No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

AttackIQ vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 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

AttackIQ
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
48th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (5th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (18th), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (8th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (8th), Container Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of AttackIQ is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 3.6%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud3.6%
AttackIQ0.6%
Other95.8%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2783439 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps at a marketing services firm with 51-200 employees
Continuous offensive testing has transformed our cloud security and prioritizes critical fixes
The continuous testing and continuous offensive testing are among the best features that AttackIQ offers, and being able to categorize it based on criticality such as very critical, emergency, high, medium, and low is valuable. AttackIQ allows us to resolve issues much quicker because these issues come in categories, enabling us to prioritize them and fix the emergency issues first. It has definitely reduced response time and improved our discoverability of these issues in the first place.
RW
Head Of IT at Cirrus Response
Cloud security has cut investigation time and now reveals threats faster but needs simpler oversight
When deploying AI applications, my key security concerns with Microsoft Defender for Cloud are data loss, leakage of data, and guardrails around the actual AI, and I am hoping that this is going to help me put those guardrails in place and identify data exfiltration. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not helped me manage and secure multi-cloud environments, as we are 100 percent Microsoft and have not really got it in any other environment at all. I am not yet using the unified AI-powered security feature offered by Microsoft Defender for Cloud, but that is coming. I am not yet using the integrated XDR feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, but that is coming. I am not yet utilizing the GenAI threat protection features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. That is also coming and a lot of that will come from learning it here. I have enabled the agentless scanning in my cloud environment with Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Assessing the impact on my workload protection without needing to install agents with Microsoft Defender for Cloud makes it a lot easier, but it also identifies a lot more, which puts more load on me sometimes. I would advise another organization considering Microsoft Defender for Cloud that it is the most logical route to follow if their whole ecosystem is Microsoft. It is easy to implement and it is very self-explanatory when doing it, making sense to just follow the steps as it is too simple, really. I would rate this review a 7.5 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"AttackIQ is solving a lot of the problems that I had before or that we as an organization had before, even the security team, so it is solving all my issues."
"Overall, I've had a good experience with the product. It's worked well for me."
"Overall, I've had a good experience with the product."
"After using AttackIQ, it has helped the team and the company improve on false positives and reduce risk, as most people are now capable of identifying how to work on detection, improving fine-tuning and all those things."
"I have not experienced any difficulties or issues with the stability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."
"When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard. This gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about the email, sorting out the email, or looking at it through an ITSM solution, whey they have to look at the description and use cases. Efficiency increases with this optimized, ready-made solution since you don't need to invest in something externally. You can start using the dashboard and auditing capability provided from day one. Thus, you have fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution, providing operational efficiency for your team."
"The solution has improved our organization in terms of benchmarking, our Secure Score has improved a lot, and we're compliant with particular benchmarks."
"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture by at least 100 percent."
"The biggest benefit of Microsoft Defender for Cloud for us is specifically around being able to identify threats very quickly and being able to shut them down."
"The strong point of Defender, especially when using Azure Arc to bring in on-premises systems, is that it doesn't matter where these systems are; they're just resources in the portal."
"One of the features that I like about the solution is it is both a hybrid cloud and also multi-cloud. We never know what company we're going to buy, and therefore we are ready to go. If they have GCP or AWS, we have support for that as well. It offers a single-panel blast across multiple clouds."
"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was quite difficult and took a long time."
"The initial setup was difficult. It was not straightforward."
"I don't appreciate Microsoft Defender for Cloud because it seems to interfere with many things. That's the problem I've been experiencing with it."
"The product was a bit complex to set up earlier, however, it is a bit streamlined now."
"Sometimes, it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or certain kinds of products. That's not an issue directly with the product, though."
"An area where Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be improved is in getting away from having multiple menus that do the same thing, which seems imposing when looking at it."
"It's hard to reach someone who understands my problems. I haven't had many issues, so I haven't called them."
"Microsoft can improve the pricing by offering a plan that is more cost-effective for small and medium organizations."
"Defender could improve how data is represented. It can be unstructured or slow to load."
"Most customer teams need more training on this type of product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."
"Pricing depends on your workload size, but it is very cheap. If you're talking about virtual machines, it is $5 or something for each machine, which is minimal. If you go for some agent-based solution for every virtual machine, then you need to pay the same thing or more than that. For an on-premises solution like this, we were paying around $30 to $50 based on size. With Defender, Microsoft doesn't bother about the size. You pay based on the number of machines. So, if you have 10 virtual machines, and 10 virtual machines are being monitored, you are paying based on that rather than the size of the virtual machine. Thus, you are paying for the number of units rather than paying for the size of your units."
"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."
"We only use the free tier, so we haven't faced any pricing, setup costs, or licensing challenges."
"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."
"There are two different plans. We're using the secure basic plan, but we have used the end security plan as well. There are additional costs, but it gives us more functionalities compared to the basic plan."
"The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have."
"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with AttackIQ?
AttackIQ can be improved by implementing more of a security training platform focused on real-world scenarios, simulating real-world attack behavior aligned with the MITRE ATT&CK and NIST frame...
What is your primary use case for AttackIQ?
My main use case for AttackIQ is conducting breach and attack simulation or any kind of new ransomware simulation, basically for executing particular real-world attack scenarios. Regarding my main ...
What advice do you have for others considering AttackIQ?
In my current organization, we are not using AttackIQ; in my previous organization, I have used AttackIQ, and it was more of hands-on training rather than being deployed as a typical tool for impro...
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 across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud was pretty straightforward. We did have a consultation with a third party to go over different tiers and produ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
Microsoft Defender for Cloud can be improved. An additional feature that should be included in the next release is Zero Trust, similar to ThreatLocker software.
 

Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about AttackIQ vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,376 professionals have used our research since 2012.