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Bitdefender GravityZone XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Executive Summary

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

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Net...
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
122
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (4th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (5th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (3rd), Ransomware Protection (2nd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (1st)
Bitdefender GravityZone XDR
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (29th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
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 Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), 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

Extended Detection and Response (XDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Bitdefender GravityZone XDR1.2%
SentinelOne Singularity Endpoint6.3%
Wazuh5.1%
Other87.4%
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud6.5%
Wiz12.5%
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks10.1%
Other70.9%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
 

Featured Reviews

ABHISHEK_SINGH - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Process Expert at A.P. Moller - Maersk
Gained full visibility and streamlined threat detection through behavior-based insights and AI integration
Initially, we got to have a lot of false positives when we onboarded, but nowadays it's quite smooth. We have fine-tuned our security policies and allowed different levels of policies to get rid of those false positives. Currently, we are getting a fairly good amount of incidents that are not false positives or benign, but actionable items. The process is streamlined. In the initial days, the operations used to get involved in a lot of benign and other activities, but now the process is streamlined. We are leveraging the auto-detection and remediation plans. The operations teams are now more involved in other business roles as well, not just looking into the logs and fetching out what's happening there. They have fixed a lot of things. Initially, they didn't have IAC code drift detection, cloud posture management, or security posture management, but they have those now. They purchased different vendors and did a merger with that. They have now Prisma Cloud that gets integrated and now they are working with Cortex Cloud. Everything that was negative has now been addressed, and the product altogether looks to be in a very better and mature shape now. Currently, it's more or less detecting the workloads with AI-based best practices. Since most organizations are consuming AI agents and other things, we are looking forward to seeing what other feature enhancements Palo Alto can support in that.
Jörg Köhler - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at AvalisNT AG
Setup is smooth and management is seamless, while improvements in email filtering transparency enhance efficiency
For data correlation, we just haven't worked long enough with it to assess its impact on our overall threat response strategy. We prefer a system that simply informs us when there is a problem; we don't want to engage too much in threat hunting. Therefore, we're not looking to create a SOC from this, which is also why we moved from XDR to MDR. There are areas for improvement, including the difficulty in getting the right handles on the applied email filters. It's sometimes unclear why one email is treated as spam and another is not, even if they contain similar content. Making the process of how emails are treated a bit more transparent would be beneficial.
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

"It has pretty much everything we need and works well within the Palo Alto ecosystem."
"Palo Alto is one of the tech vendors that always provides top-of-the-line products."
"One major outcome our organization achieved with Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is that it is a good tool for analysis, remediation, and incident response, with no negative points in terms of budget and overall effectiveness."
"Threat identification and detection are the most valuable features of this solution."
"Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks has given us better endpoint visibility and richer investigation context, allowing us to identify suspicious activity, understand the attack path, and contain potential threats much faster than before."
"We think that this product will help us grow, as it meets our needs currently and we can grow with it over time."
"WildFire AI is the best option for this product."
"Everything is organized straightforwardly; all the incidents are clearly described and everything you need is essentially in one menu and one UI interface, which is quite beneficial for me and also for the customer."
"It provides an in-depth analysis and gives recommendations, along with a historical search capability."
"I appreciate the overall utilization of AI to enhance security posture."
"Since then, we are working with it, and so far, we have no problems; it's working smoothly with email security."
"The solution has an automatic patch management capability."
"The HyperDetect feature in GravityZone XDR is effective."
"I would rate GravityZone XDR more than nine out of ten."
"I find that the auto-response capability is most valuable."
"Scalability is pretty easy. It's easy to increase the capacity. You can just add on licenses to the existing license, and the duration of the license can be adjusted. For example, you've already bought a license for a year, and you want to add some more users. We can just add on licenses for the remaining period so that the entire organization can have the same expiry date. That makes renewal easier."
"It works seamlessly on the Azure platform because it's a Microsoft app. Its setup is similar, so if you already have a Microsoft account, it just flows into it."
"It isn't a highly complex solution. It's something that a lot of analysts can use. Defender gives you a broad overview of what's happening in your environment, and it's a great solution if you're a Microsoft shop."
"The solution helped out management a lot, reducing about 50% of the time needed to spend on this after implementation and saving the organization money by consolidating into one solution instead of two or three."
"Microsoft Defender has a lot of features including regulatory compliance and attaching workbooks but the most valuable is the recommendations it provides for each and every resource when we open Microsoft Defender."
"This solution is stable, it's 100% guaranteed and I've never had any problems with it other than some planned IT downtime."
"It offers virus management and addresses threats such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other critical security concerns."
"The feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud that I appreciate most is the ability to view logs of applications, as I find it much clearer to understand what is running."
"In summary, if you would like to work with a product that addresses security in the cloud, or in a multi-cloud environment then this is exactly the product."
 

