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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Netskope vs Skyhigh Security comparison

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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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.7
iboss offers significant ROI by saving bandwidth and enhancing security, despite increased costs from cloud migration and device pricing.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps enhances security, reduces costs, and optimizes resources with seamless integration and proactive monitoring.
Sentiment score
8.4
Netskope offers cost-effective cloud security with significant savings, ease of use, and high returns, outperforming Zscaler financially.
Sentiment score
4.8
Skyhigh Security boosts ROI by improving efficiency, reducing maintenance, streamlining analysis, enhancing visibility, and cutting time significantly.
With iboss, whenever you turn on your laptop, the iboss agent automatically connects to the iboss cloud, enforcing all security policies. So with respect to the security side, it strengthens measures.
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I have seen some cost effectiveness from iboss; it has reduced certain support requirements, making it a more hands-off solution.
Managing Director
The biggest return on investment so far has been visibility, knowing what we have in our environment.
Cloud and data protection engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
As a small team, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps allowed us to manage systems with just one or two people.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
We have at least saved the costs we had from the Netskope solution this year.
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
I have seen a return on investment with Netskope as we saved a lot of time by catching all the threats and thoroughly understanding the cases.
At Vertica, Apj Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
With Skyhigh Security, that same analysis could often be reduced to around ten minutes
Sales Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
By moving to having more in the cloud, their cloud is automatically updated as part of a SaaS solution, which reduces the responsibility on the company to do the updates themselves.
Manager - Cyber Security at a educational organization with 1-10 employees
I have seen a positive return on investment mainly through improved operational efficiency, better cloud visibility, and stronger governance across SaaS environments.
Cyber Security Lead at Johnson and Johnson
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.8
Iboss support is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, with some concerns about communication but generally favorable reviews.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps support has mixed reviews, with high technical proficiency but inconsistent responsiveness and communication delays.
Sentiment score
7.1
Netskope's customer service is generally rated good to very good, with mixed feedback on response times and escalation speed.
Sentiment score
7.3
Skyhigh Security's customer service is highly rated, but technical support experiences vary, with some delays and inconsistencies noted.
They are very fast, responsive, and knowledgeable.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
The quality of the support is fantastic.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
We had promising discussions about resolving these issues, but no real action followed.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Their customer service is pretty good, but it's frustrating to go through three or four channels before reaching the right person.
Cloud and data protection engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
The support is excellent, and the speed of response is commendable.
Solutions Architect at a university with 51-200 employees
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.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
They align the right people at the right time to solve our problems, providing focused support.
Chief Information Security Officer at Jubil
Most of the time, being fairly IT-savvy means most issues can be resolved internally, and when a ticket is opened, it's for something really complicated.
Systems administrator at PERSAN S.A.
The support team is excellent, and I would rate them nine out of ten.
Cyber security consultant at L&T Technology Services
We can know the case severity such as P1, P2, or P3, allowing easy interaction from the customer support side.
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
Weekly setup calls are conducted with all clients to discuss ongoing issues and resolutions.
Deputy Manager at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
There is also some really good diagnostic information built into their web gateways that they deploy on-premise if you want to do hybrid, so they get a lot of information before you even know something might be wrong.
Manager - Cyber Security at a educational organization with 1-10 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Iboss efficiently scales to meet growing resource demands, supporting large user bases with robust support and adaptable infrastructure.
Sentiment score
7.5
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers scalable, cloud-native security but may require extra resources for large-scale policy management.
Sentiment score
7.7
Netskope is adaptable and flexible, excelling in scalability for medium to large organizations with strong infrastructure support.
Sentiment score
6.5
Skyhigh Security's scalable infrastructure and cloud-auto-scaling effectively support diverse business needs, despite some documentation concerns.
They are also able to meet on-demand requirements based on your contract with them, and can easily provide adequate resources and scalability.
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I would rate it a nine out of ten for scalability.
If I start seeing sluggishness or anything like that, I just reach out to my rep, and they connect with their dev team, typically resolving it the same day.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
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.
Cloud and data protection engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very scalable, provided you have the right subscription.
Solutions Architect at a university with 51-200 employees
In my experience, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is good enough for small to medium businesses.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
They declare an SLA regarding delays, making it a solid solution.
Network Security Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
The solution is easy to scale for our use case and we have approximately 8,500 users working with it.
Chief Information Security Officer at Jubil
Scalability-wise, for monitoring cloud apps, Skyhigh Security is more scalable, and we never faced any scalability issues on the dashboards.
Cloud Operations Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
They have peering agreements with a lot of the major ISPs where their data centers are, which allows them to get a really good bandwidth allocation.
Manager - Cyber Security at a educational organization with 1-10 employees
The platform handled large enterprise environments reasonably well, including distributed users, multiple SaaS applications, and hybrid infrastructure scenarios.
Cyber Security Lead at Johnson and Johnson
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Iboss is generally stable with reliable support, despite initial deployment challenges, and is often praised for minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is stable and reliable, with minimal downtime and continuous improvements praised by users.
Sentiment score
7.9
Netskope is highly stable and reliable, with minor issues resolved swiftly, maintaining performance and user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
7.6
Skyhigh Security is stable and reliable, with past issues resolved and praised for its multi-location feature enhancing reliability.
It's been pretty solid; I've never had an outage with them, and if I ever had, it's only been once out of the seven years.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
We've experienced zero downtime.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device despite our ClearPass sending information to the iboss box.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps.
Head of Security Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
I would assess the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps as stable
Network Engineer at Apexon
My impression on the stability and reliability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that it is very stable.
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
Regarding pricing, Netskope is quite expensive, but when compared with other solutions, it's somehow justified because it has better categorization and more granular features regarding web protection, as it allows control of HTTP methods.
Systems administrator at PERSAN S.A.
Netskope has proven to be stable, which is reflected in my rating of nine out of ten.
Cyber security consultant at L&T Technology Services
We did not face any downtime on that site, so it is quite reliable.
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
If your primary location is down, you just get diverted to the other one.
Manager - Cyber Security at a educational organization with 1-10 employees
It has many gaps, so I think some customers take three months and up to six months for the deployment of Skyhigh Security.
Secure at ESCARE COLtd
 

