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Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs NGINX App Protect comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security, reduces costs, and boosts productivity with proactive threat detection and seamless integration.
Sentiment score
6.9
Organizations saw positive ROI with NGINX App Protect during COVID-19, improving security and integration, anticipating future benefits.
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.
The biggest return on investment is the rapid improvement of security posture.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud support is praised for expertise but criticized for delays, inconsistent service, and ticket handling issues.
Sentiment score
6.3
NGINX App Protect support is praised for promptness and helpfulness but inconsistencies and costs affect user satisfaction.
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.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is highly scalable, managing diverse environments smoothly, with seamless integration and flexible subscriptions despite cost concerns.
Sentiment score
6.5
NGINX App Protect is scalable with diverse options but faces deployment, traffic, and configuration centralization challenges noted by users.
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 won't replace our endpoint XDR, but it will likely adapt and support any growth in the Microsoft Cloud space.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a stable, reliable environment with minor performance issues primarily due to outdated systems.
Sentiment score
8.4
NGINX App Protect is praised for stability and integration, outperforming competitors, though minor improvements in HTML5 are needed.
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.
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Defender for Cloud needs better automation, integration, user-friendliness, documentation, pricing, real-time monitoring, and legacy support.
NGINX App Protect requires improved flexibility, UI, API, automation, network support, pricing, integration, and feature enhancements like security and documentation.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides flexible pricing with a free version; costs vary by features, region, and enterprise needs.
NGINX App Protect costs $3,000-$400,000 annually, considered expensive but competitive, with no hidden fees and strategic cost management possible.
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.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters.
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security with AI detection, compliance, seamless Azure integration, and multi-cloud support for streamlined protection.
NGINX App Protect provides comprehensive security features including automation, containerization, and flexible API connectivity for robust application protection.
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.
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Security
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (5th)
NGINX App Protect
Ranking in Container Security
21st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (15th), API Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 7.1%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NGINX App Protect is 0.2%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Security
 

Featured Reviews

Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Tomaz Sobczak - PeerSpot reviewer
Signature-based detection, DOS protection, and bot protection
NGINX App Protect is easier to automate and configure, or manage from an API. This is good for securing applications. However, it's not suitable for more complex tasks. NGINX App Protect positively impacted performance changes. There's a cache or it works like a proxy, so it can speed up applications. It can also offload some functions from servers, which NGINX can handle faster.
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859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 NGINX App Protect?
I don't know the pricing yet because in my other project, I was not part of the buying side and I was just starting to look at options.
What needs improvement with NGINX App Protect?
It would be better if it were easier to implement and if there was more information from F5 regarding hardware requirements and specifications to deploy the service, to avoid disruptions after impl...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
NGINX WAF, NGINX Web Application Firewall
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. NGINX App Protect and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.