Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Microsoft Entra Verified ID comparison

"The most valuable feature is the regulatory compliance aspect, where we utilize predefined initiatives like NIST. Alert management is another useful feature. Alerts are directly integrated with our email or DevOps board for easy viewing, allowing us to identify problem areas efficiently."

"The security policy is the most valuable feature for us. We can go into the environment settings and attach any globally recognized framework like ISO or any benchmark."

"The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available."

"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."

"It takes very little effort to integrate it. It also gives very good visibility into what exactly is happening."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has definitely helped us manage and secure our multi-cloud environment by providing ease of use."

"It's got a lot of great features."

"The most valuable features offer the latest threat detection and response capabilities."

"I would recommend this solution to others because it's simple enough to deploy."

"The most valuable features of the solution are mainly in the areas of security and auditing."

"I like the Microsoft Authenticator app since it comes with two-factor authentication."

"The authentication features of Microsoft Entra Verified ID are valuable. As an infrastructure professional, I appreciate the exceptional integration between on-premises Active Directory features and Entra ID."

"The MFA number matching feature effectively prevents unauthorized access by phishing bad actors who might obtain email credentials. This feature requires users to verify a number on their screen, ensuring they only approve genuine requests."

"For improvements, I'd like to see more use cases integrated with Microsoft Sentinel and support for multi-cloud environments beyond just Azure."

"We haven't experienced issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud for our company size of about five hundred people. However, I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises."

"For Kubernetes, I was using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). To see that whatever is getting deployed into AKS goes through the correct checks and balances in terms of affinities and other similar aspects and follows all the policies, we had to use a product called Stackrox. At a granular level, the built-in policies were good for Kubernetes, but to protect our containers from a coding point of view, we had to use a few other products. For example, from a programming point of view, we were using Checkmarx for static code analysis. For CIS compliance, there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, we had to use other plugins to see that the CIS benchmarks are compliant. There are CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes on AWS and GCP, but there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product. We ended up with two different dashboards. We had Azure Security Center, and we had Stackrox that had its own dashboard. The operations team and the security team had to look at two dashboards, and they couldn't get an integrated piece. That's a drawback of Azure Security Center. Azure Security Center should provide APIs so that we can integrate its dashboard within other enterprise dashboards, such as the PowerBI dashboard. We couldn't get through these aspects, and we ended up giving Reader security permission to too many people, which was okay to some extent, but when we had to administer the users for the Stackrox portal and Azure Security Center, it became painful."

"However, some Copilot features aren't available in the GCP environment. This is something we hope will be addressed in the future."

"Another thing is that Defender for Cloud uses more resources than CrowdStrike, which my current company uses. Defender for Cloud has two or three processes running simultaneously that consume memory and processor time. I had the chance to compare that with CrowdStrike a few days ago, which was significantly less. It would be nice if Defender were a little lighter. It's a relatively large installation that consumes more resources than competitors do."

"Features like code scanning and pipeline scanning are not included in the solution."

"The pricing could be improved, as it is somewhat high for smaller companies."

"The cost is always a concern, but overall, it's not too bad because it is easy to use and pretty friendly."

"While Microsoft continues to improve the solution, integrating the ID with biometric features could be enhanced, especially in terms of standard B2C flows for multi-factor authentication. Improvements in remembering devices and the timing of MFA triggers could also be beneficial."

"There are issues with the integration of Microsoft Entra Verified ID and MFA. Sometimes, the MFA process doesn't succeed, requiring users to sign out and log back in."

"I must do two-factor authentication when I sign in from a different location. It creates friction. It's not personalized for the end user. I would like to see specific insights."

"The tool's expensive nature is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Microsoft products basically have no support other than the knowledge base, so I would give it a two out of 10."

"The solution is expensive, and I rate it a five to six out of ten."

"I am not involved much with the pricing but the bundle offering is good."

"The price of the solution is good for the features we receive and there is an additional cost for Microsoft premier support. However, some of my potential customers have found it to be expensive and have gone on to choose another solution."

"Understanding the costs of cloud services can be complicated at first. As with a lot of things in the cloud, it can be quite hard to understand the end cost, but it becomes clearer over time. Early on, the lack of transparency is a challenge. Microsoft does not tell you the cost when they launch something. It is clever marketing, and there is room for improvement there. There should be clarity from the start."

"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."

"They have a free version, but the license for this one isn't too high. It's free to start with, and you're charged for using it beyond 30 days. Some other pieces of Defender are charged based on usage, so you will be charged more for a high volume of transactions. I believe Defender for Cloud is a daily charge based on Azure's App Service Pricing."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters."

"While we pay for any additional features, the pricing seems competitive, though I am not involved in the specific cost details."

"I still feel the pricing is on the higher side for larger customers. They don't pay anything for on-prem Active Directory. Although we receive additional features with Microsoft’s SSO, pricing is an area Microsoft can work on."

"The pricing and setup are standard. With Entra, you choose between P1 and P2 licenses. We recommend having at least one P2 license in a company for better alert management, even though P2 is more expensive."

"If one is cheap and ten is very expensive, I rate the product price as seven."