Room For Improvement

Iboss struggles with Mac support, ISP integration in India, and needs improvements in security features and cloud integration.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps needs improvements in pricing, interface, integrations, alert precision, documentation, and multi-cloud support.
Users seek enhanced SaaS visibility, integration, features like identity protection, better pricing, support, policy management, and threat detection.
Skyhigh Security needs enhancements in performance, UI simplicity, API integration, support, reporting, troubleshooting tools, and cloud access control.
It is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
We also had a problem with a transition when we upgraded from one appliance of theirs to another, but their engineer lost a good deal of our data.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Our iboss subscription access should be more secure with an OTP or VPN etc.
For data loss prevention, it would be useful to be able to drill down into the kind of data being transferred over CloudApp.
Head of Security Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
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.
Network Engineer at Apexon
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps would benefit if Microsoft allows users to fine-tune false positives, enabling us to dismiss alerts or make adjustments so that such things don't trigger multiple times in the future.
Security delivery analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Specifically, the use of AI/ML for anomaly detection and dealing with signatureless advanced threats would be beneficial.
Senior Product Manager - Cyber Security for Middle East, Central Asia and Africa Region at Ivanti
There is a pressing need to expand this to 64,000 sessions.
Cyber security consultant at L&T Technology Services
It is important for the solution to correctly categorize websites as genuine or non-genuine, fitting them into the right category.
Chief Information Security Officer at Jubil
There is no API available.
Security automation specialist at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Skyhigh Security is quite simple, but if there is any improvement in the GUI, it will be quite easy for us because it looks a legacy interface.
Technical Associate Network Security at Valuepoint Systems
Skyhigh Security is an overall good solution for a larger enterprise.
Cloud Operations Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Iboss offers competitive, transparent pricing with valuable cloud solutions, appealing to enterprises for predictable budgeting and desired functionality.
Enterprise users find Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps affordable within bundles but expensive standalone, desiring more pricing transparency.
Netskope offers competitive pricing with significant value, generally including support, training, and is viable for enterprises seeking robust capabilities.
Skyhigh Security pricing is reasonable for enterprises, often complex, and includes support with multi-year agreements favored for savings.
It offers the same features you would get from a vendor that charges 250,000 British pounds for a fraction of the price.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
The following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs.
Network Administrator at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern.
Managing Director
The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is acceptable.
Solutions Architect at a university with 51-200 employees
My organization is currently revisiting pricing, but previously, the cost was a bit expensive, yet comparable to other solutions with similar functionalities and features.
Manager, Information Technology Security Compliance at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
It's not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive, placing it in the mid-level range.
IT Architect at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Netskope is cost-effective compared to similar solutions like Zscaler.
Senior Product Manager - Cyber Security for Middle East, Central Asia and Africa Region at Ivanti
The pricing and licensing was generally aligned with the number of users and the models, and the cost depends on the scope, but I think Skyhigh Security has great pricing for the market.
Sales Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Licensing can become complex depending on the number of users, integrations, data protection requirements, and other features.
Cyber Security Lead at Johnson and Johnson
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing indicates it is high, but it is negotiable.
Senior Manager, Risk at LTFS
 

