Checkmarx One vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Checkmarx and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Checkmarx is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.3, while Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1. Checkmarx holds a 0.9% mindshare in VM, compared to Microsoft’s 5.3% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Checkmarx users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Checkmarx One and Microsoft Defender for Cloud compete in the security software market. Based on the features and integrations, Checkmarx One seems to have the upper hand in code analysis, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud excels in security insights and Azure integration.

Features: Checkmarx One offers advanced code analysis identifying vulnerabilities without code compilation, integrates with Jenkins, and supports multiple programming languages, enhancing developers' versatility. Microsoft Defender for Cloud excels in providing superior security insights, seamless Azure integration, and comprehensive monitoring across hybrid environments, making it appealing for businesses within Microsoft's ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: Checkmarx One needs to address false positives, broaden language support, and improve user documentation. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be more user-friendly by simplifying its complexity, providing more detailed recommendations, and improving real-time alerting effectiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Checkmarx One is commonly used in on-premises environments and is complemented by knowledgeable technical support, though delays are occasional. Microsoft Defender primarily thrives in hybrid and public cloud environments, with high-rated support despite noted setup complexity.

Pricing and ROI: Checkmarx One is perceived as expensive, but its secure code development capabilities justify the cost, though its flexible licensing model can be complex. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a predictable pricing model attractive to organizations using multiple Microsoft products, yet the cost can escalate for large-scale deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

September 2025

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Helped 868,759 peers since 2012

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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.1%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Checkmarx One is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.3%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	5.3%
Zafran Security	1.1%
Checkmarx One	0.9%
Other	92.7%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

Read full review

Syed Hasan

Specialist Leader at Deloitte

Partner experiences excellent technical support and seamless initial setup

In my opinion, if we are able to extract or show the report, and because everything is going towards agent tech and GenAI, it would be beneficial if it could get integrated with our code base and do the fix automatically. It could suggest how the code base is written and automatically populate the source code with three different solution options to choose from. This would be really helpful.

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Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"The solution has good performance, it is able to compute in 10 to 15 minutes."

"The identification of verification-related security vulnerabilities is really important and one of the key things. It also identifies vulnerabilities for any kind of third-party tool coming into the system or any third-party tools that you are using, which is very useful for avoiding random hacking."

"I like that you don't have to compile the code in order to execute static code analysis. So, it's very handy."

"The most valuable feature is the simple user interface."

"The SAST component was absolutely 100% stable."

"One of the most valuable features is it is flexible."

"Less false positive errors as compared to any other solution."

"The most valuable features of Checkmarx are difficult to pinpoint because of the way the functionalities and the features are intertwined, it's difficult to say which part of them I prefer most. You initiate the scan, you have a scan, you have the review set, and reporting, they all work together as one whole process. It's not like accounting software, where you have the different features, et cetera."

More Checkmarx One pros

"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security."

"The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications."

"Some of the most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud include its effectiveness in threat detection through unsupervised machine learning, CTI, and advanced sandboxing."

"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has definitely helped us manage and secure our multi-cloud environment by providing ease of use."

"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."

"The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative."

"It has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"It would be really helpful if the level of confidence was included, with respect to identified issues."

"Checkmarx has a slightly difficult compilation with the CI/CD pipeline."

"Implementing a blackout time for any user or teams: Needs improvement."

"It provides us with quite a handful of false positive issues. If Checkmarx could reduce this number, it would be a great tool to use."

"Its pricing model can be improved. Sometimes, it is a little complex to understand its pricing model."

"Integration into the SDLC (i.e. support for last version of SonarQube) could be added."

"The cost per user is high and should be reduced."

"Checkmarx needs to be more scalable for large enterprise companies."

More Checkmarx One cons

"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."

"Agent features need to be improved. They support agents through Azure Arc or Workbench. Sometimes, we are not able to get correct signals from the machines on which we have installed these agents. We are not able to see how many are currently reporting to Azure Security Center, and how many are currently not reporting. For example, we have 1,000 machines, and we have enrolled 1,000 OMS agents on these machines to collect the log. When I look at the status, even though at some places, it shows that it is connected, but when I actually go and check, I'm not getting any alerts from those. There are some discrepancies on the agent, and the agent features are not up to the mark."

"The product was a bit complex to set up earlier, however, it is a bit streamlined now."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be improved by adding capabilities for NetApp files and more PaaS resources from other vendors, not just Microsoft."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

"The initial setup is not actually so complex but it feels complex because there are many add-ons. There are many options and my team needs to be aware of all of these changes happening on the backend which is a distraction."

"Defender is occasionally unreliable. It isn't 100% efficient in terms of antivirus detection, but it isn't an issue most of the time. It's also somewhat difficult to train new security analysts to use Defender."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The price of Checkmarx could be reduced to match their competitors, it is expensive."

"The pricing is competitive and provides a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) for achieving application security."

"The license has a vague language around P1 issues and the associated support. Make sure to review these in order to align them with your organizational policies."

"It is the right price for quality delivery."

"We're using a commercial version of Checkmarx, and we paid for the solution for one year. The price is high and could be reduced."

"The tool's pricing is fine."

"It is an expensive solution."

"The solution is costly."

More Checkmarx One pricing and cost advice

"Defender for Cloud is pretty costly for a single line. It's incredibly high to pay monthly for security per server. The cost is considerable for an enterprise with 500-plus virtual machines, and the monthly bill can spike."

"Defender's basic version is free, which is good. Many of our teams are evaluating the paid version against third-party products."

"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."

"The product's pricing policy is generally favorable."

"Pricing is difficult because each license has its own metrics and cost."

"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."

"This solution is more cost-effective than some competing products. My understanding is that it is based on the number of integrations that you have, so if you have fewer subscriptions then you pay less for the service."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	30
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	38

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	45

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...

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What alternatives are there for Fortify WebInspect and Fortify SCA?

I would like to recommend Checkmarx. With Checkmarx, you are able to have an all in one solution for SAST and SCA as ...

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What do you like most about Checkmarx?

Compared to the solutions we used previously, Checkmarx has reduced our workload by almost 75%.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx?

The pricing is relatively expensive due to the product's quality and performance, but it is worth it.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The pricing is pretty standard.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 34% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 14% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 6% of the time

Nucleus vs Zafran Security

Compared 6% of the time

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SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs Checkmarx One

Compared 44% of the time

Veracode vs Checkmarx One

Compared 8% of the time

Checkmarx SAST vs Checkmarx One

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Checkmarx One

Compared 5% of the time

GitHub Advanced Security vs Checkmarx One

Compared 4% of the time

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AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 29% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Orca Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

September 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One

September 2025

Download Checkmarx One product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

September 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Demo not available

Checkmarx

Microsoft

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Checkmarx One is an enterprise cloud-native application security platform focused on providing cross-tool, correlated results to help AppSec and developer teams prioritize where to focus time and resources.

Checkmarx One offers comprehensive application scanning across the SDLC:

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
API security
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Container security
IaC security
Correlation, prioritization, and risk management
Codebashing secure code training
AI security
Tech partnerships extending AppSec into runtime analysis
Developer tool integrations including: CI/CD tools, development frameworks, feedback tools, IDEs, programming languages and SCMs

Checkmarx One provides everything you need to secure application development from the first line of code through deployment and runtime in the cloud. With an ever-evolving set of AppSec engines, correlation and prioritization features, and AI capabilities, Checkmarx One helps consolidate expanding lists of AppSec tools and make better sense of results. Its capabilities are designed to provide an improved developer experience to build trust with development teams and ensure the success of your AppSec program investment.

Checkmarx

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

September 2025

Free Report: Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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