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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Microsoft Defender for Clou...
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), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (14th)
Microsoft Purview Data Life...
Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite
33rd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Email Archiving (11th), Document Management Software (2nd), Data Governance (29th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 3.2%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Microsoft Security Suite Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps3.2%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management0.6%
Other96.2%
Microsoft Security Suite
 

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.
AnonyAdmin - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides data protection across platforms and connects to different devices
The rollout of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is not yet complete. The goal of this implementation is to mitigate the risk of oversharing, particularly in anticipation of the broader adoption of Copilot. Purview's ability to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, as well as data in other SaaS applications, is crucial. As a university with a bring-your-own-device policy, we cannot control the devices used by our diverse population of students and faculty. Therefore, an inclusive ecosystem that seamlessly integrates with various devices is essential, as we cannot enforce restrictions on specific devices or mandate particular technologies due to the open nature of our system. It is critical that Purview provides data protection across diverse cloud and platform environments, including AWS and GCP. Historically, our primary platform has been AWS, but we are increasingly expanding into Microsoft Azure. Therefore, I anticipate a future where we utilize both platforms extensively, making comprehensive data protection essential. Purview's design incorporates critical global regulations, ensuring compliance for university researchers and the institution itself with government and various regulatory requirements. Purview enhances visibility across our data estate. The new AI-powered data security features, especially the oversharing report, promise to be invaluable by providing insights into potentially overshared files and sites. This automation eliminates the need for custom scripts and manual data mining, previously necessary for identifying such issues, and ultimately saves significant development time. Purview saves time by eliminating the need for manual scripts, which can take days to run due to the volume of people and sites involved. Instead of running scripts multiple times or waiting hours for completion, Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have become more aware of what services our users are using, how often they are using them, and what data is being sent out of the organization and to which services. So, it is really a lot about visibility and helping us make decisions based on that. It drives some of our policy decisions for adding extra security controls."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"I like the alert policies because they are quite robust. It has some built-in templates that we can easily pick up. One of them is the alert for mass downloads, when a particular user is running a massive download on your SharePoint site."
"Shadow IT discovery is the feature I like the most."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that we are primarily using only the Defender for Cloud on the Azure Cloud."
"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"The product’s most valuable feature is SQL database."
"The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial."
"The UI is the most valuable feature."
"The system is stable; I haven't encountered any worldwide stability issues unlike other office products."
"Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process."
"The automatic data labeling is compelling, and we are investigating its use."
 

Cons

"They should continue integration with all other Microsoft security-related products. The integration with all the other products is still ongoing."
"I believe it's only set to be integrated with Microsoft Defender for identity and identity protection. I would like to see it available for use with something like Office 365 Defender. I don't think it's integrated with that yet."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps’s technical support services needs improvement."
"An area of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that needs to be improved or enhanced is the reporting function. In the beginning, there was a good reporting function which gave us a sort of monthly overview report. But that has gone away."
"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."
"I would prefer to have filtering options incorporated within the policies, enabling the solution to perform tasks beyond mere blocking or allowing."
"We would like to get more information from the endpoint. I don't get enough detailed information right now on why something failed. There is not enough visibility."
"I would like to see them include more features in the older licenses. There are some features that are not available, such as preventing or analyzing cloud attacks."
"The time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges."
"Microsoft's Purview Data Lifecycle Management preview features can be unreliable, hindering their usefulness."
"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Where we are right now, this is an acceptable pricing. I would like to see more transparency given to the end user. The end user given to us is via the cloud service provider. There are different programs and license models. Some include this, and some include that. It is all over the place. There can be a little more consistency or simplification in the pricing so that your parts list is not ten pages long, and you are not trying to determine, "If I have an E3, does this cover that?", or "Do I need to pay separately for the license?" Simplification would probably be better."
"This product is not expensive."
"The product's pricing seems fair."
"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."
"The price could be better and should be reconsidered."
"We have an educational licensing agreement. It's a customer agreement for multiple years."
"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."
"The service operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, charging an extra one cent per field of metadata scanned in our data."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

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 Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
We opted for Purview Data Lifecycle Management due to its significant cost advantage over competitors. At a 95 percent price reduction, it was a clear winner. The service operates on a pay-as-you-g...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
One of the requirements is to have data leak policies and data access policies. This is very critical to enforce data governance standards, which relate to data classification, access control, data...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?
I am a customer and user of the tools. We are a big shop, and both the companies I work for are Microsoft Office 365 customers with over eighty thousand seats. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Mana...
 

Also Known As

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
Microsoft Information Governance, Microsoft Purview Records Management
 

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 for Cloud Apps vs. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,202 professionals have used our research since 2012.