

NGINX App Protect and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are both prominent in the cybersecurity market. While both offer a range of useful capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud seems to have the upper hand with its comprehensive security management across multi-cloud environments, which includes strong integration with Azure services and robust regulatory compliance features.
Features: NGINX App Protect provides robust security headers, proxy functionality, and efficient load balancing. It works seamlessly with various web applications and DevOps environments, being open source and versatile enough for containerized solutions. Microsoft Defender for Cloud excels in security management across hybrid environments, integrating with Azure services and presenting a range of alerts and automation notifications, alongside strong regulatory compliance capabilities.
Room for Improvement: NGINX App Protect requires enhanced configuration flexibility, more effective API exposure, and better documentation. Its high licensing costs and technical support processes also need attention. Microsoft Defender for Cloud can improve understanding of pricing structures, address false positive reports, and enhance automation and integration. More granular policy management and AI-driven responses warrant enhancements.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: NGINX App Protect is frequently deployed on-premises and in private clouds, though it faces mixed reviews regarding customer support, which is often costly with delayed response times. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is predominantly used in public or hybrid cloud environments with supportive technical assistance, though its documentation and response promptness could be improved for a better user experience.
Pricing and ROI: NGINX App Protect is perceived as expensive, though some users see strong ROI, especially in agile environments. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is also considered costly, particularly in regions with distinct market constraints, yet is praised for integration capabilities and its potential value when included in broader Microsoft service bundles.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
Compared to not having Microsoft Defender for Cloud in place, we definitely saw an advantage by not having downtime due to a security threat.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
They were quick and efficient when we had issues.
As we have reduced our on-premises infrastructure, it is about how we can migrate workloads to the cloud to make it easier, and then having everything fully encompassed and secured within that area makes it much easier for us to scale as needed and grow.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
It has multiple licenses and features, covering infrastructures from a hundred to five hundred virtual machines, without any issues.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
It is a quality solution, and I would rate its stability as eight out of ten.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
It would be beneficial to streamline recommendations to avoid unnecessary alerts and to refine the severity of alerts based on specific environments or environmental attributes.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
There was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service.
Security has essentially no cost when compared to the cost of a breach.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
The most valuable feature is the ability to operate in a DevOps environment and to be configured through API and pipeline by the developers themselves.
Detecting bots and blocking IPs have proven effective for securing applications.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Microsoft Defender for Cloud | 6.3% |
| NGINX App Protect | 0.4% |
| Other | 93.3% |

| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 27 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 10 |
| Large Enterprise | 49 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 8 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 5 |
| Large Enterprise | 11 |
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.
NGINX App Protect application security solution combines the efficacy of advanced F5 web application firewall (WAF) technology with the agility and performance of NGINX Plus. The solution runs natively on NGINX Plus and addresses some of the most difficult challenges facing modern DevOps environments:
NGINX App Protect offers:
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