Checkmarx One vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management comparison

Checkmarx and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Checkmarx is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.3, while Microsoft is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.1. Checkmarx holds a 1.3% mindshare in VM, compared to Microsoft’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Checkmarx users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Checkmarx One and Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management are leading products in vulnerability management. Checkmarx One stands out in pricing and support, while Microsoft Defender offers superior features, making it worth the investment.

Features: Checkmarx One provides static application security testing, extensive customization options, and caters to enterprise needs. Microsoft Defender offers robust real-time threat intelligence, seamless integration with Microsoft services, and a comprehensive security solution.

Room for Improvement: Checkmarx One could enhance real-time threat intelligence, integrate better with non-enterprise environments, and expand its range of integrations. Microsoft Defender could improve by offering more detailed customization options, reducing initial setup complexity, and optimizing pricing tiers for smaller businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Checkmarx One facilitates deployment with detailed onboarding resources and live support. Microsoft Defender uses Microsoft's existing support structure for an integrated setup, enhancing efficiency within Microsoft environments.

Pricing and ROI: Checkmarx One is more cost-effective initially, with a lower setup cost and flexible pricing tiers for scalability and high ROI. Microsoft Defender requires a higher initial investment but offers substantial long-term ROI through enhanced security and reduced risks.

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

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

September 2025

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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 November 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 1.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 2.5%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management	2.5%
Zafran Security	1.1%
Checkmarx One	1.3%
Other	95.1%

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.

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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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Krishna R

DGM. Technical Security at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Achieve comprehensive endpoint and identity protection with continuous real-time monitoring

I have not thought about improvements for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management as of now, but this is typically an operational maintenance process. The operational maintenance process refers to these products being part of day-to-day operations. Threats keep coming almost daily, and we need to run it, prioritize the risk, and apply the patches. I am not able to think of many features for improvement at this point in time. There should be risk scoring added to Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management; specifically, they call it quantification of the risk. If they can provide peer site reviews or risk scoring, such as how my organization in the healthcare industry fares against my peers on average, it would be valuable information. This scoring should be for specific industries as well. If I belong to the healthcare industry using Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, it should provide me with a risk score and show how I fare against the risk score of my industry. If there are guidelines or insights on this, it will compel customers to reduce risk levels or improve their risk scores. The application block capabilities in Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management are effective and up to the standards, as everybody is looking at open OSINT and open-source security packages. I think on CV scoring, they are aligned with the industry.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

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

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

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

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

"Helps us check vulnerabilities in our SAP Fiori application."

"What I like best about Checkmarx is that it has fewer false positives than other products, giving you better results."

"We use the solution to validate the source code and do SAST and security analysis."

"Scan reviews can occur during the development lifecycle."

"Our static operation security has been able to identify more security issues since implementing this solution."

"It can integrate very well with DAST solutions. So both of them are combined into an integrated solution for customers running application security."

"It is a stable product."

"It shows in-depth code of where actual vulnerabilities are."

More Checkmarx One pros

"A valuable feature is the ease of management and integration with Microsoft products."

"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is a good product, and I believe it deserves a positive recommendation."

"The main advantage of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is that it can locate and prevent most threats even when the endpoints are not connected to the corporate network, as long as the internet is available."

"The integration with SIEM is the best, specifically the native integration with Microsoft SIEM."

"The product’s most valuable features are compliance, recommendations, and inventories."

"The integration with Sentinel has been one of the most valuable features for my organization."

"The most valuable aspect is the kind of assessment results I get, and the recommendations provided in Microsoft products really help in taking care of the resources."

"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management has streamlined our threat management processes and provided region-specific customization for our healthcare operations."

More Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"I think the CxAudit tool has room for improvement. At the beginning you can choose a scan of a project, but in any event the project must be scanned again (wasting time)."

"The product can be improved by continuing to expand the application languages and frameworks that can be scanned for vulnerabilities. This includes expanded coverage for mobile applications as well as open-source development tools."

"They can support the remaining languages that are currently not supported. They can also create a different model that can identify zero-day attacks. They can work on different patterns to identify and detect zero-day vulnerability attacks."

"With Checkmarx, normally you need to use one tool for quality and you need to use another tool for security. I understand that Checkmarx is not in the parity space because it's totally different, but they could include some free features or recommendations too."

