Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Sysdig Falco comparison

Microsoft and Sysdig are both solutions in the Container Security category. Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while Sysdig is ranked #19 with an average rating of 10.0. Microsoft holds a 6.6% mindshare in Container Security, compared to Sysdig’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sysdig users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Read 79 Microsoft Defender for Cloud reviews

20,047 Views
6,616 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Sysdig Falco

Read 1 Sysdig Falco review

1,627 Views
1,627 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Sysdig Falco

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Sysdig Falco compete in cloud security and threat detection. Sysdig Falco appears to have an advantage due to its strong capabilities in container security, especially in Kubernetes environments.

Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a comprehensive security suite integrating threat management and vulnerability assessments across Azure services. Sysdig Falco specializes in runtime threat detection in cloud-native applications, offering detailed insights into container activities. Its focus on container security stands out as a significant differentiator for teams prioritizing Kubernetes and container environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender for Cloud features seamless deployment with Azure integration, providing quick access to security features across Azure platforms. Sysdig Falco's deployment is favored for multi-cloud or hybrid cloud environments where container security is essential. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is praised for its cohesive support within the Microsoft ecosystem, while Sysdig Falco benefits from strong community support and expertise in cloud-native security.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud aligns its pricing with value propositions, delivering ROI for organizations heavily invested in Azure services. Sysdig Falco is regarded as a cost-effective choice for advanced container security, with its specialized features often justifying the investment. The decision often hinges on specific security needs, with Sysdig Falco being appealing to those requiring focused container security despite potentially higher initial setup costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Container Security Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Container Security

August 2025

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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 Container Security

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), 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), Microsoft Security Suite (8th), Compliance Management (5th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)

Sysdig Falco

Ranking in Container Security

19th

Average Rating

10.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 6.6%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sysdig Falco is 2.0%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	6.6%
Sysdig Falco	2.0%
Other	91.4%

Container Security

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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Patrik Gunnersten

Pre-Sales Manager at Conoa AB

Has delivered real-time insights for detecting runtime vulnerabilities and improving response speed

The runtime security part of Sysdig Falco has been the most valuable over the years. They do extensive monitoring, and you can get many insights and an overview and drill down into connections, but it's the runtime security that sets them apart from the competition. Sysdig Falco's real-time monitoring feature for anomaly detection is very high quality. They lean on the Falco project, which is an open-source project that is an excellent source of finding vulnerabilities. They have AI capabilities to set a baseline of the traffic that the client usually has, and then they find anomalies where things start to deviate from the baseline, and they do that exceptionally. The flexibility of Sysdig Falco's rule-driven engine for meeting security policies for customers is very good because you can have the standard features that are already out-of-the-box ready, and then you can tailor your own rules freely and create any type of rules desired.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful."

"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security."

"Scalability is great, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"The UX and UI are very good. Users have more of a taste for Microsoft UI."

"The valuable features include the ability to manage devices and the fact that Defender can replace other security tools like SCCM."

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

"The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"We've had incidents with clients where high-impact CVEs were published, and I know comparisons where one client said if they didn't have Sysdig Falco in place, what took them about a day would have probably taken one or two months to resolve."

Cons

"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."

"I would like to see better automation when it comes to pushing out security features to the recommendations, and better documentation on the step-by-step procedures for enabling certain features."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be improved by adding capabilities for NetApp files and more PaaS resources from other vendors, not just Microsoft."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters. It could be cheaper."

"The solution could extend its capabilities to other cloud providers. Right now, if you want to monitor a virtual machine on another cloud, you can do that. However, this cannot be done with other cloud platform services. I hope once that is available then Defender for Cloud will be a unified solution for all cloud platform services."

"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."

"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."

"The remediation process could be improved."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"One area for improvement would be having predefined security standards for measuring compliance reports."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The pricing and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud have been good for us. We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license."

"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 tool is pretty expensive."

"Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."

"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."

"The solution is expensive, and I rate it a five to six out of ten."

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

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Government

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...

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What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

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

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

The pricing is pretty standard.

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Comparisons

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Compared 29% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Orca Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

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CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Sysdig Falco

Compared 22% of the time

SUSE NeuVector vs Sysdig Falco

Compared 16% of the time

Trivy vs Sysdig Falco

Compared 13% of the time

Wiz vs Sysdig Falco

Compared 11% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Sysdig Falco

Compared 7% of the time

More Sysdig Falco Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

September 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Container Security

August 2025

Download Sysdig Falco product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

Interactive Demo

Microsoft

Demo not available

Sysdig

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

Sysdig Falco is a powerful open-source behavioral activity monitoring tool designed for containerized environments. Its primary use case is to enhance security and threat detection in cloud-native infrastructures.

The most valuable functionality of Sysdig Falco lies in its ability to detect and alert on abnormal behavior within containers and Kubernetes environments. It leverages a set of rules to monitor system calls, network activity, file access, and other low-level events, enabling it to identify suspicious activities and potential security breaches.

By continuously monitoring container activities, Sysdig Falco helps organizations detect and respond to security incidents in real time. It provides detailed insights into container behavior, allowing security teams to identify and investigate potential threats quickly. Additionally, it can be integrated with existing security tools and workflows, enabling seamless incident response and threat hunting.

Sysdig Falco's benefits extend beyond security. It also helps organizations ensure compliance with industry regulations and best practices. By monitoring container activities, it provides an audit trail of system events, facilitating compliance reporting and forensic analysis.

Furthermore, Sysdig Falco is highly customizable, allowing organizations to define their own rules and policies based on their specific security requirements. This flexibility enables fine-grained control over the monitoring and alerting process, ensuring that security teams focus on the most critical threats.

Sysdig

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

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