Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection comparison

Microsoft and SonicWall are both solutions in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category. Microsoft is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.5, while SonicWall is ranked #23 with an average rating of 9.0. Microsoft holds a 1.8% mindshare in ATP, compared to SonicWall’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of SonicWall users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Defender for Clou...

Read 42 Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps reviews

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367 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SonicWall Capture Advanced ...

Read 9 SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection reviews

436 Views
410 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Defender for Clou...

SonicWall Capture Advanced ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 1, 2024

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection are competing in the cybersecurity solutions category, focusing on threat detection and management. SonicWall holds an advantage due to its superior features, while Microsoft Defender offers more favorable pricing and robust support, balancing its overall value proposition.

Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps stands out with integrated threat protection, offering comprehensive visibility across various cloud services, seamless integration with Microsoft ecosystems, and identity and posture management. SonicWall Capture ATP excels in advanced threat detection through multiple engine layers, optimizing network traffic for specific applications, and providing robust firewall solutions for zero-day threat protection.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Defender could enhance its delay in incident detection and integration with third-party applications. Moreover, improving internal data consistency and simplifying setup for less technical users would benefit its offerings. SonicWall Capture ATP might improve its customer service accessibility, refine its configuration process for cost-effective scalability, and engage more in competitive pricing strategies.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender offers straightforward deployment with seamless integration into existing Microsoft ecosystems, known for its highly supportive customer service. SonicWall Capture ATP's deployment is more customizable, accommodating diverse IT infrastructures but may require substantial initial configuration. Its customer service is perceived as less accessible in comparison to Microsoft.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is competitively priced, providing significant value for organizations already invested in Microsoft's suite of products, resulting in strong ROI potential without additional costs. On the other hand, SonicWall Capture ATP presents higher setup costs but justifies them with its advanced security capabilities, appealing to security-conscious enterprises. The primary distinction between the two is Microsoft's affordability and substantial ROI contrasting SonicWall's upfront investment aligned with its promise of advanced security.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection

December 2025

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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)

14th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)

SonicWall Capture Advanced ...

Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

23rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

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 SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection is 1.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps	1.8%
SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection	1.6%
Other	96.6%

Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)

Featured Reviews

Frank Van Der Spek

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.

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Mohamed Fouad

Cybersecurity Team Leader at EMAK For Integrated Solutions

Advanced sandboxing has protected our environment and stops unknown threats in real time

The most capable feature of SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection is the accurate verdict of the file, and I have used many other types of sandboxing, but using SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection is truly helpful for our organization. In my experience, the best features SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection offers include accuracy for the submitted files, and one of the most valued features is its usability, as it is so usable and helpful to integrate with other solutions, making it a fantastic product overall. It is easy to set up and connect SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection with other solutions, as it can be integrated with many products, supporting real-time memory inspection, rapid signature deployment, broad file type support, and block until verdict capability, along with flexible configuration, while providing comprehensive reporting. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection supports sandbox evasion techniques, which is important since sophisticated malware increases the evasion capability to detect and deceive sandboxing environments. SonicWall employs deception techniques simulating user interaction or fake high volume targets to determine when custom malware can still potentially bypass detection through environment-aware code. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection positively impacts our organization by helping us stop advanced persistent threats, as we have defined our targeted adversaries and increased security for our organization.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is its policy implementation."

"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is to stop shadow IT."

"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."

"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."

"Everything from Microsoft is integrated. You receive regular reports on them all. You can push your reports, logs, and security alerts, which are all integrated. It is crucial that these solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment."

"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."

"There are a lot of features with benefits, including discovery, investigation, and putting controls around things. You can't say that you like the investigation part but not the discovery. Everything is correlated; that's how the tool works."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps pros

"Provides good protection and security."

"The stability of the solution is good. We haven't had any breaches or crashes. It's been very stable for us."

"In my experience, the best features SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection offers include accuracy for the submitted files, and one of the most valued features is its usability, as it is so usable and helpful to integrate with other solutions, making it a fantastic product overall."

"I like this setup for a firewall. You can set things up very easily and you can automate items as well. It's a very robust firewall solution for enterprise as well as small businesses."

"We get alert messages whenever there is a new threat. We are notified at the firewall level that things are blocked, which keeps us in our comfort zone."

"They have a large database of commonly known things that they can catch automatically, then they have anything which is questionable go to the sandbox and be examined there before going into our network."

"The reporting that you get from it is the most valuable feature. You can see it via the appliance itself, and also via the MySonicWall account for the registered device. You are able to select the file if it's malicious, and you can select it in the reporting and see what triggered it, and things like that. I found that to be quite useful."

"We use it for protection against viruses and ransomware attacks."

More SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection pros

Cons

"There have been instances where the alerts generated have been false positives."

"There are challenges with detection and there are challenges with false-positive rates."

