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Illumio vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Cloud and Data Center Security (4th), Container Security (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
Illumio
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (2nd), Microsegmentation Software (3rd)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Illumio is 6.8%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 13.6%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew W - PeerSpot reviewer
Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues
Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.
Alark Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Visual traffic interface aids in network micro-segmentation while a streamlined update option enhances process efficiency
The strongest aspect of Illumio is the visual traffic interface, which allows us to see all traffic that communicates with our servers and allied companies. We can write rules that can be embedded into the IP table, making it easy to handle. Illumio enables us to see network flows, traffic sources, and destinations. The policy generation and enforcement capabilities are valuable, allowing for selective enforcement. Illumio helps in audit purposes by saving data and showing blocked traffic, ensuring no outside traffic is allowed.
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspects of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security are its alerting system and the remediation guidance it provides."
"When creating cloud infrastructure, Cloud Native Security evaluates the cloud security parameters and how they will impact the organization's risk. It lets us know whether our security parameter conforms to international industry standards. It alerts us about anything that increases our risk, so we can address those vulnerabilities and prevent attacks."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"You not only get to know about vulnerabilities and misconfigurations but also some of the actual"
"It saves time, makes your environment more secure, and improves compliance. SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security helps with audits, ensuring that you are following best practices for cloud security. You don't need to be an expert to use it and improve your security."
"The offensive security feature is valuable because it publicly detects the offensive and vulnerable things present in our domain or applications. It checks any applications with public access. Some of the applications give public access to certain files or are present over a particular domain. It detects and lets us know with evidence. That is quite good. It is protecting our infrastructure quite well."
"We use the infrastructure as code scanning, which is good."
"Singularity Cloud Workload Security provides us with better security detection and more visibility. It is another resource that we can use to detect vulnerabilities in our company's systems. For example, it can help us detect new file processes that we are not familiar with, which could be used by attackers to exploit our systems. Singularity Cloud Workload Security can also help us diagnose and analyze data to determine whether it is malicious or not. Singularity Cloud Workload Security is like another pair of eyes that can help us protect our systems from cyberattacks."
"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."
"The product provides visibility into how the applications communicate and how the network protocols are being used."
"The tool helps with my company's security posture."
"Customer support is excellent."
"The Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination."
"The dependency map is most valuable feature."
"I would recommend Illumio to all sizes of companies."
"The solution is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security. It has made the cloud environment more secure, thanks to all the recommendations we can get."
"It's quite a good product. It helps to understand the infections and issues you are facing."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud can find potential phishing links and malicious code in data at rest."
"The most valuable feature is the hunting feature, which integrates well into the entire Microsoft ecosystem."
"The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."
"It has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem."
"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."
"The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very good."
 

Cons

"I would like additional integrations."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is an excellent CSPM tool, but its CWPP features need improvement, and there is scope for more application security posture management features."
"To enhance the notification system's efficiency, resolved issues should be promptly removed from the portal."
"Some of the navigation and some aspects of the portal may be a little bit confusing."
"Implementing single sign-on requires a pre-class account feature, which is currently not available."
"Cloud Native Security's reporting could be better. We are unable to see which images are impacted. Several thousand images have been deployed, so if we can see some application-specific information in the dashboard, we can directly send that report to the team that owns the application. We'd also like the option to download the report from the portal instead of waiting for the report to be sent to our email."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is an excellent CSPM tool, but the CWPP features need to improve, and there is a scope for more application security posture management features. There aren't many ASPM solutions on the market, and existing ones are costly. I would like to see SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security develop into a single pane of glass for ASPM, CSPM, and CWPP. Another feature I'd like to see is runtime protection."
"The Automation tab is an add-on that doesn’t work properly. They provide a list of scripts that don’t work and I have asked support to assist but they won’t help. When running on various endpoints the script doesn’t work and if it does, it’s only a couple. There are a lot of useful scripts that would be beneficial to run forensics, event logs, and process lists running on the endpoint."
"Illumio Adaptive Security Platform could improve by supporting more operating systems. For example, Cisco and Apache appliances."
"I would like to see better data security in the product."
