Microsoft Defender for Cloud Reviews

We use Azure Security Center in our own company, and we have also deployed it for one of our clients. Our biggest use case is the enforcement of regulatory compliance on our cloud.

Security Center has helped us really well in terms of regulatory compliance enforcement on our cloud. We were able to deploy the inbuilt policies, and we were also able to build our own initiatives and policies. There were certain things that we wanted to check to see if our VMs were compliant. We also wanted to ensure that our storage and databases are compliant, and Security Center helped us in doing that.

This product has features that have helped us improve our security posture because we have a large estate of servers or VMs in Azure, and with Security Center, we were able to find out that a lot of our VMs were not compliant. This would have caused us a lot of trouble if there was an audit in the near future. The issues that it flagged for us gave us the opportunity to fix the problems, which was really helpful. Essentially, it was a preventative measure that allowed us to identify and rectify issues before they got out of hand.

One way that this solution has helped to improve our organization is that we have a better view of the entire security status, including how compliant our systems are and whether there are any open issues that need our attention. There are also reports that we generate periodically, so everyone is aware of the overall status of the environment.

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.

Our overall security posture has been enhanced. A lot of the time, our cloud is accessed by people in the organization and they keep spinning up virtual machines, creating resources. Often, there are ports that open or there are certain security issues that are not handled. Because there are so many people and so many new resources coming up, it is difficult to track all of them. With the help from Security Center, we are able to see exactly what has come up.

If there are new issues that arise, which could happen if someone has not followed the proper protocol before bringing up a VM or another network resource, we can see this because we have a better local view of exactly what is there in the environment. So in that regard, we can say that it has helped us improve our security posture.

Using this product does not affect the end-user in any major way. Its usage is mostly relevant to the backend, and of interest to administrators.

The most valuable features are regulatory compliance and security alerts. The security score is very helpful, as well. Together, these let us know the state of each subscription and whether there are any actions that we need to take. This functionality is pretty helpful in audits.

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. We showed it to a couple of our clients, and they had trouble understanding it and an explanation or breakdown is not readily available. The score includes different weightage for certain controls. For example, if there is a "Control A" and it has a weight of 10 then it would affect the score more than "Control B", which has a weight of five. Being able to see the weights that are assigned to each control would be an improvement.

We have been using Azure Security Center for between eight and nine months.

This is a pretty stable solution and we haven't run into any issues as of yet.

I don't think there should be problems with scalability. It supports more than a hundred subscriptions, with multiple thousands of resources. I expect that we will be fine in that regard.

There are between 10 to 15 users that are currently using the security center. We have only two to three administrators and the rest of them have a highly localized role. Some of them are working on the policies, whereas others take care of compliance issues. They try to remedy issues and also try to improve our security score.

Our client has data centers that are divided into various regions and various business units. They are onboarding new business owners every couple of months, so it is in the process of expansion. They want all of their business units to be onboarded.

I have not had the chance to speak with technical support from Microsoft but from what I have heard from my colleagues, they are pretty responsive and give you good information with respect to fixing issues.

We had another tool, Morpheus, which was a multi-cloud manager. We did some work on it but because it wasn't native to Azure, we didn't go any further with it.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. We just had to enable it for our subscriptions.

Deployment does not take a long time. The maximum is 24 hours if you have a lot of subscriptions but otherwise, it's pretty quick.

We have several subscriptions so we initially started by deploying some for testing. When we were sure that we knew how to go about it, we deployed the remaining ones.

We completed the deployment in-house and two people were required.

There are two other people in charge of maintenance.

The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have.

As we were on Azure, we didn't look to other vendors for similar solutions.

We use between 80% and 90% of the functionality within the solution. We don't use workbooks as of now but otherwise, we use pretty much everything.

There are a few options that are included but not enabled out of the box. One example of this is Azure Defender.

Maintenance-wise, one thing that we do is keep up to date on policies and compliance. Microsoft provides a lot of out-of-the-box compliance initiatives, and sometimes they can go out of date and are replaced. We have to make sure that the new ones are correctly enabled and that the older ones are no longer active. Essentially, we want to disregard the old policies and ensure that the new ones are enforced.

