Microsoft Defender for Cloud Reviews

My client, a construction company, needed to replace their antivirus solution, including their Azure and on-prem services. They decided they wanted to use Defender for Cloud, so I started to implement it for them. The license for their antivirus software was about to expire, and they didn't want to spend much money. They opted for Defender for Cloud to replace Symantec. System Center (endpoint protection), Security Center and Advanced Threat Protection were all consolidated into one product called  Defender for Cloud. 

The company I worked for was divided into several teams. We had an Azure Infrastructure team and workplace teams providing local on-premise services. The client was the biggest construction company in the country, with multiple locations. 

The strong point of Defender, especially when using Azure Arc to bring in on-premises systems, is that it doesn't matter where these systems are. They're just resources in the portal. If you see them and can install agents on them, it's fine. It doesn't matter how it's distributed or where the locations are. 

I believe that Microsoft Defender for Cloud raised our client's Microsoft Security Score to around 79 percent. That includes other security components. It's not just antivirus. There are all sorts of things that contribute to the score, for instance, the use of public IP addresses on VMs.

Our clients also saw some financial benefits because they didn't need to renew the Symantec license, but the biggest benefit was the ability to install Defender on Azure and on-premises machines from a single point.

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. Having that unified portal was nice, but it was a challenge. We first implemented Azure Arc, which allowed us to incorporate our on-prem machines like they were actual Azure resources. The single-pane-of-glass management is highly practical. We are accustomed to managing systems across different portals or interfaces, so it's convenient to do it from one place. That's a bonus, although it's in no small part thanks to Azure Arc. Defender then takes all the services it finds in Azure Arc and it rolls them out seamlessly as long as they ause Server 2016 version or above.

It's a severe issue when you need to install Defender for Cloud on Microsoft operating systems older than 2016. Operating systems released after 2016 will seamlessly integrate with Defender with no problems. Older operating systems don't integrate smoothly. The 2012 operating systems will continue to be used for years. The 2008 systems will be phased out, so that won't be a problem for long, but you need some quick fixes to install on a 2012 OS.

The older the operating system, the more difficult it is to detect if the solution is working. That was a significant problem. It works fine on a newer OS. On the older ones, we had to do some tricks to determine if it was correctly deployed and working since the integration of Defender in the older OS is a lot less. Microsoft couldn't help us with that.

Another thing is that Defender for Cloud uses more resources than for instance, 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.

I have been implementing Microsoft Defender for a large construction company. We started the contract about three or four months ago. I was only responsible for the installation. We aren't the team that monitors or maintains the solution. That was not my task. We were just responsible for installing it and ensuring it worked on every machine.

Defender is relatively stable as far as I can tell. It works great except for the issues with older operating systems. In some cases, you may need to come up with a workaround. 

The solution is scalable if you activate the Defender plan for all servers and containers. When you deploy new ones, it automatically picks them up and installs the components. It's perfectly scalable in that sense.

I rate Microsoft support five out of ten. You can open up a support ticket and get into Microsoft's general support chain. You need to explain the issue, and they'll get back to you. Nine times out of ten, you will get someone new and need to explain the situation again. That doesn't help much. In the end, we had to fix it all ourselves.

We had a contact at Microsoft Amsterdam who was helpful. He was more of a sales contact. He told us the best approach and turned out to be correct.

Neutral

It wasn't my decision to go with Defender for Cloud.  That doesn't mean that I would've chosen anything else per se, but those decisions are made on the managerial level. 

Installing Defender was straightforward as long as you're dealing with a more current operating system. On a post-2016 operating system, it's only a few mouse clicks. That's the beauty of the cloud. It arranges everything for you. The on-premise solution usually works the same. It's seamless. You activate the plan, select for which resource types you want to enable Defender, (including on-prem machines using Azure Arc) then hit "go." All that changes on older operating systems.

We had to create a design, test it, and get approval from management. We first tried it on a 2019 operating system, which was a piece of cake, but we faced challenges deploying it on 2008 and 2012 systems. That's why it ultimately took us three weeks to complete the deployment. If you don't have any older operating systems, it's quite effortless. 

We had four people working on the implementation, including three technicians. I was the only one from our Azure team, and there was another person from the workplace team who had access to the on-premise servers. He could log in to run some scripts and see if everything worked. We also had a project manager and a person from the client's team to test as soon as we were ready. 

I rate Defender for Cloud eight out of ten. It uses more resources than competing solutions, but that's the only issue. If you plan to implement Defender for Cloud, I recommend considering the operating systems you use. 

