Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Tenable Security Center comparison

Microsoft and Tenable are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while Tenable is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.7. Microsoft holds a 5.1% mindshare in VM, compared to Tenable’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Tenable users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Tenable Security Center and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are key players in the cybersecurity industry. While Tenable focuses more on vulnerability scanning, Microsoft Defender offers broader multi-cloud protection, with its robust integration with Azure giving it a slight edge in comprehensive security management.

Features: Tenable Security Center shines with its distributed scan model capable of handling multiple environments, its Assurance Report Card providing immediate security overviews, and its predictive prioritization features that help focus on critical vulnerabilities. Microsoft Defender for Cloud excels in multi-cloud protection, smooth integration with Azure, and robust threat intelligence that enhances compliance management and security insight.

Room for Improvement: Tenable Security Center has room to advance its reporting capabilities with more flexible, intuitive options and could better integrate with third-party tools. Microsoft Defender for Cloud struggles with complex pricing structure, sometimes leading to surprise costs, and could reduce false positives for more trustworthy alerts.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tenable Security Center's straightforward setup is mostly praised, although clearer documentation would enhance user experience; its support varies by region. Microsoft Defender for Cloud benefits from Azure's native integration, facilitating deployment, but also presents regional customer service inconsistencies, making premium support advisable for critical issues.

Pricing and ROI: Tenable Security Center employs an asset-based pricing model often viewed as expensive; however, it promises strong ROI through resource efficiency and proactive security measures. Microsoft Defender for Cloud aligns its flexible pricing with Azure use, perceived as potentially costly for total coverage, yet it often ensures favorable ROI through comprehensive security features.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center

September 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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.1%, up from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Security Center is 3.7%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Tenable Security Center	3.7%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	5.1%
Zafran Security	1.0%
Other	90.2%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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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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OndrejKOVAC

Solution engineer at EXPERTience

Empower clients with risk-based vulnerability management through continuous workflow and valuable insights

Tenable Security Center could improve by implementing more dynamic data displays and translating reports into European languages. This is especially relevant in Central Eastern Europe, where clients often require reports in local languages. Additionally, the licensing model could be more flexible for managed security providers, similar to a pay-as-you-go model.

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

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"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."

"I find Microsoft Defender for Cloud's KQL very flexible and powerful. It's really easy to search through with KQL queries to find the security breaches and incidents and to track down the breach itself."

"It is very intuitive when it comes to policy administration, alerts and notifications, and ease of setting up roles at different hierarchies. It has also been good in terms of the network technology maps. It provides a good overview, but it also depends on the complexity of your network."

"The most valuable feature is the hunting feature, which integrates well into the entire Microsoft ecosystem."

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

"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 solution is used for risks, vulnerabilities, and compliance."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has improved our security poster by at least 100 percent."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"This solution has a much lower rate of false positives compared to competing products."

"What is useful to me is being able to fulfill very customized scanning policies. In the clinical environment, because of vendor control, we can't perform credential-vulnerability scanning. And network scans, which I've done before, can cause a lot of impact. Being able to create very customized policies to be able to routinely scan and audit our clinical networks, while simultaneously not causing impact, is important to us."

"Tenable.sc's best features are the availability model, accident management, and scoring."

"I like Tenable.sc's analytics and reporting. You can also configure your on-prem network monitors to talk to your Tenable.sc control panel."

"I find Tenable SC to be a very scalable product."

"Initial setup was pretty straightforward."

"The tool gives us fewer false positives. Compared to its competitors, the solution’s reports are more accurate."

"The valauble feature is compliance reporting system."

More Tenable Security Center pros

Cons

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"The product was a bit complex to set up earlier, however, it is a bit streamlined now."

"Features like code scanning and pipeline scanning are not included in the solution."

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

"Support needs to be highly responsive, especially in large enterprise environments."

"The pricing could be better."

"Defender could improve how data is represented. It can be unstructured or slow to load. The recent update allowing policy grouping into control groups is beneficial, but further enhancements for speed and clarity are needed."

"There needs to be improvement in the security recommendations, particularly in attack path mapping. Sometimes, it misleads users about the real exposure of external-facing assets."

"The pricing could be improved, as it is somewhat high for smaller companies."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"There is not much room for improvement. However, there should be a guide that describes the step-by-step procedures for doing tasks. Otherwise, training is required from a senior guy to a junior guy."

"The web application scanning area can be improved."

"Certain aspects require manual effort, such as exporting and analyzing data for our dashboards. The built-in components of the Tenable solution are somewhat clumsy that require external tools. So, this is an area of improvement."

"Additional costs are associated with using the solution, as additional scanners are required for different endpoints connected to the Tenable Security Center. If Tenable Security Center could extract information from these scanners automatically rather than manually, it would enhance user-friendliness for customers."

"If I want to have a very low-managed scan policy, it's a lot of work to create something which is very basic. If I use a tool like Nmap, all I have to do is download it, install it, type in the command, and it's good to go. In Security Center, I have to go through a lot of work to create a policy that's very basic."

"Tenable SC can improve by adding more integrations with HCI-type tools and more accurate vulnerability detection."

"The solution is expensive."

"The solution needs to improve the vulnerability assessment because we have experienced some challenges with accuracy."

More Tenable Security Center cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

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

"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."

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

"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."

"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."

"There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."

"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing. If you have Cloud for Key Vault, the pricing is different than it is for storage. Every type has its own pricing list and rules."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

"It is a bit expensive. Everything is included in the license."

"Tenable SC is priced per asset, with the basic solution starting around US$12,000 for 500 assets."

"We're happy with the licensing cost and find it affordable."

"I rate the solution's price as seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. The tool is quite expensive."

"We're able to save because we don't have to employ more staff members to help wit ht he scheduling of the scans, running the reports or sending them out to the systems owners. That alone is a big ROI for us."

"For 500 users the licensing fee is roughly $100,000."

"The price of Tenable SC is expensive, we pay approximately €70,000 for the license annually. We have to pay for each IP test. The cost of other solutions is far less, such as Nessus Professional, which is €3,000 annually."

"I would rate the pricing a nine out of ten, where ten is expensive. It is the most expensive tool my company is using."

More Tenable Security Center pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	26

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...

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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 acros...

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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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What do you like most about Tenable SC?

The tool's dashboard and reporting capabilities match our company's needs since we are able to modify the basic view ...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable SC?

The price of Tenable Security Center is not so high; it's relatively a cheaper solution.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Tenable SC?

The reason for rating it an eight out of ten is that the initial setup could be easier; the setup is rather difficult...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Compared 32% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 14% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 9% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

Nucleus vs Zafran Security

Compared 6% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 31% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Orca Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Qualys VMDR vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 11% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 11% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 10% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 8% of the time

DefectDojo vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 2% of the time

More Tenable Security Center Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

October 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

October 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Tenable Security Center

October 2025

Download Tenable Security Center product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Tenable.sc, Tenable Unified Security, Tenable SecurityCenter

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Microsoft

Demo not available

Tenable

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

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

Get a risk-based view of your IT, security and compliance posture so you can quickly identify, investigate and prioritize your most critical assets and vulnerabilities.

Managed on-premises and powered by Nessus technology, the Tenable Security Center (formerly Tenable.sc) suite of products provides the industry’s most comprehensive vulnerability coverage with real-time continuous assessment of your network. It’s your complete end-to-end vulnerability management solution.

Tenable

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

IBM, Sempra Energy, Microsoft, Apple, Adidas, Union Pacific

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center

September 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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