Microsoft Defender for Cloud Reviews

The solution provides a security score based on the environment and gives recommendations for improving that score. For example, a manual server may require patches to strengthen security, and MS Defender for Cloud informs us. We can also run a vulnerability assessment in the background of work processes to detect server vulnerabilities. We primarily operate a hybrid cloud environment with some specific on-prem integrations.

One of our clients, operating in the electronics industry, has around 1,300 endpoints, 700 users on the Windows server, and 300 other devices. There are also 100-150 users on Unix servers.

We use multiple Microsoft security products, including Defender for Cloud, Sentinel, and Defender for Endpoint. The products are integrated, and there is nothing complicated about integrating them; we provide the APIs or the credentials, and they are automatically integrated.

The product helps us prioritize threats across the enterprise, which is essential when interacting with clients, as we can show them their high-risk vulnerabilities and tackle them first.

The solution helps automate routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts. Additionally, following the resolution of an issue, we can set up a logic app to trigger an automatic system response if it happens again.

The integrated security suite saves us time, as multiple security solutions work together seamlessly in the cloud, allowing us to take actions that could take 24-48 hours to replicate using third-party products. 

Defender for Cloud reduced our time to detect and respond; if we are faced with an issue known to the threat intelligence database or that occurred before, we don't need to invest any time at all. The solution reduced our time to detect and respond by around 50%. 

Integration with Defender for Endpoint allows us to see the health of our endpoints in terms of workload protection, which is one of the benefits of these integrations.

Microsoft solutions working natively together to provide integrated protection and coordinated detection and response is essential from a business point of view. We don't have to manage multiple tools and services from different dashboards; we can monitor and manage everything from a single point. All the generated alerts from numerous services are ingested into one solution that a single team can monitor. That's one of the best parts of using the integrated Microsoft security suite.

The solution's robust security posture is the most valuable feature.

We have a lot of firewalls, and we can manage them in the solution through the firewall manager. We can set up an Azure firewall and centralize the management policy.

The solution provides excellent visibility into threats, and it's a cloud-based integrated solution, so we don't have to worry about any third-party products or services. Microsoft provides so many options, and that's great.

Defender for Cloud generates reports we can use as an assessment, as it allows us to see the services in our environment and our points of highest risk.

The solution's threat intelligence helps us prepare for threats before they hit and take proactive steps, which is very useful for analysis. 

The most significant areas for improvement are in the security of our identity and endpoints and the posture of the cloud environment. Better protection for our cloud users and cloud apps is always welcome.

Several features are already in the pipeline, including one called External Attack Surface Management, which will be welcome additions.

The solution's stability is impressive; it's very stable.

The scalability is excellent; if we grow or shrink in the future, the scalability is there to accommodate us. I rate the solution ten out of ten in this regard.

When we have a critical issue, customer service is very prompt, and we often get support rapidly. We also get good help in our production environment.

Positive

I previously used Symantec Endpoint Detection and Response and switched because of the benefits of having a cloud-native solution. Additionally, the market is moving towards Microsoft, including many of our customers, so it makes sense for us to go with this trend.

The initial setup consists of three steps for us; first, we conduct an assessment or discovery with a client to determine their requirements and develop an understanding of their environment. Second, we design and plan the deployment to fulfill the client's requirements. Third, we implement and conduct a POC, and if successful, we roll out the entire deployment. The complexity of the setup and the number of staff required depends on the size of the business.

An example of an organization with 500-1,000 staff is that the initial information gathering takes four weeks, the design and planning stage takes two weeks, and the implementation and POC take another two weeks. Therefore, the deployment can take between eight and 15 weeks for a two-person team.

In terms of maintenance, the solution requires monitoring and routine inspection of the details across the services.

I rate the solution nine out of ten. 

DevOps security features are in the preview phase, so we may utilize the solution for that in the future.

We use Microsoft Sentinel, enabling us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. This data ingestion is important to our security operations because information on our critical applications and services provides us with activity, audit, and application logs. This logging capability means Sentinel allows us to investigate threats and respond holistically from one place. 

To a security colleague who says it's better to go with a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor's security suite, I'd say there are benefits in going with a single vendor.

