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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Veritas Alta SaaS Protection 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)
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (13th)
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
28th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (11th), SaaS Management Platforms (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
 

Featured Reviews

Jagadeesh Gunasekaran - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves us time, has good visibility, and a single dashboard
The solution is user-friendly and provides great visibility into threats. There are easy options available for specific workflow inspections. We can also get support by going through the Microsoft documentation, which is straightforward. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us prioritize threats across our enterprise. It covers us from a compliance perspective and protects our organization's data. Data protection is a very important aspect of any new organization, as we need to protect our data from both external attacks and insider threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us monitor for abnormal activity by insiders, which is one of the most important access points for attackers today. Additionally, the different cloud apps that Defender for Cloud Apps supports provide us with much more visibility into potential threats and activities on the internet. We have integrated Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps alerts with Sentinel. The integration is straightforward. We can find the configuration details on Microsoft's official documentation website. If we are familiar with how Microsoft products work, we will be able to follow the instructions clearly. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Sentinel work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment. Our integrated Microsoft solutions provide comprehensive threat protection, covering most of the tactics and techniques relevant to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Sentinel allows us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. When implementing an SIEM solution, there are always prerequisites such as Active Directory logs, security logs, firewall logs, and DNS logs. These are important logs that need to be ingested into the environment. Sentinel has many third-party connectors available that make integrations straightforward. Microsoft provides the configuration details in the Sentinel platform. It is important to integrate all relevant log sources into the SIEM solution so that we can detect and be alerted to any type of threat factor, whether it is from an internal or external source. Integrating third-party solutions into the platform requires a separate configuration, but Microsoft provides the necessary information. However, we need to have the appropriate permissions to execute these setups. Sentinel provides a centralized dashboard that covers threat management and configuration. It gives us complete insight into what entities are accessing, as well as full details for investigation. We can see how the alerts and threats are relevant to suspicious activities, whether they are related to malicious IP addresses, suspicious ASHAs, or any other indicators of compromise. All of this relevant data can be seen in a single pane. Recently, Microsoft introduced a new investigation experience in a single pane. This means that we can now get a lot of details in a single pane, without having to go there and execute a query. There are a lot of new insights being developed in the Sentinel platform these days. It has software intelligence. They recently introduced Microsoft Defender Threat Intelligence, which covers almost all IOCs. This protects organizational assets from threats and suspicious traffic associated with IOCs. If a match is found, alerts are generated. This is a very interesting feature. Another great feature is automation and logic apps. We can create a number of operations, such as posting in a team's channel if a severe incident occurs or sending an email notification. There are many operations available, so we can automate a lot of tasks. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps us stay compliant. It has predefined mechanisms in place to prevent attacks. For example, if an external user tries to access our SharePoint folders or files, an attack will be blocked. This is why it is important to give appropriate access to guest users. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has many features and benefits. It provides a number of policies that can be configured to meet the specific needs of our security team. These policies can be used to customize cloud applications so that only authorized users can access them and perform operations that benefit the organization. In terms of safety and security, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is top-notch. Using the solution's automation features, we can suppress false positive alerts. We can also close alerts, lower their severity from "high" to "low" or "informational," or close them immediately with the appropriate commands. This will depend on the configuration automation rule and the perspective from which we are testing. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps provides a single console. We are also provided with Microsoft templates to enable workbooks instantly. Alternatively, we can build our own customized workbooks to provide better insights and improve our SOC efficiency and overall performance. Consolidating all of our security data into one dashboard has saved our security operations team a significant amount of time. From an analyst's perspective, it is now much easier to correlate events, investigate alerts, and visualize specific entities. For example, an analyst can quickly see all of the alerts associated with a particular IP address, or they can view all of the activity for a specific entity over the past 24 hours or 7 days. This level of detail and insight would not be possible if our data were siloed in multiple dashboards. The single dashboard saves our operations approximately 20 hours per week by eliminating the need to access multiple consoles and tabs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps threat intelligence can help us prepare for potential threats before they happen. However, it depends on how we develop the policies for the database to block or ignore things in our environment.
SunilPanigrahi - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution with good duplication capabilities and fair pricing
The duplication is the solution's most valuable feature The backup reports and the dashboard need improvement.  I've been using the solution for five years. The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any problems over the past five years of use. Scalability is fine. We keep adding different…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very easy to install and it includes the Intune portal from Microsoft where I can control all the devices from one place."
"One of the most valuable features is auditing. Some of the other protection services have issues with auditing. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has an excellent auditing technique that helps us avoid the risk of filtering or information loss. You can use different tools to guarantee these things. It allows you to conduct an in-depth exploration of applications, users, and files that are harmful or suspicious. You can also enhance your security setup by creating personalized rules or policies that help you better control traffic in the cloud."
"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."
"Shadow IT discovery is the feature I like the most."
"The most effective features for data protection are data loss prevention (DLP) and data classification."
"Threat detection is its key feature, and that's why we use this tool. It gives an alert if a PC is attacked or there is any kind of anomaly, such as there is a spike in sending emails or we see an unauthorized website being accessed. So, it keeps us on our toes. We get to know that there is something wrong, and we can isolate the user and find any issues with it. So, threat detection is very robust in this tool."
"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."
"I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and the ease of configuration."
"I think the most important feature is the ability of SaaS Backup to cover all modules proposed by Office 365, because competing solutions don't cover the total scope."
"It's a good solution. It's pretty stable."
"The solution is stable; I haven't experienced any bugs or glitches on it."
"The most valuable feature is that it is simple to use."
"The duplication is the solution's most valuable feature."
"he most valuable feature is that it's not so intrusive with computer resources."
"It's very comprehensive. It's one of the first brands to appear in its field."
 

