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AWS Security Hub vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 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

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (5th), Container Security (8th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
AWS Security Hub
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
20th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Security Orchestration Automation and Response (SOAR) (8th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Container Management (8th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Security Hub is 2.5%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.1%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud5.1%
Qualys TotalCloud2.1%
AWS Security Hub2.5%
Other90.3%
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
Misbah Mohammed Kollathodi - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineering Technical Leader Sre (Cloud/Kubernetes Security) at Cisco
Centralized compliance monitoring has strengthened our cloud security posture and daily governance
AWS Security Hub is something which I basically use to see how much your infrastructure is compliant. It is basically what we call a CSPM, which is a cloud security posture management tool. You can automate the best practices and continue with security best practices; it will give you your misconfigurations and aggregate all your tickets in one place. The best thing about AWS Security Hub is that it is a single point of place where you can get all your misconfigurations without having to go to each service and check. For example, if your business deals with any compliance like PCI DSS or FSBP and ISD, you can check how much your infrastructure is compliant with these standards. Each standard has several security controls, and AWS Security Hub checks these security controls and tells us what percentage your application and infrastructure is compliant with these standards. It also has integration with GuardDuty, Inspector, and other AWS services. In that aspect, it provides a lot of findings. It also supports some third-party product sources. I believe it will reduce your effort to correct those findings and can automate the security tests, consolidate the view of findings across accounts and providers. You can also apply remediation for these findings and automate that; for example, if somebody opens the security group, you can use tools such as Amazon Inspector to close this port when this finding comes. So I would say it is a good tool for cloud security, cloud security posture management, compliance management, and all these things. If you are dealing with sensitive data, it is very critical. A lot of people are using AWS Security Hub today in our company, maybe in every account we have. It is a must for cloud security. I believe bigger organizations use that, so it is a need for our security strategy.
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

"Qualys TotalCloud has improved our security posture."
"The agent and agentless scanning in TotalCloud, particularly the FlexScan method, is incredibly valuable. With traditional scanning approaches, we had to give IP ranges and whitelist IPs. All that is now simplified. FlexScan requires minimal intervention, and after configuration, it automatically collects data and performs necessary scans."
"The most valuable feature of Qualys TotalCloud is the visibility it provides."
"While automatic inventory detection upon connection is a helpful feature, a truly valuable capability would be assessing an environment's security posture against Azure and CIS best practices."
"The most valuable feature is the consolidated information that it provides from various platforms."
"I would recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users because it is cost-efficient and has a good return on investment."
"The platform's unified view of the organization proves particularly valuable for leadership team meetings."
"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable features are its security capabilities that help identify and mitigate risk factors."
"Finding out if your infrastructure is secure is a valuable feature."
"Easily integrates with third-party tools"
"I like that AWS Security Hub currently has several good features, around four or five. The technical support for AWS Security Hub is also responsive."
"Cloudposse is a valuable feature as it guarantees my security."
"The best feature of AWS Security Hub is that you can get compliance or your cloud's current security posture."
"The solution is very good at detection and providing real-time alerts."
"The most beneficial aspect of Security Hub is its proactive capability, allowing us to identify potential security issues before they escalate."
"AWS Security Hub has very good integration features. It allows for AWS native services integration, and it helps us to integrate some of the services outside of AWS."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud can find potential phishing links and malicious code in data at rest."
"The features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud that I like the most are the regulatory compliance capabilities; these features have benefited my organization by improving our overall security posture."
"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."
"Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful."
"Defender for Cloud provides a prioritized list of remediations for security issues, reducing risk and improving security operations."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has improved our security poster by at least 100 percent."
"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."
"The solution is quite good and addresses many security gaps."
 

