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

The compared Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #14 in VM , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 3.1% mindshare in the category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #1 in CNAP , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 16.8% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 25, 2025

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks and Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management are prominent players in the cloud security domain. Prisma Cloud stands out for its comprehensive multi-cloud security features and seamless AWS integration, giving it an edge in extensive security functionalities.

Features: Prisma Cloud provides dynamic workload identity creation, comprehensive monitoring, integration with AWS, automated forensics, and vulnerability scanning. RedLock's cloud security components such as Twistlock and PureSec enhance Prisma’s offerings. Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management delivers robust vulnerability assessment, accurate CVE details, Microsoft ecosystem integration, and prioritizes vulnerabilities based on severity.

Room for Improvement: Prisma Cloud requires better documentation, dashboard customization, and user navigation improvements. Users report issues with API instructions and role-based access control, and desire clearer alerting systems. For Microsoft Defender, there is a need for improved automation of remediation processes, faster dashboard refresh rates, and stability enhancements, especially with high-memory usage agents.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prisma Cloud offers good technical support but experiences occasional delays. Its deployment is seamless across hybrid, on-premises, and public clouds, though initial integrations can be complex. Microsoft Defender is praised for straightforward deployment within Microsoft tool environments, with pre-existing integration simplifying installation despite requiring expertise for optimal setup. Both solutions are known for prompt support responses, although Prisma Cloud's support varies regionally.

Pricing and ROI: Prisma Cloud is viewed as costly yet justifiable due to its comprehensive features, despite growth estimation challenges. Users appreciate predictable licensing. Microsoft Defender offers economical pricing, especially for Microsoft ecosystem clients, with cost-saving bundles. Both solutions are deemed to provide satisfactory ROI, though detailed metrics can be elusive for some organizations.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

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

March 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

Vulnerability Management

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at Novartis

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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TakayukiUmehara

Security Specialist at Prudential Systems Japan

Ease of management and integration supports operations, but has high resource consumption

A valuable feature is the ease of management and integration with Microsoft products. I appreciate that I can click on a server in the Defender Console, notice a risk, and retrieve all necessary information. Speed is a key feature as it is very quick to administer and allows for manual configuration from the portal.

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Mohammad Qaw

Senior Security Consultant at helpag

It gives you one console to see all of your assets, review their configurations, and build your processes

Most customers use Prisma Cloud for visibility and compliance. Prisma has so many features, but many organizations do not use them. They primarily use the visibility part to connect all their cloud accounts and hosts for visibility to see if they are missing any security controls or if they have any misconfigurations. You can connect it to cloud environments such as Azure, AWS, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, etc., or to an on-prem data center. Prisma Cloud gives you so many options to automate processes related to your daily operations. When it comes to cybersecurity, you can automate things with their existing APIs. They also have out-of-the-box integrations with many solutions. I have not seen any limitations. Everything is customizable. You can do whatever you want, defining the reporting and custom use cases. They recently updated the UI, so it's much better than before.

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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 is an excellent tool."

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

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

"The solution helps identify threats and vulnerabilities."

"A valuable feature is the ease of management and integration with Microsoft products."

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

"Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management provides regular advisories and recommendations that help improve our security posture."

"The solution is highly scalable."

"One valuable feature is the Microsoft Security Scorecard."

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

"The integration with SIEM is the best, specifically the native integration with Microsoft SIEM."

More Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management pros

"Prisma Cloud's most valuable asset is its ability to provide detailed visibility into container activity."

"Prisma Cloud has enabled us to take a very strong preventive approach to cloud security. One of the hardest things with cloud is getting visibility into workloads. With Prisma Cloud, you can go in and get that visibility, then set up policies to alert on risky behavior, e.g., if there are security groups or firewall ports open up. So, it is very helpful in preventing configuration errors in the cloud by having visibility. If there are issues, then you can find them and fix them."

"In the GlobalProtect module, we can easily guide users experiencing connection issues through the notification column."

"The most valuable feature is that the rule set is managed and that it can be run on a regularly scheduled basis."

"One feature we like is the amount of data Prisma gives us. Some infrastructure and platform vulnerabilities that in the cloud are hard to detect, and we were unaware of some of these. It's critical to shed light on these. For example, you create virtual machines and forget about them, but when you revisit them, some vulnerabilities may be detected."

"CSPM is very useful because it gives us good policies and violation alerts."

"Due to the maturity of most companies, security posture management is the most valuable feature."

"We have standardized vendor process management, so we want to reduce multiple vendors. Prisma Cloud is part of Palo Alto. We use Palo Alto firewalls and other solutions. Prisma has many features that intelligently cover cloud security. One solution can cover runtime for EC2 systems, containers, and Fargate. We also have EKS/Kubernetes integration. So, whatever the cloud-native solution in Pfizer, we can use one solution to secure that."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks 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 worst aspect is the refresh rate of the dashboard. A vulnerability I patch within 15 minutes takes 24 additional hours for an update."

"Sometimes the stability of the agents could be improved."

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

"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."

