We performed a comparison between Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Skyhigh Security based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Microsoft Defender provides regulatory compliance, ransomware protection, and security scoring, while Skyhigh Security offers strong URL spam filtering, encrypted disk, and endpoint protection, and efficient backup features. In terms of improvement, Microsoft Defender for Cloud lacks consistency, customization, integration, collaboration, documentation, intuitive features, and coverage. Skyhigh Security, on the other hand, needs better implementation, API integration, and training resources.
Service and Support: While some customers have had positive experiences with both solutions, there have also been issues with slow response times and unhelpful support. Additionally, Microsoft Defender for Cloud has outsourced support which has caused some frustration. However, Skyhigh Security's tutorials and documentation are generally praised as excellent.
Ease of Deployment: Microsoft Defender for Cloud is easy to set up and can be done by one person. It is cloud-based and doesn't need infrastructure deployment. On the other hand, Skyhigh Security's setup time varies depending on the user's skills and knowledge of technology and networking, ranging from five minutes to two weeks.
Pricing: Microsoft Defender for Cloud is seen as a fair and cost-effective option for pricing, with some complexity in licensing but often bundled with other Microsoft solutions. Skyhigh Security, on the other hand, is considered to have higher pricing and its hardware is seen as expensive. While its licensing is reasonably priced, some reviewers suggest there is room for improvement in this area.
ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud consolidates security solutions and reduces management time, resulting in a positive ROI. On the other hand, Skyhigh Security offers improved security posture, reduced risk of data breaches, increased visibility, and compliance, all of which can contribute to a positive ROI.
Comparison Results: Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a better option than Skyhigh Security based on user reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has more valuable features such as regulatory compliance, ransomware protection, and access controls. Skyhigh Security needs improvements in virtual solutions, API integration, and technical support.
"The CSPM module has been the most effective. It was easy to deploy and covered all our accounts through APIs, requiring no agents. Wiz provides instant visibility into high-level risks that we need to address."
"The solution is very user-friendly."
"I like Wiz's reporting, and it's easy to do queries. For example, it's pretty simple to find out how many servers we have and the applications installed on each. I like Wiz's security graph because you can use it to see the whole organization even if you have multiple accounts."
"Our most important features are those around entitlement, external exposure, vulnerabilities, and container security."
"The security baseline and vulnerability assessments is the valuable feature."
"The vulnerability management modules and the discovery and inventory are the most valuable features. Before using Wiz, it was a very manual process for both. After implementing it, we're able to get all of the analytics into a single platform that gives us visibility across all the systems in our cloud. We're able to correspond and understand what the vulnerability landscape looks like a lot faster."
"The automation roles are essential because we ultimately want to do less work and automate more. The dashboards are easy to read and visually pleasing. You can understand things quickly, which makes it easy for our other teams. The network and infrastructure teams don't know as much about security as we do, so it helps to have a tool that's accessible and nice to look at."
"With Wiz, we get timely alerts for leaked data or any vulnerabilities already existing in our environment."
"The vulnerability reporting is helpful. When we initially deployed Defender, it reported many more threats than we currently see. It gave us insight into areas we had not previously considered, so we knew where we needed to act."
"The integration with Logic Apps allows for automated responses to incidents."
"When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard. This gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about the email, sorting out the email, or looking at it through an ITSM solution, whey they have to look at the description and use cases. Efficiency increases with this optimized, ready-made solution since you don't need to invest in something externally. You can start using the dashboard and auditing capability provided from day one. Thus, you have fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution, providing operational efficiency for your team."
"The technical support is very good."
"We can create alerts that trigger if there is any malicious activity happening in the workflow and these alerts can be retrieved using the query language."
"Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."
"The solution's robust security posture is the most valuable feature."
"It takes very little effort to integrate it. It also gives very good visibility into what exactly is happening."
"User analytics."
"The product has a very high rating from reviewers. It's a well-respected product."
"The solution performs well."
"The feature I found most valuable is the API."
"Offers a very strong URL spam filtering feature."
"It is easy to configure rules."
"It's a great product with solid features."
"The feature I like best about Skyhigh Security is its wide range of product support. For example, my company had NetApp storage running, and Skyhigh Security has on-premises NetApp storage support, which isn't available in other solutions. Skyhigh Security also has a better filtering feature versus the filtering feature in other solutions."
"We wish there were a way, beyond providing visibility and automated remediation, to wait on a given remediation, due to a critical aspect, such as the cost associated with a particular upgrade... We would like to see preventive controls that can be applied through Wiz to protect against vulnerabilities that we're not going to be able to remediate immediately."
"The solution's container security could be improved."
"The reporting isn't that great. They have executive summaries, but it's only a compliance report that maps all current issues to specific controls. Whether you look at one subscription or project, regardless of the size, you will get a multipage report on how the issues in that account map to that control. Our CSO isn't going to read through that. He won't filter that out or show that to his leadership and say, "Here's what we're doing." It isn't a helpful report. They're working on it, but it's a poor executive summary."
"The remediation workflow within the Wiz could be improved."
"We would like to see improvements to executive-level reporting and data reporting in general, which we understand is being rolled out to the platform."
"The only small pain point has been around some of the logging integrations. Some of the complexities of the script integrations aren't supported with some of the more automated infrastructure components. So, it's not as universal. For example, they have great support for cloud formation and other services, but if you're using another type of management utility or governance language for your infrastructure-as-code automation components, it becomes a little bit trickier to navigate that."
"Given the level of visibility into all the cloud environments Wiz provides, it would be nice if they could integrate some kind of mechanism to better manage tenants on multiple platforms. For example, let's say that some servers don't have an application they need, such as an antivirus. Wiz could include an API or something to push those applications out to the servers. It would be great if you could remedy these issues directly from the Wiz platform."
"The only thing that needs to be improved is the number of scans per day."
"Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government."
"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."
"The documentation and implementation guides could be improved."
"The overview provides you with good information, but if you want more details, there is a lot more customization to do, which requires knowledge of the other supporting solutions."
"Consistency is the area where the most improvement is needed. For example, there are some areas where the UI is not uniform across the board."
"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."
"Defender is occasionally unreliable. It isn't 100% efficient in terms of antivirus detection, but it isn't an issue most of the time. It's also somewhat difficult to train new security analysts to use Defender."
"I would like to have the ability to customize executive reporting."
"There isn't really any aspect that is lacking."
"Needs integration with other technology ecosystems."
"The biggest challenge we have with McAfee is their cross-cloud support."
"The encrypted disk implementation could be improved. I currently use it from a dongle or USB key with two-factor authentication to access my computer."
"User interface could be more intuitive."
"The documentation could be improved."
"Its initial setup could be more straightforward."
"You can integrate Skyhigh's rules with Active Directory groups. For example, you can allow access to a specific website for a defined set of users. I can do that, but the rules are not straightforward. It can look up the group in Active Directory. However, it doesn't always find the proper group name. The rule configuration should be simpler and more granular. The admin should be able to map 80 groups in the rules quickly."
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 46 reviews while Skyhigh Security is ranked 14th in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) with 51 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0, while Skyhigh Security is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Skyhigh Security writes "Good scalability, but the technical support service needs improvement". Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Sentinel, whereas Skyhigh Security is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Netskope , Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Symantec Proxy and Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks. See our Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Skyhigh Security report.
See our list of best Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) vendors and best Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) vendors.
We monitor all Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
