BMC Helix Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

BMC and Microsoft are both solutions in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category. BMC is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.5, while Microsoft is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.1. BMC holds a 0.3% mindshare in CWPP, compared to Microsoft’s 13.4% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of BMC users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

BMC Helix Cloud Security and Microsoft Defender for Cloud compete in the cloud security solutions sector. While the latter excels in features and integration, BMC has an edge in terms of cost and customer support.

Features: BMC Helix Cloud Security offers automation, real-time compliance checks, and integration with multi-cloud platforms. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides comprehensive threat protection, integrates seamlessly within the Microsoft ecosystem, and features advanced analytics.

Room for Improvement: BMC Helix Cloud Security could enhance its threat detection capabilities and analytics features. Microsoft Defender for Cloud might focus on improving ease of deployment, support for non-Microsoft environments, and affordability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BMC Helix Cloud Security boasts flexible deployment options and is known for excellent customer service. Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrates well with Microsoft platforms but can be complex to deploy for some users, although its integration into the Microsoft ecosystem is a significant advantage.

Pricing and ROI: BMC Helix Cloud Security is recognized for its cost-effectiveness and quick ROI due to low setup costs and excellent support. Microsoft Defender for Cloud, while possibly requiring a larger initial investment, offers long-term value through its extensive feature set and robust security enhancements.

To learn more, read our detailed BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

May 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 3.1%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC Helix Cloud Security is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 13.4%, down from 16.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)

Featured Reviews

Andrew W

VP - Information Technology at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues

Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.

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GregoireSoukiassian

Consultant at Ministry of Research and Education

Effectively addresses security concerns but could use enhancement in terms of integration

BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists of separate point solutions that don't flow together as seamlessly as they could. This lack of integration, unlike platforms like ServiceNow, may be due to historical factors. Enhancing this integration would make it a more compelling choice from a business perspective and offer a smoother user experience. In the next release of BMC Helix Cloud Security, I would like to see additional features, particularly AI integration, which has already been announced. AI integration could bring more precision to the platform, making it even more interesting and effective.

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Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps

Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"You not only get to know about vulnerabilities and misconfigurations but also some of the actual"

"We really appreciate the Slack integration. When we have an incident, we get an instant notification. We also use Joe Sandbox, which Singularity can integrate with, so we can verify if a threat is legitimate."

"It gives me the information I need."

"The solution helped free other staff to work on other projects or other tasks. We basically just had to do a bunch of upfront configuring. With it, we do not have to spend as much time in the console."

"The ease of use of the platform is very nice."

"The best features we value in SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security include compliance monitoring features, as we are a frequently audited company. They provide reports with compliance scores, showing how well we meet certain regulatory standards, such as HIPAA, and we can show our compliance as a percentage."

"The UI is very good."

"Cloud Native Security's evidence-based reporting allows us to prioritize issues by understanding their impact, helping us resolve the most important problems first."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pros

"The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities."

"Role-based security is a valuable feature."

"The features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools."

"It's also multi-cloud. You can look at several cloud providers: AWS, Azure, or GCP."

"The best feature is time to value. With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud. If you have Azure and AWS deployments, you might have multiple subscriptions in Azure and usually multiple accounts in AWS. You may even be doing some GCP work (around Google Cloud Platform). It's very difficult to manage a common set of policies, even less reporting, across multiple subscriptions, accounts, and cloud environments. What BMC Helix Cloud Security does is provide a unified view or single pane of glass as to your baseline. Then, it also facilitates the ability for Level 1 or 2 operations support to take action and report on security vulnerabilities."

"The cool feature of Helix Cloud Security is that you can do all that — understand and remediate issues — in one dashboard, based on the different policies that are available for security, out-of-the-box."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud monitors our entire cloud environment. It enables conditional access and incorporates features like number matching and single sign-on for all our cloud apps. It is great for protecting against ransomware and various security threats."

"Defender is user-friendly and provides decent visibility into threats."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has improved our security poster by at least 100 percent."

"Scalability is great, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"It helps you to identify the gaps in your solution and remediate them. It produces a compliance checklist against known standards such as ISO 27001, HIPAA, iTrust, etc."

"The solution's coordinated detection and response across devices and identities is impressive because it is complete."

"The most valuable features are the security recommendations provided by Defender for Cloud."

"The valuable features include the ability to manage devices and the fact that Defender can replace other security tools like SCCM."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"The areas with room for improvement include the cost, which is higher compared to other security platforms. The dashboard can also be laggy."

"Their search feature could be better."

"They can add more widgets to its dashboard. A centralized dashboard with numerous metrics would improve user understanding."

"One potential drawback is the cost of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, which may be prohibitive for smaller businesses or startups, particularly those in regions with lower average incomes, such as India."