"The technical support takes too much time to resolve tickets."

"The product is not stable; it is very resource-intensive, consuming a lot of memory and CPU, which makes it slow."

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

More Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management cons

"They need to make the settings more flexible to fit our internal policies about data. We didn't want developers to see some data, but we wanted them to have access to the console because it was going to help them... It was a pain to have to set up the access to some languages and some data."

"The innovation side of the solution could be more efficient and more detailed."

"The information presented in the UI sometimes doesn't look intuitive enough."

"Sometimes, when you assign subnets to regions, the IP address will jump from one location to another because it will automatically change substantially. Then, we need to add those IP subnets to our firewall for existing access. The need to update those subnets potentially causes maintenance or access issues. So far, we can only provide bigger customers with six subnets, and a small company may not be able to access those services."

"We have discovered that Prisma is not functioning properly with GCP."

"Getting new guys trained on using the solution requires some thought. If someone is already trained on Palo Alto then he's able to adapt quickly. But, if someone is coming from another platform such as Fortinet, or maybe he's from the system side, that is where we need some help. We need to find out if there is an online track or training that they can go to."

"The access controls for our bank roles were not granular enough. We needed specific people to do particular actions, and we often had to give some people way too much access for them to be able to do what they needed in Prisma. They couldn't do their jobs if they didn't have that level of access, so other people had to do that part for them. It would help to have more granular role-based access controls."

"The UI is good, however, they could improve the experience."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The tool is a bit costly."

"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 costs are reasonable."

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

"The product’s pricing is medium."

"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a highly expensive solution."

"Almost all the CSPM tools are pretty expensive."

"Prisma Cloud is a value-back cloud-managed solution; cloud-native solutions are quite expensive."

"Prisma Cloud is more expensive than some other solutions, but when we consider all of its use cases, the cost averages out."

"This solution is good for a company with at least 400 people that must be connected remotely. For smaller companies, it can be too expensive."

"Prisma Cloud is affordable."

"The pricing structure is easy to understand. Depending on the use case the pricing of the solution can be different. There are not any additional costs to the standard living fees."

"Its price is reasonable as compared to other products. The main challenge is explaining the licensing model to customers. It isn't a problem related to Palo Alto. Commonly, people don't understand cloud licensing or security licensing. When they have fixed virtual machines, they know what they are going to be charged, but when it comes to cloud automation, it is hard for them to get clarity in case of high workloads or when they have enabled auto-scaling, etc. It would be helpful if Palo Alto can educate people on their licensing programs."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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?

I find that the pricing for Zafran aligns well with the comprehensive features it offers. The asset and user-based li...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

Zafran is a new startup. Features are continuously being added or improved. 1) Continued integrations with existing (...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

We connect this to our vulnerability scanner as input, our security tools to better determine risk, and our change ma...

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What do you like most about Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?

The solution helps identify threats and vulnerabilities.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management?

For our current usage, we do not have any complaints, but a potential improvement could be the introduction of a more...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

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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...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

May 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management

April 2025

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management report

Download Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management product report

Buyer's Guide

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

April 2025

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

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Also Known As

No data available

Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto

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

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks delivers comprehensive security for cloud environments, focusing on workload protection, identity creation, and seamless AWS integration. Its cloud visibility and control, combined with thorough vulnerability scanning, help maintain robust security across multi-cloud platforms.

Prisma Cloud provides essential capabilities for cloud security posture management, container security, and compliance monitoring. Enterprises utilize it to secure cloud configurations, detect vulnerabilities, and ensure regulatory compliance, spanning AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Its runtime management, identity-based micro-segmentation, and threat detection enhance cybersecurity. Despite needing improvements in documentation, integration complexities, UI, and the need for role-based access control refinement, it remains pivotal for securing assets across cloud infrastructures, particularly with its capabilities for vulnerability scanning and CI/CD pipeline integration.

What are the key features?

Workload Identity Creation: Establishes identities for cloud workloads, enhancing security through precise access management.
Dynamic Workload Protection: Protects applications dynamically, securing resources during runtime.
Integration with AWS Products: Seamlessly integrates with AWS services, maximizing the efficiency of cloud operations.
Automated Forensics: Provides detailed insights through automated investigations and runtime mapping between containers.
Application Dependency Map: Enables compliance and asset management through comprehensive inventory functionality.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Proactive Threat Prevention: Enhances security measures with advanced threat detection and prevention.
Cloud Visibility and Control: Offers control across multi-cloud environments, ensuring users maintain a strong security posture.
Prevention Capabilities: Users value its ability to prevent vulnerabilities and threats effectively.
Integration Capabilities: Supports seamless integration into existing cloud infrastructures and CI/CD pipelines.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, Prisma Cloud is implemented to strengthen cybersecurity measures, facilitate regulatory compliance, and enhance governance. Organizations leverage its features to secure sensitive data, monitor configurations, and integrate security processes within CI/CD workflows, ensuring robust protection across complex cloud infrastructures.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America

Buyer's Guide

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

March 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

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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