We performed a comparison between CrowdStrike Falcon and Microsoft Defender for Cloud based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: CrowdStrike Falcon stands out for its minimal impact on system performance, optimal resource utilization, and precise detection of threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is highly regarded for its automated processes, advanced threat analysis, and extensive security measures, including protection against ransomware and access controls. CrowdStrike Falcon could benefit from adding a sandbox feature and more detailed firewall management options. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could use enhancements in automation and ease of use.
Service and Support: CrowdStrike Falcon's customer service has been commended for its promptness and assistance. Some Defender for Cloud users reported positive experiences with Microsoft, while others complained that the solution's outsourced support lacked technical knowledge.
Ease of Deployment: CrowdStrike Falcon's setup is considered to be simple and efficient, with varying deployment times ranging from a few days to a month. While there may be some challenges during installation, they are generally manageable. The initial setup of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is described as straightforward, but the deployment time may vary depending on specific requirements.
Pricing: Some users find CrowdStrike Falcon costly and think the price should be lowered to make it more competitive. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is in the mid-to-high pricing tier. While some users find it expensive, others believe it offers good value.
ROI: CrowdStrike Falcon offers cost savings by decreasing the required number of engineers and eliminating the necessity for onsite servers. Microsoft Defender for Cloud streamlines security tasks and saves users money by consolidating various solutions.
Comparison Results: Users prefer CrowdStrike Falcon over Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Users like CrowdStrike Falcon's effortless setup process and lightweight design. It provides an in-depth analysis of endpoint devices, precise threat detection, and robust defense against cyberattacks.
"The solution was relatively easy to deploy."
"The main thing is that I feel safe. Because the processes that have been used to get a handle on the attackers are much better than other competitors"
"Additionally, when it comes to EDR, there are more tools available to assist with client work."
"Fortinet FortiEDR made our clients feel secure and more at ease, knowing that they had an EDR solution that would close the gap in their security posture."
"The most valuable feature is the analysis, because of the beta structure."
"The setup is pretty simple."
"It is a scalable solution...The initial setup of Fortinet FortiEDR was straightforward."
"Fortinet has helped free up around 20 percent of our staff's time to help us out."
"CrowdStrike Falcon's most valuable features are the lightweight agent which has absolutely zero performance issues. There is no performance deterioration on the laptop on the network. It is a signature-less antivirus and anti-malware solution, it doesn't depend on signatures which better protects the systems."
"The most valuable feature of CrowdStrike Falcon is its accuracy."
"I value the overall behavior analysis of CrowdStrike. The engine of this product is what drew us to this solution."
"Easy to use, intelligent, and stable threat detection software."
"The most valuable features in CrowdStrike Falcon are the full EDR with antivirus, hunting, reporting, and RTR remote control."
"The detection is very effective."
"As an EDR tool, we can integrate log management and event management. The solution deals with threats automatically, that's the advantage."
"One of the most valuable features of CrowdStrike Falcon is when there are upgrades there are no additional fees."
"Everything is built into Azure, and if we go for cross-cloud development with Azure Arc, we can use most of the features. While it's possible to deploy and convert third-party applications, it is difficult to maintain, whereas Azure deployments to the cloud are always easier. Also, Microsoft is a big company, so they always provide enough support, and we trust the Microsoft brand."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
"Technical support is helpful."
"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."
"DSPM is the most valuable feature."
"It is very intuitive when it comes to policy administration, alerts and notifications, and ease of setting up roles at different hierarchies. It has also been good in terms of the network technology maps. It provides a good overview, but it also depends on the complexity of your network."
"The main feature is the security posture assessment through the security score. I find that to be very helpful because it gives us guidance on what needs to be secured and recommendations on how to secure the workloads that have been onboarded."
"The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites."
"I would like the solution to extend beyond endpoint protection and include other attack surfaces such as other network components."
"The solution's installation from a central installation server could be improved because the engineers had a little bit of trouble getting it installed from a central location."
"FortiEDR can be improved by providing more detailed reporting."
"FortiEDR could add a separate scanning dashboard. In incident management, we prefer to remove the endpoint system from the environment and scan the system. We typically use Symantec for that, but if we want to use FortiEDR for that, then we need a scanning tab to clarify things."
"To improve Fortinet, we need to see more features and technology areas at the endpoint level introduced."
"ZTNA can improve latency."
"Everything with Fortinet having to do with their cloud services. They need to invest more in their internal infrastructure that they are running in the cloud. One of the things I find with their cloud environment compared to others' is that they go cheap on the equipment. So it causes some performance degradation."
"We'd like to see more one-to-one product presentations for the distribution channels."
"The price is too high."
"Crowdstrike Falcon XDR can improve the integration. There are some locks on the cloud to on-premise integrations."
"Sometimes CrowdStrike changes the GUI, and they need to be better at informing us and providing guidance concerning that."
"There are some areas where some customers would prefer a different service."
"I would like to see a more accurate integration and an option to check the local machine."
"Tighter integration around XDR could be included."
"They should provide us with good visibility for everything."
"CrowdStrike Falcon could improve the EDR functionality. Once the functionality of the solution improves, it will be even better in the market and able to compete with Carbon Black."
"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."
"The solution could extend its capabilities to other cloud providers. Right now, if you want to monitor a virtual machine on another cloud, you can do that. However, this cannot be done with other cloud platform services. I hope once that is available then Defender for Cloud will be a unified solution for all cloud platform services."
"Azure's system could be more on point like AWS support. For example, if I have an issue with AWS, I create a support ticket, then I get a call or a message. With Azure support, you raise a ticket, and somebody calls back depending on their availability and the priority, which might not align with your business priority."
"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."
"From my own perspective, they just need a product that is tailored to micro-segmentation so I can configure rules for multiple systems at once and manage it."
"Microsoft can improve the pricing by offering a plan that is more cost-effective for small and medium organizations."
"For Kubernetes, I was using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). To see that whatever is getting deployed into AKS goes through the correct checks and balances in terms of affinities and other similar aspects and follows all the policies, we had to use a product called Stackrox. At a granular level, the built-in policies were good for Kubernetes, but to protect our containers from a coding point of view, we had to use a few other products. For example, from a programming point of view, we were using Checkmarx for static code analysis. For CIS compliance, there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, we had to use other plugins to see that the CIS benchmarks are compliant. There are CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes on AWS and GCP, but there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product. We ended up with two different dashboards. We had Azure Security Center, and we had Stackrox that had its own dashboard. The operations team and the security team had to look at two dashboards, and they couldn't get an integrated piece. That's a drawback of Azure Security Center. Azure Security Center should provide APIs so that we can integrate its dashboard within other enterprise dashboards, such as the PowerBI dashboard. We couldn't get through these aspects, and we ended up giving Reader security permission to too many people, which was okay to some extent, but when we had to administer the users for the Stackrox portal and Azure Security Center, it became painful."
Protect your organization from all threats - not just malware - even when computers and servers aren’t connected to the internet. Start your free trial and deploy CrowdStrike Falcon within minutes to start receiving full threat protection.
CrowdStrike Falcon is ranked 3rd in EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) with 49 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 2nd in CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platforms) with 22 reviews. CrowdStrike Falcon is rated 8.6, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of CrowdStrike Falcon writes "Robust threat hunting and great ability to do on-keyboard remote response and quarantining of devices". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides good recommendations and makes policy administration easy". CrowdStrike Falcon is most compared with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Microsoft Defender XDR, Trend Micro Deep Security, Darktrace and Trend Vision One, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with Microsoft Defender XDR, AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft Sentinel. See our CrowdStrike Falcon vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
We monitor all EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
