Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Microsoft Purview Audit comparison

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a nine out of 10."

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

"Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."

"The most valuable features are ransomware protection and access controls. The solution has helped us secure some folders on our systems from unauthorized modifications."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has made our environment more secure."

"The most valuable feature is the hunting feature, which integrates well into the entire Microsoft ecosystem."

"Defender for Cloud provides a complete DevOps security package for cloud services."

"The most valuable feature is the regulatory compliance aspect, where we utilize predefined initiatives like NIST."

"The main Microsoft feature is that it offers common integration of services, of data, of identity, meaning user accounts, user access, and privileged access."

"The overall user experience with Microsoft Purview Audit is of higher quality than when it was branded as Compliance Center, and Microsoft consistently updates and evolves functionalities and the overall experience."

"We're easily saving at least one hour per day using this solution."

"The platform has significantly enhanced our operational insight into the overall Microsoft 365 environment."

"Azure's system could be more on point like AWS support. For example, if I have an issue with AWS, I create a support ticket, then I get a call or a message. With Azure support, you raise a ticket, and somebody calls back depending on their availability and the priority, which might not align with your business priority."

"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."

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

"The remediation process could be improved."

"Most of the time, when we log into the support, we don't get a chance to interact with Microsoft employees directly, except having it go to outsource employees of Microsoft. The initial interaction has not been that great because outsourced companies cannot provide the kind of quality or technical expertise that we look for. We have a technical manager from Microsoft, but they are kind of average unless we make noise and ask them to escalate. We then can get the right people and the right solution, but it definitely takes time."

"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."

"The documentation could be much clearer."

"We would like to have better transparency as to how the security score is calculated because as it is now, it is difficult to understand."

"We are still in the early stages of leveraging Microsoft Purview Audit. Currently, it's primarily used for the audit function."

"We do have a Denial of Access happening."

"Areas for product improvement include enhancing customization options and integrating more comprehensive compliance features."

"I had a case where I spent three or four hours working deeply with a customer to explain how to work with eDiscovery, why Content Search is not there when it was before, what is an eDiscovery case, and why we are talking about all of this just to review a list of kept emails."

"There are improvements that have to be made to the licensing. Currently, for servers, it has to be done by grouping the servers on a single subscription... We don't have an option whereby, if all those resources are in one subscription, we can have each of the individual servers subject to different planning."

"Azure Defender is definitely pricey, but their competitors cost about the same. For example, a Palo Alto solution is the same price per endpoint, but the ground strikes cost a bit more than Azure Defender. Still, it's pricey for a company like ours. Maybe well-established organizations can afford it, but it might be too costly for a startup."

"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."

"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."

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

"The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against the importance of what needs covering."

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

"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."