If there are a lot of Server 2008 and 2012 VMs, it might not be the best solution. It is still possible, but it's harder to monitor and manage. It's tricky to check if everything works. These issues don't exist as long as you use the 2016 version or above. 

I work as a SOC manager. We use it for incident security, incident monitoring, threat analysis, and looking at remediation or suppression.

Most use cases that come from Microsoft are all automated. Even before any manual effort, the tool is designed in such a way that it just does the threat analysis. It gives us exactly what the incident alert is all about: 

• The priority
• The threat 
• The impact
• The risk
• How it can be mitigated. 

Those are the key features of this particular tool.

The solution has features that have definitely helped improve our security posture.

One important security feature is the incident alerts. Now, with all these cyberattacks, there are a lot of incident alerts that get triggered. It is very difficult to keep monitoring everything automatically, instead our organization is utilizing the automated use case that we get from Microsoft. That has helped bring down the manual work for a lot of things. The automation tool does the following (when human interaction is needed): 

• Identifies what kind of an alert is it. 
• Whether we have to dismiss it. 
• When we need to take any action so the team can do it appropriately. 

This is one of its key benefits.

It is easy to use based on my experience. If a newcomer comes in, it is just a matter of time to just learn it because it is not that difficult.

Most of the time, we are looking for more automation, e.g., looking to ensure that the real-time risk, threat, and impact are being identified by Microsoft. With the Signature Edition, there is an awareness of the real risks and threats. However, there are a lot of things where we need to go back to Microsoft, and say, "Are you noticing these kinds of alerts as well? Do we have any kind of solution for this?" This is where I find that Microsoft could be more proactive.

I have been using it for more than nine years.

We have not had issues with tool usage or any hiccups.

There are certain glitches, which are areas of improvement, thus we continuously keep working with Microsoft. Microsoft does acknowledge this, because it's a learning experience for Microsoft as well. They always expect feedback and improvements on their tools, as it is a collaboration effort between Microsoft and the client.

I work for an organization with more than 50,000 users. Under security alone, we have 5,000-plus users. On my team, we have around 400 people who are looking at it.

There are different roles in the company: project management, security operations (the red and blue teams), and pen testing. I lead a security operations center team, where we have L1, L2, L3, and L4 capabilities. All these come under the same umbrella of the security operations center, and they are all rolled up to the Chief Information Security Officer as part of security. 

An ongoing improvement for both Microsoft as well as for my organization: We need to work together. Sometimes, the solution doesn't work so we reach out to Microsoft Enterprise support for any help or assistance. If there is any feedback or improvement, then we work together, but they definitely have helped most of the time.

There are certain gray areas. We constantly work with Microsoft to notice whether there is something that only we, as a client, face. Or, if there are other clients who have the same kind of situation, issues, or scenarios where they need help. 

I would rate Azure Security Center anywhere between five to six out of 10. Most of the time, when we log into the support, we don't get a chance to interact with Microsoft employees directly, except having it go to outsource employees of Microsoft. The initial interaction has not been that great because outsourced companies cannot provide the kind of quality or technical expertise that we look for. We have a technical manager from Microsoft, but they are kind of average unless we make noise and ask them to escalate. We then can get the right people and the right solution, but it definitely takes time.

We use Microsoft Defender and Splunk. We primarily went with Azure Security Center because of client requirements.

The initial setup is pretty easy and straightforward. 

To deploy just Azure Security Center, it took three to four hours. However, there are a lot of things that it depends on.

Different clients have different requirements. If the client says, "We are using Azure Security Center. We want to use Microsoft technology or products." We will go with that. There are clients who are using Cisco products as well. 

The solution architect usually designs it, taking into consideration the initial setup guide, playbook, and documentation. 

We don't use consultants for the deployment.

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

For organizations who have an on-prem environment and are planning to move to a cloud-based solution, Azure Security Center is definitely one of the best tools that they can use. Year-over-year, I can see a lot of differences and improvements that Microsoft has definitely implemented, in terms of risk analysis, threat impact, and risk impact.

Most of the time, for any action that is performed within an organization or environment, if there is a risk or threat analysis, it is the security operation center who gets to know about it. The end user doesn't get affected at any cost unless there is a ransomware or cyberattack.

I wouldn't say that this is the only tool or product that has helped us out. There are a lot of technologies that Microsoft has come up with, which all together have made a difference. From a score of one to 10 for overall security, I would rate Azure Security Center somewhere between a seven to eight. This is not the only tool that my team depends on. There are other tools, but in terms of threat analysis and threat impact, this particular tool has definitely helped us.

