Fortinet FortiSandbox vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

Fortinet and Microsoft are both solutions in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category. Fortinet is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.8, while Microsoft is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.4. Fortinet holds a 9.4% mindshare in ATP, compared to Microsoft’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Fortinet users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Fortinet FortiSandbox

Read 38 Fortinet FortiSandbox reviews

2,294 Views
1,950 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Microsoft Defender for Clou...

Read 39 Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps reviews

7,854 Views
236 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Fortinet FortiSandbox

Microsoft Defender for Clou...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Fortinet FortiSandbox are competitors in the cloud security domain. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps appears to have the advantage in ecosystem integration, particularly for Microsoft-centric businesses, while Fortinet FortiSandbox shines in advanced threat detection and sandboxing capabilities.

Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps integrates seamlessly across various Microsoft platforms, providing robust threat detection and real-time monitoring. It offers a comprehensive security posture management tool that enhances the overall visibility of cloud usage within an organization. Fortinet FortiSandbox is noted for its dynamic behavior analysis, which effectively identifies zero-day threats. It integrates with Fortinet solutions to provide enhanced security features and robust sandboxing for isolating and analyzing potential threats.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps could improve its integration capabilities with non-Microsoft security products, enhance its reporting features, and better manage false positives. It also needs to expand support for non-Windows platforms. Fortinet FortiSandbox might benefit from improved integration with third-party solutions, simplified licensing, and performance enhancements. Expanding its virtual environment offerings could also improve its competitive position.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is designed for seamless deployment in hybrid and public cloud environments, though technical support experiences vary. Fortinet FortiSandbox offers deployment flexibility with on-premises and hybrid models but requires more technical know-how. Users value Fortinet's support but note opportunities for faster integration help.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is generally bundled with Microsoft 365, offering good value but can be expensive standalone. It provides significant ROI through improved security integration. Fortinet FortiSandbox has competitive pricing, but licensing can be complex. For those needing high threat protection, it offers a satisfactory ROI due to its efficiency in safeguarding sensitive information.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortinet FortiSandbox vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiSandbox vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

July 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

Fortinet FortiSandbox

Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Threat Deception Platforms (7th)

Microsoft Defender for Clou...

Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

14th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Fortinet FortiSandbox is 9.4%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 1.8%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

Featured Reviews

Abdelhamid Saber

Senior Security & Infra Technology Systems Engineer at BARQ Systems

Enhanced network security with adaptable integration and really good support

We use FortiSandbox for scanning files and images that pass through our networks. It integrates with different devices, such as five adapters and other Fortinet devices It is time-saving and more secure. It saves us from a lot of antivirus and anti-malware issues. The adapter is beneficial as it…

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Jagadeesh Gunasekaran

Cyber security engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Saves us time, has good visibility, and a single dashboard

The solution is user-friendly and provides great visibility into threats. There are easy options available for specific workflow inspections. We can also get support by going through the Microsoft documentation, which is straightforward. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise. It covers us from a compliance perspective and protects our organization's data. Data protection is a very important aspect of any new organization, as we need to protect our data from both external attacks and insider threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us monitor for abnormal activity by insiders, which is one of the most important access points for attackers today. Additionally, the different cloud apps that Defender for Cloud Apps supports provide us with much more visibility into potential threats and activities on the internet. We have integrated Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps alerts with Sentinel. The integration is straightforward. We can find the configuration details on Microsoft's official documentation website. If we are familiar with how Microsoft products work, we will be able to follow the instructions clearly. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Sentinel work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. Our integrated Microsoft solutions provide comprehensive threat protection, covering most of the tactics and techniques relevant to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Sentinel allows us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. When implementing an SIEM solution, there are always prerequisites such as Active Directory logs, security logs, firewall logs, and DNS logs. These are important logs that need to be ingested into the environment. Sentinel has many third-party connectors available that make integrations straightforward. Microsoft provides the configuration details in the Sentinel platform. It is important to integrate all relevant log sources into the SIEM solution so that we can detect and be alerted to any type of threat factor, whether it is from an internal or external source. Integrating third-party solutions into the platform requires a separate configuration, but Microsoft provides the necessary information. However, we need to have the appropriate permissions to execute these setups. Sentinel provides a centralized dashboard that covers threat management and configuration. It gives us complete insight into what entities are accessing, as well as full details for investigation. We can see how the alerts and threats are relevant to suspicious activities, whether they are related to malicious IP addresses, suspicious ASHAs, or any other indicators of compromise. All of this relevant data can be seen in a single pane. Recently, Microsoft introduced a new investigation experience in a single pane. This means that we can now get a lot of details in a single pane, without having to go there and execute a query. There are a lot of new insights being developed in the Sentinel platform these days. It has software intelligence. They recently introduced Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, which covers almost all IOCs. This protects organizational assets from threats and suspicious traffic associated with IOCs. If a match is found, alerts are generated. This is a very interesting feature. Another great feature is automation and logic apps. We can create a number of operations, such as posting in a team's channel if a severe incident occurs or sending an email notification. There are many operations available, so we can automate a lot of tasks. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us stay compliant. It has predefined mechanisms in place to prevent attacks. For example, if an external user tries to access our SharePoint folders or files, an attack will be blocked. This is why it is important to give appropriate access to guest users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has many features and benefits. It provides a number of policies that can be configured to meet the specific needs of our security team. These policies can be used to customize cloud applications so that only authorized users can access them and perform operations that benefit the organization. In terms of safety and security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is top-notch. Using the solution's automation features, we can suppress false positive alerts. We can also close alerts, lower their severity from "high" to "low" or "informational," or close them immediately with the appropriate commands. This will depend on the configuration automation rule and the perspective from which we are testing. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps provides a single console. We are also provided with Microsoft templates to enable workbooks instantly. Alternatively, we can build our own customized workbooks to provide better insights and improve our SOC efficiency and overall performance. Consolidating all of our security data into one dashboard has saved our security operations team a significant amount of time. From an analyst's perspective, it is now much easier to correlate events, investigate alerts, and visualize specific entities. For example, an analyst can quickly see all of the alerts associated with a particular IP address, or they can view all of the activity for a specific entity over the past 24 hours or 7 days. This level of detail and insight would not be possible if our data were siloed in multiple dashboards. The single dashboard saves our operations approximately 20 hours per week by eliminating the need to access multiple consoles and tabs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps threat intelligence can help us prepare for potential threats before they happen. However, it depends on how we develop the policies for the database to block or ignore things in our environment.