Cons

"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
"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."
"Defender for Cloud Apps could come with more configured policies out of the box. Also, integration could be easier. Integration is moderately difficult because Microsoft hasn't developed a solution that unifies device onboarding and management. You have to use Intune to manage devices and Defender for Endpoint to enforce policies. They need to fix their integration, but I believe they will straighten it out by the end of the year."
"This service would be better if it had a separate license, only for this service, that could be used to track usage."
"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."
"The technical support team has room for improvement."
"Currently, reporting is not very straightforward and it needs to be enhanced. Specific reports are not included and you need to run a query, drill down, and then export it and share it. I would love to have reports with more fine-tuning or granularity, and more predefined reports."
"There are challenges with detection and there are challenges with false-positive rates."
"In the future, we would like to see support for virtualized machines."
"The go-between is a Veritas partner, so the customer support was not that good. The solution is fine except when there is a purchasing crisis where you have to remake the ecosystem. It causes a lot of issues. The support was a problem, but we're okay with it as long as we have someone to communicate with."
"The tool can be improved in terms of maintainability and flexibility, especially as companies grow larger. In these aspects, I feel Veeam is better for cloud and operational purposes."
"The implementation could be improved. The server setup is very easy, but some specific client implementation, for example, Oracle or SQL servers, are a little bit complicated. they should offer a bit more assistance with the setup for these particular items."
"Currently, it isn't possible to use anything other than Veritas cloud to back up to. I think today it's important to cover the three major cloud provider: GCP, Azure and AWS."
"Licensing has been a struggle. It went from bronze, silver to gold. Licensing needs more sophistication. It has features that are sold as separate add-ons."
"The solution does lack a lot of features, and we're considering switching."
"The usability of the solution isn't the best."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly."
"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."
"It has pretty good pricing."
"We have an educational licensing agreement. It's a customer agreement for multiple years."
"It has fair pricing. You pay for what you get. As far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"The program is quite expensive."
"This solution is not cheap and not expensive but priced in the mid-range."
"The tool is expensive compared to Veeam."
"I would rate this solution's pricing as five out of five."
"SaaS Backup isn't the most expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
The pricing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is acceptable. If a product is of high quality, it justifies the expense.
What needs improvement with Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
The tool can be improved in terms of maintainability and flexibility, especially as companies grow larger. In these aspects, I feel Veeam is better for cloud and operational purposes.
What is your primary use case for Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is good for cloud backups and has many integration features. It works well in a hybrid model.
 

Also Known As

MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
SaaS Backup
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Veritas Alta SaaS Protection and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.