Microsoft Defender for Cloud Reviews

We have deployed Microsoft Defender for Cloud to identify vulnerabilities across various log sources for our client.

We implemented Defender to improve the security posture of our client's landscape.

The single pane of glass that Microsoft offers is highly crucial for several reasons. First, aggregating multiple log sources into a single pane of glass is not achievable without Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Second, we also interact with other cloud environments.

We use Defender's free CSPM functionality for the Microsoft Cloud security benchmark. The benchmark recommendations show all the vulnerabilities that help us to create a remediation plan and to take action.

It is a necessity for us that the free CSPM functionality provides multi-cloud monitoring and posture management because most of our workloads are spread across multi-clouds.

The comprehensive range of workloads protected by Defender for Cloud is sufficient for our needs, as it encompasses all essential security pillars.

We have enabled Defender for Cloud's native support for GCP. A key requirement for us before selecting Defender for Cloud was that it supported other clouds.

Defender for Cloud has aided in reducing the number of vulnerabilities and expediting the resolution process, thanks to its helpful suggestions. Consequently, we have achieved remarkable time savings of approximately 30 to 40 percent each week in comprehending and addressing vulnerabilities.

By integrating Defender for Cloud with the firewall and Defender for Endpoints, we have gained comprehensive security insights through these Microsoft integrations. This unified approach provides a single pane of glass for viewing all security information, eliminating the need to navigate between multiple portals.

Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture.

The unified monitoring has saved us around 30 percent of our time.

Defender for Cloud has increased our security team's efficiency by 30 percent.

Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled.

The multi-cloud capability is an important feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

The remediation process could be improved. I have seen that Google has a similar Security Center, where they not only identify vulnerabilities but also provide the steps to fix them. If Microsoft Defender for Cloud could provide remediation steps for all vulnerabilities, it would be a significant enhancement. Currently, only some vulnerabilities have remediation steps available.

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

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable. We have not encountered any downtime.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is scalable.

The technical support is good. We can raise tickets without any issues.

We previously utilized Google's Security Center. However, we transitioned to Microsoft Defender for Cloud following the client's preference for a native solution, as they are a Microsoft-centric organization. Additionally, Microsoft Defender for Cloud's multi-cloud capabilities, including its ability to integrate information from Google Cloud, were compelling factors in our decision.

We have achieved a return on investment in terms of time and efficiency, which translates to monetary savings. For instance, we have gained 30 percent more efficiency in remediation tasks. This means that what previously took ten days can now be completed in seven days, saving us time and, consequently, money.

I am not involved much with the pricing but the bundle offering is good.

We considered Prisma Cloud before ultimately selecting Microsoft Defender for Cloud. The fact that Defender for Cloud was a native solution for our client significantly simplified the integration process.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud nine out of ten.

We have Microsoft Defender for Cloud deployed across 2,000 locations and over 3,000 endpoints.

No maintenance is required from our end.

We are a managed service provider. We use Microsoft Defender for Cloud to provide services to our customers.

Defender for Cloud provides a complete DevOps security package for cloud services. Defender covers a broad range of workloads. It helps us prioritize because it identifies critical alerts that we work to resolve. 

Microsoft Defender for Cloud has enhanced our security process by providing insights and critical alerts. We use it on our own managed platform. It has helped us gain some insights and realize areas for improvement. We have worked to resolve the issues highlighted by the alerts, improving our overall security posture.

While we are satisfied with Defender for Cloud's features, an AI enhancement could potentially provide better advice and adapt more effectively to our environment.

I have been using Defender for Cloud for about three or four months.

I haven't observed any outages with Microsoft Defender for Cloud. The stability is excellent.

The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very good. I haven't experienced any issues.

I rate Microsoft support eight out of 10. Technical support is generally satisfactory, though call response times can occasionally be slow.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward and easy.

We acted as the integrator, being a managed service provider. We haven't yet developed a strategy for implementing it in other companies.

Defender for Cloud provides an invaluable return on investment by preventing potential security breaches. The peace of mind it offers is difficult to quantify.

Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services.

We evaluated other products but focused on adopting a more cloud-native approach with Microsoft's platform.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud nine out of 10. It's progressing well, although perfection takes time.