Typically, when we have a scenario where a client wants to migrate their resources to Azure, they might migrate their IaaS platforms, such as virtual machines; they might migrate their applications or their databases; they could also migrate into Kubernetes services. There are a variety of projects. I work for many types of customers where all these different scenarios are involved, including applications, app services, database as a service, IaaS by default, and Kubernetes.

With a project that I recently completed for one of our customers, the requirement was around their bidding application on-prem, utilizing different cognitive services and AI modules on Azure. They wanted to containerize this entire application with AKS, Azure Kubernetes Services. They did so, and Security Center was integrated with this entire AKS system. What Security Center provided us with was a solution for how we could better secure this entire environment. It provided some recommendations on pod security and how the pods do not need to communicate with each other. It recommended isolating these pods for better security, so that even if a certain user got access to a pod, or a certain threat was detected for one of the pods, we wouldn't have to worry about the entire system being compromised. By implementing the recommendation, if a pod is compromised, only that pod is affected and can be destroyed anytime by the AKS system.

Another recommendation was for enabling some edge layer WAF services, by leveraging a Microsoft out-of-the-box solution like Front Door. Security Center said, "Okay, now that the application is being accessed over the public internet, it is not as secure as it could be." An edge solution, like an application delivery controller such as a WAF or a CDN service was another option. It could be anything that sits at the edge and manages the traffic so that only authorized access is allowed within the network. Security Center recommended Front Door, or we could leverage other solutions like Cloudflare, or a vendor-specific solution like F5. We could then make sure that any Layer 7 security is handled at the edge and doesn't affect the application inside. SSL offloading is taken care of at the edge. Any region-specific blocking is also taken care of at the edge. If an application is only accessed in the U.S., we can block locations at scale with this solution. That is how Security Center provided us with some recommendations for better securing the environment.

Another way that Security Center can help is that it can benchmark the infrastructure in terms of compliance. Compliance-based infrastructure is one of the norms nowadays. If an application is health-based or it's a Fintech-based application, certain standards like HIPAA, NIST, or PCI need to be followed by default. Auditors or compliance teams used to run through a manual checklist to make sure that the environment was secure. But with Security Center, we can do it via an automated layer, introducing regulatory compliance policies. Security Center performs scanning of the entire environment, in regard to the policies, in real time. Using the example of the bidding system, it's a Fintech environment and, while having NIST is not mandatory, we could enable a benchmark run-through, to make sure the infrastructure is NIST-compliant.

With Security Center, we applied policies that align with these types of compliance. Security Center takes these policies and runs through the infrastructure to see what the gaps are and provides us with a report on what is compliant on the infrastructure and what is non-compliant. We can fix those non-compliant parts.

For any type of service, I would recommend the go-to solution for security on Azure is Security Center. The advantage is, firstly, is that it has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem. It has seamless integration with their Log Analytics workspaces, and it also provides some insights into what can be a better solution when it comes to securing their environment.

When it comes to improving the security posture, whenever we have a small project for a customer where they want to migrate their resources into Azure, once the resources are migrated, such as the ones I noted above, we go ahead and integrate Security Center in various ways. One of those ways is to use an agent that can be installed on virtual machines so that we can extensively monitor security alerts or threats that happen on the device. 

But for platforms as a service, we can't have an agent installed, so it integrates with the Log Analytics workspace. For any PaaS services, or a database as a service, or data lakes, we take their Log Analytics workspace and integrate it with Security Center. Once we have integrated it, Security Center discovers the resources, determines what the different configurations are, and provides us with some recommendations for the best practices that Microsoft suggests.

For example, if the Security Center agent is installed on a virtual machine and it scans the environment and identifies that the access to this VM is public and also doesn't have any MFA, it will recommend that blocking public access is one of the best practices to make sure that only safe access is allowed. Along with that, it can also provide us with some insights about enabling MFA solutions that can provide an additional security layer. Those are examples of things that Security Center can recommend for providing a more secure infrastructure

There is a slight gap between the real-time monitoring and real-time alerts. While Security Center has the ability to detect sophisticated attacks or understand potential threats, I feel that if the response time could be improved, that would be a good sign.

In addition, when it provides recommendations, those recommendations have a standard structure. But not all the recommendations work for a given environment. For example, if a customer is already using a third-party MFA solution, Microsoft doesn't understand that, because Microsoft looks into its own MFA and, if not, it will provide a recommendation like, "MFA is suggested as a way to improve." But there are already some great solutions out there like Okta or Duo, multi-factor authentication services. If a customer is already using Okta as an SSO in its entire environment, they will want to continue with it. But Security Center doesn't understand that and keeps making recommendations. It would help if it let us resolve a recommendation, even if it is not implemented.

