Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Orca Security comparison

Microsoft and Orca Security are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Microsoft is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.1, while Orca Security is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.6. Microsoft holds a 2.9% mindshare in VM, compared to Orca Security’s 4.4% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Orca Security users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Orca Security and Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management compete in the cybersecurity landscape. Orca Security leads in pricing and customer support satisfaction, while Microsoft Defender's advanced features are often seen as a worthy investment.

Features: Orca Security delivers comprehensive cloud security with agentless architecture, intelligent alerting, and rapid threat identification. Microsoft Defender offers deep integration within Microsoft ecosystems, robust threat management capabilities, and automatic threat response.

Room for Improvement: Orca Security can enhance its integration with non-cloud environments, expand customization options, and refine predictive analytics. Microsoft Defender could improve customer support, simplify initial configurations, and enhance management dashboards for non-Microsoft platforms.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Orca Security facilitates a straightforward deployment with rapid integration across cloud platforms, supported by extensive customer assistance. Microsoft Defender streamlines deployment in Microsoft-native environments but may require additional configuration efforts. Orca’s service reputation is stronger, ensuring a smoother experience from setup to ongoing support.

Pricing and ROI: Orca Security offers a cost-effective solution with a focus on ROI by cutting unnecessary overhead and providing rapid threat mitigation. Microsoft Defender, potentially requiring a higher initial investment due to integration and feature set, promises ROI through comprehensive protection, especially within Microsoft systems. Orca Security is attractive for budget-conscious buyers, while Microsoft Defender offers value for those focusing on extensive capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Orca Security Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Orca Security

July 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 August 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.9%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is 2.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 4.4%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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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NaySan @ Suraj Verma

Solution Consultant at BIM Group of Companies

Provides actionable vulnerability insights and recommendations with notable efficiency

They may need to improve the portal refresh rate for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management because it takes time for recommendations to disappear after mitigation; sometimes, it takes one week, when it should ideally take only one to two hours. Overall, everything is good with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management, but the portal refresh rate can take up to seven days in some cases and three or four days in others to reflect changes.

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CHINTAN MEHTA

Cloud Security Automation Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Consolidating security tools with comprehensive cloud visibility

The documentation for Orca Security could be improved. The compliance framework also needs enhancements, especially concerning integrations with other tools like ServiceNow's vulnerability modules, which are not as mature as expected. It should also increase its capability to ingest data from other security tools like CloudSight for endpoint detection and provide real-time monitoring.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

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

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

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"The solution is up-to-date and helps prevent zero-day attacks."

"The product's stability is very high...The scalability of the product is amazing."

"The product’s most valuable features are compliance, recommendations, and inventories."

"The integration with Sentinel has been one of the most valuable features for my organization."

"The solution helps identify threats and vulnerabilities."

"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is versatile and assesses vulnerabilities, providing detailed information on CVEs, their categories, and exploit statuses."

"The most valuable aspect is the kind of assessment results I get, and the recommendations provided in Microsoft products really help in taking care of the resources."

"The main advantage of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management is that it can locate and prevent most threats even when the endpoints are not connected to the corporate network, as long as the internet is available."

More Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management pros

"Another valuable feature with Orca, something that's not talked about enough, is its ability to rank your gaps and your tasks... You can get visibility with agents and there are a lot of ways to do that. But the ranking and the context across the entire environment, that is what is unique about Orca."

"Orca's dashboard is excellent. My team needs to be able to focus on specific areas for improvement in our cloud environment. And most recently, we've started to get good use out of sonar, the search capabilities, and the alert creation."

"I would rate the quality of support as nine stars out of ten due to their quick and helpful responses."

"I find Orca Security's CIEM feature invaluable, as it focuses on entitlement and posture management, identifying assets with older OS versions, and asset misconfiguration."

"The best features of Orca Security include its ability to perform a lot of security controls without requiring any installation of agents, making it very easy to set up."

"The initial setup is very easy."

"The vulnerability management does not require network scanning or agent technology, so I don't need to modify any of my products in order to do vulnerability assessments."

"Orca Security has updated its interface, making it more user-friendly. I find it particularly useful as it allows me to easily navigate the dashboard and prioritize actions based on severity and criticality."

More Orca Security pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"The setup phase of the product is not that easy and needs a person to have a certain level of expertise."

"There should be risk scoring added to Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management; specifically, they call it quantification of the risk."

"The worst aspect is the refresh rate of the dashboard."

"Probably my only criticism would be the cost. It is expensive."

"There is a good solution from Microsoft, however, there is a gap between Windows and Linux management."

