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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)
14th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (11th)
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection
Ranking in Advanced Threat Protection (ATP)
26th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
SaaS Backup (20th), SaaS Management Platforms (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 1.9%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is 1.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps1.9%
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection1.5%
Other96.6%
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.
SG
Technical Manager at Rigor Systems Limited
Experience with offsite backup enhances data integrity and reduces on-premise reliance
One of the features of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection that customers are looking for is immutability. This is the most important feature. With the cloud, Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is actually in the cloud, which means they have unlimited space to do their backups. They can expand on a need-to-need basis. The automated recovery feature of Veritas Alta SaaS Protection makes the recovery much easier, as opposed to earlier methods where we were using scripts to do the restore. Currently, it's automated so you just do a click. You select the feature in a graphical interface, making it easy to use even for a newbie.

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 of this solution is its monitoring."
"The raw logs that come directly from Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps contain all the data I need, and the ability to track activities happening on cloud applications and the alerts provided is an interesting aspect."
"The product helps us with privileged identity management to control who has access to what and for how long."
"I like the alert policies because they are quite robust. It has some built-in templates that we can easily pick up. One of them is the alert for mass downloads, when a particular user is running a massive download on your SharePoint site."
"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."
"The solution is bundled with E3 and E5 licenses; that's the reason it's most commonly deployed, as it's part of the bundle and not a separate cost, and if your business requirements are relatively simple, it can get the job done."
"Shadow IT discovery is the feature I like the most."
"It is very easy to use, which is what we look for in these types of solutions."
"Some of the tool's best features include an enhanced dashboard and strong security features compared to native Veritas. Our environment is entirely automated."
"What I like most about Veritas SaaS Backup is that it is easy to work on and has compatible features."
"The most valuable features are the ease of administration and the ease of configuration."
"The solution's hardware appliance is very scalable and very useful."
"It's very comprehensive. It's one of the first brands to appear in its field."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"It is a new thing for Microsoft, and it still has a lot of room to improve."
"I would like for it to be available on Mac and for it to support all of the features of Microsoft financing products. It is really for Windows."
"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."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"They need to improve the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules. In the latest version, you can implement ASR rules, which are quite useful, but you have to enable those because if they're not enabled, they flag false positives. In the Defender portal, it logs a block for WMI processes and PowerShell. Apparently, it's because ASR rules are not configured. So, you generally have to enable them to exclude, for example, WMI queries or PowerShell because they have a habit of blocking your security scanners. It's a bit weird that they have to be enabled to be configured, and it's not the other way around."
"This service would be better if it had a separate license, only for this service, that could be used to track usage."
"I would like to see them include more features in the older licenses. There are some features that are not available, such as preventing or analyzing cloud attacks."
"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."
"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."
"The solution does lack a lot of features, and we're considering switching."
"The usability of the solution isn't the best."
"The go-between is a Veritas partner, so the customer support was not that good."
"Licensing has been a struggle."
"An area for improvement is the product's performance, especially how long it takes to do a job."
"The technical team wasn't very helpful."
"When you finish a project, the client should have the opportunity to browse the files rather than simply ending the contract."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be better and should be reconsidered."
"Microsoft offers bundle discounts and a pay-as-you-go option."
"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 pricing is a little bit high but right now, we are okay with it because of the compatibility with Office 365, Teams, and Azure AD."
"The product's pricing seems fair."
"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."
"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."
"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."
"The program is quite expensive."
"SaaS Backup isn't the most expensive solution."
"The tool is expensive compared to Veeam."
"I would rate this solution's pricing as five out of five."
"This solution is not cheap and not expensive but priced in the mid-range."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
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 Business10
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

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 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 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 instances where the alerts generated have been false positives. A lot of work has...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is slightly expensive, but they can do more on it. The exact figure for Veritas Alta SaaS Protection depends on the size of data being stored, the region, and the type ...
What needs improvement with Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
For Veritas Alta SaaS Protection, the only challenge is downtime and the impact of time synchronization whereby different customers are on different time zones, and Veritas Alta SaaS Protection is ...
What is your primary use case for Veritas Alto SaaS Protection?
For the customers that I'm dealing with, they are using Veritas Alta SaaS Protection for long-term retention and offline backups. This means they don't have to constrain their on-premise resources....
 

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: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.