We use a lot of Microsoft technologies, not only Azure Security Center. Apart from Azure Security Center, we use the playbook. We are also moving forward with Azure IoT Central and Log Analytics, which is a SIEM tool. So, I have Azure Security Center, Azure Advanced Threat Protection, Windows Defender, Log Analytics, and Azure IoT Central. 

Using Azure Security Center, there are a lot of things that get automated. So, I am not dependent completely on Azure Security Center. It is a collaboration of different tools and technologies to achieve the end result. That is why I am saying seven to eight out of 10, because I am not dependent on a particular tool. It is also one of the tools that is definitely helpful for checking risk analysis, but there are other tools as well.

I would rate Azure Security Center as seven to eight of 10. If you talk about Microsoft products, I would rate it anywhere between eight to nine out of 10.

We use Azure Security Center in our own company, and we have also deployed it for one of our clients. Our biggest use case is the enforcement of regulatory compliance on our cloud.

Security Center has helped us really well in terms of regulatory compliance enforcement on our cloud. We were able to deploy the inbuilt policies, and we were also able to build our own initiatives and policies. There were certain things that we wanted to check to see if our VMs were compliant. We also wanted to ensure that our storage and databases are compliant, and Security Center helped us in doing that.

This product has features that have helped us improve our security posture because we have a large estate of servers or VMs in Azure, and with Security Center, we were able to find out that a lot of our VMs were not compliant. This would have caused us a lot of trouble if there was an audit in the near future. The issues that it flagged for us gave us the opportunity to fix the problems, which was really helpful. Essentially, it was a preventative measure that allowed us to identify and rectify issues before they got out of hand.

One way that this solution has helped to improve our organization is that we have a better view of the entire security status, including how compliant our systems are and whether there are any open issues that need our attention. There are also reports that we generate periodically, so everyone is aware of the overall status of the environment.

When we started out, our secure score was pretty low. We adopted some of the recommendations that Security Center set out and we were able to make good progress on improving it. It had been in the low thirties and is now in the upper eighties.

Our overall security posture has been enhanced. A lot of the time, our cloud is accessed by people in the organization and they keep spinning up virtual machines, creating resources. Often, there are ports that open or there are certain security issues that are not handled. Because there are so many people and so many new resources coming up, it is difficult to track all of them. With the help from Security Center, we are able to see exactly what has come up.

If there are new issues that arise, which could happen if someone has not followed the proper protocol before bringing up a VM or another network resource, we can see this because we have a better local view of exactly what is there in the environment. So in that regard, we can say that it has helped us improve our security posture.

Using this product does not affect the end-user in any major way. Its usage is mostly relevant to the backend, and of interest to administrators.

The most valuable features are regulatory compliance and security alerts. The security score is very helpful, as well. Together, these let us know the state of each subscription and whether there are any actions that we need to take. This functionality is pretty helpful in audits.

We would like to have better transparency as to how the security score is calculated because as it is now, it is difficult to understand. We showed it to a couple of our clients, and they had trouble understanding it and an explanation or breakdown is not readily available. The score includes different weightage for certain controls. For example, if there is a "Control A" and it has a weight of 10 then it would affect the score more than "Control B", which has a weight of five. Being able to see the weights that are assigned to each control would be an improvement.

We have been using Azure Security Center for between eight and nine months.

This is a pretty stable solution and we haven't run into any issues as of yet.

I don't think there should be problems with scalability. It supports more than a hundred subscriptions, with multiple thousands of resources. I expect that we will be fine in that regard.

There are between 10 to 15 users that are currently using the security center. We have only two to three administrators and the rest of them have a highly localized role. Some of them are working on the policies, whereas others take care of compliance issues. They try to remedy issues and also try to improve our security score.

Our client has data centers that are divided into various regions and various business units. They are onboarding new business owners every couple of months, so it is in the process of expansion. They want all of their business units to be onboarded.

I have not had the chance to speak with technical support from Microsoft but from what I have heard from my colleagues, they are pretty responsive and give you good information with respect to fixing issues.

We had another tool, Morpheus, which was a multi-cloud manager. We did some work on it but because it wasn't native to Azure, we didn't go any further with it.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. We just had to enable it for our subscriptions.

Deployment does not take a long time. The maximum is 24 hours if you have a lot of subscriptions but otherwise, it's pretty quick.

We have several subscriptions so we initially started by deploying some for testing. When we were sure that we knew how to go about it, we deployed the remaining ones.

We completed the deployment in-house and two people were required.

There are two other people in charge of maintenance.

The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have.

As we were on Azure, we didn't look to other vendors for similar solutions.

We use between 80% and 90% of the functionality within the solution. We don't use workbooks as of now but otherwise, we use pretty much everything.