Security Center provides what it calls secure score. This secure score is dependent on the recommendations. It tells you that if you resolve this recommendation, your secure score will be improved. In the case where a client is already using MFA, but the particular recommendation is not resolved, there is no improvement in the secure score. There is a huge mismatch in terms of recommendations and the alignment of secure score. MFA is just one small example, but there are many recommendations that depend on the client environment. There is room for improvement here and it would help a lot.

I'm a network and security architect for a Microsoft Gold partner. I have been extensively using Azure for five years and have been involved in multiple security and network projects. I have been using Security Center, specifically, for more than three years on Azure, applying recommendations and working on integrations with other services, etc.

The performance is pretty crisp. Because it is a platform service, we don't have to worry about the availability or response time. It's all managed via Microsoft. The performance is good for now, but it can be improved. It could be more real-time. There are many things that Security Center does in the background, so that may make the response time a bit slow. If we apply certain policies, it will run through the entire environment and give us a report after about 30 to 45 minutes. That layer could be improved.

This is a platform service and Microsoft has scalability under its control. It can scale to all of Azure.

As a Microsoft Gold partner, most of the time we work directly with the engineering team or with the Microsoft sales team. Because we are working day-in and day-out with Security Center, we are well aware of its issues, capabilities, features, and the depth of its tools. The basic, level-one or level-two support team just follow a standard. 

But there has been a huge improvement in terms of Microsoft support and they provide some really good support for Security Center.

The initial setup is very straightforward. There's nothing complex about it.

Implementation generally doesn't take a huge amount of time. Because Security Center is a service, the agents need to be installed on a virtual machine or servers. If it's an IaaS application or platform services, the log analytics need to be integrated. In an environment with about 30 or 50 servers, we could run the script and complete the onboarding of the servers into Security Center within a day, and the same is true for platform services.

But it's not just about onboarding it because Security Center also provides some recommendations, and we work on those.

I lead a team of four people who work specifically on Security Center. There are other sections of Azure Security that they work on, such as Azure Sentinel, Azure ADP, Microsoft 365 security and compliance for our portals. But for these four people, about 25 to 30 percent of their roles involves managing Security Center.

The return on investment is pretty great in terms of the feature set that Security Center provides. There are so many solutions out there that can do similar things, but at the same time, they do not have such seamless integration with other services on Azure. The return of investment is in the ease of management and the great visibility.

Pricing and licensing is a standard process. It's not as complicated as other Microsoft licensing solutions. Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward. With Security Center, there are no other fees in addition to the standard licensing fees.

We have other, third-party vendor solutions, but Security Center provides that seamless integration, along with some insights that other platform services do not. There aren't a lot of other vendors out there that can integrate with Azure platform services. It's the only solution that we recommend.

Other solutions include Qualys, Rapid7, Tenable, and Nessus. As system integrators, we generally recommend Security Center. But if a client has already made a huge investment in Tenable or Qualys, they will want to continue with that. If a client does switch, they will see the advantages of all the integrations and services that can all work together. They will have a single plane of control.

The seamless integration is one of the key benefits. It integrates well with the whole Azure ecosystem. A second advantage is not having to worry if Security Center will be able to scale. A third advantage is that it is an all-in-one service. You don't have to have multiple services for threat protection, for endpoint protection, for recommendations, and for compliance. This is one tool that can do a lot.

In terms of the cons of Security Center, there are a lot of things. Vulnerability management is available, but vulnerability assessment is not available within Security Center. That is a huge gap. As of now, Security Center relies on third-party tools in this area and we have to integrate it with them. There is also the lack of custom recommendations for the environment. That is a feature that would be helpful.

When it comes to endpoint solutions, Microsoft ATP is available, but some of our clients already have a solution such as CrowdStrike.

My advice is to go with Security Center. It's a really good tool and provides some good recommendations for the environment. Other tools can provide recommendations, but then we have to do them manually. Security Center does them automatically. That's one of the advantages that stands out compared to other tools. For anyone who asks, "Why Security Center?" I would tell them that if all their resources are being deployed, or all their applications are being hosted on Azure, this is the only solution, the best solution, out there.