"The customer service is lagging a bit. It could be better."
"We need more details on areas where there is an error or a traffic blockage. I would like the tool to offer a more detailed view."
"The solution is very basic and doesn't do anything other than the orchestration of layer four endpoint firewall rules."
"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."
"I have not had the chance to experiment deeply with it."
"There is no perfect product in the world and there are always features that can be added."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"The solution is quite complex. A lot of the different policies that actually get applied don't pertain to every client. If you need to have something open for a client application to work, then you get dinged for having a port open or having an older version of TLS available."
"Most of the time, when we log into the support, we don't get a chance to interact with Microsoft employees directly, except having it go to outsource employees of Microsoft. The initial interaction has not been that great because outsourced companies cannot provide the kind of quality or technical expertise that we look for. We have a technical manager from Microsoft, but they are kind of average unless we make noise and ask them to escalate. We then can get the right people and the right solution, but it definitely takes time."
"You cannot create custom use cases."
"The remediation process could be improved."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I wasn't sure what to expect from the pricing, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a little less than I thought."
"I am personally not taking care of the pricing part, but when we moved from CrowdStrike to PingSafe, there were some savings. The price of CrowdStrike was quite high. Compared to that, the price of PingSafe was low. PingSafe is charging based on the subscription model. If I want to add an AWS subscription, I need to pay more. It should not be based on subscription. It should be based on the number of servers that I am scanning."
"PingSafe is affordable."
"While SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers robust protection, its high cost may be prohibitive for small and medium-sized businesses."
"Singularity Cloud Security by SentinelOne is cost-efficient."
"We have an enterprise license. It is affordable. I'm not sure, but I think we pay 150,000 rupees per month."
"The price depends on the extension of the solution that you want to buy. If you want to buy just EDR, the price is less. XDR is a little bit more expensive. There are going to be different add-ons for Singularity."
"It is cost-effective compared to other solutions in the market."
"The product's pricing is around 10,000-15,000 USD. The pricing is on a yearly basis."
"There is a subscription needed to use Illumio Adaptive Security Platform and we pay every three years. Overall the solution is expensive."
"There are two different plans. We're using the secure basic plan, but we have used the end security plan as well. There are additional costs, but it gives us more functionalities compared to the basic plan."
"This solution is more cost-effective than some competing products. My understanding is that it is based on the number of integrations that you have, so if you have fewer subscriptions then you pay less for the service."
"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing. If you have Cloud for Key Vault, the pricing is different than it is for storage. Every type has its own pricing list and rules."
"Although I am outside of the discussion on budget and costing, I can say that the importance of security provided by this solution is of such importance that whatever the cost is, it is not a factor."
"The tool is pretty expensive."
"Pricing depends on your workload size, but it is very cheap. If you're talking about virtual machines, it is $5 or something for each machine, which is minimal. If you go for some agent-based solution for every virtual machine, then you need to pay the same thing or more than that. For an on-premises solution like this, we were paying around $30 to $50 based on size. With Defender, Microsoft doesn't bother about the size. You pay based on the number of machines. So, if you have 10 virtual machines, and 10 virtual machines are being monitored, you are paying based on that rather than the size of the virtual machine. Thus, you are paying for the number of units rather than paying for the size of your units."
"The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against the importance of what needs covering."
"We only use the free tier, so we haven't faced any pricing, setup costs, or licensing challenges."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) solutions are best for your needs.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?
The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?
It is cost-effective compared to other solutions in the market.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is an excellent CSPM tool, but its CWPP features need improvement, and there i...
What do you like most about Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
The features that I have found most useful is the ability to centralize all the rules and then distribute them across...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
I do not have specific knowledge about pricing details as it is handled by upper management. I know that Illumio is t...
What needs improvement with Illumio Adaptive Security Platform?
There should be an option to upgrade from the console to the latest version instead of performing manual upgrades. Th...
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening acros...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The cost is generally reasonable. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Plan 2 costs $15 per server, per month. For a normal c...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
Illumio Adaptive Security Platform, Illumio ASP
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Plantronics, NTT Innovation Institute Inc.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Illumio vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.