There are a few options that are included but not enabled out of the box. One example of this is Azure Defender.

Maintenance-wise, one thing that we do is keep up to date on policies and compliance. Microsoft provides a lot of out-of-the-box compliance initiatives, and sometimes they can go out of date and are replaced. We have to make sure that the new ones are correctly enabled and that the older ones are no longer active. Essentially, we want to disregard the old policies and ensure that the new ones are enforced.

The biggest lesson that I have learned is to keep an eye on your resource usage in Azure, because if it's a large environment with a lot of users then you might not know who opens the door to the outside. Using Security Center lets you keep track of what's going on in your environment.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I use it for managing our customers' server vulnerability assessments for regular and SQL servers. I also use it to get a security score for the resources of our customers that are on Azure, as well as security posture management. 

We also have regulatory benchmarks to audit our customers' resources that are on Azure to check whether they're meeting regulatory standards like ISO 27000.

It has enabled our organization to have an organized approach to, and quick visibility, or a bird's-eye view, of the current security portion. The way the portal organizes things has allowed us to focus on the specific vulnerabilities and security gaps that have to be fixed quickly. It gives us flexibility on what we should be checking on.

Defender for Cloud has helped us reduce or close some of the key security gaps of our main assets on the cloud. It has also helped us comply with some of the regulatory compliance standards, like CIS and ISO 27000 because of its main features. And it has also helped us in terms of threat detection and vulnerability management.

Another benefit is that it has really helped detect some of the Zero-day-model threats. We've also been able to utilize the automation features to investigate and remediate some of the threats that have been discovered. It has improved the time it takes to remediate threats, mainly because of automation. The logic apps that we've been able to set in either Sentinel or Defender for Cloud are the main components that have really improved that efficiency, and the time needed for remediating threats.

The time to respond is near real time, if the logic apps are in use, because it's just a matter of putting the playbooks into action. This is something that we've tested and found is quite effective for remediation.

The solution has also saved us money over going with a standalone solution where you purchase licenses for servers for a whole year. Now, we pay only for the servers in use. With the subscription-based model for servers, you're only paying per hour and only when the server is being utilized.

The main feature is the security posture assessment through the security score. I find that to be very helpful because it gives us guidance on what needs to be secured and recommendations on how to secure the workloads that have been onboarded.

Another component, although I can't say it's specific to Defender for Cloud, is that the onboarding process is easy. I find that helpful compared with the competitors' solutions. Onboarding the resources into Defender for Cloud is quite easy.

Also, we have integrated Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Defender for Cloud with Microsoft Sentinel and the integration is actually just a click of a button. It's very easy. You just click to connect the data sources and Microsoft Sentinel. Having them work together is an advantage. I like the fact that the main threat notification console has moved to Security Center so that we don't have to go into each of these solutions. It's beneficial having the three solutions working together in terms of the investigations that we have been doing with them.

The threat intelligence is quite good at detecting multi-level threats. If, for example, you integrate Defender for Endpoint and 365 and Defender for Identity, the threat intelligence is able to grab these two signals and provide good insights into, and a good, positive view of the threats.

The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome.

Defender for Cloud, as a solution, allows you to manage and protect servers from vulnerabilities without using Defender for Servers. I find it a bit weird, if you are to manage the antivirus for servers on the portal, that you can't deploy the antivirus policies on the same portal. For instance, if you want to exclude a particular folder from an antivirus scan or if you want to disable the antivirus from the portal, you'll not ideally do it on the portal. That's a huge part that is currently missing.

Also, some thought has to be put into the issue of false positives. We've been seeing false positives that are related to Sentinel through the integration. We have been giving them this feedback, but I don't know if that is something that Microsoft is working on.

The time for detection is one of the things that we were also supposed to raise with the Microsoft team. There is a slight delay in terms of detection. That "immediate" factor isn't there. There's a need to improve the time to detection. When malware has been detected by Defender for Endpoint, we find that it takes approximately one to two minutes before the signal reaches Defender for Cloud. If that could be reduced to near-real-time, that would be helpful. That's one of the key areas that should be improved because we've done some simulations on that.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud for three years.

It's quite stable. In my experience, there have been no issues with the stability.

Because we have Premium Support, the support is quite okay. We are able to get answers to most of the queries that we raise.

Positive

The initial setup is quite easy, especially if it's for non-servers. It's just a matter of enabling and disabling servers, using the Azure app.

And the solution doesn't require any maintenance on our side.

There are improvements that have to be made to the licensing. Currently, for servers, it has to be done by grouping the servers on a single subscription and that means that each server is subject to the same planning. We don't have an option whereby, if all those resources are in one subscription, we can have each of the individual servers subject to different planning.

