CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 23, 2023

We performed a comparison between CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security and Microsoft Defender for Cloud based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

Features: CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security was lauded for its strong adherence to security best practices. It particularly excels in endpoint protection and its ability to leverage machine learning and AI. Microsoft Defender for Cloud stands out for its automation, threat analysis, and security coverage. CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security could improve its Kubernetes and GCP support. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be better integrated with non-Microsoft solutions.
Service and Support: CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security users are generally content with the support team's assistance and promptness. Microsoft Defender users generally found the support team responsive and knowledgeable, but others said outsourced support lacked technical expertise and reported longer response times in certain regions.
Ease of Deployment: The setup for CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security was deemed easy, but some users struggled with the Kubernetes implementation. Setting up Microsoft Defender for Cloud is straightforward. The solution requires minimal maintenance and seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft services.
Pricing: Users consider the pricing of CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security to be fair, but it may be pricier than on-premises alternatives. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is seen as a good deal by some users, who consider it to be cost-effective, especially when bundled with other Microsoft products.
ROI: Users have provided limited feedback about the return on investment for CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has demonstrated a potentially high ROI by automating tasks and improving security posture.

Conclusion: Users have highlighted that Microsoft Defender for Cloud has a simple and hassle-free setup process, requires minimal maintenance, and offers comprehensive security features. The solution also provides automation and threat analysis capabilities, incident alerts, ransomware protection, and features for regulatory compliance. Additionally, it is integrated with Azure Sentinel, providing valuable insights and suggestions for remediation. On the other hand, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security has received mixed feedback regarding its setup process and user interface. Moreover, Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers more affordable pricing options in comparison to CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security.

To learn more, read our detailed CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: May 2024).

Buyer's Guide

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

May 2024

Download the complete report

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Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 1.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is 5.9%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 14.0%, down from 16.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)

Unique Categories:

Vulnerability Management

1.6%

Container Security

9.0%

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

5.5%

Container Management

0.9%

Featured Reviews

William Mailhot

Pre-sales Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Sep 27, 2023

Is able to auto-scale and remediate, as well as save us time

My favorite feature is Storyline. It creates a neat graph that shows us how any threat played out, in real time. We can see all the information about what was modified or changed on our system, such as files that were modified, created, or deleted, and register keys that were created or edited. For a SOC analyst, this information is super useful. We can deep dive into all the information and see exactly what happened on each computer individually. The second feature is actually part of the SDR platform, and it provides native integrations with other security software vendors, such as Okta or Azure AD. This allows us to ingest all of our audit logs for security events and to take action on them. For example, we can set up an automation alert so that if a threat is detected on an endpoint, we can automatically take action on our Okta or AD environment, such as locking the account that was signed in or forcing a password reset.

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Pedro Barros

Security Analyst at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 15, 2024

The user interface designs are highly user-friendly with interesting settings

The primary focus lies in the swift and effective response to potential threats. CrowdStrike's Remote Threat Response feature allows remote access to machines under investigation, provided they are online. This capability significantly aids in expediting the investigative process. Additionally, the tool supports threat hunting within the Falcon framework. An aspect worth noting is the tool's proficiency in making correlations within internal data, including both machine and user logs. The RTR feature stands out as particularly valuable to me due to its capability to log into machines. Whether it's a Linux machine, allowing me to execute native Linux commands, or a Windows machine, where I can use PowerShell commands, it empowers me to seamlessly proceed with my investigations. This flexibility is a key factor that enhances the overall effectiveness of my work.

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Srikanth Matsa

Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Dec 5, 2022

Offers a security posture score that indicates how well our environment is protected but should offer better pricing options

Before Microsoft Defender our external team would give us updates on which ports are opening and which vulnerabilities are being attacked. Now with the recommendations of Microsoft Defender, we can find these vulnerabilities sooner and fix them. Before onboarding those respected resources into Microsoft Defender, we faced a few issues. Once we onboarded those resources, we received prompt recommendations that helped us make the organization's resources more secure. If resources are not secured, it can impact the reputation of the organization. The solution helped identify a lot of the issues, at a high priority that we could resolve. Microsoft Defender helps any organization that needs to follow security baseline recommendations in order to improve its environment. Regarding threats, I recommend Microsoft Sentinel for detecting and hunting the threats. I can identify what exactly happened at that particular time or particular resource with the help of Microsoft Sentinel. The solution has significantly reduced the overall time it takes us to detect issues. Most of the resources are scanned every 30 minutes, so it doesn't take much time for the solution to give us the respected recommendations. Depending on the issue, Microsoft Defender for Cloud has helped reduce our overall time to respond. There are a few recommendations that we can fix immediately by just clicking using the UI. However, the overall time to respond to issues depends upon that respected recommendation list. There are a few things that we need to consider when it comes to the security settings of our virtual machines which can take a long time to identify and fix.

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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

"It is very straightforward. It is not complicated. For the information that it provides, it does a pretty good job."

