No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Morphisec 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Morphisec
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
31st
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (59th), Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (48th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (59th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (36th), Threat Deception Platforms (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Morphisec is 2.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps2.0%
Morphisec2.1%
Other95.9%
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

FV
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
Deployment has been seamless with insightful data categorization and enhanced control
The features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that I have found most valuable include the overall portal view, with bubble graphs which give us insight into what goes where in the categorization, nowadays with Generative AI but all kinds of categorization, collaboration, etc. That central view of the portal is very useful for us. The impact of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps on our organization's ability to assess and manage app related risks has been significant because we have more visibility. Therefore, we can add more control, and we have already done so. This was not possible in the old solution, in the old CASB solution with Netskope. We now can see on the spot, and we do that almost weekly, what the end users are utilizing, which cloud providers or cloud apps they're using. The visibility into OAuth apps provided by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very good. The visibility into risk and risk management of our organization's Generative AI apps is very nice, as you can choose the category Generative AI and then see exactly what traffic has been going to and from Generative AI in the cloud. This makes us very insightful on what is used within the company. We have some policies on blocking specific Generative AI, and we use within our company one particular AI part, which is CoPilot of Microsoft. In this way, we can see what the end users are using other than CoPilot, and that makes us more in control. The effectiveness of the integration of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps with Defender XDR and defending against SaaS attacks is very intuitive. It works immediately if we create a new policy or in Purview or in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, or when we make an app unsanctioned by blocking it, then it is almost immediately, or at least within a couple of hours, effective on all the endpoints where the EDR is running. This gives us much better control over things than before.
Rick Schibler - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of Information Technology at Kentucky Trailer
Offers in-memory protection at a lower price than competitors
Morphisec's in-memory protection is probably the most valuable feature because it stops malicious activity from occurring. If something tries to install or act as a sleeper agent, Morphisec will detect and stop it. Morphisec's Moving Target Defense is critical to hardening our attack surface. If it detects something, it indicates whether it's valid. That means you've got a breach requiring investigation. It detects anomalies but doesn't necessarily point to what caused them. You still need to do that work. The solution is reasonably easy to administer. They made some changes last year, adding a cloud-based monitoring solution that makes deploying and monitoring our endpoints easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"On-demand scanning is the most valuable feature. In addition, it's a fairly fluid product. It syncs back to the cloud and provides metrics. It's pretty intelligent."
"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 compliance capabilities of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps are quite extensive."
"The benefit you get is that you are able to monitor all your applications and control the data that goes out of those applications."
"Shadow IT discovery is the feature I like the most."
"The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows MCAS to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include live, up-to-date information, which provided real-time alerts, and the ability to delve into detailed metadata information."
"Defender for Cloud Apps has given us good visibility regarding what we've allowed in our environment until now. It helps us to know our inventory, understand what our customers are using, and steer them toward safer practices."
"The ability to stop attacks without having to detect or have a signature for the attack is the most valuable feature."
"The biggest feature is that it hides everything from your operating system that's running in-memory from anything to try to run against it. That's the most unique thing that's on the market. There's nothing else out there that's quite like that. That's a big selling point and why we went with it. It does exactly what the design does. If you can't find it, you can't execute against it."
"Morphisec's in-memory protection is probably the most valuable feature because it stops malicious activity from occurring. If something tries to install or act as a sleeper agent, Morphisec will detect and stop it."
"Morphisec also provides full visibility into security events for Microsoft Defender and Morphisec in one dashboard... in the single pane of glass provided by Morphisec, it's all right there at your fingertips: easy to access and easy to understand. And if you choose to go down further to know everything from the process to the hash behind it, you can."
"Before we got Morphisec we evaluated solutions that claim to do similar things, and we have done additional evaluations since we started using it, but I don't think anything can truly touch what Morphisec does and the way it does it."
"All the alerts are on the dashboard, which is quite simple and useful for us. You can easily check all the alerts that are being blocked or allowed, or whatever the action is. You can easily see that and you can take the necessary actions. You can add a PowerShell extension or any activities for blocking at your network level or for endpoints."
"We haven't had any cybersecurity incidents on machines running Morphisec."
"Morphisec is a straightforward solution that is efficient and very stable."
 

