Drata vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

"Drata offers APIs for every clause so that it can integrate into various platforms."

"The way the tool's controls are linked to the framework, specifically with SAST and HIPAA frameworks or any other frameworks, is really good."

"Drata helps eliminate evidence gathering and makes assigning different activities to different team members easier, simplifying compliance and audit processes. In Pennsylvania, we're putting in thousands of hours. Drata improves our security posture by reducing extra work, allowing us to focus on other security directives. I like the control editing and task management features the most. It's easy to use, but it's also easy for people to think they don't need security experts if they have it."

"My experience with customer support was good; they were responsive, but they didn't ever get us to a solution that worked."

"Drata helped us publish our ISO and SOC reports, which was essential for the acquisition. The challenge now is whether Drata can scale up to meet the needs of a larger company, which already has tools like Intune to enforce laptop encryption. Drata is excellent for startups and small—to medium-sized companies but may face challenges in larger organizations with multiple environments."

"Drata keeps adding new features, allowing us to build our entire InfoSec program within it. Adding new components and evidence for different audits is easy. Drata also integrates with various software, like ticketing systems, source code control, and cloud platforms, continuously pulling evidence from these integrations. Without a GRC tool with these integrations, we used to gather evidence from different software during audits manually. Drata has a significant impact on our security posture management. Previously, Drata had features for security posture management, primarily through integration with AWS. For example, it would scan AWS for specific security requirements, like ensuring all S3 buckets are private. It will be reported on the Drata platform if it finds a public bucket. Recently, Drata introduced a new feature that uses an infrastructure-as-code approach. This feature detects issues and provides AI-generated suggestions for fixing them. If an organization uses infrastructure-as-code solutions like Terraform, Drata will suggest changes to the Terraform code to address the issues. You can then review and apply these changes to fix the problems. This is particularly useful when dealing with many topics, as it helps automate and speed up the process of implementing fixes. However, this AI-generated code feature is part of Drata’s upsell options. The basic version of Drata offers limited capabilities compared to the advanced features available with a paid upgrade. Even without this new feature, Drata's security posture management is valuable, as it scans cloud environments for deviations from defined security baselines. Many tools offer similar capabilities, but Drata’s new feature that translates issues into actionable fixes is a notable advancement. This benefits teams with the capability and resources to use this tool effectively."

"The product is 100 percent friendly to use."

"The notification process of Microsoft Defender for Cloud has been the most valuable feature. The notification process is effortless, as it can tell me right there and then locate issues pretty fast, saving us a lot of time by not having to dig through all the warnings."

"The solution is used for risks, vulnerabilities, and compliance."

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

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud monitors our entire cloud environment. It enables conditional access and incorporates features like number matching and single sign-on for all our cloud apps. It is great for protecting against ransomware and various security threats."

"Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."

"The solution is up-to-date with the latest updates and identified threats."

"The vulnerability reporting is helpful. When we initially deployed Defender, it reported many more threats than we currently see. It gave us insight into areas we had not previously considered, so we knew where we needed to act."

"It's got a lot of great features."

"There is room for improvement in Drata. The core features are solid, but some new features are in a very MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage. They work, but the user experience isn't always smooth. While the core features are well-developed compared to the market, the new features need more polish. They could benefit from more user feedback and iterations to make them more useful. Some of these new features look promising buthave flaws, so we can’t fully adopt them or justify paying extra for them now. The user interface is clean and intuitive. However, you'll need some specific knowledge if you're a security policy manager or need to set updifferent integrations."

"The existing features of Drata are already extensive and costly to integrate."

"The product can improve in its API documentation area."

"The thing with Drata is you cannot open multiple tabs on the same interface or the same desktop,"

"Drata has impacted our organization negatively, as it made the whole compliance process more complicated and cost me significant time."

"One of the challenges with Drata is that if you're paying for a subscription to ISO 27001, you must undergo a risk assessment. You should have access to all necessary modules on the platform to achieve your compliance posture and certification."

"In terms of improvements, I'd suggest better marketing since the industry tends to market these tools as security experts, which isn't true."

"The solution is quite costly."

"Microsoft can improve the pricing by offering a plan that is more cost-effective for small and medium organizations."

"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."

"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."

"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."

"Although Microsoft Defender for Cloud is based on security, I wish it went beyond providing assessments, reports, and generic steps. More detailed procedures would be helpful, especially for lower-level support staff."

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

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is not compatible with Linux machines."

"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."

"I remember that my company used to pay 25,000 USD to use the product...The product's cost is really high, but it is a powerful tool."

"It's one of the more expensive options, but I think it's worth the money if you can afford it."

"Drata's pricing is quite reasonable. Compared to other tools in the market, including its biggest competitor, Vanta, Drata is much cheaper. Even compared to other tools like AuditBoard, which aren’t as good, Drata’s price remains competitive."

"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."

"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."

"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."

"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."

"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."

"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."

"The price of the solution is good for the features we receive and there is an additional cost for Microsoft premier support. However, some of my potential customers have found it to be expensive and have gone on to choose another solution."

"I am not involved in this area. However, I believe its price is okay because even small customers are using Azure Security Center. I don't think it is very expensive."