications do they want to integrate with it and do they have the corporate licenses? MCAS itself is scalable. You don't need to deal with servers, or RAM, or finding a new data center. Scaling it is purely up to you and depends on how much data you want to feed it and on the use cases you want to use it for.

I use Microsoft tech support at the highest levels. The experience with their tech support, as a partner, purely depends on what kind of contract you have and what kind of a relationship you have. If you have a very good relationship, you get responses when you need them. But when you talk about bugs or you are asking for a feature, you have to wait for their product life cycle. Overall, their support is good. Not average, but not excellent.

Neutral

The initial setup of Cloud App Security is quite straightforward. It's not complex. Microsoft's documentation around it is absolutely great. It guides you through the settings you need to configure and whatever apps you need to integrate. There is no difficulty in getting it up and running. It is more seamless than any other solution. It is even easier to run on Windows machines because the documentation is very good. They have very clearly described what needs to be done.

Once you have all the requirements, like your user account and license, a person can configure it in a day because it's a SaaS solution. But the time it will take depends on the fine-tuning, and that is determined by why you are using MCAS. That's the important part. If you're looking at user behavior, or if you're looking at data, or if you're looking at infrastructure security posture, each of these will affect the time it takes. If it's just for shadow IT, it will take one or two days to configure. If you're integrating it with AWS to help with your security posture, it will take three or four days.

One engineer who has prior experience is more than enough, but having two guys for setup might be better.

Day-to-day maintenance, again, depends on how you are going to utilize it. If you already have a SOC running with four or five people in it and your environment is small to medium in size, five people can use this tool and get value out of it. If you are talking about an organization like Walmart or Microsoft or a multinational company that has users across regions, you will need more people to support it. MCAS is a tool. It will have the data, but you will need to use it.

I'm not involved with the cost side of the solution so I don't know how much has been invested in MCAS. But where it's adding value is around the controls. I'm sure there are savings in that regard.

I have not implemented any other solutions, but I looked into Zscaler cloud security. Because Zscaler is an independent company, it doesn't have that many solutions with Microsoft. A cloud app security solution should have native products as well as integration with many other products. On that point, Microsoft is way ahead. For example, 80 percent of the world is using Office 365 for email services and 60 percent are using SharePoint for information sharing. Because these tools are Windows products, the controls become easy to implement.

My advice is to use it to its fullest capabilities. It has a lot of features and it is being enhanced daily. It's a full engine that you can use to discover all your assets in the cloud, whether they are on a public cloud or a private cloud. Every month or every quarter, look at what's new and how you can leverage it. You're already paying for those enhancements so use them, fine-tune them, and optimize them. The tool has a lot of capabilities. A lot of people only utilize it for information protection or tracking user activity or for their cloud-based security posture. Use it all. There's a lot in it.

MCAS is not a tool that interacts with end-users because there is no client. They don't know that MCAS is in the picture, so it doesn't impact the end-user.

The biggest lesson I would take from the use of Microsoft Cloud App Security is that you are being monitored. Do not use your professional device for personal use because there are more eyes and controls around.

In addition, the way you use MCAS is that you discover and then you put the controls in place to govern things. That's how any other security tool works. You first put it in learning mode to see what will happen. For example, If I put in this or that control, how much will it impact my end-users? In those terms, MCAS has been really nice.

If you have a lot in the Microsoft environment or AWS or Google Cloud, it's going to help you a lot.

We are a consulting firm and we configure this service for our clients.

Our clients use it for Shadow IT systems and processes. It is used specifically for cloud services, such as services that reside in Microsoft Azure.

It is very easy to use, which is what we look for in these types of solutions. 

This service would be better if it had a separate license, only for this service, that could be used to track usage. 

We have been using Microsoft Cloud App Security for the past month.

This is a stable product.

This solution is scalable. You simply buy licenses and access the platform.

Currently, we have five people in the company who are using it. With new clients using our service and other clients moving to the cloud, I want to have a security broker in place so I expect to increase our usage.

I have not contacted technical support yet.

As a cloud-based service, there is no installation.

Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly. It gives them access to many Microsoft services, and one of them is Microsoft Cloud App Security.

We are currently evaluating other products such as Netskope, to see what it can offer us. We primarily want to see if it is easier for our clients to use. It seems that the integration with the cloud service is much more difficult.

Licensing for this product is not as expensive as Netskope.

This is a pretty good service and I definitely recommend it if you are using Microsoft Azure or Microsoft services.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The use case is for getting visibility over cloud applications that our users are consuming, how they consume it, and using the protection which comes with Cloud App Security with that visibility. It provides monitoring and visibility into cloud apps that our users are using and has ;a layer of security wrapped around that. It identifies malicious activity, if it's occurring, and provides overall protection of our company data from things like data exfiltration and all the other integrations that it has with other Microsoft security products.

