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Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP improves security and compliance, reduces manual tasks, boosting efficiency and ROI with automation.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps enhances security and efficiency, offering significant ROI with up to 60% savings and streamlined operations.
The compliance has improved as our overall compliance score against CIS benchmark has improved from around 72 to 92% within the first three months of adoption.
Assistant Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
This helped my team cut manual review time by roughly twenty to twenty-five percent, allowing me to reallocate effort to proactive cloud security improvements.
Networking and System Consultant at Orbcom,Lda.
Monitoring cloud security automatically ensures a return on investment.
Cloud Engineer at Cloudar
The biggest return on investment so far has been visibility, knowing what we have in our environment.
Cloud and data protection engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
As a small team, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps allowed us to manage systems with just one or two people.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
We have at least saved the costs we had from the Netskope solution this year.
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP offers excellent, knowledgeable support but could improve initial response times at the basic support level.
Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps support is praised for its responsiveness, though some users experience delays and resource access challenges.
When I need help or have open questions, or if I require the capability to deploy a quick test environment, there are always people I can contact at Check Point to get my information or the environment as fast as I need it.
Cloud Security Architect at controlware
I have a dedicated support engineer and a presales engineer dedicated to me.
Cloud Engineer at Cloudar
Customer support for Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP has been responsive and knowledgeable.
Assistant Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Their customer service is pretty good, but it's frustrating to go through three or four channels before reaching the right person.
Cloud and data protection engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
The support is excellent, and the speed of response is commendable.
Solutions Architect at a university with 51-200 employees
There were instances where the engineers were knowledgeable and helpful, but at other times it felt like a ping pong game, with unnecessary transfers until the right person was found.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP scales well across clouds, with reliable performance and strong security compliance, despite licensing concerns.
Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers scalable, seamless integration, and reliable management for organizations of all sizes and environments.
Visibility scales without performance issues as my environment expands.
Networking and System Consultant at Orbcom,Lda.
Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP scales efficiently in the multi-cloud environment.
Assistant Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
I never had any performance-related issues.
Cloud Security Architect at controlware
For what I know about the log collector and how much data it can take in, it is super scalable and capable of handling high workloads.
Cloud and data protection engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very scalable, provided you have the right subscription.
Solutions Architect at a university with 51-200 employees
In my experience, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is good enough for small to medium businesses.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP is reliable and efficient, handling large-scale workloads with minimal downtime despite occasional minor latency issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is highly stable, reliable, and maintains performance with minor, swiftly resolved incidents.
If there are errors, it is sometimes challenging to elaborate or troubleshoot since it is not transparent enough to understand what to search for.
Cloud Security Architect at controlware
It is rapidly evolving, and sometimes mistakes occur, necessitating testing.
Cloud Engineer at Cloudar
I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps.
Head of Security Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
I would assess the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps as stable
Network Engineer at Apexon
My impression on the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that it is very stable.
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
 