The biggest lesson that I have learned is to keep an eye on your resource usage in Azure, because if it's a large environment with a lot of users then you might not know who opens the door to the outside. Using Security Center lets you keep track of what's going on in your environment.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I am from a Citrix background and in our organization, we implement solutions and provide them to end-users. In our past couple of deployments, we have been using hybrid cloud scenarios where the complete workload is on the Azure platform and the management is done on the Citrix cloud.

The workloads include tasks for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 devices, and they are all running on Azure. We have to make sure that they are compliant with our organization's security standards, which is why we are using the Azure Security Center.

We integrate each workload with the Azure Security Center, where we can use things like Azure Defender and use the Azure Log Analytics Workspace.

Our environment is completely virtual. We have a virtual desktop infrastructure, like a Desktop as a Service.

Azure Security Center has helped to improve our security posture. Before we implemented it, we used to have to install the agent manually for each and every workload. For example, if I have 40 machines in my environment, I have to go to all of them and install the agent. This manual process not only required a lot of human effort but created more opportunities for error. By using the Azure Security Center, I can integrate it just by selecting the subscription. It will take care of everything.

This solution has improved our end-user experience in cases, for example, where Microsoft Defender is not implemented, Azure Defender can be integrated. When an end-user runs an EXE file or any malicious activities are running on the device, Azure Security Center will capture them and send an alert to the administrator.

The most valuable features related to my involvement are Azure Defender and enabling log analytics on the workloads. This helps to integrate the workload suite with the analytics repository. For example, if I want to capture any logs from a Windows 10 workload, then this allows me to do so.

The Log Analytics Workspace acts as a repository where it captures all of the data from Windows 10 and Windows 8 workloads. In order to implement it, an agent needs to be installed. With Azure Security Center, we can configure a policy that accounts for different subscription levels. It automatically installs the agent and begins capturing data.

This product provides us with many features including auto-provisioning of dependency agents for Azure Log Analytics, as well as for Azure Defender.

We can create alerts that trigger if there is any malicious activity happening in the workflow and these alerts can be retrieved using the query language.

Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender. It has most of the features for monitoring end-user machines for security updates or malicious activity but, for example, the latest DAT files are slow to arrive compared to Microsoft Defender.

I would rate the stability a four out of five. Once we enable it, the Azure Security Center will push security updates to all of the end-user machines and start capturing the logs. It helps in many ways.

There is no limitation to the scalability. For example, if I have 10 subscriptions in my Azure environment, it is my choice if I have to use five in production and five for non-production. If I require more, I can upgrade it as needed. It's very flexible.

The people who work with this product hands-on are our administrators. Apart from them, nobody has the access required to make changes.

If we face any issue with Azure Security Center, where we are unable to solve it ourselves, we raise a support ticket with Microsoft directly. We describe the issue and they will come back to us with support.

Usually, we are happy with the support that we receive.

Prior to this product, we worked on a solution from McAfee. However, it was a legacy application and when it came time to upgrade, we opted to use one from Azure because we were using Azure already.

In the case of an on-premises workload, we instead use a SQUAM solution by Microsoft.

The initial setup is a straightforward process. We just need to go into the security center and select the substrates. The deployment takes less than one hour to complete.

In terms of an implementation strategy, we simply follow the Microsoft documentation.

There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions. 

My advice for anyone who is considering Azure Security Center is that it has similar features to the on-premises Microsoft Defender, as well as other software security tools. If you are already using an Azure environment then I recommend implementing Azure Security Center versus having security solutions from different vendors.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

This solution replaces, in many ways, the on-premises operations manager that used to be part of the System Center.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the support for a multi-cloud environment.

The policy-related features are good. For example, there is a compliance policy that is related to PCI and another related to NIST.

The support for dynamic networking is good.

Alerting and incident management are valuable features.

The integration with Logic Apps allows for automated responses to incidents. It is also integrated with Microsoft Defender.

They added new functionality into the pretty long list of features and it is constantly being updated. 

There is no perfect product in the world and there are always features that can be added. Innovation is something that is always on the table.

I have been working with Azure Security Center for more than four years.

This product is much more stable than anything else. The SLA has four nines of stability and it is impossible to compare it with anything that is on-premises. Cloud systems are much more stable.

Scalability is not something that we talk about because this product only exists in the cloud. We talk about it in terms of regions. There are approximately 50 zones across the globe, where for example, Canada has three zones that are split into Central, East, and West.

This is an example of Software as a Service, so scalability is out of the question.

