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BMC Helix Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (5th), Cloud and Data Center Security (3rd), Container Security (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
BMC Helix Cloud Security
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
22nd
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (6th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.9%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of BMC Helix Cloud Security is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 13.3%, down from 16.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew W - PeerSpot reviewer
Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues
Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.
GregoireSoukiassian - PeerSpot reviewer
Effectively addresses security concerns but could use enhancement in terms of integration
BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists of separate point solutions that don't flow together as seamlessly as they could. This lack of integration, unlike platforms like ServiceNow, may be due to historical factors. Enhancing this integration would make it a more compelling choice from a business perspective and offer a smoother user experience. In the next release of BMC Helix Cloud Security, I would like to see additional features, particularly AI integration, which has already been announced. AI integration could bring more precision to the platform, making it even more interesting and effective.
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution saves 40% of my time."
"SentinelOne's behaviour analytics are valuable because they detect anomalies and malicious behaviour that signature-based solutions might miss."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security has a dashboard that can detect the criticality of a particular problem, whether it falls under critical, medium, or low vulnerability."
"As a frequently audited company, we value SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security's compliance monitoring features. They give us a report with a compliance score for how well we meet certain regulatory standards, like HIPAA. We can show our compliance as a percentage. It's also a way to show that we are serious about security."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers an intuitive user interface that lets us navigate quickly and easily."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security has saved up to 50 percent in engineering time."
"The GUI is one of the best features. Audit reports and documentation for alerts are also valuable."
"The visibility SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security provides into the Cloud environment is a valuable feature."
"The features that I've found most valuable are its container security aspect. I also like its vulnerability management tools."
"The best feature is time to value. With very minimal effort, you are able to have a cohesive view into your security posture on one or multiple cloud accounts, particularly if you are dealing with multicloud. If you have Azure and AWS deployments, you might have multiple subscriptions in Azure and usually multiple accounts in AWS. You may even be doing some GCP work (around Google Cloud Platform). It's very difficult to manage a common set of policies, even less reporting, across multiple subscriptions, accounts, and cloud environments. What BMC Helix Cloud Security does is provide a unified view or single pane of glass as to your baseline. Then, it also facilitates the ability for Level 1 or 2 operations support to take action and report on security vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities."
"The cool feature of Helix Cloud Security is that you can do all that — understand and remediate issues — in one dashboard, based on the different policies that are available for security, out-of-the-box."
"Role-based security is a valuable feature."
"It's also multi-cloud. You can look at several cloud providers: AWS, Azure, or GCP."
"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."
"Technical support is helpful."
"Defender for Cloud provides a complete DevOps security package for cloud services."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable as advertised."
"The solution's coordinated detection and response across devices and identities is impressive because it is complete."
"This is a platform as a service provided by Azure. We don't need to install or maintain Azure Security Center. It is a ready-made service available in Azure. This is one of the main things that we like. If you look at similar tools, we have to install, maintain, and update services. Whereas, Azure Security Center manages what we are using. This is a good feature that has helped us a lot."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce."
"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive."
 

Cons

"After closing an alert in Cloud Native Security, it still shows as unresolved."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is an excellent CSPM tool, but its CWPP features need improvement, and there is scope for more application security posture management features."
"I personally use the SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security daily, and I have noticed that the dashboard occasionally gets stuck, potentially due to internet issues. It could benefit from enhancements to be more robust and smoother."
"Once all components, including the cloud piece and container runtime piece, integrate further and incorporate an AI layer for better comprehension, it will greatly enhance the utility of Singularity Cloud Security."
"One of our use cases was setting up a firewall for our endpoints, specifically for our remote users... We were hoping to utilize SentinelOne's firewall capabilities, but there were limitations on how many URLs we could implement. Because of those limitations on the number of URLs, we weren't able to utilize that feature in the way we had hoped to."
"The SentinelOne customer support needs improvement, as they are sometimes late in responding, which is critical in a production issue."
"There can be a specific type of alert showing that a new type of risk has been identified."
