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Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 5, 2025

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
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (16th), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (1st)
Microsoft Defender Vulnerab...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (16th), Microsoft Security Suite (20th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (5th)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (8th), Container Security (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management2.8%
Wiz10.3%
Tenable Nessus7.7%
Other79.2%
Vulnerability Management
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks14.5%
Wiz23.4%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud10.9%
Other51.2%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
NaySan @ Suraj Verma - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Harsh_Vardhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides visibility and control that our customers need
Different modules are valuable for different customers. We are leveraging CSPM. It is one of the best solutions for comprehensive visibility into cloud resource configurations and compliance. It has a lot of out-of-the-box policies, and the visibility that we are getting is impressive. The DSPM module is valuable. This is the latest one that Palo Alto procured from Dig Security. No competitor provides this functionality in a single pane of glass. The support for Linux and container security is also very good. That is the beauty of Prisma Cloud. However, in terms of Windows security, Prisma Cloud is lacking because currently, there is no runtime protection available. The UI is very good. We get all the things within a single UI. It is easy to use. A new user can easily understand it. It is very user-friendly.

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."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"The integration with SIEM is the best, specifically the native integration with Microsoft SIEM."
"The recommendations, scores, and steps to remediate actions are highly useful."
"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management provides regular advisories and recommendations that help improve our security posture."
"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."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management a nine out of ten."
"The solution helps identify threats and vulnerabilities."
"The product's stability is very high...The scalability of the product is amazing."
"One valuable feature is the Microsoft Security Scorecard."
"The client wasn't using all of the features, but the one that stood out was infrastructure-as-code (IaC). I built IaC use cases and was trying to get them to use it. I also liked cloud workload protection. I worked with the vulnerability management team to develop a process. It's a manual process, so it can be challenging to remediate many image or container issues. It was nice that we could build out a reporting process and download the reports. The reports are solid."
"It scans our containers in real time. Also, as they're built, it's looking into the container repository where the images are built, telling us ahead of time, "You have vulnerabilities here, and you should update this code before you deploy." And once it's deployed, it's scanning for vulnerabilities that are in production as the container is running."
"Through Prisma Cloud, we can write Lambda functions, configure policies to check the security posture, and get reports. We can do a lot more."
"It provides good visibility and control regardless of the complexity."
"The runtime mechanism on the solution is very useful. It's got very good network mapping between containers. If you have more than one container, you can create a content data link between them."
"We haven't had an issue with the product for over a year."
"Integrating with a CI/CD pipeline and incorporating a vulnerability assessment process are highly effective features, especially when combined with runtime protection."
"We found it to be easy and flexible. We could easily configure it for our needs, and we could spread the Prisma Cloud platform to 16 countries without encountering any kind of problem."
 

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."
"It is expensive."
"It is challenging to extract and customize reports from the system."
"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."
"The worst aspect is the refresh rate of the dashboard."
"The worst aspect is the refresh rate of the dashboard. A vulnerability I patch within 15 minutes takes 24 additional hours for an update."
"The product is not stable; it is very resource-intensive, consuming a lot of memory and CPU, which makes it slow."
"The constant changes in the product configuration or the console setup can sometimes be challenging."
"Integration can be improved."
"Though Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides excellent security, is a pioneer in this space, and knows what it's doing, from a user perspective, it would have been better if it was a little easier to use."
"It provides all the cloud details but is not entirely linked to the compute model."
"The feedback that we have given to the Palo Alto team is that the UI can be improved. When you press the "back" button on your browser from the Investigate tab, the query that you're working on just disappears. It won't keep the query on the "back" button."
"When it comes to protecting the full cloud-native stack, it has the right breadth. They're covering all the topics I would care about, like container, cloud configuration, and serverless. There's one gap. There could be a better set of features around identity management—native AWS—IAM roles, and service account management. The depth in each of those areas varies a little bit. While they may have the breadth, I think there's still work to do in flushing out each of those feature sets."
"Technical support could use some improvement."
"Having auto Defender upgrades so that we do not have to upgrade Defender manually would be helpful."
"More documentation with real-world use cases would be helpful."
"I don't have any specific notes for improvement; however, if they could continue to focus more on giving users the ability to create custom policies and configurations, that would be ideal."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The tool is a bit costly."
"The licensing costs are reasonable."
"The product’s pricing is medium."
"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 licensing model follows a per-user per-month structure."
"Although the cost can be high, the value is worth the price tag."
"Its licensing cost depends on the type of license such as the business license or the enterprise license. The enterprise license is costlier than the business license, but we get more visibility and more modules. If you have a multi-cloud environment and subscribe to each cloud's native CSPM tool, it is costly. If you are using a single tool like Prisma Cloud, with a single license, you can monitor all environments, such as Google Cloud, Azure, AWS, and Oracle Cloud. The cost of Prisma Cloud is less than the cost of subscribing to the CSPM tool of each cloud provider. This is where Prisma Cloud can save costs."
"Our licensing fees are $18,000 USD per year."
"The cost depends on the pricing model. Compared to other solutions, the cost isn't that bad."
"Prisma Cloud's licensing system functions as expected with a solid licensing infrastructure."
"Prisma Cloud is a high-end enterprise solution, making it quite expensive."
"From my exposure so far, they have been really flexible on whatever your current state is, with a view to what the future state might be. There's no hard sell. They "get" the journey that you're on, and they're trying to help you embrace cloud security, governance, and compliance as you go."
"The cost was not on the higher side. Overall, the cost gets recovered with its implementation."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business34
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise58
 

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...
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...
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...
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 ...
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...
What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?
Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.
What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?
We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
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