Cons

"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 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."
"They need to improve the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules."
"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."
"MCAS doesn't have many reporting capabilities, and it's really an operational nightmare to get all these things done at this point in time by using MCAS."
"Since implementing this solution, we have had more support calls regarding false positives."
"If this solution were more robust then it would be much more useful."
"The documentation could be improved as it is not updated immediately when Microsoft makes changes. Users must wait a few weeks for the changes to be reflected in the documentation."
"It would be useful for them if they had some kind of network discovery."
"Overall, I don't know 100% if it's increasing our security posture, but it does give us a nice peace of mind."
"From a company standpoint, a little more interaction with the customers throughout the year might be beneficial. I would like check-ins from the Morphisec account executives about any type of Morphisec news as well as a bit more interaction with customers throughout the year to know if anything new is coming out with Morphisec, e.g., what they are working on in regards to their development roadmap. We tend not to get that up until the time that we go for a yearly renewal. So, we end up talking to people from Morphisec once a year, but it is usually at renewal time."
"Morphisec is a venture startup. They are still early in their growth stage. They need to get mature on their customer support and on how they interface with system tools. For example, they need to get multifactor in place and an API for the major multi-factor systems, e.g., Okta, Duo, Ping, and Microsoft. They don't have them built in yet. They are working on them. It is just not there yet. Also, their stability, customer support, and processes need improvement, which is just part of maturity."
"We started in the Linux platform and we deployed to Linux. The licensing of that has been confusing between Linux licensing and Windows licensing."
"The weakest point of this product is how difficult it is to understand the reasons for an alert."
"We sometimes have to depend on the support team to know what action we should take."
"The weakest point of this product is how difficult it is to understand the reasons for an alert. This is a problem because it is hard to determine whether an attack is real or not."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly."
"The pricing is a little bit high but right now, we are okay with it because of the compatibility with Office 365, Teams, and Azure AD."
"The product's pricing seems fair."
"The E5 license offers everything bundled. People are moving to Microsoft because you buy one license and it gives you everything."
"The pricing is fair."
"I'm not totally involved in the pricing part, but I think its pricing is quite aggressive, and its price is quite similar to Netskope. Netskope has separate licensing fees or additional charges if you want to monitor certain SaaS services, whereas, with MCAS, you get 5,000 applications with their Office 365. It is all bundled, and there's no cost for using that. You only have the operational costs. In the country I am in, it is a bit difficult to get people with the required skill sets."
"Its pricing is on the higher side. Its price is definitely very high for a small-scale company. As an enterprise client, we do get benefits from Microsoft. We get a discounted price because of the number of users we have in our company. We have a premier package, and with that, we do get a lot of discounts. There are no additional costs. It only comes in the top-tier packages. Generally, the top-tier license is the best license that you can get for your organization. If you want, you can buy it separately, but that's not a good idea."
"Microsoft offers bundle discounts and a pay-as-you-go option."
"Morphisec is reasonably priced because our parent company's other subsidiaries use different products like CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is four or five times more expensive than Morphisec. The competitive pricing saves us money in our overall security stack."
"It is a little bit more expensive than other security products that we use, but it does provide us good protection. So, it is a trade-off."
"It does not have multi-tenants. If South Africa wants to show only the machines that they have, they need their own cloud incidence. It is not possible to have that in a single cloud incidence with multiple tenants in it, instead you need to have multiple cloud incidences. Then, if you have that, it will be more expensive. However, they are going to change that, which is good."
"We are still using a separate tool. I know for our 600 or I think we're actually licensed for up to 700 users, it runs me 23 or $24,000 a year. When you're talking to that many users plus servers being protected, that's well worth the investment for that dollar amount."
"Our licensing is tied into our contract. Because we have a long-term contract, our pricing is a little bit lower. It is per year, so we don't get charged per endpoint, but we do have a cap. Our cap is 80 endpoints. If we were to go over 80, when we renewed our contract, which is not until three years are over. Then, they would reevaluate, and say, "Well, you have more than 80 devices active right now. This is going to be the price change." They know that we are installing and replacing computers, so the numbers will be all over the place depending on whether you archive or don't archive, which is the reason why we just have to keep up on that stuff."
"It is an annual subscription basis per device. For the devices that we have in scope right now, it is about $25,000 a year."
"Licenses are per endpoint, and that's true for the cloud version as well. The only difference is that there is a little extra charge for the cloud version."
"Compared to their competitors, the price of Morphisec is not that high. You can easily deploy it on a large-scale or small-scale network."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Outsourcing Company
16%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise8
 

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 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 needs improvement with Microsoft Cloud App Security?
The fidelity of the signal in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has been a challenge in some areas. There have been instances where the alerts generated have been false positives. A lot of work has...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
Morphisec, Morphisec Moving Target Defense
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Lenovo/Motorola, TruGreen, Covenant Health, Citizens Medical Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Morphisec and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.