Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management comparison

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management

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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 Cloud

Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (4th), Compliance Management (5th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)

Microsoft Purview Data Life...

Ranking in Microsoft Security Suite

33rd

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Email Archiving (11th), Document Management Software (2nd), Data Governance (29th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Microsoft Security Suite category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 6.0%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Microsoft Security Suite Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	6.0%
Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management	0.6%
Other	93.4%

Microsoft Security Suite

Featured Reviews

Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps

Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

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AnonyAdmin

Enterprise Messaging Systems Engineer at a university with 10,001+ employees

Provides data protection across platforms and connects to different devices

The rollout of Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management is not yet complete. The goal of this implementation is to mitigate the risk of oversharing, particularly in anticipation of the broader adoption of Copilot. Purview's ability to connect to iOS, Mac, and Android devices, as well as data in other SaaS applications, is crucial. As a university with a bring-your-own-device policy, we cannot control the devices used by our diverse population of students and faculty. Therefore, an inclusive ecosystem that seamlessly integrates with various devices is essential, as we cannot enforce restrictions on specific devices or mandate particular technologies due to the open nature of our system. It is critical that Purview provides data protection across diverse cloud and platform environments, including AWS and GCP. Historically, our primary platform has been AWS, but we are increasingly expanding into Microsoft Azure. Therefore, I anticipate a future where we utilize both platforms extensively, making comprehensive data protection essential. Purview's design incorporates critical global regulations, ensuring compliance for university researchers and the institution itself with government and various regulatory requirements. Purview enhances visibility across our data estate. The new AI-powered data security features, especially the oversharing report, promise to be invaluable by providing insights into potentially overshared files and sites. This automation eliminates the need for custom scripts and manual data mining, previously necessary for identifying such issues, and ultimately saves significant development time. Purview saves time by eliminating the need for manual scripts, which can take days to run due to the volume of people and sites involved. Instead of running scripts multiple times or waiting hours for completion, Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process.

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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 the comprehensive overview across different workloads. It allows us to see protection not just across one workload, such as virtual machines, containers, infrastructure, or data, but across all our workloads. This overall visibility is really helpful."

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

"This is a platform as a service provided by Azure. We don't need to install or maintain Azure Security Center. It is a ready-made service available in Azure. This is one of the main things that we like. If you look at similar tools, we have to install, maintain, and update services. Whereas, Azure Security Center manages what we are using. This is a good feature that has helped us a lot."

"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."

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

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has significantly enhanced our overall security posture by approximately 20 to 25 percent."

"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."

"Most importantly, it's an integrated solution. We not only have Defender for Cloud, but we also have Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Identity. It's an integrated, holistic solution."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"The system is stable; I haven't encountered any worldwide stability issues unlike other office products."

"The automatic data labeling is compelling, and we are investigating its use."

"Purview's built-in functionality provides immediate access to reports, streamlining the entire process."

"The UI is the most valuable feature."

Cons

"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."

"When you work with it, the only problem that we're struggling with is that we have 21 different subscriptions we're trying to apply security to. It's impossible to keep everything organized."

"I would like to have the ability to customize executive reporting."

"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."

"While we are satisfied with Defender for Cloud's features, an AI enhancement could potentially provide better advice and adapt more effectively to our environment."

"The documentation could be much clearer."

"The range of workloads is broad, but we'd love to add more workloads and make it a single security solution that covers all those workloads. Covering more would allow us to see and protect more workloads from a single pane of glass. Additional features should include protection for more AI workloads as it currently focuses primarily on OpenAI."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"The time it takes to scan is one issue; when we raise high-volume issues and tickets related to scanning failures, it relates to permission errors, which are technical challenges."

"Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management can be challenging to implement due to its complexity and dense documentation, making it difficult to get started."

"Microsoft's Purview Data Lifecycle Management preview features can be unreliable, hindering their usefulness."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Defender's basic version is free, which is good. Many of our teams are evaluating the paid version against third-party products."

"Pricing depends on your workload size, but it is very cheap. If you're talking about virtual machines, it is $5 or something for each machine, which is minimal. If you go for some agent-based solution for every virtual machine, then you need to pay the same thing or more than that. For an on-premises solution like this, we were paying around $30 to $50 based on size. With Defender, Microsoft doesn't bother about the size. You pay based on the number of machines. So, if you have 10 virtual machines, and 10 virtual machines are being monitored, you are paying based on that rather than the size of the virtual machine. Thus, you are paying for the number of units rather than paying for the size of your units."

"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."

"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."

"The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have."

"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."

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

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

"The service operates on a pay-as-you-go basis, charging an extra one cent per field of metadata scanned in our data."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	45

No data available

Questions from the Community

How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?

Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The pricing is pretty standard.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?

We opted for Purview Data Lifecycle Management due to its significant cost advantage over competitors. At a 95 percent price reduction, it was a clear winner. The service operates on a pay-as-you-g...

What needs improvement with Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?

One of the requirements is to have data leak policies and data access policies. This is very critical to enforce data governance standards, which relate to data classification, access control, data...

What is your primary use case for Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management?

I am a customer and user of the tools. We are a big shop, and both the companies I work for are Microsoft Office 365 customers with over eighty thousand seats. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Mana...

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Product Reports

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Data Governance

Download Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management product report

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management report

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

Microsoft Information Governance, Microsoft Purview Records Management

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Overview

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management helps businesses manage data effectively, enhancing compliance and control while optimizing data usage across the organization.

Designed for comprehensive data governance, Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management aids businesses in automating data retention, labeling, and protection policies. It integrates seamlessly with existing systems, facilitating robust data management, which supports compliance and risk management efforts. Suitable for businesses seeking to consolidate data management processes, it ensures that valuable data is efficiently cataloged, accessible, and secured, contributing to informed decision-making and resource optimization.

What features should users be aware of?

Automated Data Retention: Simplifies data management by automatically applying retention policies.
Sensitivity Labeling: Offers robust capabilities to classify and protect sensitive information.
Data Insights: Provides analytical insights that help in monitoring compliance and data usage.
Policy Enforcement: Integrated tools for automating policy application across data assets.

What benefits can users expect from reviews?

Improved Compliance: Ensures adherence to regulations through automated policy enforcement.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines data management tasks, reducing manual intervention and potential errors.
Cost Effectiveness: Reduces the need for multiple tools by consolidating data management activities.
Enhanced Security: Protects sensitive data through advanced labeling and encryption features.

In finance, Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management facilitates compliance with strict regulations, in healthcare, it safeguards patient data while streamlining retention policies, and in retail, it organizes customer data for better insights and tailored marketing strategies, ensuring data is a strategic resource across sectors.

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Information Not Available

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Microsoft Purview Data Lifecycle Management