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Illumio vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 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
114
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (5th), Cloud and Data Center Security (2nd), Container Security (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (1st)
Illumio
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (7th), Microsegmentation Software (2nd)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (8th), Container Security (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 3.6%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Illumio is 6.4%, up from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 14.3%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud14.3%
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security3.6%
Illumio6.4%
Other75.69999999999999%
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Mike Bulyk - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom correlation searches enhance threat detection efficiency
Singularity Cloud Security significantly reduced our organization's threat detection time by providing immediate data visibility. This allows our team to analyze telemetry in real-time, query it, and identify anomalies or potential threats using the Singularity platform. We can create rules that automatically trigger alerts based on this real-time data, enabling immediate response. This instant threat detection and response capability is a major improvement over our previous reliance on multiple tools with delayed data flows. Singularity Cloud Security eliminates those delays, saving valuable time in incident response scenarios. MTTR and MTTD are critical metrics for incident response processes. They measure the time it takes to fully address an incident, from initial detection to complete remediation. Minimizing these times is crucial to limit damage, as attackers can quickly exploit vulnerabilities and compromise additional systems. Rapid detection and response are essential to disrupt attackers and prevent further progression within the attack chain. Singularity Cloud helps reduce false positives by allowing engineers direct access to data. This access enables querying, validation, and the creation of correlation searches for improved data analysis. Instead of a black box approach, Singularity provides full visibility into the code and syntax used, increasing confidence in the results. Ultimately, Singularity offers greater control over correlation searches, detection rules, and response scenarios due to the enhanced engagement and control it provides. Singularity's ability to create custom correlation searches significantly reduces noise by avoiding reliance on generic, pre-built searches that often lead to false positives in diverse organizational environments. This targeted approach results in a high positive rate and efficacy, allowing for focused detection and response. By designing and running custom searches, Singularity minimizes the need to sift through irrelevant alerts, unlike systems using default rules that inundate analysts with noise. This translates to a very low noise-to-efficacy ratio, enabling efficient and accurate incident response. Singularity Cloud offers valuable data and capabilities extending beyond security, benefiting various business units. For example, it helped troubleshoot a newly introduced service with limited telemetry. My team created custom correlation searches to track specific event types, confirming the software's functionality. This success garnered positive feedback throughout the company, reaching even the CIO and CSR, as it enabled the business to showcase the software's effectiveness in a way that was previously impossible. SentinelOne improves our regulatory compliance by fulfilling the endpoint detection and response requirements of various frameworks. Many federal regulations require businesses to meet specific security standards, including those related to endpoint, identity, and cloud security. SentinelOne enables us to meet these requirements and assure potential partners that we have a robust security posture. This strengthens our partnerships and streamlines procurement processes, demonstrating how SentinelOne contributes to our compliance efforts. SentinelOne's evidence-based reporting, particularly the CNS reports, fosters trust due to the transparency of the data source and the ability to understand the underlying mechanisms. Knowing the search criteria, data types, and information gathering process, especially when customized for detection engineering, creates confidence in the product and the relationship with SentinelOne. This transparency and customization allow users to delve into the mechanics of the reporting, understand its functionality, and ultimately trust the evidence provided. AI is a crucial consideration for security strategies. While some view AI as a potential replacement for human analysts, others see it as a powerful tool to enhance their capabilities. The latter approach emphasizes AI's ability to accelerate incident response, improve threat detection, and provide valuable insights to analysts. This perspective suggests that AI should be used to augment human expertise, enabling analysts to make faster and more informed decisions, particularly in prioritizing threats and developing a sixth sense for identifying malicious activity. By integrating AI as an enabler, organizations can empower their security teams to become more efficient and effective, ultimately strengthening their overall security posture.
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

"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security's graph explorer is a valuable tool that lets us visualize all connected services."
"The solution's most valuable features are its ability to detect vulnerabilities inside AWS resources and its ability to rescan after a specific duration set by the administrator."
"All the features we use are equal and get the job done."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its storyline, which helps trace an event back to its source, like an email or someone clicking on a link."
"The UI is very good."
"The offensive security where they do a fix is valuable. They go to a misconfiguration and provide detailed alerts on what could be there. They also provide a remediation feature where if we give the permission, they can also go and fix the issue."
"I would definitely recommend SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security for infrastructure security."
"Our organization is growing steadily, so our infrastructure is expanding, and we're managing more technical resources. Singularity Cloud Security helps us track our resources so that we don't get lost in the overwhelming volume of things and ensures we follow best practices. The solution gives us better visibility into our resources and enables faster resolution."
"The product provides visibility into how the applications communicate and how the network protocols are being used."
"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 solution is easy to use."
"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."
"I would recommend Illumio to all sizes of companies."
"The dependency map is most valuable feature."
"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 Explorer allows you to know the traffic between source and destination."
"The solution is very easy to deploy."
"DSPM is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the regulatory compliance aspect, where we utilize predefined initiatives like NIST."
"It's got a lot of great features."
"Defender is a robust platform for dealing with many kinds of threats. We're protected from various threats, like viruses. Attacks can be easily minimized with this solution defending our infrastructure."
"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."
"It offers virus management and addresses threats such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other critical security concerns."
"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."
 

