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Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros and cons

Vendor: Microsoft
4.0 out of 5
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Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers comprehensive threat protection and compliance management, integrating well with Azure and other Microsoft services to provide a complete security overview.
Users appreciate its intuitive dashboard that presents a thorough view of an organization's security status, aiding in efficient threat detection and management.
The integration with Azure services simplifies deployment and management, offering advanced features like automated incident alerts and vulnerability assessments.
It enhances security posture through a combination of regulatory compliance checks, security recommendations, and seamless integration with SIEM tools and other Microsoft solutions.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud proves effective in identifying and mitigating various threats, thereby improving security operations and reducing risk.

CONS

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is criticized for its complex cost calculations, making it challenging to predict future expenses.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud lacks the ability to efficiently create custom use cases and playbooks for automation.
There are concerns about the effectiveness and completeness of threat intelligence and compliance metrics in Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud's integration with third-party services is seen as problematic for some users.
Support from Microsoft, especially for high-severity cases, is considered slow and inadequate by users.
 

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Pros review quotes

RP
Nov 9, 2021
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.
TD
Nov 4, 2021
One of the features that I like about the solution is it is both a hybrid cloud and also multi-cloud. We never know what company we're going to buy, and therefore we are ready to go. If they have GCP or AWS, we have support for that as well. It offers a single-panel blast across multiple clouds.
it_user1583334 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 21, 2021
It has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem.
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
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IS
Jul 26, 2022
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.
DS
Nov 4, 2024
The solution is very easy to deploy.
VA
Jun 10, 2021
With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates.
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 19, 2024
Microsoft Defender for Cloud helps in improving our overall security posture. We have a nice overview of what is missing where and what can be improved.
PratikSavla - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 2, 2022
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.
MS
May 25, 2021
Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful.
HJ
Aug 3, 2022
Defender lets you orchestrate the roll-out from a single pane. Using the Azure portal, you can roll it out over all the servers covered by the entire subscription.
 

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Cons review quotes

RP
Nov 9, 2021
For Kubernetes, I was using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). To see that whatever is getting deployed into AKS goes through the correct checks and balances in terms of affinities and other similar aspects and follows all the policies, we had to use a product called Stackrox. At a granular level, the built-in policies were good for Kubernetes, but to protect our containers from a coding point of view, we had to use a few other products. For example, from a programming point of view, we were using Checkmarx for static code analysis. For CIS compliance, there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, we had to use other plugins to see that the CIS benchmarks are compliant. There are CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes on AWS and GCP, but there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product. We ended up with two different dashboards. We had Azure Security Center, and we had Stackrox that had its own dashboard. The operations team and the security team had to look at two dashboards, and they couldn't get an integrated piece. That's a drawback of Azure Security Center. Azure Security Center should provide APIs so that we can integrate its dashboard within other enterprise dashboards, such as the PowerBI dashboard. We couldn't get through these aspects, and we ended up giving Reader security permission to too many people, which was okay to some extent, but when we had to administer the users for the Stackrox portal and Azure Security Center, it became painful.
TD
Nov 4, 2021
Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts.
it_user1583334 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 21, 2021
If a customer is already using Okta as an SSO in its entire environment, they will want to continue with it. But Security Center doesn't understand that and keeps making recommendations. It would help if it let us resolve a recommendation, even if it is not implemented.
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IS
Jul 26, 2022
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.
DS
Nov 4, 2024
You cannot create custom use cases.
VA
Jun 10, 2021
The overview provides you with good information, but if you want more details, there is a lot more customization to do, which requires knowledge of the other supporting solutions.
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 19, 2024
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.
PratikSavla - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 2, 2022
Microsoft sources most of their threat intelligence internally, but I think they should open themselves up to bodies that provide feel intelligence to build a better engine. There may be threats out there that they don't report because their team is not doing anything on that and they don't have arrangements with another party that is involved in that research.
MS
May 25, 2021
Consistency is the area where the most improvement is needed. For example, there are some areas where the UI is not uniform across the board.
HJ
Aug 3, 2022
Another thing is that Defender for Cloud uses more resources than CrowdStrike, which my current company uses. Defender for Cloud has two or three processes running simultaneously that consume memory and processor time. I had the chance to compare that with CrowdStrike a few days ago, which was significantly less. It would be nice if Defender were a little lighter. It's a relatively large installation that consumes more resources than competitors do.