"In terms of dashboarding, the solution could provide a little more flexibility in terms of creating more dashboards. It has some of its own dashboards that come out of the box. However, if I have to implement my own dashboards that are aligned to my organization's requirements, that dashboarding feature has limited capability right now."

"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."

"If it is a very large code base then we have a problem where we cannot scan it."

"The Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) feature should be better."

More Checkmarx One cons

"The documentation from Microsoft needs significant improvement. The documents are disorganized, with one document linking to another, making the steps unclear and difficult to follow."

"They may need to improve the portal refresh rate for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management because it takes time for recommendations to disappear after mitigation; sometimes, it takes one week, when it should ideally take only one to two hours."

"The general support could be improved."

"The setup phase of the product is not that easy and needs a person to have a certain level of expertise."

"The worst aspect is the refresh rate of the dashboard. A vulnerability I patch within 15 minutes takes 24 additional hours for an update."

"There is a good solution from Microsoft, however, there is a gap between Windows and Linux management."

"The constant changes in the product configuration or the console setup can sometimes be challenging."

"The automated remediations can be more specific."

More Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

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

"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."

"We have purchased an annual license to use this solution. The price is reasonable."

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

"Its price is fair. It is in or around the right spot. Ultimately, if the price is wrong, customers won't commit, but they do tend to commit. It is neither too cheap nor too expensive."

"Be cautious of the one-year subscription date. Once it expires, your price will go up."

"The pricing was not very good. This is just a framework which shouldn’t cost so much."

"The solution is costly."

More Checkmarx One pricing and cost advice

"The licensing costs are reasonable."

"The product’s pricing is medium."

"The licensing model follows a per-user per-month structure."

"I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"The tool is a bit costly."

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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

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

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%.

See all answers

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

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?

The solution helps identify threats and vulnerabilities.

See all answers

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

I would rate the price as a three for us due to the partnership discounts. For non-partners, however, the cost could ...

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What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?

I have not thought about improvements for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management as of now, but this is typicall...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Compared 29% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 14% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 9% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

Nucleus vs Zafran Security

Compared 6% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs Checkmarx One

Compared 47% of the time

Veracode vs Checkmarx One

Compared 7% of the time

Checkmarx SAST vs Checkmarx One

Compared 6% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Checkmarx One

Compared 4% of the time

GitHub Advanced Security vs Checkmarx One

Compared 4% of the time

More Checkmarx One Competitors

Qualys VMDR vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 23% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 21% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 17% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 5% of the time

Tanium vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

October 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One

November 2025

Download Checkmarx One product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

October 2025

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management report

Download Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management product report

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 Vulnerability Management enables organizations to identify vulnerabilities, manage patches, and fortify threat detection. It offers endpoint assessments, cloud incident management, and dynamic security through Microsoft's Security Scorecard integration.

Organizations leverage Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management for advanced threat detection and response. It provides robust tools for vulnerability assessment and cloud incident management, integrated with Microsoft's Security Scorecard to enhance dynamic security profiling. Key features include automatic patch deployment, security configuration management, and seamless integration with Microsoft platforms, benefiting both on-prem and cloud environments. Organizations can track vulnerabilities with severity-based reports, helping manage outdated software and minimizing threat exposure.

What are the key features of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?

Compliance: Ensures adherence to security regulations.
Recommendations: Provides actionable advice for security enhancements.
Inventories: Offers detailed inventory tracking for software and hardware.
Threat Identification: Detects potential threats proactively.
Vulnerability Assessment: Evaluates system vulnerabilities comprehensively.
Zero-day Protection: Shields systems from newly discovered exploits.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Integration: Facilitates seamless integration with Microsoft and diverse platforms.
Risk Mitigation: Assists in mitigating risks through accurate assessments.
Prioritization: Helps prioritize vulnerabilities for efficient patch management.
Up-to-date Protection: Ensures systems remain secured and current.

In healthcare, Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management helps manage compliance with health regulations, while in finance, it aids in securing sensitive data from cyber threats. Manufacturing sectors benefit from its patch management, keeping operational technology systems less vulnerable to disruptions.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

September 2025

Free Report: Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

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

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