I don't think there is much effect on end-user experience here, because whenever you talk about Security Center, the agents or tools are applicable to the underlying infrastructure rather than the end-user. For example, an application is hosted on a server or, for platform services, it's being integrated with these services. While a user is accessing these applications, Security Center just scans the data to understand what the incoming traffic is like. It provides intelligence reports such as where the traffic is coming from and what kind of data is being accessed for the end-user. Apart from that, it doesn't affect anything for the end-user.

The primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Cloud in our organization is investigating breach or security incidents.

Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture by 20 to 30 percent. With everybody moving to hybrid, it's challenging to maintain a good security posture with so many people working from home. I'm impressed with the solution's coordinated detection and responses across devices, identities, apps, emails, data, and cloud workloads. That's why we're considering using Defender in more areas and integrating it more.

I find Microsoft Defender for Cloud's KQL very flexible and powerful. It's really easy to search through with KQL queries to find the security breaches and incidents and to track down the breach itself. Microsoft Defender for Cloud presents a prioritized list of remediation for security issues, giving us a starting point to begin locking things down and tightening security.

I can't think of anything that needs improvement. It's a pretty good product.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud for the last year.

Defender's stability has been flawless for us. I haven't noticed any issues.

It's great. It seems perfectly scalable.

I would rate Microsoft customer service and technical support 10 out of 10. They seem quick to respond and get us the answers we need, taking a hands-off approach to helping us integrate.

Positive

I previously used other antivirus products like Kaspersky. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is preferred because it offers cloud ability and is a more trusted partner in the industry.

We used a consultant for the implementation, and the experience was good. No complaints.

Our return on investment is seen through increased productivity. I'm able to get more done with less time.

I evaluated other antivirus products like Kaspersky before switching.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a ten. Having this solution alleviates the need to worry about other antivirus products, offering a one-stop solution.

We are using the tool for checking for vulnerabilities over my website for my own personal purpose and within my corporate role. This is also a tool that we have deployed. In terms of usage, it's much more related to reporting and vulnerability management rather than setting up from an organizational perspective.

From an efficiency perspective, it has helped with reporting and the self-service availability of security postures.

The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available. Additionally, the suggestions I get from Defender for security levels and recommendations on how to upgrade my security level are very appreciated.

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

I have been working with it for more than a year now.

I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

There are no complaints about scalability, and I rate it an eight out of ten.

I rate customer support a nine out of ten. The support team was very responsive to queries.

Positive

Rating the setup, I would give it a six out of ten. The setup process took about two to three days due to waiting on support replies.

I had a support team to help with some of the setup aspects, and they were very responsive.

It's difficult to say because the volume of vulnerabilities and threats has increased, making it tough to compare efficiency between usage before and after implementation.

I don't have visibility into the specific costs, but it seems to be a significant concern for our organization. Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.

I am familiar with Dataiku and Databricks, and we use SailPoint in conjunction.

Users must first understand the list of assets they have and whether there is out-of-the-box connectivity with them.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Defender for Cloud is used for scenarios, including internal threats, threat hunting, in-depth analysis, and scanning the environment. We don't use Microsoft Defender for ATP or Sentinel for our security score, we have a third-party solution.

Defender helps us evaluate our security posture and make it more secure by providing a wider overview of endpoint security and anti-malware technology. We have greater visibility into all the activity happening within the infrastructure and better oversight.

It helps us catch threats that we wouldn't have noticed and also enables us to be more proactive. For example, we can run a script within the environment and provide better insights. Defender increased the efficiency of our SOC by around 65 to 80 percent.

At my previous company, the environment was 100% cloud, so having a cloud-native solution was critical. Also, in a cloud environment, you are exposed to many users with different user behavior patterns also, so it's good to have UEBA features that look at patterns in user behavior.

The unified portal provides a gap analysis of what's going on across the environment with users, and what they do across the environment every day. Having that single pane of glass is essential.

Defender is occasionally unreliable. It isn't 100% efficient in terms of antivirus detection, but it isn't an issue most of the time. It's also somewhat difficult to train new security analysts to use Defender.

I used Microsoft Defender for two years at my previous company.

Defender for Cloud is stable.

Defender for Cloud is scalable. It's easy to use and manage for large environments.