Cons

"The cloud licensing unit system is unclear, especially since "units" aren't well-defined."
"Overall, we are satisfied with it. However, the response part of the Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) module can be improved. It is not yet in place according to requirements; it is not completely available even though the module has been released."
"There is room for improvement in vulnerability scanning, particularly for PaaS environments. Currently, Qualys does not have full access to these instances, which limits its effectiveness."
"Regarding technical support from Qualys, they respond, but the response time can be too long. Sometimes we need to wait weeks for solutions to simple questions."
"Qualys TotalCloud can be improved in the integration piece, especially with ServiceNow, where there's a bidirectional sync integrated, as there is no native capability from Qualys that can give monitoring metrics of how many assets came in and how many failed or were not properly reconciled or combined."
"Their support could be improved."
"The vulnerability part is good, but the policy compliance module needs improvement because it involves a lot of manual work. Specifically, the remediation part of the controls requires enhancements."
"I sometimes have difficulty detecting or uninstalling certain versions of applications, which I have to do manually."
"Right now, there are some difficulties we're facing with AWS Security Hub, and we need our central team to mitigate the issues."
"Security Hub is currently not worth investing in, as it requires more configurations and integration with other services to work effectively."
"The solution will only give you insight if you have configure rule enabled. It should work more like Prisma Cloud and Dome9 which have a better approach."
"One aspect that could be improved in the solution is its adaptability to different markets and geopolitical restrictions. In certain regions like Thailand, specific services from certain countries or providers, such as AWS or Azure, might be limited or blocked. It also needs improvement in would require configuring the solution more adaptable to AWS infrastructure and function."
"We need more granular-level customizations to enable or disable the rules in AWS Security Hub."
"Adding SIEM features would be beneficial because of the limited customization of AWS Security Hub."
"Security needs to be measured based on their own criteria. We can't add custom criteria specific to our organization. For example, having an S3 bucket publicly available might be flagged as a critical alert, but it might not be critical in a sandbox environment. So, it gets flagged as critical, which becomes a false positive. So, customization options and creating custom dashboards would be areas for improvement."
"However, the sheer number of services can be overwhelming when implementing something new."
"The solution is quite complex. A lot of the different policies that actually get applied don't pertain to every client. If you need to have something open for a client application to work, then you get dinged for having a port open or having an older version of TLS available."
"The product must improve its UI."
"Defender for Cloud is pretty costly for a single line. It's incredibly high to pay monthly for security per server."
"It's hard to reach someone who understands my problems. I haven't had many issues, so I haven't called them."
"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."
"Defender could provide more in-depth visibility into vulnerabilities and services. For instance, we wanted to scan Azure NetApp for sensitive data, but they didn't have that feature. It was only for storage accounts. I want Azure Defender features to cover all Azure resources rather than a few."
"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 customer service at Microsoft has room for improvement. The first line of support is not technically adept and often requires engaging higher-level technicians to resolve issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"I am not sure about the pricing. From what I understand, it is a bit on the higher side, but I do not have the exact numbers."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"Although Qualys TotalCloud is relatively expensive due to its unique automation features, its cost-effectiveness is rated an eight out of ten, with ten being the most costly."
"AWS Security Hub's pricing is pretty reasonable."
"The pricing is fine. It is not an expensive tool."
"The price of AWS Security Hub is average compared to other solutions."
"Security Hub is not an expensive solution."
"The price of the solution is not very competitive but it is reasonable."
"The cost is based on the number of compliances, core checks, and services required, and for more than 10,000 recommendations, the charge is just one dollar."
"There are multiple subscription models, like yearly, monthly, and packaged."
"AWS Security Hub is not an expensive tool. I would consider it to be a cheap solution. AWS Security Hub follows the PAYG pricing model, meaning you will have to pay for whatever you use."
"There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."
"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."
"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
"Understanding the costs of cloud services can be complicated at first. As with a lot of things in the cloud, it can be quite hard to understand the end cost, but it becomes clearer over time. Early on, the lack of transparency is a challenge. Microsoft does not tell you the cost when they launch something. It is clever marketing, and there is room for improvement there. There should be clarity from the start."
"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."
"Pricing is difficult because each license has its own metrics and cost."
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Comparison Review

it_user186927 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Operations at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Feb 16, 2015
Cybereason vs. Interset vs. SQRRL
Capture DB - they all use NoSQL db and hence solve the ad hoc query and 'go back in time' problem with current best of breed SIEM and DLP solutions that rely on real time analysis of incoming logs (and don't store them). This means deeper and quicker iterative threat analysis and assessment…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?
We purchased Qualys TotalCloud for GCP and Azure as well. It is comparatively better than others regarding pricing. T...
What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
I am unsure about how Qualys TotalCloud can be improved. I do not have anything else to add about the needed improvem...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is telemetry, although I am unsure about the specifics. A quick specific examp...
Which is better - Azure Sentinel or AWS Security Hub?
We like that Azure Sentinel does not require as much maintenance as legacy SIEMs that are on-premises. Azure Sentinel...
What needs improvement with AWS Security Hub?
I do not see any areas for improvement in AWS Security Hub itself, but the cost factor is something that is the main ...
What is your primary use case for AWS Security Hub?
AWS Security Hub is something I have used daily as it is a part of my job for cloud security purposes. If you are dea...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was that the license cost was the only consideration. Setup an...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
To improve Microsoft Defender for Cloud, I think pricing-wise, the license price is a little bit higher from an inges...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
SQRRL
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Edmunds, Frame.io, GoDaddy, Realtor.com
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 AWS Security Hub vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.