"SentinelOne stands out with its responsiveness to feature requests for Singularity Cloud Security."

"It used to guide me about an alert. There is something called an alert guide. I used to click on the alert guide, and I could read everything. I could read about the alert and how to resolve it. I used to love that feature."

"PingSafe can integrate all your cloud accounts and resources you create in the AWS account, We have set it up to scan the AWS transfer services, EC2, security groups, and GitHub."

"It saves time, makes your environment more secure, and improves compliance. PingSafe helps with audits, ensuring that you are following best practices for cloud security. You don't need to be an expert to use it and improve your security."

"I did a lot of research before signing up and doing the demo. They have a good reputation as far as catching threats early on."

"We noted immediate benefits from using the solution."

"All the features we use are equal and get the job done."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pros

"The most valuable feature of Falcon Cloud Security is its comprehensive threat-hunting ability."

"The immediate mitigation of potential threats and instant alerts are valuable."

"CrowdStrike utilizes signatureless technology, eliminating the need for regular signature updates on endpoint systems."

"There is a lot that it can do, but endpoint protection is the main thing about it. The fact that it uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to monitor and remediate the issues in real-time is probably the bread and butter of the product."

"Technical support is helpful."

"Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is most valuable."

"The most valuable features of CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security are Cloud Security Posture Management and Cloud Workload Protection, offering more visibility and protection across our cloud environment."

"The initial setup is easy ."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security pros

"Most importantly, it's an integrated solution. We not only have Defender for Cloud, but we also have Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Identity. It's an integrated, holistic solution."

"The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites."

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

"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."

"The technical support is very good."

"It's got a lot of great features."

"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."

"The integration with Logic Apps allows for automated responses to incidents."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"Scanning capabilities should be added for the dark web."

"The recommended actions aren't always specific, so it might suggest recommendations that don't apply to the particular infrastructure code I'm reviewing."

"I want PingSafe to integrate additional third-party resources. For example, PingSafe is compatible with Azure and AWS, but Azure AD isn't integrated with AWS. If PingSafe had that ability, it would enrich the data because how users interact with our AWS environment is crucial. All the identity-related features require improvement."

"There's room for improvement in the graphic explorer."

"The could improve their mean time to detect."

"In addition to our telecom and Slack channels, it would be helpful to receive Cloud Native Security security notifications in Microsoft Teams."

"When we get a new finding from PingSafe, I wish we could get an alert in the console, so we can work on it before we see it in the report. It would be very useful for the team that is actively working on the PingSafe platform, so we can close the issue the same day before it appears in the daily report."

"It would be really helpful if the solution improves its agent deployment process."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security cons

"Different file options should be available, and clients should be able to select from the options."

"The UI part needs to be improved."

"The threat intelligence and user behavioral analysis could be more comprehensive."

"The CrowdStrike partner portal documentation could be improved to provide proper instructions for integrating their products."

"The log scale or Humio side of it where it collects the data and expands into the XDR world still needs time to develop in terms of the way it combines the data and metadata that flows into the platform. I know they're working on it."

"Incorporating threat intelligence into the system would be a valuable addition."

"It would be more convenient if there was an easier way to install CrowdStrike, perhaps through better integration with Active Directory."

"The CrowdStrike dashboard currently lacks a username field."

More CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security cons

"I would suggest building a single product that addresses endpoint server protection, attack surface, and everything else in one solution. That is the main disadvantage with the product. If we are incorporating some features, we end up in a situation where this solution is for the server, and that one is for the client, or this is for identity, and that is for our application. They're not bundling it. Commercially, we can charge for different licenses, but on the implementation side, it's tough to help our end-customer understand which product they're getting."

"The documentation could be much clearer."

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

"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."

"Another thing is that Defender for Cloud uses more resources than CrowdStrike, which my current company uses. Defender for Cloud has two or three processes running simultaneously that consume memory and processor time. I had the chance to compare that with CrowdStrike a few days ago, which was significantly less. It would be nice if Defender were a little lighter. It's a relatively large installation that consumes more resources than competitors do."

"The solution could extend its capabilities to other cloud providers. Right now, if you want to monitor a virtual machine on another cloud, you can do that. However, this cannot be done with other cloud platform services. I hope once that is available then Defender for Cloud will be a unified solution for all cloud platform services."

"The overview provides you with good information, but if you want more details, there is a lot more customization to do, which requires knowledge of the other supporting solutions."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Singularity Cloud Workload Security's pricing is good."

"Pricing is based on modules, which was ideal for us."

"Their pricing appears to be based simply on the number of accounts we have, which is common for cloud-based products."

"As a partner, we receive a discount on the licenses."

"PingSafe is cost-effective for the amount of infrastructure we have. It's reasonable for what they offer compared to our previous solution. It's at least 25 percent to 30 percent less."

"PingSafe is priced reasonably for our workload."

"For pricing, it currently seems to be in line with market rates."

"PingSafe falls within the typical price range for cloud security platforms."