When I joined my last company, they were already using Defender. However, I've worked at several companies that use other solutions such as ESET, CrowdStrike, etc. I've previously worked with EDR and XDR solutions. 

I've done a couple of POCs for Microsoft Defender with the company, and the process is always the same. We don't deploy everything into live environments. It is deployed to a testing environment. After we test a couple of times, we undergo a complete training process. Finally, we organize and deploy it to a section of the company. We usually deploy one segment at a time, like finance, marketing, etc. 

If you have ATP Defender, you must set up a data lake. After deployment, there isn't much maintenance on our end besides managing the logs. You must create scripts for your use cases to inject into the solution. The deployment team typically consists of two people from security, two from infrastructure, and the service desk manager. 

I don't typically handle the licensing. I do POCs and product evaluations. However, I know that Defender for Cloud is packaged with other Microsoft solutions. Most people with Defender ATP also have the E5 or F5 license. It comes with the package, so you only need to activate and configure the solution.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a seven out of ten. Most of the time, it isn't the most advanced antivirus software on the market. It isn't a highly complex solution. It's something that a lot of analysts can use. Defender gives you a broad overview of what's happening in your environment, and it's a great solution if you're a Microsoft shop. 

For example, the customer wants to restrict USB connections or any output device, or they want to verify any link they open before opening it in their real environment. Mostly, they replace the current security tool they are using, such as Kaspersky, with Defender for Cloud because it integrates well with Office 365.

The biggest advantage is it centralizes management. Customers do not have to manage different vendor products. They feel confident using Microsoft because of the long-recognized technology and detailed technical documentation available online.

The valuable features include the ability to manage devices and the fact that Defender can replace other security tools like SCCM. Since they use Office 365, they need tools that work better in their organization, such as M365 Defender for Cloud.

There are challenges with the licensing policies, which are quite complicated. The documentation is difficult to understand and resellers need proper training to support customers effectively. Microsoft should provide better training for resellers.

I have been working with Defender for Cloud for more than five years.

It is quite stable. It doesn’t have significant stability issues. I would rate it an eight for stability.

I am not the one using it directly yet I haven't heard any complaints, so I would rate it a five.

Working with Microsoft technical support can be challenging. The problem-solving process can be delayed, and not all issues get resolved promptly. If there are ten tickets, maybe only five or six get resolved satisfactorily.

Neutral

Customers are replacing security tools like Kaspersky, Symantec, or Broadcom to use Defender for Cloud because it integrates seamlessly with Office 365.

The initial setup is not very easy yet it is manageable. It is not too difficult for those familiar with the product. It is a medium-complexity setup.

The implementation should be handled by the reseller. Resellers need proper training from Microsoft as the documentation is complicated.

In Vietnam, the cost structure makes it expensive. The licensing is priced publicly on the Microsoft website and it adds up based on the number of users.

The cost is expensive for the Vietnamese market. It is publicly available on the Microsoft website, and the pricing depends on the number of users.

Organizations should ensure resellers are well-trained to support the new technologies. Proper documentation and support are crucial.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Defender acts as a CSPM solution, a post-share management solution for cloud security. We use it to find weak spots in our cloud configuration and strengthen the overall security posture of our cloud environment. With this particular tool, we seek to protect workloads across various environments. We have about 3,000 endpoints and 100 users in the United States alone. 

Defender gave us more substantial visibility into our security, helping us increase our overall security posture and manage risks throughout the entire organization. It helps us make decisions about specific kinds of risks. If we see a glaring vulnerability, we can determine whether this is an acceptable risk or something that requires urgent action. The risk level determines our investment and budgeting, and the amount of work needed to remedy that. It provides a lot of valuable information for informing our comprehensive risk management strategy.

The solution does a pretty good job of finding previously unknown threats. It helps keep us aware of the kinds of threats that are out there and how we could potentially be impacted. Defender gives us a high level of information about unknown or zero-day threats. It's sometimes hard to gauge whether everything is there because the report is customized based on our infrastructure and what might be pertinent to us.

They've always notified us when there was a zero-day threat. I think there have been a few instances where they altered us about a new threat before it was publicized, which is a good sign that they value us as a customer. They've warned us about something before releasing it to the wider public.