We are using the tool for checking for vulnerabilities over my website for my own personal purpose and within my corporate role. This is also a tool that we have deployed. In terms of usage, it's much more related to reporting and vulnerability management rather than setting up from an organizational perspective.

From an efficiency perspective, it has helped with reporting and the self-service availability of security postures.

The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available. Additionally, the suggestions I get from Defender for security levels and recommendations on how to upgrade my security level are very appreciated.

I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets.

I have been working with it for more than a year now.

I rate the stability an eight out of ten.

There are no complaints about scalability, and I rate it an eight out of ten.

I rate customer support a nine out of ten. The support team was very responsive to queries.

Positive

Rating the setup, I would give it a six out of ten. The setup process took about two to three days due to waiting on support replies.

I had a support team to help with some of the setup aspects, and they were very responsive.

It's difficult to say because the volume of vulnerabilities and threats has increased, making it tough to compare efficiency between usage before and after implementation.

I don't have visibility into the specific costs, but it seems to be a significant concern for our organization. Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.

I am familiar with Dataiku and Databricks, and we use SailPoint in conjunction.

Users must first understand the list of assets they have and whether there is out-of-the-box connectivity with them.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

The primary use case for Microsoft Defender for Cloud in our organization is investigating breach or security incidents.

Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture by 20 to 30 percent. With everybody moving to hybrid, it's challenging to maintain a good security posture with so many people working from home. I'm impressed with the solution's coordinated detection and responses across devices, identities, apps, emails, data, and cloud workloads. That's why we're considering using Defender in more areas and integrating it more.

I find Microsoft Defender for Cloud's KQL very flexible and powerful. It's really easy to search through with KQL queries to find the security breaches and incidents and to track down the breach itself. Microsoft Defender for Cloud presents a prioritized list of remediation for security issues, giving us a starting point to begin locking things down and tightening security.

I can't think of anything that needs improvement. It's a pretty good product.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud for the last year.

Defender's stability has been flawless for us. I haven't noticed any issues.

It's great. It seems perfectly scalable.

I would rate Microsoft customer service and technical support 10 out of 10. They seem quick to respond and get us the answers we need, taking a hands-off approach to helping us integrate.

Positive

I previously used other antivirus products like Kaspersky. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is preferred because it offers cloud ability and is a more trusted partner in the industry.

We used a consultant for the implementation, and the experience was good. No complaints.

Our return on investment is seen through increased productivity. I'm able to get more done with less time.

I evaluated other antivirus products like Kaspersky before switching.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a ten. Having this solution alleviates the need to worry about other antivirus products, offering a one-stop solution.

For example, the customer wants to restrict USB connections or any output device, or they want to verify any link they open before opening it in their real environment. Mostly, they replace the current security tool they are using, such as Kaspersky, with Defender for Cloud because it integrates well with Office 365.

The biggest advantage is it centralizes management. Customers do not have to manage different vendor products. They feel confident using Microsoft because of the long-recognized technology and detailed technical documentation available online.

The valuable features include the ability to manage devices and the fact that Defender can replace other security tools like SCCM. Since they use Office 365, they need tools that work better in their organization, such as M365 Defender for Cloud.

There are challenges with the licensing policies, which are quite complicated. The documentation is difficult to understand and resellers need proper training to support customers effectively. Microsoft should provide better training for resellers.

I have been working with Defender for Cloud for more than five years.

It is quite stable. It doesn’t have significant stability issues. I would rate it an eight for stability.

I am not the one using it directly yet I haven't heard any complaints, so I would rate it a five.

Working with Microsoft technical support can be challenging. The problem-solving process can be delayed, and not all issues get resolved promptly. If there are ten tickets, maybe only five or six get resolved satisfactorily.

Neutral

Customers are replacing security tools like Kaspersky, Symantec, or Broadcom to use Defender for Cloud because it integrates seamlessly with Office 365.

The initial setup is not very easy yet it is manageable. It is not too difficult for those familiar with the product. It is a medium-complexity setup.

The implementation should be handled by the reseller. Resellers need proper training from Microsoft as the documentation is complicated.

In Vietnam, the cost structure makes it expensive. The licensing is priced publicly on the Microsoft website and it adds up based on the number of users.

The cost is expensive for the Vietnamese market. It is publicly available on the Microsoft website, and the pricing depends on the number of users.