If you need tech support, you need to go to the support site, find the proper program, and subscribe to it. Only basic support is included. If you need premium support or if you need a developer, the support is available, you just need to go to the site and find it.

It is extremely easy to subscribe, and extremely easy to understand. It depends on your requirements and on exactly what you need but a description of every program is readily available.

If you have questions, go to the FAQ, and on the same page, you will have access to the documentation. The documentation is crystal clear. It's very practical and actionable. It explains in simple phrases, or words, what the action is, what the purpose is, and what the benefit or value of it is. 

There is no need to find anything else. You start from the price calculator, and then click and get more information, and from the same page, you find what you need. 

You don't need to do anything else.

With respect to implementation, you just switch it on.

If you need to deploy something else then there are step-by-step instructions available. Setup and deployment will be easy for those who have experience working with this type of solution.

For those not used to this type of operation or not working in this area, it is absolutely possible to talk to their partners, such as the one that I work for, and they will help you.

If you hire the consulting service from a partner then they will help you to plan and design, including performing a capacity review to see what is required and what services need to be integrated. You will identify needs such as an on-premises data center versus using a third-party cloud.

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

There is a price calculator for Azure Services. You select the service that you are interested in, and the basic or the standard is there immediately, which has support options. Different levels of support are available for different prices. A subscription is part of the Azure Service. You will need to find what type of service you need.

If you need to negotiate the price, based on the enterprise agreement or per commitment, the price schema is available. You just need to speak with a partner.

You can also pay with your credit card, but you will need to read the documentation online.

In summary, if you would like to work with a product that addresses security in the cloud, or in a multi-cloud environment then this is exactly the product. There is no need to implement anything else.

There are multiple things that are absolutely nice about this product. That said, there is no such thing as a perfect product.

I would rate Azure Security Center a nine out of ten.

We are using this solution to implement our CAS policy and it monitors compliance with the Security Center.

Also, we use it for thereat protection. It detects any threats and provides threat recommendations.

Azure Security Center should be more easily understood by a non-technical person. It's more about the security before getting into the product.

It needs to be simplified and made more user-friendly for a non-technical person.

In the next release, I would like to see a better dashboard and more integration with IT sales Management.

I have been using Azure Security Center for one year.

We are working with the latest version.

It's a stable solution.

Azure Security Center is scalable. We have ten users in our organization.

The technical support is very good.

The initial setup was straightforward, but you have to understand the product.

It took us 48 hours to deploy.

We have a team of two to maintain this solution. One is an architect and the other is a service engineer.

We did not use a vendor team to implement this solution. I did it myself.

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

I plan to continue using this solution and I recommend it to others.

I would rate Azure Security Center a seven out of ten.

We are using Azure Security Center for software development.

It's a cloud service that includes the security center and tailoring certain options.

The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce.

Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government.

The initial setup could be simplified.

In the next release, I would like to see more development in the area of NECES scanning or Splunk, or Universal Forwarding. 

I have been working with Azure Security Center for six months.

We are working with Microsoft Azure for the government version of the cloud.

This solution is stable. It's 100% guaranteed and I've never had any problems with it other than some planned IT downtime.

Azure Security Center is scalable. We've been able to scale pretty well for a workforce that has over 400 developers.

My experience with technical support was more like a consultation. "Tell us what you need and we'll see if we can do that for you."

In some cases, they had to develop on top of the commercial product just to conform to certain government regulations and cybersecurity requirements.

Previously, we did not use a different solution, this is the first option.

It was pretty complex. We had to go back and negotiate with Azure on a few of the options that were commercially available, but not in the government products.

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

The pricing is comparable. The features that we're getting are tailored to what we need.

It was the best fit for us.

In the future, we will be looking at government brands of the same thing that are part of the DISA.

After looking at DISA's product options, they usually select commercial versions and government versions of commercial products like Azure. For example, Amazon Web Services, and Google cloud.

This was our first option or our first go-to solution because we were considering not only Microsoft but Amazon and Google as well.

Microsoft seemed to have most of what we need.

I am currently working on my Cloud Security Certification.

For anyone who is considering this solution, from a cybersecurity standpoint, if they are doing any kind of scanning, vulnerability scanning for software or systems and they're feeding into the cloud, make sure to check whether the security center doesn't offer adequate options for them to work with. If not, then look into other software like Spunk. They look into everything and they have plenty of conversations with the staff. That's the cloud security provider.

