Azure Firewall vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

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2,720 views|2,201 comparisons
81% willing to recommend
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1,165 views|867 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Azure Firewall and Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Microsoft Security Suite solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Azure Firewall vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It's helped us improve our security posture.""The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.""It's auto-scalable, which is a great feature.""Microsoft's technical support is very good. They're quite knowledgable and responsive.""The SIEM that Azure Firewall provides us is very robust.""Great security and connectivity.""The solution can autoscale.""The solution is stable."

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"Defender's integration with our identity solutions is critical in our current setup.""All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related.""In Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, there is an option to enable files. Once you enable that, it will give you all the files in your organization and where they are located in the cloud... That feature is very useful for investigation purposes.""The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows MCAS to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly.""The general usability of the solution is very straightforward.""The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long.""Shadow IT discovery is the feature I like the most.""The most valuable feature is its policy implementation."

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Cons
"The interface could be improved, it's not very user friendly.""Azure should be able to work better as a balancer also, instead of just being a firewall. It should have a wider mandate.""We find it's different implementing it region-to-region. It might help if it was universal across all regions.""There are a number of things that need to be simplified, but it's mostly costs. It needs to be simplified because it's pretty expensive.""The solution doesn't offer the same capabilities of Fortinet. It should offer intrusion prevention and advance filtering. These are two very useful features offered on Fortinet that Azure lacks.""The reporting, logging, and monitoring features, as well as the flexibility of the policies, need to be improved.""They can improve the pricing of Azure Firewall.""It needs a lot of improvement, especially on intruder detection. They are working hard on that."

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"I believe it's only set to be integrated with Microsoft Defender for identity and identity protection. I would like to see it available for use with something like Office 365 Defender. I don't think it's integrated with that yet.""They need to improve the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules. In the latest version, you can implement ASR rules, which are quite useful, but you have to enable those because if they're not enabled, they flag false positives. In the Defender portal, it logs a block for WMI processes and PowerShell. Apparently, it's because ASR rules are not configured. So, you generally have to enable them to exclude, for example, WMI queries or PowerShell because they have a habit of blocking your security scanners. It's a bit weird that they have to be enabled to be configured, and it's not the other way around.""It doesn't actually decrease the time to respond. This has been an issue with Microsoft recently. Sometimes, there is a delay when it comes to getting an alert policy email... Sometimes it takes two or three hours for that email to be sent.""We would like to get more information from the endpoint. I don't get enough detailed information right now on why something failed. There is not enough visibility.""The integration with macOS operating systems needs to be better.""The response time could be better. It will be helpful if the alerts are even more proactive and we can see more data. Currently, the data is a little bit weak. It is not complete. I can't just see it and completely know which user or which device it is. It takes some effort and time on my part to investigate and isolate a user. It would be great if it is more user-friendly or easy for people to understand.""Sometimes the support is actually lacking.""In the future, I would like to see more plug-and-play capabilities that use AI to tell you what needs to be done. It would be helpful if it scanned our devices and made security suggestions, on a configuration basis."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Azure Firewall is more expensive. If Microsoft can make Azure Firewall cheaper, I can see that all clients will think of using it. One client used FortiGate because it is much cheaper. Some clients ask me for Cisco, but in the cloud estimate, I found its cost is the same as Azure Firewall."
  • "Azure Firewall is quite an expensive product."
  • "The licensing module is good."
  • "The total cost of ownership is much less than Palo Alto, Cisco, or any other brand."
  • "It is pay-as-you-go. So, you pay based on the usage. If I remember it well, there is a basic fee, and there is a traffic fee. It is not per month. It is per hour or something like that. It is not so expensive."
  • "Azure Firewalls operate on a pay-as-you-go model, similar to cloud services."
  • "The solution is cheaper than other brands. My company has an enterprise contract and we finally got a good price with Azure."
  • "Azure Firewall comes with Azure native services. We did not buy any kind of license for it. Whether you have a free subscription or a pay-as-you-go model, you can deploy the Azure Firewall service... The amount that you use will determine how much you pay."
  • More Azure Firewall Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "We have an educational licensing agreement. It's a customer agreement for multiple years."
  • "This product is not expensive."
  • "Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."
  • "The pricing is a little bit high but right now, we are okay with it because of the compatibility with Office 365, Teams, and Azure AD."
  • "I'm not totally involved in the pricing part, but I think its pricing is quite aggressive, and its price is quite similar to Netskope. Netskope has separate licensing fees or additional charges if you want to monitor certain SaaS services, whereas, with MCAS, you get 5,000 applications with their Office 365. It is all bundled, and there's no cost for using that. You only have the operational costs. In the country I am in, it is a bit difficult to get people with the required skill sets."
  • "Its pricing is on the higher side. Its price is definitely very high for a small-scale company. As an enterprise client, we do get benefits from Microsoft. We get a discounted price because of the number of users we have in our company. We have a premier package, and with that, we do get a lot of discounts. There are no additional costs. It only comes in the top-tier packages. Generally, the top-tier license is the best license that you can get for your organization. If you want, you can buy it separately, but that's not a good idea."
  • "The price could be better and should be reconsidered."
  • "It is a little bit expensive. When you want to have the complete package with Office 365, Defender, and everything else, it is expensive."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Azure Firewall Vs. Palo Alto Network NG Firewalls Both solutions provide stellar stability and security. Azure Firewall is easy to use and provides excellent support. Valuable features include… more »
    Top Answer:Both products are very stable and easily scalable The setup of Azure Firewall is easy and very user-friendly and the overall cost is reasonable. Azure Firewall offers a solid threat awareness, can… more »
    Top Answer:Both of these solutions are excellent options that provide flexible scalability and solid security Fortinet Fortigate VM integrates well and has excellent centralized reporting. It is very easy to… more »
    Top Answer:Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat… more »
    Top Answer:It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notifications are pretty good.
    Top Answer:Where we are right now, this is an acceptable pricing. I would like to see more transparency given to the end user. The end user given to us is via the cloud service provider. There are different… more »
    Ranking
    14th
    Views
    2,720
    Comparisons
    2,201
    Reviews
    9
    Average Words per Review
    538
    Rating
    8.0
    10th
    Views
    1,165
    Comparisons
    867
    Reviews
    15
    Average Words per Review
    1,031
    Rating
    8.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
    Learn More
    Overview