"One potential drawback is the cost of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, which may be prohibitive for smaller businesses or startups, particularly those in regions with lower average incomes, such as India."
"Every organization out there doesn't rely on just one control body. They use FISMA control. They may use HIPAA, CIS, PCI, or SOX, then blend them. One of the things that is now in big demand for BMC Helix Cloud Security is content. That's the next journey in its lifespan, making it easier for the community to share and collaborate on content for security controls that can be measured and remediated."
"We've had some with issues connectors. The connectors have seemed to have caused a little bit of trouble, perhaps with the APIs trying to scan the environment. The only time I've had to reach out to tech support was for that. It seems it may not have been scanning correctly or I wasn't seeing data within a specific time. But we've set up a couple of connectors in the past couple of weeks and they actually scanned the AWS environment and we had data within about 10 minutes. It's working a lot faster and I think they're making improvements as they go."
"BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features."
"The UI could be more user-friendly."
"I want the role-based security feature to be improved."
"The remediation process could be improved."
"The range of workloads is broad, but we'd love to add more workloads and make it a single security solution that covers all those workloads. Covering more would allow us to see and protect more workloads from a single pane of glass. Additional features should include protection for more AI workloads as it currently focuses primarily on OpenAI."
"The cost is always a concern, but overall, it's not too bad because it is easy to use and pretty friendly."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"Defender could improve how data is represented. It can be unstructured or slow to load."
"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."
"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."
"Most customer teams need more training on this type of product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I understand that SentinelOne is a market leader, but the bill we received was astronomical."
"I wasn't sure what to expect from the pricing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little less than I thought."
"PingSafe falls within the typical price range for cloud security platforms."
"PingSafe is priced reasonably for our workload."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is costly."
"Its pricing is okay. It is in line with what other providers were providing. It is not cheap. It is not expensive."
"It's a fair price for what you get. We are happy with the price as it stands."
"We found it to be fine for us. Its price was competitive. It was something we were happy with. We are not a Fortune 500 company, so I do not know how pricing scales at the top end, but for our cloud environment, it works very well."
"The pricing is based on an annual subscription, upfront, and it's based on cloud assets. Whether your assets are in Azure and AWS combined, the tool tells you how many assets are being scanned and that's the number used for pricing."
"It is a subscription model with term licensing that is usually yearly. This includes, not only the product, but support and maintenance. It is based on cloud assets. Therefore, if you have 100 cloud assets, those cloud assets are measured based on evaluation or transactions. For example, if I'm evaluating that cloud asset for CIS compliance, PCI compliance, and AWS best practices, that asset gets evaluated three times, as those are three transactions. However, the license model is based on peak asset usage. So, over a year, if you deploy 100, 1000, 500, and then 2000 assets, you will be charged for the 2000 peak of assets managed by Helix Cloud Security."
"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."
"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."
"The tool is pretty expensive."
"I am not involved much with the pricing but the bundle offering is good."
"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."
"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."
"They have a free version, but the license for this one isn't too high. It's free to start with, and you're charged for using it beyond 30 days. Some other pieces of Defender are charged based on usage, so you will be charged more for a high volume of transactions. I believe Defender for Cloud is a daily charge based on Azure's App Service Pricing."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) solutions are best for your needs.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
26%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?
The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?
I don't handle the price part, but it isn't more expensive than Palo Alto Prisma Cloud. It's not cheap, but it is wor...
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
There is scope for more application security posture management features. Additionally, the runtime protection needs ...
What do you like most about BMC Helix Cloud Security?
The most valuable aspects of BMC Helix Cloud Security are its security features and regulatory compliance capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BMC Helix Cloud Security?
I would rate the price of BMC Helix Cloud Security as a seven in terms of costliness. It is not the cheapest option a...
What needs improvement with BMC Helix Cloud Security?
BMC Helix Cloud Security has room for improvement in terms of integrating its various features. It currently consists...
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 do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
TrueSight Cloud Security, SecOps Policy Service
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
NHS, Vodafone, Kansas City Life, SKY Italia, Cybera
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 BMC Helix Cloud Security vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.