There's no option for specifying that "Server A should be in Plan 1 and server B should be in Plan 2," because the servers are in the same subscription. That's something that can be fixed. 

Also, there needs to be a clear description by Microsoft for those customers who have Defender for Endpoint for Servers and Defender for Servers because now they don't know which subscription they should purchase.

I've used many solutions, but Defender for Cloud is in its own class. You can't compare it with third-party solutions because those solutions either have a third-party antivirus or they're not integrated in the same way as Defender for Cloud is. Because Defender for Cloud integrates multiple solutions within it, like Defender for Endpoint, other workloads, and the firewall manager, it stands on its own as a single solution that contains all these solutions. 

I am working in a security domain where Azure Security Center is playing a key role. We are primarily using Azure Security Center to secure our infrastructure. We are also able to use Azure Security Center for many other purposes.

In terms of deployment, we have a hybrid cloud. It is a combination of both on-prem and cloud. Azure Security Center is deployed on-prem, and then there are OMS agents that are provided by Microsoft that can be installed at any location, such as on-prem or on the cloud. These agents collect Windows and Linux logs from the machines on various clouds for Azure Security Center, which is something interesting for me.

It has improved our security posture a lot. The Azure Security Center provides a score that shows where is your organization at the moment in terms of security. After some time, you can see how much you have improved and where you can improve your score. We are getting this kind of advice from Azure Security Center.

It has definitely affected our end-user experience. With the help of this tool, we can investigate more security incidents in a very good manner. It has also enriched my career and improved me as a professional in terms of understanding various features and security incidents. 

Before implementing Azure Security Center, we had so many issues with our infrastructure in terms of security monitoring. With the implementation of Azure Security Center, we have resolved many issues. One of the issues that we have resolved is that we are now able to do security monitoring of the complete infrastructure. It not only supports cloud security monitoring; it also supports on-prem security monitoring. It has an OMS agent that can be installed on on-prem Windows servers, Linux, or other platforms for collecting logs. These agents can also be used on other cloud platforms, such as AWS, GCP, or Google Cloud. 

The security alerts and correlated alerts are most valuable. It correlates the logs and gives us correlated alerts, which can be fed into any security information and event management (SIEM) tool. It is an analyzed correlation tool for monitoring security. It gives us alerts when there is any kind of unauthorized access, or when there is any malfunctioning in multifactor authentication (MFA). If our Azure is connected with Azure Security Center, we get to know what types of authentication are happening in our infra. 

It has so many security monitoring features, such as compromised accounts. For example, if I'm working for abc.com company, and I'm using the same company email address for registering to another hotel or some other place where it gets hacked or something goes wrong, they will alert us. If my credentials are dumped somewhere on the dark web, they trigger an alert stating that you should go and reset your credentials. There are many more interesting alerts, and such features are pretty awesome in terms of security monitoring. In terms of security, it gives a very good overview of our estate. It also has many features from the cloud administration side.

Agent features need to be improved. They support agents through Azure Arc or Workbench. Sometimes, we are not able to get correct signals from the machines on which we have installed these agents. We are not able to see how many are currently reporting to Azure Security Center, and how many are currently not reporting. For example, we have 1,000 machines, and we have enrolled 1,000 OMS agents on these machines to collect the log. When I look at the status, even though at some places, it shows that it is connected, but when I actually go and check, I'm not getting any alerts from those. There are some discrepancies on the agent, and the agent features are not up to the mark.

Sometimes, we are getting backdated logs, and there could be more correlation.

So far, its stability is good. I don't see any issues with the stability part.

In terms of new features, we are able to scale up to our requirements. New features get added immediately. So far, I don't see any issues in our environment.

Our company is an MNC, and there are around 180,000 endpoints that we are protecting or monitoring with this solution. Currently, its adoption is around 70%. We cannot achieve 100% coverage because of some of the legacy products. There are legacy servers, and then there are some people who are working in customer environments where they are not utilizing our laptops. We still need to cover 20% more.

Their support during the implementation was awesome. They provided very good support. After the implementation, they scheduled weekly calls to check with us if everything is going well. They helped us with troubleshooting and more understanding. If there are any product improvements, they have been announcing them over the course.

I was not involved in its implementation, but it was a pretty straightforward process. 

There is a separate cloud team for implementation. We just review whatever they have implemented from the security perspective. We review whether they have implemented it correctly or whether we are getting correct alerts. 

Our admin team had one week of training, and they implemented it with the help of Microsoft. Our environment is a bit complex, but we did it.