Valuable Features

Iboss provides comprehensive cloud security with advanced features, enhancing data protection and management efficiency for network security.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers seamless integration, real-time threat detection, and robust security features for comprehensive cloud protection.
Netskope provides comprehensive cloud security with intuitive management, robust threat protection, and efficient real-time monitoring and deployment.
Skyhigh Security enhances security management with flexible remote access, scalable solutions, and comprehensive visibility without VPNs.
The solution's mental health function can detect if someone needs help.
Head of Cybersecurity at SES Water
It's given us a lot more visibility into our computer assets that may be infected with viruses and also shows us people who have unusually large uploads or might be engaging in high-risk activities, such as searches or going to sites not categorized by their web crawler.
Educational Technology Coordinator at a performing arts with 201-500 employees
iboss was the best solution for us because, no matter what domain you were in, everything is under a single pane of glass, which is exactly what we wanted.
Managing Director
It provides excellent suggestions and options for configuration; for example, it can track suspicious files getting uploaded to cloud resources on Azure based on their signatures, generating alerts for those files.
Security delivery analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The product recommends things that need to be blocked and allows for dynamic configuration, which cuts down on potential issues that might arise from going through lists and understanding what needs to be blocked.
Partner & Chief Executive Officer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
The ability to sanction unsanctioned apps using Secure Score benchmarking, included in Cloud, is also beneficial.
Head of Security Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Netskope is cloud-native, enabling differentiation of tenants in cloud applications, whether they are enterprise or personal, and provides control over shadow IT access.
Network Security Manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
The threat protection capabilities are beneficial, especially in reducing the load on email traffic by preventing phishing emails and providing malware protection from advanced threats.
Senior Product Manager - Cyber Security for Middle East, Central Asia and Africa Region at Ivanti
Having these functionalities integrated into one dashboard makes Netskope efficient and user-friendly.
Cyber security consultant at L&T Technology Services
Skyhigh Security dashboard helps monitor security threats, and it works well with very large enterprise environments.
Cloud Operations Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
By going through their Zero Trust interface, we effectively had single sign-on to the internal network remotely without a VPN, so it reduced the overhead and gave us faster access to the files.
Manager - Cyber Security at a educational organization with 1-10 employees
The hardware and cloud usability features help my team by providing easy scalability, which is the main advantage.
Senior Associate at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 4.4%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 5.5%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netskope is 13.1%, down from 14.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Skyhigh Security is 4.2%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Netskope13.1%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps5.5%
iboss4.4%
Skyhigh Security4.2%
Other72.8%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
Abdulrahman Muhammadi - PeerSpot reviewer
information Security and IT Manager at Discover Dollar Technologies Pvt Ltd.
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.
RP
At Vertica, Apj Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Increased security and threat detection save significant time
The best features that Netskope offers in my experience include SSC for secure services, CASB which helps to protect from different attacks, SWG feature, cloud firewall, SDPN which helps to create an instant connection, and remote browser isolation which isolates uncategorized and risky websites. Compared to Checkpoint as SaaS, the catch rate of Netskope was very high and the system consumption rate such as RAM, ROM, and memory consumption for Netskope was less compared to Checkpoint SaaS. Netskope has positively impacted our organization by securing all our systems, and the response time is also less, with a high catch rate for any incident.
Felipe Antoniazzi - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber Security Lead at Johnson and Johnson
Centralized cloud visibility has strengthened governance but still needs smoother policy tuning
Skyhigh Security is, in my view, a strong platform. Of course, there are still areas where the user experience and operational workflows could be improved. One area for improvement is simplifying the initial deployment and policy tuning process. In large enterprise environments, configuring CASB and DLP policies across multiple SaaS platforms can become complex and time-consuming, especially when trying to balance security controls with user productivity. Another improvement in my view is related to the platform improving dashboard usability and investigation workflows. While the amount of data and visibility is valuable, some reporting and navigation areas can feel less intuitive than newer cloud-native security platforms. Another improvement opportunity, in my view, is alert tuning and noise reduction. Many security monitoring solutions require achieving the right balance between visibility and excessive alerting through continuous optimization. More intelligent prioritization and contextual risk scoring could help reduce analyst fatigue.
report
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899,204 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise47
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...
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-nat...
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 a...
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 i...
Which is better, Zscaler internet access or Netsckope CASB?
We researched Netskope but ultimately chose Zscaler. Netskope is a cloud access security broker that helps identify ...
What needs improvement with Netskope CASB?
Netskope's pricing is very high compared to other vendors, and compared to Zscaler, Netskope has less capability.
What needs improvement with McAfee Web Gateway?
Skyhigh Security is, in my view, a strong platform. Of course, there are still areas where the user experience and op...
What is your primary use case for McAfee Web Gateway?
My main use case for Skyhigh Security is primarily for CASB functionality, SaaS security visibility, cloud data prote...
What advice do you have for others considering McAfee Web Gateway?
My main advice would be to spend enough time planning governance, policy design, and operational workflows before ena...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
Netskope CASB
McAfee MVISION Cloud, McAfee MVISION Unified Cloud Edge, McAfee Web Gateway, McAfee MVISION CNAPP, and Skyhigh Networks, McAfee Web Gateway
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
NetApp, Genomic Health, Caterpillar, Apollo, Pandora, Continental Resources, Fractal, infinera, Tesla
Western Union.Aetna.DirecTV.Adventist.Equinix.Perrigo.Goodyear.HP.Cargill.Sony.Bank of the West.Prudential.
Find out what your peers are saying about Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Netskope and others in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB). Updated: June 2026.
899,204 professionals have used our research since 2012.