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is reasonable, neither overly expensive nor excessively cheap, making it competitive compared to other market options."

"Its price is moderate."

"I am not the one who handled the pricing. A different team worked on it, but it is pretty expensive."

"The pricing is fair for what you get. I'd rate them a solid nine out of ten in terms of pricing."

"CrowdStrike Falcon is very expensive."

"CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is pricy."

"Defender for Cloud is pretty costly for a single line. It's incredibly high to pay monthly for security per server. The cost is considerable for an enterprise with 500-plus virtual machines, and the monthly bill can spike."

"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing. If you have Cloud for Key Vault, the pricing is different than it is for storage. Every type has its own pricing list and rules."

"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."

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

"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."

"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."

"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."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?

I'm not aware of the exact pricing.

See all answers

What needs improvement with PingSafe?

When I joined my organization, I saw that PingSafe was already implemented. I started to use the tool's alerting feat...

See all answers

What do you like most about CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security?

It's easy to gather insights and conduct analysis about existing threats.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security?

You can't get a fixed price for these tools. If you subscribe to something and need to deploy it to another team, the...

See all answers

What needs improvement with CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security?

The threat intelligence and user behavioral analysis could be more comprehensive.

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?

Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Microsoft needs to bring the cost down. What we'...

See all answers

Comparisons

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 30% of the time

Wiz vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 22% of the time

Orca Security vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 10% of the time

AWS GuardDuty vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 10% of the time

Sysdig Secure vs SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

Compared 4% of the time

More SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security Competitors

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security

Compared 18% of the time

AWS GuardDuty vs CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security

Compared 14% of the time

Wiz vs CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security

Compared 13% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security

Compared 6% of the time

Sysdig Falco vs CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security

Compared 5% of the time

More CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security Competitors

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 19% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 9% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 7% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security

May 2024

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security report

Download SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security product report

Buyer's Guide

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security

June 2024

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security report

Download CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

June 2024

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Also Known As

PingSafe

No data available

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

Learn More

SentinelOne

CrowdStrike

Microsoft

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

SentinelOne

Demo not available

CrowdStrike

Microsoft

Overview

Singularity Cloud Security is SentinelOne’s comprehensive, cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP). It combines the best of agentless insights with AI-powered threat protection, to secure and protect your multi-cloud infrastructure, services, and containers from build time to runtime. SentinelOne’s CNAPP applies an attacker’s mindset to help security practitioners better prioritize their remediation tasks with evidence-backed Verified Exploit Paths™. The efficient and scalable runtime protection, proven over 5 years and trusted by many of the world’s leading cloud enterprises, harnesses local, autonomous AI engines to detect and thwart runtime threats in real-time. CNAPP data and workload telemetry is recorded to SentinelOne’s unified security lake, for easy access and investigation.

Singularity Cloud Security includes both agentless and AI-powered cloud security controls, which represent two halves of our strategy to keep public cloud and container environments safe. Radically reduce your cloud attack surface with Singularity Cloud Native Security, formerly PingSafe, with agentless insights and evidence-based prioritization; protect runtime compute and container with Singularity Cloud Workload Security, SentinelOne’s real-time CWPP, with AI-powered machine-speed blocking of threats.

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is a platform of cloud security solutions aimed at protecting organizations from breaches while simplifying cloud security management. The unified platform combines several cloud security functionalities for comprehensive protection. Built on the CrowdStrike Falcon Platform, it leverages the powerful agent and technology used in CrowdStrike's renowned endpoint protection solutions, extending its capabilities seamlessly to cloud environments.

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security is designed to be a shield for the cloud infrastructure. One of its key strengths is its ability to monitor cloud workloads for potential breaches and attacks. It doesn't matter if you're running virtual machines, containers, or a combination of both across different cloud providers – Falcon Cloud Security offers visibility and protection. Additionally, it works tirelessly to pinpoint misconfigurations or vulnerabilities in your cloud setup, proactively stopping issues before they become full-blown security incidents. Compliance becomes easier too, as it can check if your deployments meet the requirements of various industry standards and regulations.

If you heavily utilize containers and Kubernetes, Falcon Cloud Security has you covered. It delves deep into container images and running containers to spot weaknesses and potential threats, helping you secure your containerized applications from the moment they're developed to when they're up and running. Finally, it tackles the often messy world of permissions in the cloud. Falcon Cloud Security analyzes identities and their attached permissions, ensuring that the principle of least privilege is followed and sensitive data isn't exposed due to overly broad access rights.

In essence, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security aims to simplify the complexities of cloud security by consolidating tools, providing a centralized view of your risks and threats, and delivering advanced protection that blends seamlessly with your development processes.

Based on the interviews we conducted with CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security users, overall, the sentiment is positive. Users praise the solution's efficacy in detecting and preventing threats, its ease of use, scalability, stability, and integration with existing systems. There were also mentions of areas for improvement, such as the pricing, the user interface, and customer support.

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.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

Buyer's Guide

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

May 2024

Free Report: CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.

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See our CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.

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