I would rate Azure Security Center an eight out of ten.

We use it to keep our Azure infrastructure up to date with the security best practices that Microsoft suggests. We also use it to have better visibility into changes in our databases.

It helps me know if a new virtual machine or an app gateway or a functional service has come online that doesn't have the best security practices enforced on them. The impact we've had is a better security posture being enforced throughout our Azure environment.

The solution has also simplified management of endpoints and servers and gives us visibility in a single pane of glass. And it's easy to identify security corrections in the environment.

It has helped save us SOC time and increased their efficiency. While we haven't measured by how much, we see it in their day-to-day activities. And it has likely improved our time to detection, but we just haven't had anything to detect.

The most valuable features of the solution are the insights, meaning the remediation suggestions, as well as the incident alerts.

We have also integrated Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Defender for Cloud with Microsoft Sentinel and the integration was easy.

In addition, it's good at helping us proactively discover unknowns and defend against threats.

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.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud on a day-to-day basis for about a year.

It's quite stable. We don't have many problems.

The scalability is very good.

We have 100 internal users and we are deployed across multiple sites. It's 100 percent cloud and our infrastructure handles API responses for our clients.

For the cloud infrastructure, their technical support is good.

Positive

In my previous company, I used the native portal, which is pretty much what Defender does, on AWS.

The intelligent threat hunting provided by Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Sentinel based on the alerts, incidents, and logs passed along by Microsoft Defender for Cloud is moderate.

The ability of Microsoft solutions to work natively together to deliver integrated protection as well as coordinated detection and responses across the environment is improving a lot, but it still has a ways to go.

Overall, if you are worried about security, you should have Microsoft Defender for Cloud. It's the minimum you should have.

We are consultants and we have customers using Azure Defender for the protection of their businesses. Many of our customers are in the financial industry.

The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications. 

This solution has been very useful for securing core funds and preventing them from being hijacked by any application or spyware for our banking customers. People can be susceptible to scams easily because they are not aware of the current threat trends. We are able to scan for threats which have helped us limit the risks in the future.

The solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge.

In a future release, the solution could improve by providing more automation and clarity in the autoanalysis. When we provide our customers with a Microsoft solution for security, Microsoft has to go beyond the basic expectations to impress the customers.

I have been using Azure Defender for approximately one year.

The solution is very stable.

Azure Defender is scalable. We have not found any issue.

The technical support has been responsive. However, we need to be connected to the right level of support. For example, if you are a customer or if you purchased this solution as part of a certification, your level of satisfaction for support will depend on the provider you purchased it from. Microsoft will not be the one doing support for you. If you do not have premier support with Microsoft, as a cloud provider, you will have to support your customers when they are in need. Without Microsoft's premier support you only have break-fix support and if there is a major issue you will not have the help to understand what is happening, or how to prevent it from happening in the future.

The implementation can be difficult if there is not any prior training. There is a lot of elements that have to be understood.

We have an advisor that provides us with information to help us control and configure the solution. Additionally, they have assisted us with automation.

The price of the solution is good for the features we receive and there is an additional cost for Microsoft premier support. However, some of my potential customers have found it to be expensive and have gone on to choose another solution. Additionally, if the customer does not take the full package from Azure Defender it makes it difficult for us to manage the solution for them.

I rate Azure Defender an eight out of ten.

The most valuable features of this solution are the vulnerability assessments and the glossary of compliance.

As an analyst, there is no way to configure or create a playbook to automate the process of flagging suspicious domains. Azure Defender does not have this capability and that is one of the features that is very crucial. 

When we receive an alert on suspicious domains, we have to do it manually. We go to VirusTotal, or AlienVault to confirm. It would be useful to have it done automatically.

I have been using Azure Defender for three months.

We are using the latest version.

It's a stable solution. We have not had any issues.

We have not paid for Azure technical support. We have not contacted technical support.

We have not worked with any other solution.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy, very easy.

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

We are also researching Darktrace. We wanted to see the capabilities that it offers. 

Azure Defender and Azure Resource Manager are all a part of Microsoft Azure. We use all of them.

This solution has the best security center, security manager dashboard that I have ever seen. I would recommend using this solution. It has everything in one place, and it's easy to configure and easy to deploy.

I would rate Azure Defender an eight out of ten.