"The automated remediations can be more specific."

"We have experienced some logging issues, including a few hours of downtime initially. Despite this, I would rate the overall stability as an eight."

"It is expensive."

More Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management cons

"As with all software, the user interface can always be made simpler to use. It would be helpful for people with very little knowledge, like somebody sitting behind the SOC, to allow them to be able to drill down into things a little bit easier than it is currently."

"The timeout settings could be made more customizable, as sometimes if I leave the office early, it's still running unless manually turned off."

"I would like to see an option to do security checks on a code level. This is possible because they have access to all of the code running in the cloud provider, and combining their site-scanning solution with that would be a nice add-on."

"Orca Security can be improved as there should be some kind of central pane of glass. Similar to how cloud management works, Orca Security should have something comparable."

"It's not all clouds that they are currently onboarded with. For instance, they are not yet with public cloud and many other private clouds."

"The interface can be a bit cranky and sometimes takes a lot of time to load."

"The presentation of the data in the dashboard is a little bit chaotic."

"The main drawback in an agentless approach is that if the solution detects a virus or malware in the environment, we need to manually remove it. But from my experience with other production environments, it's not straightforward to install agents in the hope they will automatically remediate viruses, even from production environments... Ultimately, the ability to auto-remediate is something that I would like to see."

More Orca Security cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"I rate the product's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

"The tool is a bit costly."

"The licensing costs are reasonable."

"The licensing model follows a per-user per-month structure."

"The product’s pricing is medium."

"While it's competitive with Palo Alto Prisma, I think Orca's list price is very high. I would advise Orca to lower it because, at that price, I might consider alternatives like Wiz, which also offers agentless services."

"Its license is a bit expensive."

"Orca is very competitive when compared to the alternatives and is not the most expensive in the market, that's for sure."

"Orca Security is cheaper compared to other solutions in the same space."

"We have a total of 25 licenses for this solution. The solution is on a pay-and-you-use model."

"Overall, the pricing is reasonable and the discounts have been acceptable."

"It is the cost of the visibility that you get. When you really sit down and think about what do you need to do to secure an environment with a low impact on the business, and you take a look out into the world, I think this tool is well justified around cost."

"The most expensive solution is Palo Alto. They claim to be very robust. The next most expensive is Wiz, followed by Orca and all the rest."

More Orca Security pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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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What do you like most about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?

The solution helps identify threats and vulnerabilities.

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

I would rate the price as a three for us due to the partnership discounts. For non-partners, however, the cost could ...

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What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?

I have not thought about improvements for Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management as of now, but this is typicall...

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What do you like most about Orca Security?

It's for protection. It's an agentless tool. We don't need to install anything at a customer's premises. We can just ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Orca Security?

I really love the way Orca Security worked. A potential improvement could be additional security features for the two...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Orca Security?

We used Orca Security ( /products/orca-security-reviews ) for about two to three months until I left the company. The...

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Comparisons

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Compared 37% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 15% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 9% of the time

ServiceNow Security Operations vs Zafran Security

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

Qualys VMDR vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 26% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 22% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 17% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 5% of the time

Tanium vs Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management Competitors

Wiz vs Orca Security

Compared 29% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Orca Security

Compared 8% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Orca Security

Compared 5% of the time

Upwind vs Orca Security

Compared 4% of the time

AWS Security Hub vs Orca Security

Compared 3% of the time

More Orca Security Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

July 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

August 2025

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management report

Download Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management product report

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security

August 2025

Download Orca Security product report

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 Vulnerability Management enables organizations to identify vulnerabilities, manage patches, and fortify threat detection. It offers endpoint assessments, cloud incident management, and dynamic security through Microsoft's Security Scorecard integration.

Organizations leverage Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management for advanced threat detection and response. It provides robust tools for vulnerability assessment and cloud incident management, integrated with Microsoft's Security Scorecard to enhance dynamic security profiling. Key features include automatic patch deployment, security configuration management, and seamless integration with Microsoft platforms, benefiting both on-prem and cloud environments. Organizations can track vulnerabilities with severity-based reports, helping manage outdated software and minimizing threat exposure.

What are the key features of Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?

Compliance: Ensures adherence to security regulations.
Recommendations: Provides actionable advice for security enhancements.
Inventories: Offers detailed inventory tracking for software and hardware.
Threat Identification: Detects potential threats proactively.
Vulnerability Assessment: Evaluates system vulnerabilities comprehensively.
Zero-day Protection: Shields systems from newly discovered exploits.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Integration: Facilitates seamless integration with Microsoft and diverse platforms.
Risk Mitigation: Assists in mitigating risks through accurate assessments.
Prioritization: Helps prioritize vulnerabilities for efficient patch management.
Up-to-date Protection: Ensures systems remain secured and current.