Defender improved our SOC efficiency and saved us from having to add more personnel on the SOC side. It definitely improved that whole area, giving us the bandwidth to work on other things. Defender reduced our detection time because they are proactive about notifying us. I haven't seen too much of a time lag. There were a few instances, but it was never something critical where we had to call them out and ask if this was an issue or something. 

Time-to-response has also gone down. The sooner we get the notification, the quicker we can jump on something. It helped us respond to any potential breach or attack faster. 

It also saved us money because we don't need to deploy a second product to get some additional coverage. It also saved us from adding more security staff. Overall, it has had a positive financial impact on the company. 

The vulnerability reporting is helpful. When we initially deployed Defender, it reported many more threats than we currently see. It gave us insight into areas we had not previously considered, so we knew where we needed to act.

Defender's ability to protect multi-cloud environments is essential for us. Our company's offerings are based on tasks, and these cloud service providers are critical infrastructure for us. If anything bad happens, it compromises our services. We need to understand and improve our posture.

It also seamlessly integrates with Sentinel. It was fairly easy because we already leveraged Microsoft 365 earlier, so adding the Sentinel piece was pretty quick. It took a day to figure out and go ahead with the actual deployment. This integration with 365 and Sentinel provided timely intelligence over time. It becomes a problem if we don't get a threat notification in time. They are highly proactive about delivering that information in the initial alert and backing it up with more details as the situation develops.

Microsoft has a relatively sizeable threat-hunting group constantly digging up many things. That helps because it gives us confidence if we face some threats that not many other players are exploring. With this particular product, we're confident they'll let us know where we stand. 

Microsoft sources most of their threat intelligence internally, but I think they should open themselves up to bodies that provide feel intelligence to build a better engine. There may be threats out there that they don't report because their team is not doing anything on that and they don't have arrangements with another party that is involved in that research. 

Opening up to more collaboration with different entities in the private or public sector would help them feed more information to the customers and improve their security posture. More partnerships with other players who can feed them intelligence will help them develop the engine powering this product, ultimately benefiting every customer who uses it. 

I have been using Defender for Cloud for about a year and a half. 

We've had a positive experience overall with Defender's unified portal. We seldom see any bugs. Sometimes, there is a lag in the reporting and some inconsistencies with our searches, but it's rare. There were some periods when their service was not running properly.

While there hasn't been a significant outage, we've experienced some performance degradation where Microsoft notified us that they were having a problem. They informed us ahead of time when there are issues, but I've never had a complete outage thus far. 

Defender for Cloud is scalable, given the licensing model. The performance doesn't suffer under a heavy workload. Many organizations I know have a massive workload, and they're still leveraging Defender without any issues. I rate Defender an eight out of ten for scalability.

I rate Microsoft support an eight out of ten. Their support is great, so we have no complaints. They were responsive when we had issues.

Positive

We used SentinelOne only for endpoint threat detection. That's probably the closest competitor. We haven't used any other solutions besides that. 

Setting up Defender for Cloud was relatively straightforward. We worked with a person assigned from Microsoft, who gave us a walkthrough of the steps we needed to take.

Defender doesn't require much maintenance after deployment other than a few pieces of infrastructure we have internally. We need to monitor the solutions to check alerts and security advisories, but we've never had to deal with any maintenance.

We ended up using a reseller. They were good. I used them for other vendors, and we've had a productive relationship working on multiple initiatives. This one was nothing new. 

They have a free version, but the license for this one isn't too high. It's free to start with, and you're charged for using it beyond 30 days. Some other pieces of Defender are charged based on usage, so you will be charged more for a high volume of transactions. I believe Defender for Cloud is a daily charge based on Azure's App Service Pricing. 

It's a negligible cost if your usage isn't that high, like a few cents. It's appealing for people to try it. If you don't plan to use it much, you won't have a high bill.

Other options were considered, but it came down to the level of value we would get from a holistic vulnerability intelligence product like Defender for Cloud. Also, Microsoft products are pervasive, with a much broader customer base. That was a deciding factor. We saw much more potential from Defender compared to the alternatives. Even though the competition solutions may have functioned better in terms of providing more intelligence, other factors weighed in favor of Microsoft Defender.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud an eight out of ten. I recommend doing a PoC. You shouldn't implement something after only reviewing the documentation and marketing materials. Put it through a PoC for a month at least to get a feel for how it functions and whether it satisfies your requirements. 