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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

"It is a stable solution."

"The most valuable features for me when it comes to Fortinet FortiSandbox are the integrity of the Sandbox and the power of the analyzing tool of the solution."

"The solution is very good because it catches a lot of threats in emails."

"Fortinet FortiSandbox puts suspicious files in quarantine, analyzes for virus risks, and lets them out of quarantine if it detects no risk."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that the performance it offers to users is good, making it useful for us in our company."

"The real-time analysis capability of FortiSandbox is beneficial for email analysis."

"The dynamic behavior analysis is excellent. We have many attacks caught by the FortiSandbox as zero-day attacks. Additionally, the administration is simple and can be customized to fit your companies needs."

"The most valuable feature was the EDR, endpoint detection and response."

More Fortinet FortiSandbox pros

"Better logging allows us to find problems and take appropriate steps to lock them out."

"The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows MCAS to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly."

"In Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, there is an option to enable files. Once you enable that, it will give you all the files in your organization and where they are located in the cloud... That feature is very useful for investigation purposes."

"I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps."

"Defender helps us control which applications are being used and gain more security insight into remote and hybrid users based on user identity and log in location. You can also integrate Defender for Cloud Apps with Defender for Endpoint to extend its capabilities."

"If your business requirements are relatively simple, it can get the job done."

"All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related."

"The general usability of the solution is very straightforward."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps pros

Cons

"If we can have more dashboards, it would be good."

"In future releases, I would like to see more automation capabilities."

"At least once a week we have a false alarm. This needs to be adjusted so that we get fewer of these occurrences."

"Fortinet FortiSandbox can improve by decreasing the time of analysis response. Other solutions have a better response time, such as WildFire."

"The licensing can be very confusing. It needs to be simplified."

"The delivery feature in my country is extremely bad."

"For additional features, maybe a form of execution pain files in a non-virtual environment because it has threats that identify when it is being run in a virtual machine."

"The area I would like this solution to be improved in is the integrations for Sandbox with AI and big data ML mechanisms. I think this would be a practical improvement."

More Fortinet FortiSandbox cons

"We are having trouble with our continuous reporting configuration and struggling with configuring the collector properly with our log parsing. We've also faced difficulties getting support for this issue. It's taken us months to figure this out after going through a couple of different support channels."

"This service would be better if it had a separate license, only for this service, that could be used to track usage."

"I want them to enhance in-session policy."

"We sometimes get errors when we create policies, which is somewhat annoying because some policies stop working due to misconfigurations. We find this challenging because it limits our options for troubleshooting an issue."

"Currently, reporting is not very straightforward and it needs to be enhanced. Specific reports are not included and you need to run a query, drill down, and then export it and share it. I would love to have reports with more fine-tuning or granularity, and more predefined reports."

"In the future, I would like to see more plug-and-play capabilities that use AI to tell you what needs to be done. It would be helpful if it scanned our devices and made security suggestions, on a configuration basis."

"The insights could be improved, especially in reporting. While it is possible for me to see the usage from different cloud apps, determining if critical data has been uploaded or if it is just normal transport data is difficult."

"It takes some time to scan and apply the policies when there is some sensitive information. After it applies the policies, it works, but there is a delay. This is something for which we are working with Microsoft."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product's pricing a five or six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high."

"There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees."

"We are on an annual license to use the solution. We have an additional feature that is integrated with S5, which is working well."