"The cloud-based operations might pose challenges in areas with limited or unavailable internet connectivity. Desktop features might be useful for smaller organizations with less complex security needs."

"The price is on the higher side. The dashboard can be more detailed."

"Whenever I view the processes and the process aspect, it takes a long time to load."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security cons

"We've had some with issues connectors. The connectors have seemed to have caused a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment. The only time I've had to reach out to tech support was for that. It seems it may not have been scanning correctly or I wasn't seeing data within a specific time. But we've set up a couple of connectors in the past couple of weeks and they actually scanned the AWS environment and we had data within about 10 minutes. It's working a lot faster and I think they're making improvements as they go."

"Every organization out there doesn't rely on just one control body. They use FISMA control. They may use HIPAA, CIS, PCI, or SOX, then blend them. One of the things that is now in big demand for BMC Helix Cloud Security is content. That's the next journey in its lifespan, making it easier for the community to share and collaborate on content for security controls that can be measured and remediated."

"BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features."

"The UI could be more user-friendly."

"I want the role-based security feature to be improved."

"Most of the time, when we log into the support, we don't get a chance to interact with Microsoft employees directly, except having it go to outsource employees of Microsoft. The initial interaction has not been that great because outsourced companies cannot provide the kind of quality or technical expertise that we look for. We have a technical manager from Microsoft, but they are kind of average unless we make noise and ask them to escalate. We then can get the right people and the right solution, but it definitely takes time."

"I felt that there was disconnection in terms of understanding the UI. The communication for moving from the old UI to the new UI could be improved. It was a bit awkward."

"Customizing some of the compliance requirements based on individual needs seems like the biggest area of improvement. There should be an option to turn specific controls on and off based on how your solution is configured."

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

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is not compatible with Linux machines."

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

"Support needs to be highly responsive, especially in large enterprise environments."

"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is somewhat high compared to other market tools."

"It is cheap."

"I would rate the cost a seven out of ten with ten being the most costly."

"Singularity Cloud Workload Security's licensing and price were cheaper than the other solutions we looked at."

"The tool is cost-effective."

"Its pricing is constant. It has been constant over the previous year, so I am happy with it. However, price distribution can be better explained. That is the only area I am worried about. Otherwise, the pricing is very reasonable."

"SentinelOne provided competitive pricing compared to other vendors, and we are satisfied with the deal."

"I wasn't sure what to expect from the pricing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little less than I thought."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pricing and cost advice

"It is a subscription model with term licensing that is usually yearly. This includes, not only the product, but support and maintenance. It is based on cloud assets. Therefore, if you have 100 cloud assets, those cloud assets are measured based on evaluation or transactions. For example, if I'm evaluating that cloud asset for CIS compliance, PCI compliance, and AWS best practices, that asset gets evaluated three times, as those are three transactions. However, the license model is based on peak asset usage. So, over a year, if you deploy 100, 1000, 500, and then 2000 assets, you will be charged for the 2000 peak of assets managed by Helix Cloud Security."

"The pricing is based on an annual subscription, upfront, and it's based on cloud assets. Whether your assets are in Azure and AWS combined, the tool tells you how many assets are being scanned and that's the number used for pricing."

"The pricing and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud have been good for us. We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license."

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

"There are improvements that have to be made to the licensing. Currently, for servers, it has to be done by grouping the servers on a single subscription... We don't have an option whereby, if all those resources are in one subscription, we can have each of the individual servers subject to different planning."

"Although I am outside of the discussion on budget and costing, I can say that the importance of security provided by this solution is of such importance that whatever the cost is, it is not a factor."

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

"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."

"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."

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

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?

The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?

I don't handle the price part, but it isn't more expensive than Palo Alto Prisma Cloud. It's not cheap, but it is wor...

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What needs improvement with PingSafe?

There is scope for more application security posture management features. Additionally, the runtime protection needs ...

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What do you like most about BMC Helix Cloud Security?

The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Cloud Security?

I would rate the price of BMC Helix Cloud Security as a seven in terms of costliness. It is not the cheapest option a...

See all answers

What needs improvement with BMC Helix Cloud Security?

BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists...

See all answers

How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?

Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening acros...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

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

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The pricing is pretty standard.

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 20% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 16% of the time

AWS GuardDuty vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 7% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 5% of the time

Orca Security vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 4% of the time

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Competitors

CloudBolt vs BMC Helix Cloud Security

Compared 62% of the time

Zscaler Internet Access vs BMC Helix Cloud Security

Compared 38% of the time

More BMC Helix Cloud Security Competitors

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 21% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Rapid7 InsightCloudSec vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 1% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

June 2025

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security report

Download SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security product report

Buyer's Guide

BMC Helix Cloud Security

July 2025

Download BMC Helix Cloud Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

June 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Also Known As

PingSafe

TrueSight Cloud Security, SecOps Policy Service

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

SentinelOne

Demo not available

BMC

Microsoft

Overview

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security protects cloud workloads, offering advanced threat detection and automated response. It integrates seamlessly with cloud environments and secures containerized applications and virtual machines against vulnerabilities.