    Azure Firewall is a user-friendly, intuitive, cloud-native firewall security solution that provides top-of-the-industry threat protection for all your Azure Virtual Network resources. Azure Firewall is constantly and thoroughly analyzing all traffic and data packets, making it a very valuable and secure fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability. Azure Firewall allows users to create virtual IP addresses and provides for secure DDoS protection for the virtual machines on your network. It also provides fast and efficient east-west and north-south traffic security.

    Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service built to protect your Azure Virtual Network resources. It is a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability.

    Azure Firewall has two significant offerings, Standard and Premium.

    Azure Firewall Standard works directly with Microsoft Cyber Security and supplies excellent L3-L7 filtering and threat awareness. The proactive real-time threat awareness will quickly alert you and immediately deny all traffic to and from any known problematic or suspicious domains or IP addresses. Microsoft Cyber Security is updated continually to protect against all new and known potential threats at all times. To learn more about Azure Firewall Standard, click here.

    Azure Firewall Premium provides everything the standard version does, and additionally adds extra levels of data encryption, network intrusion detection, extended URL filtering, and Web category filters. To learn more about the added features of Azure Firewall Premium, click here.

    Key Benefits and Features of Azure Firewall:

    • High availability - You do not need load balancers with Azure Firewall; it's already built in and ready to go.
    • Self-scalability - Azure Firewall is intuitive and will auto-scale as needed based on traffic flow to be ready for peak traffic times.
    • Threat awareness - Using Microsoft Cyber Security to filter traffic, Azure Firewall will deny any known problematic threats to keep your network safe.
    • Additional IP addresses - You can securely add up to 250 public IP addresses with Azure Firewall
    • Improved web category filtering - You can set up specific protocols to allow or deny categories within websites that are deemed inappropriate for use within your network. You have the ability to organize categories based on a defined set of descriptions.

    What our real users have to say:

    Many PeerSpot users found Azure Firewall to be very user-friendly and easy to use. They liked that it offers seamless integration to the cloud and were especially pleased with the threat filtering options.

    Regarding integration and threat intelligence, our users wrote:

    “The most valuable feature is the integration into the overall cloud platform.”

    The most valuable feature is threat intelligence. It is based on filtering and can identify multiple threats.”

    I think that one of the best features is definitely the premium version, along with the IDPs in terms of the intrusion detection and prevention system.”



    Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is a comprehensive security solution that provides protection for cloud-based applications and services. It offers real-time threat detection and response, as well as advanced analytics and reporting capabilities. With Defender for Cloud Apps, organizations can ensure the security of their cloud environments and safeguard against cyber threats. Whether you're running SaaS applications, IaaS workloads, or PaaS services, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps can help you secure your cloud environment and protect your business from cyber threats.

    Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Benefits:
    • Provides comprehensive security for cloud applications
    • Integrates with other Microsoft security tools
    • Easy to use and deploy
    • Provides real-time threat detection and response
    • Strong protection against phishing attacks and other common threats
    • Highly customizable to meet specific needs of different organizations
    Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Use Cases:
    • Governance, authentication, security, and compliance. 
    • Detects shadow IT and anomalous user behavior
    • Controls access to applications
    • Provides auditing and filtering setups
    • Used for end-user compute devices, file monitoring, user investigation, and activity
    • Used for data governance, threat detection, and getting visibility over cloud applications
    • Used to identify information about applications beyond organizational boundaries
    • Prevent exfiltration and data filtration of corporate data
    • Used to deal with spam emails and detect shadow IT

    Reviews from Real Users

    Ram-Krish, Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm, says that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need".

    PeerSpot user, Senior Cloud & Security Consultant at a tech services, writes that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps "Great for monitoring user activity and protecting data while integrating well with other applications".

    Simon Burgess,Infrastructure Engineer at SBITSC, states that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is "A fluid, intelligent product for great visibility, centralized management, and increased uptime".

    Sample Customers
    Information Not Available
    Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company31%
    Financial Services Firm25%
    Government13%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Educational Organization27%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Government9%
    Engineering Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise49%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Azure Firewall vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Firewall vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Azure Firewall is ranked 14th in Microsoft Security Suite with 33 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 10th in Microsoft Security Suite with 30 reviews. Azure Firewall is rated 7.2, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Azure Firewall writes "Easy to use and configure but could be more robust". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps writes "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need". Azure Firewall is most compared with Fortinet FortiGate-VM, Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series and Fortinet FortiGate, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Netskope , Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks and Qualys VMDR. See our Azure Firewall vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps report.

    See our list of best Microsoft Security Suite vendors.

    We monitor all Microsoft Security Suite reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.