We have absolutely got a return on the investment. Our company is a managed security service provider (MSSP). When we get more projects, we mention the products that we are currently using to secure our environment. We also do a proof of concept (PoC) or a demo about how we installed such products in our environment and how secure we are. There are so many security scoring systems, and they give the score. Our score is on the highest side, which is useful for providing a security service to our client or customer. We have implemented Azure Security Center at many places for our customers.

I am not involved in this area. However, I believe its price is okay because even small customers are using Azure Security Center. I don't think it is very expensive.

For cloud security posture, Azure Security Center is a good product. It is different from a Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tool. We are also using a SIEM tool. Microsoft has a SIEM tool called Sentinel, and there are many SIEM tools out there in the market such as Splunk, QRadar, and ArcSight. Azure Security Center is not a replacement for Sentinel. It gives the complete posture of your cloud. It was started with the purpose of finding any anomalies and malfunctioning for Azure AD, which is related to login and logout of employees, but then they elaborated it a bit more.

I would rate Azure Security Center a nine out of 10.

We are working for a major client in the UK. So, we are moving all the products of clients from their on-premises environment to the cloud. One of the biggest challenges we face, “Once the infrastructure is created in the cloud, how can we make sure that the infrastructure is secure enough?” For that purpose, we are using Azure Security Center, which gives us all the security loopholes and vulnerabilities for our infrastructure. That has been helpful for us.

We use the Azure Security Center to scan the entire infrastructure from a security point of view. It gives us all the vulnerabilities, observations, etc. It reports most of the critical issues.

From an organization or security audit point of view, there are few tools available in the market. The output or score of Azure Security Center has really helped the organization from a business point of view by showing that we are secure enough with all our data, networks, or infrastructure in Azure. This helps the organization from a business point of view to promote the score, e.g., we are secure enough because this is our score in Azure Security Center.

We are using it from a security point of view. If there is a threat or vulnerability, the solution will immediately scan, report, or alert us to those issues.

We are using most of the good services in Azure:

• The load balancing options
• Firewall
• Application Gateway
• Azure AD. 

I value Azure Security Center the most from a security point of view. Everybody is concerned about moving data or infrastructure to the cloud. This solution proves that we are secure enough for that infrastructure, which is why I really value the Azure Security Center. We are secure in our infrastructure.

This is a platform as a service provided by Azure. We don't need to install or maintain Azure Security Center. It is a ready-made service available in Azure. This is one of the main things that we like. If you look at similar tools, we have to install, maintain, and update services. Whereas, Azure Security Center manages what we are using. This is a good feature that has helped us a lot.

From a business point of view, the only drawback is that Azure or Microsoft need to come up with flexible pricing/licensing. Then, I would rate it 10 out of 10.

We have been using it in production for the last three years. I have been part of the cloud migration team for Azure Cloud for the last two years.

We started using Azure Cloud from the initial version. Every week or month, there are updates in Azure. For the last three years, we have been using the latest version.

Whenever we increase the number of our resources, Azure Security Center easily copes with it. Since this is a ready-made service, it will automatically scale.

We are working with around 100 to 150 major clients in the UK. Each client has 200 to 500 users.

From an overall infrastructure point of view, we have a five member team.

We are getting adequate support and documentation from Microsoft. We are a Premium customer of Microsoft, so we are getting support in terms of documentation and manual support.

We were using this service from the onset.

This is a PaaS service. It is a ready-made service available in Azure Cloud. It is very easy to use and set up because you are using the platform. We don't want to maintain this service from our end. 

There are different models when it comes to the cloud:

• Infrastructure as a service
• Platform as a service
• Software as a service.

We are using sort of a hybrid, both infrastructure as a service and platform as a service. 

We are using our own team for the deployment.

We consume or subscribe to the service. Azure takes care of the maintenance and deployment, and we don't need to worry about it.

We are securing our customers' infrastructure using Azure Security Center. That internally helps their overall organization meet their goal/score on security.

So far, the feedback from the customer and our team have been really positive. We are very happy and getting return on investment from this product.

Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool.

One of the main challenges that we have been facing with Azure Security Center is the cost. The costs are really a complex calculation, e.g., to calculate the monthly costs. Azure is calculating on an hourly basis for use of the resource. Because of this, we found it really complex to promote what will be our costs for the next couple of months. I think if Azure could reduce the complex calculation and come up with straightforward cost mapping that would be very useful from a product point of view.

Other than Azure Security Center, we did not find a single tool which could analyze all our infrastructure or resources in Azure Cloud.

We were mainly looking for products or tools native to Azure. The other tools that we evaluated were not native to Azure. Azure Security Center is natively attached to Azure. Because other tools were not natively supporting Azure, then we would have to maintain and deploy them separately.