Cons

"It would be good to have a better way to search for a file within the UI."
"I would like to see some additional features related to email protection included."
"The solution should add unwanted malicious hash values to a block list so that whenever the action is triggered, it will automatically prevent the malicious content."
"The price could be a little lower."
"The installation should be easier and the Palo Alto pre-sales and sales teams should have more information on the product because they don't know what they are selling."
"Currently, we are monitoring all USB drives and ports but we would like to improve our device control capabilities."
"While using Cortex, I noticed some aspects that could be improved, such as increasing the synchronization speed between XDR and Xnor."
"The product's pricing needs improvement. They could provide more discounts. Additionally, the dashboard and control panel could be enhanced."
"The product could be improved by offering a single panel for the management of all Bitdefender products. Additionally, there might be a need to simplify the interface in the future."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"Another area of improvement is CPU utilization. CPU utilization could be improved."
"There are areas for improvement, including the difficulty in getting the right handles on the applied email filters."
"It's not very mature, and additional costs are involved."
"The resource consumption is high for Bitdefender GravityZone XDR, nearly using one gigabyte of RAM, especially on Windows 10 and 11."
"While we are satisfied with Defender for Cloud's features, an AI enhancement could potentially provide better advice and adapt more effectively to our environment."
"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."
"Consistency is the area where the most improvement is needed. For example, there are some areas where the UI is not uniform across the board."
"It's really hard to get ahold of Microsoft support. When you buy a product, with the M365 portal, you're given the option to chat with somebody, and normally you don't hear back immediately."
"I rate Microsoft support five out of 10. It gets better once you're escalated past the first and second levels. It's difficult to get the necessary support when tickets are first opened."
"The remediation process could be improved."
"Another thing that could be improved was that they could recommend processes on how to react to alerts, or recommend best practices based on how other organizations do things if they receive an alert about XYZ."
"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cortex XDR’s pricing is very reasonable."
"The price was fine."
"Cortex XDR's pricing is ok."
"The pricing is a little high. It is per user per year."
"The pricing is okay, although direct support can be expensive."
"The cost of Cortex XDR by Palo Alto Networks is $55 to $90 USD per endpoint per month."
"We pay about $50,000 USD per year for a bundle that includes Cortex XDR."
"When we first bought it, it was a bit expensive, but it was worth it. The licensing was straightforward."
"It's not the price of the software itself that makes it expensive. It's because you have to buy a VM; you have to buy additional hardware. All those things make it slightly costlier."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a six out of ten."
"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."
"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."
"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."
"The tool is pretty expensive."
"The pricing and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud have been good for us. We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license."
"Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services."
"The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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 Business50
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise57
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. Sentinel One
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Comparing CrowdStrike Falcon to Cortex XDR (Palo Alto)
Cortex XDR by Palo Alto vs. CrowdStrike Falcon Both Cortex XDR and Crowd Strike Falcon offer cloud-based solutions th...
How is Cortex XDR compared with Microsoft Defender?
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint is a cloud-delivered endpoint security solution. The tool reduces the attack surface,...
What needs improvement with Bitdefender GravityZone XDR?
For data correlation, we just haven't worked long enough with it to assess its impact on our overall threat response ...
What is your primary use case for Bitdefender GravityZone XDR?
I am using SentinelOne not for MDR, only for EDR/XDR, because we wanted to use it for MDR, but the threshold for the ...
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

Cyvera, Cortex XDR, Palo Alto Networks Traps
No data available
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CBI Health Group, University Honda, VakifBank
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 SentinelOne, TrendAI, Palo Alto Networks and others in Extended Detection and Response (XDR). Updated: October 2026.
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