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Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (6th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (7th)
Akamai Enterprise Applicati...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (19th), ZTNA as a Service (21st), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (18th)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (15th), Microsoft Security Suite (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 4.5%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is 3.8%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 5.9%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps5.9%
iboss4.5%
Akamai Enterprise Application Access3.8%
Other85.8%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
DE
Platform Manager at Globe Telecom
Centralized authentication streamlines global access with single sign-on and auto-scaling for seamless user experience
We use Akamai Enterprise Application Access for centralized authentication for our global customers. It provides a solution for consolidated authentication on our platform. We use the service to manage access for our global consumers, not for remote access for our employees My favorite part of…
reviewer2777910 - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner & Chief Executive Officer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Enforces dynamic policies and blocks risky behaviors to safeguard sensitive data
The fidelity of the signal in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has been a challenge in some areas. There have been instances where the alerts generated have been false positives. A lot of work has to go into scoping and tuning the policies so that actual value can be achieved, especially when not doing outright blocks. When monitoring is the approach, it can be overwhelming for security teams to review all of the alerts and determine which ones require action. When a legitimate alert is found that requires action, the tools are available to take that direction, but it can take considerable time to determine if an alert is real or not, and that represents a problem. There is uncertainty about how well Microsoft is keeping up with the changing landscape of threats, as new artificial intelligence services and software as a service applications appear every day.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The security aspect of the solution, particularly the malware behind it, is excellent."
"iboss has significantly lowered the number of security incidents. It is crazy how much it blocks and how much it is aware of the outside danger."
"The students were always protected, and the content filtering worked very well, seeming to work better than other products we had tried previously."
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"First of all, the security policies are essential. I do not have to rely solely on Active Directory for our users."
"The iboss solution gives me the ability to scan the traffic through all the ports, through all the 131,000 PCP and UDP ports, and with this ability, we have the granularity also for consults over social media and applications on mobile, and this is an advantage that the customers are looking for right now."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"Application Access's most valuable feature is the accessibility of enterprise tech protection."
"The solution is very convenient and stable because you don't have to worry about attacks to public IPs or public networks."
"The capability of Akamai Enterprise Application Access is what you're looking for, it's giving you the service that you're looking for. It's simple and doesn't use an agent. It uses LCSD responders, and they have a lot of services around the globe. That's the reason that we were very interested in using it because it has a lot of coverage. This is because it's under the GDS umbrella."
"My favorite part of the Akamai Enterprise Application Access service is its SSO and auto-scaling capabilities."
"We've had a good ROI from Application Access."
"The cost and the capability are great."
"The product’s most valuable feature is SQL database."
"The most effective features for data protection are data loss prevention (DLP) and data classification."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that we are primarily using only the Defender for Cloud on the Azure Cloud."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"The solution is helping a lot; we get very detailed reporting on security that really shows what users are doing, including what they've opened, what they're sharing, downloading, viewing, and when they are logging in."
"It gives our clients a sense of confidence that in case there are activities on some of their applications, they will get an alert and the issue will be mitigated, based on the action that has been set."
"The most valuable feature is the seamless integration across different clouds."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of management. It's important."
 

Cons

"The reporting feature needs improvement."
"Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc. It is easy to gain access if, for example, hackers obtain my username and password."
"It is stable, but due to growth, it can sometimes be less stable than wanted."
"Iboss is growing so fast that it is often hard for them to keep up with the challenges."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"I am currently doing a PoC of the zero trust aspect of it. Compared to other similar solutions, it is hard to get around each feature. It takes a while to get used to it."
"The dashboards for local use could be better."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"The solution has two agents so should combine its enterprise application and security access into one agent."
"The technical enablement sessions are quite limited, and Akamai could help by providing more of them."
"If you provide enterprise services we have to stop telling the customers it's going to be per users or the transactions. That's not good for the customers, it's good for the vendors."
"We need another approach to bring the solution to the cloud. In addition to Access Management, we would like to see if we can jump into Directories. I think ADs are going to go away and everything is going to be cloud-based and minimize the use of ADs because of the cost and some other dependencies to the cloud. Every time you buy AD it is more hardware, and everything's changing to software. The network's changing, the applications are changing, and for IT it is hard to keep up with it."
"The pricing could be lower for Akamai Enterprise Application Access."
"Sometimes, we'll get false positive alarms. For example, when a SharePoint path has no file sharing, but there is an external user, it will trigger an alarm that the file has been shared with an external user... the alerting mechanism should be more precise when giving you an alert about what activity has been done with the file..."
"The Cloud App Security integration with external DLP solutions is not so seamless."
"Improved communication and follow-up would be helpful. Sometimes, we don’t hear back after creating a ticket for a day or two."
"The documentation could be improved as it is not updated immediately when Microsoft makes changes. Users must wait a few weeks for the changes to be reflected in the documentation."
"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."
"There have been instances where the alerts generated have been false positives."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps' initial setup was quite technical but we were prepared. The time of the implementation depends on the job and how many users are being set up."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"Licensing is based on user count."
"The price is great it is all-inclusive, they use an enterprise cost model. That's what we like compared to other users. This is one of the main attractions of Akamai Enterprise Application Access. It's already an enterprise cost model established with us for services."
"The license can be shared based on the number of active users."
"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."
"The product's pricing seems fair."
"It has pretty good pricing."
"The price could be better and should be reconsidered."
"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."
"Microsoft offers bundle discounts and a pay-as-you-go option."
"We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly."
"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."
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916,582 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise12
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
I think iboss could be improved by emphasizing the modular function even more during sales presentations and demonstr...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
iboss is primarily used for content filtering within school districts and public K-12 school districts, and it can al...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
My experience with iboss's pricing structure, setup cost, and licensing model has been positive, straightforward, and...
What needs improvement with Akamai Enterprise Application Access?
The pricing is a bit expensive for our market. Although it is cheaper compared to alternatives, Akamai Enterprise App...
What is your primary use case for Akamai Enterprise Application Access?
We use Akamai Enterprise Application Access ( /products/akamai-enterprise-application-access-reviews ) for centralize...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-nat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
At the time of implementation, when the size of our organization was small, it was a more affordable product. Since a...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Cloud App Security?
The fidelity of the signal in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has been a challenge in some areas. There have been i...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
Soha
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by global enterprises and government agencies.
Bugcrowd, InPowered, Spirent Communications
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai Enterprise Application Access vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
916,582 professionals have used our research since 2012.