We are working for a major client in the UK. So, we are moving all the products of clients from their on-premises environment to the cloud. One of the biggest challenges we face, “Once the infrastructure is created in the cloud, how can we make sure that the infrastructure is secure enough?” For that purpose, we are using Azure Security Center, which gives us all the security loopholes and vulnerabilities for our infrastructure. That has been helpful for us.

We use the Azure Security Center to scan the entire infrastructure from a security point of view. It gives us all the vulnerabilities, observations, etc. It reports most of the critical issues.

From an organization or security audit point of view, there are few tools available in the market. The output or score of Azure Security Center has really helped the organization from a business point of view by showing that we are secure enough with all our data, networks, or infrastructure in Azure. This helps the organization from a business point of view to promote the score, e.g., we are secure enough because this is our score in Azure Security Center.

We are using it from a security point of view. If there is a threat or vulnerability, the solution will immediately scan, report, or alert us to those issues.

We are using most of the good services in Azure:

• The load balancing options
• Firewall
• Application Gateway
• Azure AD. 

I value Azure Security Center the most from a security point of view. Everybody is concerned about moving data or infrastructure to the cloud. This solution proves that we are secure enough for that infrastructure, which is why I really value the Azure Security Center. We are secure in our infrastructure.

This is a platform as a service provided by Azure. We don't need to install or maintain Azure Security Center. It is a ready-made service available in Azure. This is one of the main things that we like. If you look at similar tools, we have to install, maintain, and update services. Whereas, Azure Security Center manages what we are using. This is a good feature that has helped us a lot.

From a business point of view, the only drawback is that Azure or Microsoft need to come up with flexible pricing/licensing. Then, I would rate it 10 out of 10.

We have been using it in production for the last three years. I have been part of the cloud migration team for Azure Cloud for the last two years.

We started using Azure Cloud from the initial version. Every week or month, there are updates in Azure. For the last three years, we have been using the latest version.

Whenever we increase the number of our resources, Azure Security Center easily copes with it. Since this is a ready-made service, it will automatically scale.

We are working with around 100 to 150 major clients in the UK. Each client has 200 to 500 users.

From an overall infrastructure point of view, we have a five member team.

We are getting adequate support and documentation from Microsoft. We are a Premium customer of Microsoft, so we are getting support in terms of documentation and manual support.

We were using this service from the onset.

This is a PaaS service. It is a ready-made service available in Azure Cloud. It is very easy to use and set up because you are using the platform. We don't want to maintain this service from our end. 

There are different models when it comes to the cloud:

• Infrastructure as a service
• Platform as a service
• Software as a service.

We are using sort of a hybrid, both infrastructure as a service and platform as a service. 

We are using our own team for the deployment.

We consume or subscribe to the service. Azure takes care of the maintenance and deployment, and we don't need to worry about it.

We are securing our customers' infrastructure using Azure Security Center. That internally helps their overall organization meet their goal/score on security.

So far, the feedback from the customer and our team have been really positive. We are very happy and getting return on investment from this product.

Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool.

One of the main challenges that we have been facing with Azure Security Center is the cost. The costs are really a complex calculation, e.g., to calculate the monthly costs. Azure is calculating on an hourly basis for use of the resource. Because of this, we found it really complex to promote what will be our costs for the next couple of months. I think if Azure could reduce the complex calculation and come up with straightforward cost mapping that would be very useful from a product point of view.

Other than Azure Security Center, we did not find a single tool which could analyze all our infrastructure or resources in Azure Cloud.

We were mainly looking for products or tools native to Azure. The other tools that we evaluated were not native to Azure. Azure Security Center is natively attached to Azure. Because other tools were not natively supporting Azure, then we would have to maintain and deploy them separately.

So far, we have received very positive feedback from the team and customers. Because it is a single tool where we list all the problems or vulnerabilities, we are happy as a team. The customer is also happy.

End users are not interacting with Azure Security Center. This is a back-end service that evaluates security.

There are no other good tools in Azure, other than Azure Security Center, which will evaluate and alert you to security vulnerabilities and threats. So, if somebody is really concerned about the security of their infrastructure in Azure, I suggest you use Azure Security Center. The features that it provides from a security point of view are amazing.

I would rate the product as a seven or eight (out of 10) because it is really helping us to improve our security standards.