It is protecting approximately 800 users. We have four other sources feeding into it from other products that we use. We have several thousand applications for which we get reports and visibility.

It is one of our core tools for monitoring and managing our security posture. In the future, I don't see that changing much. At this stage, I think we are at a good level of how we are using it.

It has helped identify areas where we should improve, make changes to improve, the reason why we should make a change, and the impact of making the change. So, it helps drive us to make changes and see the benefits of those changes.

We have become more aware of what services our users are using, how often they are using them, and what data is being sent out of the organization and to which services. So, it is really a lot about visibility and helping us make decisions based on that. It drives some of our policy decisions for adding extra security controls.

It has all been very seamless to our users. It indirectly positively impacts them because we are keeping them more secure. No one has been saying, "Because we are using this product, it is slowing me down or causing me problems." As standard users, they wouldn't really need to know that this solution exists. They just rely on us to keep them safe.

• Helps us have a view into our overall security posture and how we can improve it. 
  
• The ability to perform investigations is very useful. 
• Identifying the number of applications, particularly connected via OAuth. 
• Has great, general overall visibility of who is using what and how. 
• We are using it as an indicator for any indicators of compromise that might be coming up.

Identity security posture points out a preset number of security posture improvements, or areas of focus, and whether they are being met. It also points out what changes need to be made in order to meet them. Therefore, we can have better security posture.

There is a feature called security configuration. This is across the whole Microsoft set of products regarding what changes can be done. Specifically within a product, we use it to improve the security posture by making changes.

They should continue integration with all other Microsoft security-related products. The integration with all the other products is still ongoing. However, the solution has already begun scaling to meet the needs of getting visibility through from other products as well.

About three years.

The stability has been fantastic. I have no complaints at all. It has been 100%.

The scalability is really good. It has improved while I have been using it. It definitely appears to be able to scale easily and well. 

The technical support is very good. They are responsive, knowledgeable, and skilled. We have great communication with them.

This is the only CASB product that I have ever used.

Anecdotally, I believe the initial setup is quite straightforward.

According to the person who originally set up the solution in our organization, but has since left, it was originally straightforward to set up.

My colleague and I share the day-to-day maintenance for one person. It needs only a few hours a day to get a lot out of it. 

We have seen ROI. Its main capabilities are:

• The protection that it gives.
• Visibility
• The protection for cloud products. 
• It helps with the improvement of our overall security posture.

Make full use of all the options available and focus a lot on policies. There are a lot of policies and alerts available which might not be used to their fullest extent. 

We are pretty happy with how it all works and fits together.

I would rate this solution as a solid nine (out of 10). The product is constantly improving. It has a low amount of false positives, i.e., true alerts identified as requiring attention.

We use it to protect our organization's data. It has the ability to create and can copy-paste for the end-user. You can take a screenshot from your mobile devices and download some confidential things. After creating the policy you can be assured that a user's data is being protected

We give devices access within a particular device that the user is accessing. We are also certain that there is no chance of scamming or that an email account can be hacked.

We also create a password policy. Whenever the end-user wants to download anything or wants to access anything there has to be some security. It secures the customer's data in their organization. 

All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related. 

I would like for it to be available on Mac and for it to support all of the features of Microsoft financing products. It is really for Windows.

I have been using Microsoft Cloud App Security for the last three years. 

The stability is good. 

It is very easy to expand it and it is also very easy to manage because it has a centralized dashboard. You can see all of our teams and activate the software. Any person can export a report. It's very easy to access for me.

Our clients are enterprise-size. 

Support is very good. If we have any problems, Microsoft will drop us an email and suggest that the server cannot be accessed due to some maintenance.

The initial setup is straightforward. You only need to set up the policies. The devices need to be compliant and particular applications have to be protected. 

It generally requires two staff members to deploy but it depends on the management. It depends if the IT staff or the customers understand the process. The only difficult part is pairing it to a mobile device. To my understanding, it's the only part that the IT staff has to handle. 

Setting up the policy is easy and then it's easy to replicate the policy. It takes maximum two hours. 

Customers are looking to protect their data and to protect their organization's files. For this, we offer them a package but the price is very high. This particular product, the Indian product, is running very well in the US and UK. 

It is certainly a good product. It is important to get a cloud-based product so that if you want to manage it remotely, you can work on a PC that is ready for that mission then.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We are using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for different purposes and one of them is for ensuring there is no shadow IT.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is to stop shadow IT.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for approximately three years

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is a stable solution.

The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is good.

We plan to increase the usage of the solution.

I found the support to be satisfying.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps' initial setup was quite technical but we were prepared. The time of the implementation depends on the job and how many users are being set up.

We did the implementation of the solution. We used two engineers and one project manager for the deployment and maintenance.

We are an MST and we do not pay for the solution. However, the price of the solution could be better.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps a nine out of ten.