"Fortinet is more reasonable than Palo Alto."

"Altogether, it is about €10,000 for the Sandbox and Email Gateway."

"The solution is unavailable at a lower cost and can be difficult to deploy."

"The solution is affordable."

"The price of Fortinet FortiSandbox is expensive."

More Fortinet FortiSandbox pricing and cost advice

"The E5 license offers everything bundled. People are moving to Microsoft because you buy one license and it gives you everything."

"I'm not totally involved in the pricing part, but I think its pricing is quite aggressive, and its price is quite similar to Netskope. Netskope has separate licensing fees or additional charges if you want to monitor certain SaaS services, whereas, with MCAS, you get 5,000 applications with their Office 365. It is all bundled, and there's no cost for using that. You only have the operational costs. In the country I am in, it is a bit difficult to get people with the required skill sets."

"We are an MST and we do not pay for the solution. However, the price of the solution could be better."

"The cost could be improved when you need to pay for anything. For example, refreshing files takes time to load, though it may be my Internet. To improve the refresh time, Microsoft says that we need to pay for a Premium license, and I don't like paying for things that help make a solution better."

"It has fair pricing. You pay for what you get. As far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."

"The pricing is in the middle. It isn't too cheap or expensive compared to other antivirus or security products. It is priced according to industry standards."

"We have an educational licensing agreement. It's a customer agreement for multiple years."

"We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortinet FortiSandbox?

The real-time analysis capability of FortiSandbox is beneficial for email analysis.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Fortinet FortiSandbox?

I think it's affordable. For the six to seven months of usage, the cost has been reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Fortinet FortiSandbox?

We sometimes face a delay in email scanning due to not having multiple virtual machines. Improvements could be made in dynamic scanning, scanning all email components such as URLs and attachments, ...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?

It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notifications are pretty good.

See all answers

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

My impression on the pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that it's fair. I don't know by heart the exact pricing, but it's part of the E5 license which we al...

See all answers

Comparisons

Palo Alto Networks WildFire vs Fortinet FortiSandbox

Compared 43% of the time

Check Point SandBlast Network vs Fortinet FortiSandbox

Compared 11% of the time

Trellix Network Detection and Response vs Fortinet FortiSandbox

Compared 10% of the time

Trend Micro Deep Discovery vs Fortinet FortiSandbox

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs Fortinet FortiSandbox

Compared 7% of the time

More Fortinet FortiSandbox Competitors

Zscaler Internet Access vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 14% of the time

Netskope vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 11% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 6% of the time

Skyhigh Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiSandbox

August 2025

Download Fortinet FortiSandbox product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

August 2025

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps report

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps product report

Also Known As

FortiSandbox

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security

Overview

Fortinet FortiSandbox is a behavior-based threat detection solution that prevents and detects malicious code in files transferred within the organization. It is integrated with FortiGate firewalls and FortiMail for threat protection and can be used for monitoring and reporting. The solution inspects files in a virtual environment with different types of virtual machines and can block or quarantine files based on their score.

The most valuable features include dynamic behavior analysis, manual scan features, easy management and configuration, fast scanning, scalability, customization, and ICAP protocol. The solution is cost-effective and faster than other sandbox solutions, with a good user interface.

Fortinet

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is a comprehensive security solution that provides protection for cloud-based applications and services. It offers real-time threat detection and response, as well as advanced analytics and reporting capabilities. With Defender for Cloud Apps, organizations can ensure the security of their cloud environments and safeguard against cyber threats. Whether you're running SaaS applications, IaaS workloads, or PaaS services, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps can help you secure your cloud environment and protect your business from cyber threats.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Benefits:

Provides comprehensive security for cloud applications
Integrates with other Microsoft security tools
Easy to use and deploy
Provides real-time threat detection and response
Strong protection against phishing attacks and other common threats
Highly customizable to meet specific needs of different organizations

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Use Cases:

Governance, authentication, security, and compliance.
Detects shadow IT and anomalous user behavior
Controls access to applications
Provides auditing and filtering setups
Used for end-user compute devices, file monitoring, user investigation, and activity
Used for data governance, threat detection, and getting visibility over cloud applications
Used to identify information about applications beyond organizational boundaries
Prevent exfiltration and data filtration of corporate data
Used to deal with spam emails and detect shadow IT

Reviews from Real Users

Ram-Krish, Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm, says that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need".

PeerSpot user, Senior Cloud & Security Consultant at a tech services, writes that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps "Great for monitoring user activity and protecting data while integrating well with other applications".

Simon Burgess,Infrastructure Engineer at SBITSC, states that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is "A fluid, intelligent product for great visibility, centralized management, and increased uptime".

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Lush, Barnabas Health, Options, Riverside Healthcare, Hillsbourough County Schools, Columbia Public Schools, Schiller AG

Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.

Buyer's Guide

Fortinet FortiSandbox vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

July 2025

Free Report: Fortinet FortiSandbox vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

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