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is renowned for its efficiency in mitigating threats in real-time. The platform integrates effortlessly with existing cloud environments, ensuring robust cloud security management with minimal manual intervention. Securing containerized applications and virtual machines, it excels in threat intelligence and endpoint protection. However, improvements are needed in performance during high workload periods, and more integrations with third-party tools and better documentation would be beneficial. Users often find the installation process complex, support response times slow, and the dashboard's navigation unintuitive.

What are the key features of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security?

Real-time Threat Detection: Identifies and mitigates threats as they occur.
Automated Response: Automatically responds to threats to minimize impact.
Ease of Deployment: Simple setup process with scalable options.
Machine Learning Insights: AI-driven insights enhance threat prevention.
Seamless Integration: Integrates with cloud environments for unified security management.

What are the primary benefits or ROI to expect from SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security?

Enhanced Threat Mitigation: Improved security against real-time threats.
Reduced Manual Intervention: Automated processes save time and resources.
Scalability: Easily adapts to growing security requirements.
Centralized Management: Manage security across platforms from a single console.
Advanced Threat Intelligence: Provides in-depth analysis and protection.

In specific industries, SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is implemented to safeguard critical data and infrastructure. Organizations in finance, healthcare, and technology depend on its real-time threat detection and automated response to protect sensitive information. Its ability to secure containerized applications and virtual machines is particularly valuable in dynamic environments where rapid scaling is necessary.

SentinelOne

BMC Helix Cloud Security is a SaaS tool designed to help organizations reduce compliance and security lapses resulting from next-gen container and cloud technologies. The solution offers a fully transparent, user-friendly view of all compliance data gathered throughout container resources, cloud, and data centers. BMC Helix Cloud Security can be used to insert compliance inquiries precisely in DevOps workflows for immediate assessment in relation to critical “go, no-go” conclusions throughout the entire workflow.

BMC Helix Cloud Security offers enterprise organizations a unique compliance solution with robust functionalities to concentrate on numerous use processes that may interfere with digital transfigurations, such as:

Discovering resources, accounts, and configurations that are non-compliant with standard regulations or the organization's own policies and protocols.
Multi-source cloud compliance for PaaS service infrastructures, networks, storage, and containers.
DevOps workflows with melded security and compliance for WebApp application blueprints and weaknesses, and all application libraries.
Out-of-box capabilities for immediate compliance integration for DevOps workflows.

BMC Helix Cloud Security is SaaS, which makes it a very flexible solution. It is able to integrate seamlessly with many of today’s enterprises’ demands. BMC Helix Cloud Security can easily perform as a policy-as-code (YAML) based protocol language, open RESTful APIs, or by seamlessly compiling extensible data connectors.

Many of today's enterprise organizations must comply with numerous policies and regulations to maintain effective operations. BMC Helix Cloud Security ensures an enterprise organization is able to satisfy regulatory standards such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act, Defense Information System Agency (DISA), or any other stringent government or internal organizational compliance standards. The solution has a comprehensive compliance policy that utilizes mode-two capabilities and will ensure that an enterprise organization will greatly minimize or even negate the threat of ransomware and data breaches throughout its network.

BMC Helix Cloud Security will also see that container and container hosts are configured correctly and will then regularly audit to ensure compliance at the three important levels of compliance - images, daemon configuration, and host configuration.

BMC Helix Cloud Security is designed to identify vulnerabilities by dissecting and thoroughly investigating compliance data for container and cloud resources and delivering the outcomes through a friendly, easy-to-understand dashboard. The solution can also provide support for unique or custom sources, provided that data is in a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format.

BMC Helix Cloud security is also able to help discover and minimize vulnerabilities created by new services, objects, and resources instituted by containers and public clouds. These can sometimes be forgotten, creating a tremendous risk to an organization. BMC Helix Cloud Security will ensure these new services will be carefully and continually monitored to ensure industry and government standards and regulations are not being compromised. The solution is continually dissecting data and then will deliver outcomes in a dynamic, easy-to-understand dashboard.

BMC Helix Cloud Security offers a user-friendly, robust, complete compliance strategy to ensure organizations maintain the highest levels of productivity and profitability while negating the risk of any type of compliance vulnerabilities.

BMC

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

NHS, Vodafone, Kansas City Life, SKY Italia, Cybera

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

Buyer's Guide

BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

May 2025

Free Report: BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

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