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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Palo Alto Networks WildFire 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
7.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps enhances security and efficiency, offering significant ROI with up to 60% savings and streamlined operations.
Sentiment score
6.5
Palo Alto Networks WildFire provides cost-effective, centralized threat management, reducing security costs and improving efficiency in high-threat environments.
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
The service generates a low rate of false positives, reducing the overhead of managing false positive events.
Presale Engineer at Westcon-Comstor
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps support is praised for its responsiveness, though some users experience delays and resource access challenges.
Sentiment score
7.0
Palo Alto Networks WildFire's support is responsive and expert but varies in availability and response time, especially for smaller companies.
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
There is a lack of SLA adherence, and third-party partners do not provide prompt responses.
Technical Superintendent at Indian Institute Of Technology, Patna
The service response times are aligned with standards, responding within a few hours based on the problem's criticality.
Presale Engineer at Westcon-Comstor
The support is quite difficult to access promptly.
Content Specialist at PeerSpot
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers scalable, seamless integration, and reliable management for organizations of all sizes and environments.
Sentiment score
8.2
Palo Alto Networks WildFire efficiently scales for diverse environments, supporting thousands of users while integrating well with security modules.
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
Wildfire is highly scalable.
Technical Superintendent at Indian Institute Of Technology, Patna
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is scalable, and I give it a nine for scalability.
Content Specialist at PeerSpot
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is highly stable, reliable, and maintains performance with minor, swiftly resolved incidents.
Sentiment score
8.5
Palo Alto Networks WildFire is highly rated for reliability, seamless integration, and effective network security performance without disruptions.
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
It performs filtering, malware blocking, and scanning.
Engineer at Taalumgroup
The solution is scalable and stable.
Technical Manager at PSR
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps seeks enhanced pricing, integration, user interface, automation, and multi-cloud support, while improving insights and management.
WildFire needs improvements in integration, user-friendliness, and pricing, along with better support, automation, and global availability.
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
The dashboard should provide better visibility, especially in showing how many files are sent to Wildfire and their findings.
Technical Superintendent at Indian Institute Of Technology, Patna
It is a very good product.
Engineer at Taalumgroup
The support could be improved, as it takes a while to get assistance from the vendors.
Content Specialist at PeerSpot
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is seen as cost-effective for enterprises within Microsoft ecosystems, despite standalone pricing concerns.
Palo Alto WildFire offers advanced threat protection, appealing to enterprises despite its high cost, potentially deterring smaller organizations.
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
I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of affordability.
Presale Engineer at Westcon-Comstor
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps integrates well, offering threat detection, management ease, shadow IT discovery, and robust security enhancements.
Palo Alto Networks WildFire automates threat analysis, excels in sandboxing, and offers robust security with cloud-based, user-friendly features.
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
Integrating Palo Alto Networks WildFire with various security protocols similar to a firewall has significantly improved the overall threat detection capabilities in our organization.
Content Specialist at PeerSpot
The most valuable feature of Wildfire is its sandboxing capability for examining suspicious files or locations.
Technical Superintendent at Indian Institute Of Technology, Patna
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
Palo Alto Networks WildFire
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 1.8%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Palo Alto Networks WildFire is 7.6%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Palo Alto Networks WildFire7.6%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps1.8%
Other90.6%
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.
RK
Engineer at Taalumgroup
Achieve effective threat prevention and seamless integration with powerful technical support
Integration with third-party products is possible. For example, connecting a mail gateway with Palo Alto Networks WildFire allows them to handle prevention. Palo Alto Networks WildFire is a cloud-based sandboxing solution. The firewall is connected to WildFire, and XDR performs sandboxing from the cloud. WildFire conducts malware scanning and emulation, then informs the firewall to block threats based on the response. It also generates reports regarding malware and other issues. The sandboxing process involves sending sample files to the cloud for scanning, checking file authenticity, certificates, and detecting malicious code. WildFire performs multiple checks and informs the XDR agent about file status. This automatic process occurs within minutes or seconds. For unknown or suspicious files, immediate blocking occurs while samples are sent to WildFire for identification. I rate Palo Alto Networks WildFire a 9 out of 10.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) solutions are best for your needs.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user206346 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Consultant at Webernetz.net - Network Security Consulting
Mar 11, 2015
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto Networks
Cisco ASA vs. Palo Alto: Management Goodies You often have comparisons of both firewalls concerning security components. Of course, a firewall must block attacks, scan for viruses, build VPNs, etc. However, in this post I am discussing the advantages and disadvantages from both vendors concerning…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise29
 

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...
How does Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall compare with Palo Alto Networks Wildfire?
The Cisco Firepower NGFW Firewall is a very powerful and very complex piece of anti-viral software. When one considers that fact, it is all the more impressive that the setup is a fairly straightf...
Which is better - Wildfire or FortiGate?
FortiGate has a lot going for it and I consider it to be the best, most user-friendly firewall out there. What I like the most about it is that it has an attractive web dashboard with very easy nav...
How does Cisco ASA Firewall compare with Palo Alto's WildFire?
When looking to change our ASA Firewall, we looked into Palo Alto’s WildFire. It works especially in preventing advanced malware and zero-day exploits with real-time intelligence. The sandbox featu...
 

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.
Novamedia, Nexon Asia Pacific, Lenovo, Samsonite, IOOF, Sinogrid, SanDisk Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Palo Alto Networks WildFire and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.