Room For Improvement

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP needs better integrations, user interfaces, support, automation, and documentation to enhance functionality and user satisfaction.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps seeks enhanced pricing, integration, user interface, automation, and multi-cloud support, while improving insights and management.
I need more integration from the code-to-cloud principle.
Cloud Security Architect at controlware
It would be nice to have periodic updates on what people should do, maybe with some analysis or something.
Information Security Officer at Cargus
I require consistency in the user interface to ensure everything is streamlined into the same look and feel.
Cloud Engineer at Cloudar
For data loss prevention, it would be useful to be able to drill down into the kind of data being transferred over CloudApp.
Head of Security Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Defender typically connects to Entra ID, but we have local users on the cloud for database access, SSH, or RDS, and there is nothing produced by Defender regarding those local IAM users.
Network Engineer at Apexon
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps would benefit if Microsoft allows users to fine-tune false positives, enabling us to dismiss alerts or make adjustments so that such things don't trigger multiple times in the future.
Security delivery analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP offers flexible licensing with varied costs, seen as high but valuable for security management.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is seen as cost-effective for enterprises within Microsoft ecosystems, despite standalone pricing concerns.
In terms of ROI, we can see time savings for audit preparation of at least 30-40%.
Assistant Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
It is not cheap, of course, yet it is a necessity.
Cloud Security Architect at controlware
From a licensing and cost perspective, it is really competitive.
Cloud Engineer at Cloudar
The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is acceptable.
Solutions Architect at a university with 51-200 employees
My organization is currently revisiting pricing, but previously, the cost was a bit expensive, yet comparable to other solutions with similar functionalities and features.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
It's not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive, placing it in the mid-level range.
IT Architect at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP offers visibility, compliance, and threat intelligence, enhancing security management and governance across multi-cloud environments.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps integrates well, offering threat detection, management ease, shadow IT discovery, and robust security enhancements.
One of the main reasons we use the solution is that it is great at identifying risks that are critical to our business.
Information Security Officer at Cargus
The CDR helps detect anomalous behavior and respond to threats before they become an issue.
Cloud Engineer at Cloudar
Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP offers a unified, modular platform that combines CSPM, CWPP, CIEM, code security, and cloud detection and response.
Assistant Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
It provides excellent suggestions and options for configuration; for example, it can track suspicious files getting uploaded to cloud resources on Azure based on their signatures, generating alerts for those files.
Security delivery analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The product recommends things that need to be blocked and allows for dynamic configuration, which cuts down on potential issues that might arise from going through lists and understanding what needs to be blocked.
Partner & Chief Executive Officer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial.
Head of Security Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (13th), Cloud and Data Center Security (9th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th), Compliance Management (6th)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (5th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (14th), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP is designed for Vulnerability Management and holds a mindshare of 1.2%, down 1.3% compared to last year.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB), holds 6.0% mindshare, down 10.0% since last year.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP1.2%
Wiz6.4%
Tenable Nessus4.9%
Other87.5%
Vulnerability Management
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps6.0%
Netskope14.4%
Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks14.3%
Other65.3%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2751468 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Boosts security and compliance in multi-cloud environments while real-time threat detection enhances risk management
Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP flagged a misconfiguration in our AWS S3 bucket that had overly permissive access settings. That configuration could have exposed our sensitive data to the public internet. The platform not only identified the issue but also provided remediation that our team was able to apply immediately. This prevented a potential data exposure. Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP offers a unified, modular platform that combines CSPM, CWPP, CIEM, code security, and cloud detection and response. The agentless workload posture, real-time threat detection and response, multi-cloud coverage and visibility, compliance automation, and one-click remediations stand out as its best features. I find myself relying on the risk management engine and prioritization the most day-to-day. In any cloud environment, you are flooded with findings, misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and compliance gaps. Without prioritization, it is overwhelming for our team to take care of the posture. CloudGuard's risk scoring helps us cut through incidents. This makes remediation faster and focused instead of wasting time checking every alert. We get to fix the issues that pose real business risks. Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP has positively impacted our organization at a significant level. We get greater visibility and control across all our cloud environments. Some biggest benefits we have seen are faster detection and remediation of misconfigurations, improved compliance posture, reduced risk exposure, operational efficiency, and cost savings. Overall, it has made our cloud environment more secure, compliant, and easier to manage while freeing up our teams to focus on projects instead of chasing alerts.
FV
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
Deployment has been seamless with insightful data categorization and enhanced control
The features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that I have found most valuable include the overall portal view, with bubble graphs which give us insight into what goes where in the categorization, nowadays with Generative AI but all kinds of categorization, collaboration, etc. That central view of the portal is very useful for us. The impact of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps on our organization's ability to assess and manage app related risks has been significant because we have more visibility. Therefore, we can add more control, and we have already done so. This was not possible in the old solution, in the old CASB solution with Netskope. We now can see on the spot, and we do that almost weekly, what the end users are utilizing, which cloud providers or cloud apps they're using. The visibility into OAuth apps provided by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very good. The visibility into risk and risk management of our organization's Generative AI apps is very nice, as you can choose the category Generative AI and then see exactly what traffic has been going to and from Generative AI in the cloud. This makes us very insightful on what is used within the company. We have some policies on blocking specific Generative AI, and we use within our company one particular AI part, which is CoPilot of Microsoft. In this way, we can see what the end users are using other than CoPilot, and that makes us more in control. The effectiveness of the integration of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps with Defender XDR and defending against SaaS attacks is very intuitive. It works immediately if we create a new policy or in Purview or in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, or when we make an app unsanctioned by blocking it, then it is almost immediately, or at least within a couple of hours, effective on all the endpoints where the EDR is running. This gives us much better control over things than before.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise56
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise19
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudGuard Workload Protection?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been reasonable for the value it delivers. The initial setup cost was fair. Understanding the right modules and tiers took a bit of plannin...
What do you like most about CloudGuard for Cloud Intelligence?
The new scanning function is a valuable feature that wasn't available until recently.
What needs improvement with CloudGuard for Cloud Intelligence?
One area that Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP could use improvement is the navigation when switching between modules. A more streamlined interface and a quicker drill-down into findings would make the...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-native solution, unifying multiple features like DNS-layer security, threat intelli...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
At the time of implementation, when the size of our organization was small, it was a more affordable product. Since all our productivity applications were on O365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Cloud App Security?
The fidelity of the signal in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has been a challenge in some areas. There have been instances where the alerts generated have been false positives. A lot of work has...
 

Also Known As

Check Point CloudGuard Posture Management, Dome9, Check Point CloudGuard Workload Protection, Check Point CloudGuard Intelligence
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Symantec, Citrix, Car and Driver, Virgin, Cloud Technology Partners
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Tenable, Qualys and others in Vulnerability Management. Updated: February 2026.
885,728 professionals have used our research since 2012.