Organizations should ensure resellers are well-trained to support the new technologies. Proper documentation and support are crucial.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Mostly, it's related to the vulnerability management.

Earlier, we used to do the vulnerability assessment manually, scheduling it based on our timeline, maybe every six months or once a year. Now, it helps us a lot because we can get the vulnerabilities updated and get recommendations.

The MDVM part is very good. While we were doing the POC, Microsoft Defender was using Qualys for the vulnerability. Now, they have switched to their own MDVM, which is Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management.

The vulnerabilities are duplicated many times. If it reports that the findings are around 30 or 40, or let's say, 100, it is not the exact number as it is possible that there are multiple findings which are duplicated in nature, and actually, the number is only 62 or 67. 

Another issue after Microsoft Defender upgraded and left Qualys is that whenever the load for the report data is too high, we cannot export the report in one go, so we have to do it in batches.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The quality of the MDVM feature, one of the keys which we are getting, is many times duplicated with the same IDs.

I have contacted Microsoft for the quality issue, and they are working with us.

Positive

I did work with something similar, however, not in the same organization. In my earlier organization, I was working with Check Point and Tenable.

The pricing is good. It is license-based, and we are not utilizing all of the features, like API and other functionalities, so the cost is not that high.

I would definitely recommend Microsoft Defender for Cloud, provided they make some improvements in the MDVM part.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

I use the solution for threat hunting. We've installed it on a lot of devices. I look for specific version numbers or threats within the environment.

The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths.

I like that the solution shows me recent log-ins for certain servers and devices. It's pretty helpful to track down activities and identify or tie them to specific users.

The product must improve its UI. Looking at multiple devices for the same issue or vulnerability is very cumbersome.

The solution should provide built-in features related to trending and graphing over time. If it’s already present, we haven’t found it. It doesn't seem intuitive to find it quite as easily as some other tools with ready-to-go dashboards.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The tool’s stability seems to be pretty good. I'm sure Microsoft takes care of its backend structure since it is a cloud solution.

Scalability, in general, is fine. We can deploy it on as many devices as we want. However, getting meaningful results and data out of that is not easy, especially when some of the things you're looking for might be across your entire enterprise. For example, if we want to know whether a DLL version is installed on any device, trying to get that information by going one by one through the devices is ridiculously cumbersome.

We used LogRhythm for a little bit. We switched to Microsoft Defender for Cloud because we wanted to do a cloud homogenization. We wanted to bring things away from on-premise and into the cloud because we had cloud assets. It just made more sense to have a cloud solution to manage the tools instead of pulling back into our network and opening the tunnel paths to our on-premise LogRhythm server.

The solution is deployed on-premise as well as on the public cloud. Our cloud providers are Azure and AWS. We also have some GCP assets. We have around 20,000 total devices. They don’t always correspond to an end user. Of those, maybe 12,000 to 13,000 are enrolled in Microsoft Defender for Cloud.

Other devices we have are either outdated Linux or outdated Windows. We’re trying to migrate all the ones we can, and then some of them will be those narrow use-case devices where it wouldn't really make sense or be feasible for them to have a definitive cloud. They're limited processing power devices, like iPads and tablets.

The product certainly requires maintenance.

Just based on costs, I do not see an ROI. However, evaluating a return on investment for something that provides insight into risks and vulnerabilities is not my area of expertise. In my opinion, a lot of it can't be quantified.

We have the full E5 license. The tool is pretty expensive.

We evaluated Splunk. Splunk's really expensive. It would also have been an on-premise solution. We needed a cloud solution.

We use Microsoft Defender for Cloud to support Azure natively. The solution’s ability to protect hybrid and multi-cloud environments is pretty important for us. Just as much as anyone else.

The unified portal for managing and providing visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments could be better with some of the ways things are displayed. Overall, it’s all right.

We have had the solution since we started cloud. I cannot provide a comparison for it. I don't pay too much attention to Microsoft Secure Score. However, I’m sure the product has affected it. We use the product to track down vulnerabilities and missing patches. When those get passed, I'm sure that it changes the score.

We have integrated Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Defender for Cloud with Microsoft Sentinel. However, I don't deal with it specifically. The tool’s UI could be better. As it is right now, we can only view information from one device at a time. It is extremely limiting.