So far, we have received very positive feedback from the team and customers. Because it is a single tool where we list all the problems or vulnerabilities, we are happy as a team. The customer is also happy.

End users are not interacting with Azure Security Center. This is a back-end service that evaluates security.

There are no other good tools in Azure, other than Azure Security Center, which will evaluate and alert you to security vulnerabilities and threats. So, if somebody is really concerned about the security of their infrastructure in Azure, I suggest you use Azure Security Center. The features that it provides from a security point of view are amazing.

I would rate the product as a seven or eight (out of 10) because it is really helping us to improve our security standards.

We typically use Azure Defender for securing our infrastructure-based virtual machines and database solutions on the Azure subscription. We've integrated a couple of the Defender agents into our on-premise servers too.

Azure Defender has improved our overall security posture. In particular, Defender's exploit protection mechanism protects our servers from unseen threats like process memory attacks, hash theft, or any direct script-based attacks.

Defender is just one component because the organization also uses endpoint security solutions and firewalls. This product is not an endpoint solution. It usually operates at the server level, improving the posture of the Azure cloud environment. Our end-users never deal with Azure Defender. It's purely on the administrative level. The server administration team handles it, so the end-user has nothing to do with it.

Defender is a robust platform for dealing with many kinds of threats. We're protected from various threats, like viruses. Attacks can be easily minimized with this solution defending our infrastructure.

The entire Defender family requires a little bit of clarity. There is a lot of confusion in the market, especially on the end-user side but also on the consulting side. Microsoft has launched four or five Defender products, including Azure Defender, which Microsoft renamed Defender for Cloud. They also have Defender for Identity, Defender for Endpoints, and Defender ATP. It isn't very clear.

I would suggest building a single product that addresses endpoint server protection, attack surface, and everything else in one solution. That is the main disadvantage with the product. If we are incorporating some features, we end up in a situation where this solution is for the server, and that one is for the client, or this is for identity, and that is for our application. They're not bundling it. Commercially, we can charge for different licenses, but on the implementation side, it's tough to help our end-customer understand which product they're getting.

I've been using Defender for Cloud for more than a year.

It's hard for me to talk about the stability of Defender because, in my experience, "stability" is not a word that is relevant to security. A security product is either good or bad. It protects me, or it doesn't. There is no middle ground.

If we are talking about crashes or other issues, I don't see any problems, and the scalability is fine. We can protect storage, key vaults, SQL servers, etc. Defender can protect eight or nine Azure services, and it all works fine, but it would be great if all Azure services could come under the umbrella of Azure Defender. 

For example, we use Defender to protect our SQL databases, but not all of our databases are Microsoft. I have to search for another security solution for the same database vertical because it's not a Microsoft database.

I am a solution designer and architect, and I incorporated Defender for Cloud into three different projects. The smallest had more than 200 virtual machines and 20 database servers plus a couple of Kubernetes and container environments. The largest is around 600 virtual machines on-premises and on Azure, and around 10 web applications, a couple of key vaults and databases, and some storage.

I have contacted Microsoft support, but I haven't opened any tickets for Defender so far. Generally speaking, Microsoft Azure support is quite good. 

The time needed for the initial deployment phase depends on the requirements, but generally, the deployment is quite fast because it's a cloud-native tool. They have just upgraded the Azure Security Center to add Defender.

When talking about cost versus value, you have to consider Defender in the context of Microsoft's cloud solutions as a whole. It's a cloud-native tool, so why is Microsoft charging so much? 

The features are good, but Microsoft created Azure, and they provide monitoring and backup solutions. It's also Microsoft's responsibility to offer security solutions, so why do they charge so much? Why isn't it incorporated into the old security center products? It should typically come with the security center. 

Defender for Cloud is pretty costly for a single line. It's incredibly high to pay monthly for security per server. The cost is considerable for an enterprise with 500-plus virtual machines, and the monthly bill can spike. 

If we're just dealing with servers and Azure infrastructure, then Defender for Cloud is the way to go. But if we want to cover endpoints, emails, and other entry-exit points, then we need to think about another solution

Symantec and a few other tools have end-to-end solutions that protect everything in a single console. You can't do that with Defender for Cloud. Depending on the client's requirements, Defender might not be the best option because it might not cover all the use cases that a client needs.

It's good for clients who are mainly or entirely dependent on Azure resources. If a client's infrastructure is more than 70 percent Azure, it's a good product because it has native control by Microsoft only. In other cases, it's a challenge. The product is good if you're working entirely within a Microsoft, like Windows Server, Azure services, or Office 365 services, but you run into a problem the moment you start going into macOS, iOS, Android, Linux, etc. 