"In the future, I would like to see more plug-and-play capabilities that use AI to tell you what needs to be done. It would be helpful if it scanned our devices and made security suggestions, on a configuration basis."

"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."

"It doesn't actually decrease the time to respond. This has been an issue with Microsoft recently. Sometimes, there is a delay when it comes to getting an alert policy email... Sometimes it takes two or three hours for that email to be sent."

"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."

"Licensing cost is a significant concern. With Defender Plan 1, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comes with a pay-per-use model."

"The technical support team has room for improvement."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps cons

"The setup needs improvement. It needs to be made more user-friendly."

"I would say the solution needs a much simpler user interface, but the functionality of the firewall is quite extensive. You need the user interface to be that way. However, if there was a way to make the user interface a little easier, that would be great."

"Could provide online training to allow customers to learn more about the product."

"If anything at all, it would be some very minor updates that need to be done, but in terms of changes, nothing comes to mind."

"It does fare well against enterprise products."

"Having an on-premise solution as well would be an option for some people, but they'll want to use a cloud solution for their sandboxing. Certain sites would want to keep all the checks done on an on-premise appliance. All the checking, rather than sending that up into a cloud engine."

"SonicWall had a recent layoff. This is a concern for us, because now we are missing the local presence from both the engineering and sales side."

"SonicWall should promote their roadmap and improve their marketing to customers."

More SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."

"The E5 license offers everything bundled. People are moving to Microsoft because you buy one license and it gives you everything."

"The product's pricing seems fair."

"Microsoft offers bundle discounts and a pay-as-you-go option."

"We are an MST and we do not pay for the solution. However, the price of the solution could be better."

"The cost could be improved when you need to pay for anything. For example, refreshing files takes time to load, though it may be my Internet. To improve the refresh time, Microsoft says that we need to pay for a Premium license, and I don't like paying for things that help make a solution better."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps pricing and cost advice

"It's thirty dollars per user and we have 30 users."

"We get our value for our money."

"When you compare it with other solutions, they are cheaper and more economical."

"The best deal from SonicWall is to buy the HA pair. When you buy the initial one, you receive the second one at a significant discount. If there is an event and something happens to one firewall, then you have the second firewall to roll into. For the price, it's pretty to tough to beat and not a lot of other firewall vendors offer it. You battle for a discount on both. Where with SonicWall, if you buy one, the second one is at half price. It's pretty straightforward."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	19

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	3

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

Zscaler Internet Access vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco Umbrella vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 15% of the time

Netskope vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 11% of the time

Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Competitors

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 vs SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection

Compared 38% of the time

Fortinet FortiSandbox vs SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection

Compared 34% of the time

Palo Alto Networks WildFire vs SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection

Compared 28% of the time

More SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps

December 2025

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps report

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps product report

Buyer's Guide

SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection

December 2025

SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection report

Download SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection product report

Also Known As

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is a comprehensive security solution that provides protection for cloud-based applications and services. It offers real-time threat detection and response, as well as advanced analytics and reporting capabilities. With Defender for Cloud Apps, organizations can ensure the security of their cloud environments and safeguard against cyber threats. Whether you're running SaaS applications, IaaS workloads, or PaaS services, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps can help you secure your cloud environment and protect your business from cyber threats.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Benefits:

Provides comprehensive security for cloud applications
Integrates with other Microsoft security tools
Easy to use and deploy
Provides real-time threat detection and response
Strong protection against phishing attacks and other common threats
Highly customizable to meet specific needs of different organizations

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Use Cases:

Governance, authentication, security, and compliance.
Detects shadow IT and anomalous user behavior
Controls access to applications
Provides auditing and filtering setups
Used for end-user compute devices, file monitoring, user investigation, and activity
Used for data governance, threat detection, and getting visibility over cloud applications
Used to identify information about applications beyond organizational boundaries
Prevent exfiltration and data filtration of corporate data
Used to deal with spam emails and detect shadow IT

Reviews from Real Users

Ram-Krish, Cloud Security & Governance at a financial services firm, says that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need".

PeerSpot user, Senior Cloud & Security Consultant at a tech services, writes that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps "Great for monitoring user activity and protecting data while integrating well with other applications".

Simon Burgess,Infrastructure Engineer at SBITSC, states that Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is "A fluid, intelligent product for great visibility, centralized management, and increased uptime".

Microsoft

SonicWall Capture, a cloud based service available with SonicWall firewalls, revolutionizes advanced threat detection and sandboxing with a multi-engine approach to stopping unknown and zero-day attacks at the gateway, and with automated remediation. Customers benefit from high security effectiveness, fast response times and reduced total cost of ownership.

SonicWall

Sample Customers

Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.

Wonder Cement, Foster Clark Products

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection

December 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. SonicWall Capture Advanced Threat Protection and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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