The solution is pretty good at keeping our multi-cloud infrastructure and cloud resources secure. We use AWS, and we also have some Windows devices in AWS. We have Microsoft Defender on those.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud has helped save some of our SOC time. The reporting features, being able to search multiple devices for a specific vulnerability or incident and tying it back, are very difficult to do in the UI. There's some scripting that can be done, but that doesn't make it easier for a lot of people.

We have set up alerts in the tool. That, combined with other industry scanners like Tenable Nessus, Invicti, and a couple of others that we utilize in our environment, sends updates and alerts to us so that we can quickly respond to issues. We were not measuring TTR. So, the effect on the overall TTR is negligible.

It is hard to quantify whether the product has saved us money. We haven't seen any attacks from ransomware gangs. Possibly, those are being prevented, and we don't get alerts for some of these attacks. It has not saved us money. It's expensive. However, it is not expensive compared to all our computers being locked up, and someone demanded two million dollars.

People evaluating the product must look at other options to determine what works best for their environment and organization. It may not necessarily be the best option, but it might be. It certainly works well in a wholly Microsoft Windows environment, especially with other Microsoft software as a primary. If they’re using OfficeSuite, like Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, it works well. If they have other things within their environment, they must do their homework and research to see if it works.

Overall, I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

We use Microsoft Defender for Cloud to manage our cloud security posture. We also use Container Protection, which provides additional security for our containerized workloads. This gives us the visibility we need to ensure that our cloud resources are secure.

We use Microsoft Defender for Cloud to natively support Azure Cloud.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud's ability to protect our hybrid environments is definitely critical because we are on the journey of transitioning from hybrid to the cloud. In order to do that, we need a platform that can help us through the transition.

The solution's unified portal is essential for managing and providing visibility across our hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Visibility is something that every security operation needs and it gives us leverage to improve our security posture. This is great.

The single pane of glass view is critical for our organization. This is because we previously used a different platform, so we are all familiar with its features and how to improve upon them. Our heavy investment in Microsoft products made Defender for Cloud a natural choice.

Our goal is to increase our secure score. As we take steps to mitigate risk, our secure score will increase, giving us the feeling that our cloud resources are secure.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud significantly improves security operations. Instead of having to look at multiple windows or portals, it provides a single pane of glass for the investigation and remediation of cloud resource risks.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud helps us proactively discover unknown threats and defend against known threats. It also helps us improve our security posture and defend our cloud resources. We do not normally have external Internet-facing resources, but when we do, Microsoft Defender for Cloud helps us meet compliance requirements.

DSPM is the most valuable feature. It integrates with standard frameworks, so we can easily see if there are any gaps in our compliance with NIST standards. This allows us to identify areas for improvement and ensure that we are meeting all applicable requirements.

I would like to have the ability to customize executive reporting.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud for five months.

In the short time we have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud it has been stable.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is scalable, and we have not yet needed to scale it up.

We previously used Prisma Cloud, but we switched to Microsoft Defender for Cloud due to internal business decisions. We have since merged with a company that also uses Microsoft Defender for Cloud. We want to leverage the licenses from the merged company and also cut costs in our security portfolio.

The implementation was completed in-house. The solution's maintenance is easy.

I give Microsoft Defender for Cloud an eight out of ten. We have not used all the modules yet.

The time to detection has remained relatively the same.

Our time to respond has remained the same because we previously used Prisma Cloud. Prisma Cloud is what we were using before, so we already have an established service level for handling incidents. We are remediating some of the configuration and cloud issues.

The primary users of the solution in our organization are the automation team and the software engineering team. We have also migrated some of our ERP systems to the solution.

I recommend Microsoft Defender for Cloud because it is a mature product that can meet most businesses' security requirements and budgets.

Our company policy is to onboard all the resources, which are supported by Microsoft Defender because it gives us a good amount of recommendations regarding security and vulnerability issues. We have a lot of new users that are not familiar with security protocols and the solution helps protect our systems. Some people don't have experience with security measures like enabling HTTPS, and FTPS security, setting up encryption on virtual machines, or they don't know how to set up private endpoints. For someone who is new, or doesn't have a lot of experience in this field, it is difficult to monitor everything. Microsoft Defender provides recommendations based on severity. High-severity recommendations are more important, while low-severity recommendations may not be as critical. Security reviewers can review all recommendations to make sure they are appropriate. Microsoft Defender is important for a whole variety of reasons, one of which is that it can help improve the security posture of our environment. This is important for organizations of all sizes but is particularly critical for businesses that are delivering services to customers.

