We performed a comparison between AWS (AWS GuardDuty) 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.
Comparison Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Microsoft Defender for Cloud comes out ahead of AWS GuardDuty. AWS GuardDuty’s initial setup and integrations are more complex. It as well has less comprehensive features and a less straightforward pricing model.
"We use the tool for threat detection. AWS includes AI features as well. AWS GuardDuty gives us reports."
"The way it monitors accounts is definitely a very important feature."
"One of the advantages of cloud services is the ability to use them on demand. There's minimal installation involved; you can check the latest offerings and make new deployments while dismantling the previous ones. This approach keeps you ahead of potential services, showcasing the agility of AWS."
"What we found most valuable in Amazon GuardDuty is its threat detection feature, especially because we were monitoring a huge number of AWS accounts, so we needed a solution that would monitor for any kind of malicious activity. The monitoring aspect of the solution was great because it gave us timely notifications if and when anything happened, and Amazon GuardDuty helped keep us on our toes to make sure we took action right away."
"The solution will detect abnormalities in the AWS workload and alert us so that we can monitor and take action."
"It kinda just gives us another layer of security. So it does provide some sort of comfort that we do have something that is monitoring for abnormal behavior."
"Since our environment is cloud based and accessible from the internet, we like the ability to check where the user has logged in from and what kind of API calls that user is doing."
"The most valuable features are the single system for data collection and the alert mechanisms."
"Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
"The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."
"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."
"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."
"It is very intuitive when it comes to policy administration, alerts and notifications, and ease of setting up roles at different hierarchies. It has also been good in terms of the network technology maps. It provides a good overview, but it also depends on the complexity of your network."
"The main feature is the security posture assessment through the security score. I find that to be very helpful because it gives us guidance on what needs to be secured and recommendations on how to secure the workloads that have been onboarded."
"DSPM is the most valuable feature."
"Amazon GuardDuty could be better enriched in threat intelligence data."
"It would be great if the solution had some automation capabilities."
"The solution's user interface could be improved because it will help users to understand multiple options."
"AWS GuardDuty needs to be more customer-oriented."
"It is evolving, and at the moment, I will just need it on a larger scale. Then, it will satisfy my demand, initially."
"The solution has to be integrated with new services that AWS adds like QuickSight, Managed Airflow, AppFlow and MWAA."
"Improvement-wise, Amazon GuardDuty should have an overall dashboard analytics function so we could see what's in the current environment, and then in addition to that, provide best practices and recommendations, particularly to provide some type of observability, and then figure out the login side of it, based on our current environment, in terms of what we're not monitoring and what we should monitor. The solution should also give us a sample code configuration to implement that added feature or feature request. What I'd like to see in the next release of Amazon GuardDuty are more security analytics, reporting, and monitoring. They should provide recommendations and additional options that answer questions such as "Hey, what can we see in our environment?", "What should we implement within the environment?", What's recommended?" We know that cost will always be associated with that, but Amazon GuardDuty should show us the increased costs or decreased costs if we implement it or don't implement it, and that would be a good feature request, particularly with all products within AWS, just for cloud products in general because there are times features are implemented, but once they're deployed, they don't tell you about costs that would be generated along with those features. After features are deployed, there should a summary of the costs that would be generated, and projected based on current usage, so they would give us the option to figure out how long we're going to use those features and the option to keep those on or turn those off. If more services were like that, a lot more people would use those on the cloud."
"There is currently no consolidated dashboard for AWS GuardDuty. It would be helpful if they could provide a dashboard based on severity levels (high, medium, low) and offer insights account-wise, especially for users utilizing automation structures."
"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."
"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."
"From a compliance standpoint, they can include some more metrics and some specific compliances such as GDPR."
"The remediation process could be improved."
"Azure's system could be more on point like AWS support. For example, if I have an issue with AWS, I create a support ticket, then I get a call or a message. With Azure support, you raise a ticket, and somebody calls back depending on their availability and the priority, which might not align with your business priority."
"Sometimes it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or a special kind of product."
"The product must improve its UI."
"The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome."
AWS GuardDuty is ranked 4th in CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platforms) with 19 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 2nd in CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platforms) with 46 reviews. AWS GuardDuty is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of AWS GuardDuty writes "A stellar threat-detection service that has helped bolster security against malicious threats". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". AWS GuardDuty is most compared with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security, Wiz, Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP and Lacework, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with Microsoft Defender XDR, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Sentinel, Wiz and Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. See our AWS GuardDuty vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
See our list of best CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platforms) vendors.
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