Cons

"When we get a new finding from SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, I wish we could get an alert in the console, so we can work on it before we see it in the report. It would be very useful for the team that is actively working on the SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security platform, so we can close the issue the same day before it appears in the daily report."
"The integration with Oracle has room for improvement."
"The application module focuses on the different codes and libraries that can be run on the machines. It is very important for Singularity EDR to detect what type of codes and what type of libraries can run in the machine. If they can implement a white list or a black list of codes or libraries that can be used in the machine, it would be very helpful. They can focus more on the application module."
"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."
"A beneficial improvement for SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security would be integration with Jira, allowing for a more streamlined ticketing system."
"Some of the navigation and some aspects of the portal may be a little bit confusing."
"One of our use cases was setting up a firewall for our endpoints, specifically for our remote users... We were hoping to utilize SentinelOne's firewall capabilities, but there were limitations on how many URLs we could implement. Because of those limitations on the number of URLs, we weren't able to utilize that feature in the way we had hoped to."
"The could improve their mean time to detect."
"There should be an option to upgrade from the console to the latest version instead of performing manual upgrades. This would be more helpful to streamline processes."
"The interaction we've had with the support team hasn't been ideal. Technical support should be improved."
"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."
"I would like to see better data security in the product."
"Illumio Adaptive Security Platform could improve by supporting more operating systems. For example, Cisco and Apache appliances."
"The solution is very basic and doesn't do anything other than the orchestration of layer four endpoint firewall rules."
"I have not had the chance to experiment deeply with it."
"There should be an option to upgrade from the console to the latest version instead of performing manual upgrades."
"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a six out of 10 due to its lack of necessary features to operate as a standalone solution."
"I would suggest building a single product that addresses endpoint server protection, attack surface, and everything else in one solution. That is the main disadvantage with the product. If we are incorporating some features, we end up in a situation where this solution is for the server, and that one is for the client, or this is for identity, and that is for our application. They're not bundling it. Commercially, we can charge for different licenses, but on the implementation side, it's tough to help our end-customer understand which product they're getting."
"However, some Copilot features aren't available in the GCP environment. This is something we hope will be addressed in the future."
"Integration into other third-party products, particularly those from tier three vendors like ManageEngine and Hexcode, has proven difficult."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is not compatible with Linux machines."
"If a customer is already using Okta as an SSO in its entire environment, they will want to continue with it. But Security Center doesn't understand that and keeps making recommendations. It would help if it let us resolve a recommendation, even if it is not implemented."
"The solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge."
"There needs to be improvement in the security recommendations, particularly in attack path mapping. Sometimes, it misleads users about the real exposure of external-facing assets."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a fair price for what you get. We are happy with the price as it stands."
"Pricing is based on modules, which was ideal for us."
"The features included in PingSafe justify its price point."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is costly."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is on the costlier side."
"Its pricing is constant. It has been constant over the previous year, so I am happy with it. However, price distribution can be better explained. That is the only area I am worried about. Otherwise, the pricing is very reasonable."
"PingSafe is not very expensive compared to Prisma Cloud, but it's also not that cheap. However, because of its features, it makes sense to us as a company. It's fairly priced."
"Singularity Cloud Workload Security's pricing is good."
"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."
"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."
"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 solution is expensive, and I rate it a five to six out of ten."
"Azure Defender is definitely pricey, but their competitors cost about the same. For example, a Palo Alto solution is the same price per endpoint, but the ground strikes cost a bit more than Azure Defender. Still, it's pricey for a company like ours. Maybe well-established organizations can afford it, but it might be too costly for a startup."
"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."
"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."
"It is bundled with our enterprise subscription, which makes it easy to go for it. It is available by default, and there is no extra cost for using the standard features."
"The pricing model for most plans is generally good, but the cost of the new Defender for Storage plan is high and should be revisited, as it could lead to disabling desirable security features due to cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise53
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise44
 

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?
I don't handle the price part, but it isn't more expensive than Palo Alto Prisma Cloud. It's not cheap, but it is wor...
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
There is scope for more application security posture management features. Additionally, the runtime protection needs ...
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.
 

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: July 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.