Before Microsoft Defender our external team would give us updates on which ports are opening and which vulnerabilities are being attacked. Now with the recommendations of Microsoft Defender, we can find these vulnerabilities sooner and fix them. Before onboarding those respected resources into Microsoft Defender, we faced a few issues. Once we onboarded those resources, we received prompt recommendations that helped us make the organization's resources more secure. If resources are not secured, it can impact the reputation of the organization. The solution helped identify a lot of the issues, at a high priority that we could resolve.

Microsoft Defender helps any organization that needs to follow security baseline recommendations in order to improve its environment. Regarding threats, I recommend Microsoft Sentinel for detecting and hunting the threats. I can identify what exactly happened at that particular time or particular resource with the help of Microsoft Sentinel.

The solution has significantly reduced the overall time it takes us to detect issues. Most of the resources are scanned every 30 minutes, so it doesn't take much time for the solution to give us the respected recommendations.

Depending on the issue, Microsoft Defender for Cloud has helped reduce our overall time to respond. There are a few recommendations that we can fix immediately by just clicking using the UI. However, the overall time to respond to issues depends upon that respected recommendation list. There are a few things that we need to consider when it comes to the security settings of our virtual machines which can take a long time to identify and fix. 

Microsoft Defender has a lot of features including regulatory compliance and attaching workbooks but the most valuable is the recommendations it provides for each and every resource when we open Microsoft Defender.

The solution provides a security posture score, which indicates how well our environment is protected and what our rating is. It also displays the current percentage of our work that is protected. 

When there is a recommendation by Microsoft Defender that suggests using the Azure Logic App, the remediation step when a user takes action should be created automatically.

Microsoft can improve the pricing by offering a plan that is more cost-effective for small and medium organizations.

I have been using the solution for almost two years.

I give the stability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud an eight out of ten.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a tool that is designed to scan our resources regardless of the volume every 30 minutes.

We have the standard support plan. If we need any help, we just raise a support ticket.

Neutral

The initial setup is easy. To enable the solution, we simply need to access Microsoft Defender and enable the on button.

Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine. This plan can be very costly for small and medium businesses and in some parts of the world, it is cheaper for an organization to hire a full-time security engineer instead.

I give the solution a seven out of ten.

Compared to Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Sentinel is a more mature solution. We can connect to Active Directory from Sentinel to identify risky users which is information that we can't get from Defender. If we could establish the connections to Azure Active Directory and Azure Active Threat Production plan, we could define our flow, which would be connected with the workspace. Microsoft Sentinel is more flexible and is ideal for more complex security scenarios.

The solution is applied for resources in the subscription. It does not differentiate the environment. If we select the app services, it will secure all the app services in all the environments. If it's not segregated as per the environment, it can create security issues. We have three different environments: production, QA, and dev and we can only deploy the resources in two regions, which are supported by the geo in India.

We have virtual machines that need to be patched. But the patching analysis isn't done by Defender. Our solutions provide patching recommendations that have to be completed manually.

Defender acts as a CSPM solution, a post-share management solution for cloud security. We use it to find weak spots in our cloud configuration and strengthen the overall security posture of our cloud environment. With this particular tool, we seek to protect workloads across various environments. We have about 3,000 endpoints and 100 users in the United States alone. 

Defender gave us more substantial visibility into our security, helping us increase our overall security posture and manage risks throughout the entire organization. It helps us make decisions about specific kinds of risks. If we see a glaring vulnerability, we can determine whether this is an acceptable risk or something that requires urgent action. The risk level determines our investment and budgeting, and the amount of work needed to remedy that. It provides a lot of valuable information for informing our comprehensive risk management strategy.

The solution does a pretty good job of finding previously unknown threats. It helps keep us aware of the kinds of threats that are out there and how we could potentially be impacted. Defender gives us a high level of information about unknown or zero-day threats. It's sometimes hard to gauge whether everything is there because the report is customized based on our infrastructure and what might be pertinent to us.

