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Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps enhances security, reduces costs by 35-45%, and improves uptime with efficient cloud application management.
Sentiment score
5.6
Determining ROI from Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is challenging due to package inclusion and unclear financial benefits.
The biggest return on investment so far has been visibility, knowing what we have in our environment.
As a small team, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps allowed us to manage systems with just one or two people.
We have at least saved the costs we had from the Netskope solution this year.
As a Microsoft partner, we receive significant discounts, making the solution affordable for us.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps support is generally good, but users suggest faster responses and improved communication.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender's customer service receives mixed reviews, highlighting inconsistent support and varying effectiveness in technical assistance.
Their customer service is pretty good, but it's frustrating to go through three or four channels before reaching the right person.
The support is excellent, and the speed of response is commendable.
There were instances where the engineers were knowledgeable and helpful, but at other times it felt like a ping pong game, with unnecessary transfers until the right person was found.
They are sometimes responsive, however, often issues cannot be reproduced on their end, making it challenging.
The support we receive from Microsoft is declining, and for example, after taking advanced support, we have not received satisfactory answers.
My team raised multiple support tickets for the product, and we were able to get responses from Microsoft support team.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers scalable security, efficiently managing large user bases and app integrations with centralized management.
Sentiment score
8.4
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is praised for its high scalability and seamless integration, receiving consistently high user ratings.
For what I know about the log collector and how much data it can take in, it is super scalable and capable of handling high workloads.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very scalable, provided you have the right subscription.
In my experience, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is good enough for small to medium businesses.
It is scalable; I evaluated the product and decided to use Defender on over 700 of our company servers.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is praised for high reliability, minimal downtime, consistent performance, and swift issue resolution.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender is rated highly stable with 99% availability, despite minor portal, compatibility, logging, and memory issues.
I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps.
I would assess the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps as stable
My impression on the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that it is very stable.
There are compatibility issues occasionally arising with false positives when other security tools are not whitelisted in Microsoft Defender.
It is very resource-intensive, consuming a lot of memory and CPU.
I would rate the overall stability as an eight.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps could improve integration, pricing, support, reporting, automation, alerts, and overall user experience across multi-cloud environments.
Microsoft Defender needs improvements in accuracy, customization, integration, resource efficiency, macOS support, user-friendliness, and affordability.
For data loss prevention, it would be useful to be able to drill down into the kind of data being transferred over CloudApp.
Defender typically connects to Entra ID, but we have local users on the cloud for database access, SSH, or RDS, and there is nothing produced by Defender regarding those local IAM users.
A significant improvement I would like to see is the integration into a single pane of glass.
This scoring should be for specific industries as well. If I belong to the healthcare industry using Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, it should provide me with a risk score and show how I fare against the risk score of my industry.
A vulnerability I patch within 15 minutes takes 24 additional hours for an update.
The product is not stable; it often uses excessive memory and CPU, which makes it slow.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is cost-effective within Microsoft 365 bundles, especially for large organizations with discounts available.
Microsoft Defender offers varying pricing; complex licensing may incur additional costs, but security benefits can justify the investment.
The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is acceptable.
My organization is currently revisiting pricing, but previously, the cost was a bit expensive, yet comparable to other solutions with similar functionalities and features.
It's not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive, placing it in the mid-level range.
Overall, every organization wishes for cheaper options, but we look at the security side as well, so we are good for now.
For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
The pricing is reasonable, and it's included in the whole Microsoft E5 bundle, so it's all-inclusive.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers integration, threat detection, and management, enhancing security with comprehensive visibility and proactive assessment.
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management excels in integration, compliance, risk prioritization, and real-time assessments, enhancing security across diverse environments.
The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very comprehensive, providing a complete 360-degree view of applications within an organization.
The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include live, up-to-date information, which provided real-time alerts.
The main advantage of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is that it can locate and prevent most threats even when the endpoints are not connected to the corporate network, as long as the internet is available.
The most valuable aspect is the kind of assessment results I get, and the recommendations provided in Microsoft products really help in taking care of the resources.
The integration with Sentinel has been one of the most valuable features for my organization.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
14th
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th)
Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
16th
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 1.8%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 1.2%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps1.8%
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management1.2%
Other97.0%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Abdulrahman Muhammadi - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration with existing cloud workflows has simplified compliance and threat detection
Licensing cost is a significant concern. With Defender Plan 1, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comes with a pay-per-use model. Each feature has its own pricing when activated on VMs. For example, the vulnerability assessment has separate pricing, the base model including encryptions has separate pricing, and the compliance features have separate pricing. This applies to each VM and Azure resource individually. It is not straightforward where you can take one license and apply it to everything. Each feature has its own pricing model which can be tedious, as the costs keep accumulating. The only lacking feature currently is XDR (extended detection and response). Apart from that, I have only positive experiences with the whole Microsoft suite, except for the pricing structure.
NaySan @ Suraj Verma - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides actionable vulnerability insights and recommendations with notable efficiency
They may need to improve the portal refresh rate for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management because it takes time for recommendations to disappear after mitigation; sometimes, it takes one week, when it should ideally take only one to two hours. Overall, everything is good with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, but the portal refresh rate can take up to seven days in some cases and three or four days in others to reflect changes.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
At the time of implementation, when the size of our organization was small, it was a more affordable product. Since all our productivity applications were on O365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
I would rate the price as a three for us due to the partnership discounts. For non-partners, however, the cost could be seen as higher, between seven to ten.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?
I have not thought about improvements for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management as of now, but this is typically an operational maintenance process. The operational maintenance process refers...
 

Also Known As

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.