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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Red Canary comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 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
8.5
Red Canary improved security ROI by efficiently detecting threats, reducing incident response times, and offering detailed alerts and cost savings.
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.
 

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
8.5
Red Canary's customer service is excellent, offering swift support with on-call availability and monthly alert discussions.
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.
In emergencies, there is an on-call person available to resolve issues immediately.
 

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
6.4
Red Canary excels in scalability, seamlessly managing large data sets, integrating with systems, and maintaining performance in growing operations.
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.
 

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
8.2
Red Canary is praised for robust reliability and consistent performance, with users reporting smooth, glitch-free operation.
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.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps could improve integration, pricing, support, reporting, automation, alerts, and overall user experience across multi-cloud environments.
Red Canary can improve by offering on-premise options, expanding language support, enhancing firewall integration, and addressing pricing concerns.
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.
Red Canary's pricing spectrum may not be ideal for smaller financial institutions.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is cost-effective within Microsoft 365 bundles, especially for large organizations with discounts available.
Red Canary's pricing, at $100 per device, is seen as fair but users desire lower costs, ideally $50.
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.
The services are higher priced.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps offers integration, threat detection, and management, enhancing security with comprehensive visibility and proactive assessment.
Red Canary offers seamless EDR integration, fast alerts, automation, threat detection, and supports compliance with key standards.
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.
Red Canary detects threats and attack patterns, allowing us to assess any significant damage caused to the banking environment, particularly if protected data has been damaged or corrupted.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
Red Canary
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
24th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (38th), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (14th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (16th)
 

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 Red Canary is 0.6%, up from 0.2% 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%
Red Canary0.6%
Other97.6%
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.
Sagar Shekhar - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source tool that offers great automation capabilities
Red Canary MDR generates a lot of output, so it would be good if, in the end, it generates a summary of all the previous attacks and what was the outcome of a single attack, especially so that it becomes easy for the user to see the summary and analyze the whole thing. In general, the solution currently fails to provide a summary to its users.
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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%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

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 needs improvement with Red Canary MDR?
Red Canary's pricing spectrum may not be ideal for smaller financial institutions.
What is your primary use case for Red Canary MDR?
We use Red Canary ( /products/red-canary-reviews ) to monitor incoming and outgoing traffic. For example, when we receive an alert that data from our internal IP address to an external IP address h...
 

Also Known As

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
Red Canary Managed Detection and Response (MDR)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
DuPont, Quanta Services, Microchip Technology, Hopkins Public Schools, Henny Penny, Schumacher Homes
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Red Canary and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.