They've always notified us when there was a zero-day threat. I think there have been a few instances where they altered us about a new threat before it was publicized, which is a good sign that they value us as a customer. They've warned us about something before releasing it to the wider public.

Defender improved our SOC efficiency and saved us from having to add more personnel on the SOC side. It definitely improved that whole area, giving us the bandwidth to work on other things. Defender reduced our detection time because they are proactive about notifying us. I haven't seen too much of a time lag. There were a few instances, but it was never something critical where we had to call them out and ask if this was an issue or something. 

Time-to-response has also gone down. The sooner we get the notification, the quicker we can jump on something. It helped us respond to any potential breach or attack faster. 

It also saved us money because we don't need to deploy a second product to get some additional coverage. It also saved us from adding more security staff. Overall, it has had a positive financial impact on the company. 

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.

Defender's ability to protect multi-cloud environments is essential for us. Our company's offerings are based on tasks, and these cloud service providers are critical infrastructure for us. If anything bad happens, it compromises our services. We need to understand and improve our posture.

It also seamlessly integrates with Sentinel. It was fairly easy because we already leveraged Microsoft 365 earlier, so adding the Sentinel piece was pretty quick. It took a day to figure out and go ahead with the actual deployment. This integration with 365 and Sentinel provided timely intelligence over time. It becomes a problem if we don't get a threat notification in time. They are highly proactive about delivering that information in the initial alert and backing it up with more details as the situation develops.

Microsoft has a relatively sizeable threat-hunting group constantly digging up many things. That helps because it gives us confidence if we face some threats that not many other players are exploring. With this particular product, we're confident they'll let us know where we stand. 

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. 

Opening up to more collaboration with different entities in the private or public sector would help them feed more information to the customers and improve their security posture. More partnerships with other players who can feed them intelligence will help them develop the engine powering this product, ultimately benefiting every customer who uses it. 

I have been using Defender for Cloud for about a year and a half. 

We've had a positive experience overall with Defender's unified portal. We seldom see any bugs. Sometimes, there is a lag in the reporting and some inconsistencies with our searches, but it's rare. There were some periods when their service was not running properly.

While there hasn't been a significant outage, we've experienced some performance degradation where Microsoft notified us that they were having a problem. They informed us ahead of time when there are issues, but I've never had a complete outage thus far. 

Defender for Cloud is scalable, given the licensing model. The performance doesn't suffer under a heavy workload. Many organizations I know have a massive workload, and they're still leveraging Defender without any issues. I rate Defender an eight out of ten for scalability.

I rate Microsoft support an eight out of ten. Their support is great, so we have no complaints. They were responsive when we had issues.

Positive

We used SentinelOne only for endpoint threat detection. That's probably the closest competitor. We haven't used any other solutions besides that. 

Setting up Defender for Cloud was relatively straightforward. We worked with a person assigned from Microsoft, who gave us a walkthrough of the steps we needed to take.

Defender doesn't require much maintenance after deployment other than a few pieces of infrastructure we have internally. We need to monitor the solutions to check alerts and security advisories, but we've never had to deal with any maintenance.

We ended up using a reseller. They were good. I used them for other vendors, and we've had a productive relationship working on multiple initiatives. This one was nothing new. 

They have a free version, but the license for this one isn't too high. It's free to start with, and you're charged for using it beyond 30 days. Some other pieces of Defender are charged based on usage, so you will be charged more for a high volume of transactions. I believe Defender for Cloud is a daily charge based on Azure's App Service Pricing. 

It's a negligible cost if your usage isn't that high, like a few cents. It's appealing for people to try it. If you don't plan to use it much, you won't have a high bill.

Other options were considered, but it came down to the level of value we would get from a holistic vulnerability intelligence product like Defender for Cloud. Also, Microsoft products are pervasive, with a much broader customer base. That was a deciding factor. We saw much more potential from Defender compared to the alternatives. Even though the competition solutions may have functioned better in terms of providing more intelligence, other factors weighed in favor of Microsoft Defender.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud an eight out of ten. I recommend doing a PoC. You shouldn't implement something after only reviewing the documentation and marketing materials. Put it through a PoC for a month at least to get a feel for how it functions and whether it satisfies your requirements.