Illumio vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jul 5, 2023

We performed a comparison between Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation 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: Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation provides useful monitoring capabilities, automated policy writing, and visibility into application communication and network protocols. Microsoft Defender for Cloud emphasizes automation, threat analysis, and security coverage. Reviews of Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation highlighted the need for more operating system support and stronger data security. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be better integrated with non-Microsoft solutions.
  • Service and Support: Some users were pleased with Illumio support's quick responses and round-the-clock assistance. However, other users complained about unhelpful replies and delayed responses. Microsoft Defender users generally found the support team responsive and knowledgeable, but others said outsourced support lacked technical expertise and reported longer response times in certain regions.
  • Ease of Deployment: Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation takes longer to set up compared to Microsoft Defender for Cloud and requires extensive testing. Setting up Microsoft Defender for Cloud is straightforward. The solution requires minimal maintenance and seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft services.
  • Pricing: Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation is subscription-based and offers one or three-year plans. Users find the solution to be expensive. In contrast, Microsoft Defender for Cloud is seen as a good deal by some users, who consider it to be cost-effective, especially when bundled with other Microsoft products.
  • ROI: Users said the ROI of Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation is difficult to quantify, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud has demonstrated a potentially high ROI by automating tasks and improving security posture. 

Comparison Results: Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation outperforms Microsoft Defender for Cloud in terms of monitoring, automatic policy writing, and visibility. Microsoft Defender for Cloud needs improvements in automation, user interface, and pricing. 

To learn more, read our detailed Illumio vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It has helped us to understand internal network visibility and firewall policy implementation. We use the product to simplify firewall policy implementation.""The most valuable feature of Illumio Adaptive Security Platform is monitoring. When I have no requirement from the other application, I can use the web block traffic to build.""The product provides visibility into how the applications communicate and how the network protocols are being used.""The Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination.""The features that I have found most useful is the ability to centralize all the rules and then distribute them across various locations. However, I've encountered challenges related to tagging policies, which can be complex to devise. It's a matter that requires careful consideration and stakeholder involvement before implementing such policies.""The solution is easy to use.""The flexibility of the solution is its most valuable feature.""The solution helps to maintain logs and monitor activities. It also helps us with access management. The tool helps us to secure organizational data that include files."

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"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.""Microsoft Defender has a lot of features including regulatory compliance and attaching workbooks but the most valuable is the recommendations it provides for each and every resource when we open Microsoft Defender.""Good compliance policies.""Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization.""The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce.""Threat protection is comprehensive and simple.""It's got a lot of great features.""Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Pros →

Cons
"I would like to see better data security in the product.""The solution is very basic and doesn't do anything other than the orchestration of layer four endpoint firewall rules.""The customer service is lagging a bit. It could be better.""The interaction we've had with the support team hasn't been ideal. Technical support should be improved.""Illumio Adaptive Security Platform could improve by supporting more operating systems. For example, Cisco and Apache appliances.""It requires a low-level re-architecting of the product.""Some of the features that can be improved is offer additional guidance on creating an effective and risk-free tagging policy would be highly beneficial.""The product’s agents don't work very well in OT environments."

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"We would like to have better transparency as to how the security score is calculated because as it is now, it is difficult to understand.""Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts.""There is no perfect product in the world and there are always features that can be added.""The product was a bit complex to set up earlier, however, it is a bit streamlined now.""Sometimes it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or a special kind of product.""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.""The overview provides you with good information, but if you want more details, there is a lot more customization to do, which requires knowledge of the other supporting solutions.""Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is a subscription needed to use Illumio Adaptive Security Platform and we pay every three years. Overall the solution is expensive."
  • "The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis."
  • More Illumio Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
  • "We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."
  • "Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
  • "This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
  • "Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."
  • "There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."
  • "Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."
  • "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."
  • More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The features that I have found most useful is the ability to centralize all the rules and then distribute them across various locations. However, I've encountered challenges related to tagging… more »
    Top Answer:The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis.
    Top Answer:Some of the features that can be improved is offer additional guidance on creating an effective and risk-free tagging policy would be highly beneficial.
    Top Answer:Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a… more »
    Top Answer:The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
    Top Answer:Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Microsoft needs to bring the cost down. What we're doing to their detriment is simply lowering the amount of log retention we're… more »
    Ranking
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    3,910
    Comparisons
    2,948
    Reviews
    6
    Average Words per Review
    384
    Rating
    8.0
    Views
    16,509
    Comparisons
    12,378
    Reviews
    21
    Average Words per Review
    1,043
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Illumio Adaptive Security Platform, Illumio ASP
    Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
    Learn More
    Interactive Demo
    Overview