The agent installed there for Defender works differently. But on the flip side, a competitor's product never addresses the spatial bias on Windows. Every product line is the same. Their agents behave the same way on Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, and Windows. That is the fundamental difference I see.

I rate Defender for Cloud eight out of ten. I would recommend it depending on your use case. It's a single solution that can address mixed infrastructure that includes on-premises, AWS, GCP, or Azure. Defender can provide security for all four.

The solution provides a security score based on the environment and gives recommendations for improving that score. For example, a manual server may require patches to strengthen security, and MS Defender for Cloud informs us. We can also run a vulnerability assessment in the background of work processes to detect server vulnerabilities. We primarily operate a hybrid cloud environment with some specific on-prem integrations.

One of our clients, operating in the electronics industry, has around 1,300 endpoints, 700 users on the Windows server, and 300 other devices. There are also 100-150 users on Unix servers.

We use multiple Microsoft security products, including Defender for Cloud, Sentinel, and Defender for Endpoint. The products are integrated, and there is nothing complicated about integrating them; we provide the APIs or the credentials, and they are automatically integrated.

The product helps us prioritize threats across the enterprise, which is essential when interacting with clients, as we can show them their high-risk vulnerabilities and tackle them first.

The solution helps automate routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts. Additionally, following the resolution of an issue, we can set up a logic app to trigger an automatic system response if it happens again.

The integrated security suite saves us time, as multiple security solutions work together seamlessly in the cloud, allowing us to take actions that could take 24-48 hours to replicate using third-party products. 

Defender for Cloud reduced our time to detect and respond; if we are faced with an issue known to the threat intelligence database or that occurred before, we don't need to invest any time at all. The solution reduced our time to detect and respond by around 50%. 

Integration with Defender for Endpoint allows us to see the health of our endpoints in terms of workload protection, which is one of the benefits of these integrations.

Microsoft solutions working natively together to provide integrated protection and coordinated detection and response is essential from a business point of view. We don't have to manage multiple tools and services from different dashboards; we can monitor and manage everything from a single point. All the generated alerts from numerous services are ingested into one solution that a single team can monitor. That's one of the best parts of using the integrated Microsoft security suite.

The solution's robust security posture is the most valuable feature.

We have a lot of firewalls, and we can manage them in the solution through the firewall manager. We can set up an Azure firewall and centralize the management policy.

The solution provides excellent visibility into threats, and it's a cloud-based integrated solution, so we don't have to worry about any third-party products or services. Microsoft provides so many options, and that's great.

Defender for Cloud generates reports we can use as an assessment, as it allows us to see the services in our environment and our points of highest risk.

The solution's threat intelligence helps us prepare for threats before they hit and take proactive steps, which is very useful for analysis. 

The most significant areas for improvement are in the security of our identity and endpoints and the posture of the cloud environment. Better protection for our cloud users and cloud apps is always welcome.

Several features are already in the pipeline, including one called External Attack Surface Management, which will be welcome additions.

The solution's stability is impressive; it's very stable.

The scalability is excellent; if we grow or shrink in the future, the scalability is there to accommodate us. I rate the solution ten out of ten in this regard.

When we have a critical issue, customer service is very prompt, and we often get support rapidly. We also get good help in our production environment.

Positive

I previously used Symantec Endpoint Detection and Response and switched because of the benefits of having a cloud-native solution. Additionally, the market is moving towards Microsoft, including many of our customers, so it makes sense for us to go with this trend.

The initial setup consists of three steps for us; first, we conduct an assessment or discovery with a client to determine their requirements and develop an understanding of their environment. Second, we design and plan the deployment to fulfill the client's requirements. Third, we implement and conduct a POC, and if successful, we roll out the entire deployment. The complexity of the setup and the number of staff required depends on the size of the business.

An example of an organization with 500-1,000 staff is that the initial information gathering takes four weeks, the design and planning stage takes two weeks, and the implementation and POC take another two weeks. Therefore, the deployment can take between eight and 15 weeks for a two-person team.

In terms of maintenance, the solution requires monitoring and routine inspection of the details across the services.

I rate the solution nine out of ten. 

DevOps security features are in the preview phase, so we may utilize the solution for that in the future.

We use Microsoft Sentinel, enabling us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. This data ingestion is important to our security operations because information on our critical applications and services provides us with activity, audit, and application logs. This logging capability means Sentinel allows us to investigate threats and respond holistically from one place. 

To a security colleague who says it's better to go with a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor's security suite, I'd say there are benefits in going with a single vendor.