In healthcare, Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management helps manage compliance with health regulations, while in finance, it aids in securing sensitive data from cyber threats. Manufacturing sectors benefit from its patch management, keeping operational technology systems less vulnerable to disruptions.

Microsoft

Orca Security is the pioneer of agentless cloud security that is trusted by hundreds of enterprises globally. Orca makes cloud security possible for enterprises moving to and scaling in the cloud with its patented SideScanning™ technology and Unified Data Model. The Orca Cloud Security Platform delivers the world's most comprehensive coverage and visibility of risks across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Kubernetes.

At Orca Security, we’re on a mission to make it fast, easy, and cost effective for organizations to address critical cloud security issues so they can operate in the cloud with confidence.

Key Platform Features:

Agentless: Complete, centralized coverage of the entire cloud estate, without the need for installing and configuring agents or layering together multiple siloed tools. Full visibility of cloud misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, workload protection, malware scanning, image scanning, file integrity monitoring and more.
Asset Inventory: Get a complete inventory of all your public cloud assets, including detailed information on installed OSes, software, and applications, as well as data and network assets such as storage buckets, Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), and Security Groups.

Attack Path Analysis: Visualize attack vectors to critical assets or crown jewels. See which assets are susceptible to lateral movement, assume roles, privilege escalation, and more.

Risk Prioritization: Prioritize the 1% of risks that matter the most, based on impact scores. Secure the vulnerabilities and misconfigured targets (critical assets) and eliminate the potential risks residing on the attack paths to those targets.
Cloud Threat Detection: Monitor for malicious activity within your entire cloud estate. Be aware of detected threats, user behavior anomalies and more.

Breach Forensics: Log every change and all activity into a central repository for investigation procedures to confirm or deny entry and compromises within the cloud estate.
Cloud To Dev (Shift Left): Orca’s built-in shift left capabilities enables DevOps to focus more security attention earlier in the CI/CD pipelines. Security teams are able to trace a production risk (misconfiguration or vulnerability) directly to the original source code repository from which it came, even down to the exact line of code that is at the root of the identified risk.
Compliance: Choose from over 60 preconfigured compliance frameworks, cloud security best practices, CIS Benchmarks, or design and build your own compliance framework for fast and continuous reporting.
Security Score: The Orca Security Score is found on Orca’s Risk Dashboard and is updated daily. The overall score is calculated based on performance in the following five categories - Suspicious Activity, IAM, Data at Risk, Vulnerable Assets, and Responsiveness. Since the scores are percentage based and not raw numbers, you can objectively make comparisons to other organizations within your industry or business units of different sizes. In addition to reporting to senior management, the Orca Security Score can help with internal self-monitoring, as a way of measuring risk mitigation efforts, to know where to focus efforts, and track progress.

Orca Security Benefits

Consolidate technologies to reduce costs and complexity:

“The more I can get out of this one solution, the better. I see Orca as the tool where we get all cloud-related security data.” - Joshua Scott, Head of Security and IT | Postman

Avoid costly breaches:

"I look at proactive asset discovery, configuration management, and vulnerability management as being able to find a vulnerability before the bad guys do and being able to deal with it before something exploits it. This is what Orca does for us." - Doug Graham, CSO & CPO | Lionbridge

Increase team productivity and efficiency by focusing on high-value activities and solving the 1% of risks that matter most:

"Orca is unique in that it locates vulnerabilities with precision and delivers tangible, actionable results – without having to sift through all the noise." - Aaron Brown, Senior Cloud Security Engineer | Sisense

Quick Time-to-Value with Immediate ROI:

"Orca told us we could have some visibility within 5 or 10 minutes, and I thought, ‘There’s no way.’ Well, I was wrong. They really did it." - Thomas Hill, CISO | Live Oak Bank

Reduce MTTR and remove operational friction:

“We can’t ask developers things like ‘Did you think about security? When you start a new VM on AWS, can you please let me know so I’m able to scan it? Can you please deploy an agent on that machine for me?’ We need a better way to work. Orca provides that better way by eliminating organizational friction.” - Erwin Geirnaert, Cloud Security Architect | NG Data

Orca Security

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

BeyondTrust, Postman, Digital Turbine, Solarisbank, Lemonade, C6 Bank, Docebo, Vercel, and Vivino

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Orca Security

July 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Orca Security

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Orca Security and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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