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation is a cloud and data center security solution that helps stop breaches from spreading across hybrid and multi cloud IT environments. The solution is designed to stop ransomware, contain cyber attacks, and reduce risk. With Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, users can understand relationships and communications to map exposure risk of systems and data, identify the right security posture and secure applications through least-privilege policies, and ensure a Zero Trust security posture.

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation Features

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Scalability: Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation scales up to 200,000 managed workloads or over 700,000 unmanaged workloads. These workloads can be in the cloud, on-premises, and in hybrid environments.
    • Single pane of visibility: The solution’s single pane of visibility improves your security posture and ability to prevent and respond rapidly to cyberattacks.
    • Simplicity: With Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, setting up groups and tags is simple. The solution is easy to integrate with next-generation firewalls and can also integrate with IT service management tools to import workload tags to provide more context to workloads.
    • Ransomware containment: The solution provides enforcement boundaries to contain attackers from moving laterally across your organization, enabling security architects to immediately isolate any workload or endpoint compromised in an attack. Enforcement boundaries can be activated instantly through scripts or by manual control, isolating workloads and endpoints already infected from spreading across the organization.

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Visibility everywhere: The Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation solution helps ensure that every interaction on your network is accounted for. 
    • Least-privilege access: By implementing Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation, your organization can prevent unexpected breaches from propagating.
    • Adaptability and consistency: The solution guarantees consistent network behavior everywhere. 
    • Proactive posture: Using the solution enables your organization to always be on the lookout for an attack. 
    • Improve breach containment: With the solution, you can prevent unauthorized lateral movement and reduce your blast radius. Creating micro-perimeters around specific assets breaks up your attack surface and gives you the granular control needed to contain breaches.
    • Streamline policy management: The solution enables organizations to decouple segmentation from the underlying network to define policies based on the language that IT uses. Illumio's human-readable labels make policy creation much simpler and faster than traditional network segmentation approaches like VLANs, IP addresses, and port numbers.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Illumio Zero Trust Segmentation is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it has a good auto policy writing feature, great mapping, and useful monitoring. 

    Shashi, Technical Consultant at a financial services firm, explains which features she really likes. “The auto policy writing is great. The feature will give you the option of inbound-outbound traffic. The Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination. The illumination definitely stands out. Mapping is great. The application group mapping is useful.”

    The solution has “helpful support, useful monitoring, and high availability,” according to Edwin L., Security Architect at MGM.

    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.

    Sample Customers
    Plantronics, NTT Innovation Institute Inc.
    Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Agriculture10%
    Recruiting/Hr Firm10%
    Consumer Goods Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm13%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise63%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise69%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business27%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise62%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise65%
    Buyer's Guide
    Illumio vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Illumio vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Illumio is ranked 15th in CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platforms) with 8 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 2nd in CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platforms) with 46 reviews. Illumio is rated 8.0, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Illumio writes "Pprevents attackers or threats from spreading or moving laterally". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". Illumio is most compared with Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, VMware NSX, Cisco Secure Workload, Zscaler Internet Access and Zero Networks Microsegmentation, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Microsoft Defender XDR, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Sentinel and Wiz. See our Illumio vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.

    See our list of best CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platforms) vendors.

    We monitor all CWPP (Cloud Workload Protection Platforms) 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.