Microsoft Defender for Cloud Reviews

We are primarily using Azure Security Center to bring a level of security into the environment. Before I started to work with this solution, I was a Kubernetes and Azure Cloud architect. I was working for a service provider where I did not get the opportunity to look at how do they secure the resources, but in the last one and a half years, I had to get into those aspects because the organization I was working for wanted to introduce Kubernetes into the ecosystem, and the main concern was regarding all the hacking that was going on. For introducing Kubernetes as a platform, all business managers wanted to know if it was secure or how to make it secure. We started to look at Azure Security Center and its capabilities because Azure was their main solution. We also used AWS and GCP to some extent, but predominantly, we had Azure. So, we first took Azure Security Center and started to leverage its features.

Azure gives access to a lot of policies and allows you to group those policies into initiatives. There were about 170 subscriptions spread across sandbox, dev, test, non-prod, and prod environments, which were spread across India, Canada, and the USA. Each geography had its own data resiliency requirements, so these policies had to be applied stringently. For example, if somebody created a virtual machine, it had to be in a specific region, or if someone was storing the data in a database, it had to be only in that region. It could not cross the border. So, we had to first enforce policies at the level where we had to identify where the storage resources were, which network could talk to which network, and who could do what, and then it went on to all levels. Azure provided very good, robust, and built-in policies for each resource, and we had to set some to audit and some to enforce. 

While setting policies for about 170 subscriptions, we needed to ensure consistency. We needed to apply them consistently across all subscriptions. Azure Security Center helped us in ensuring that we audit certain policies, and we also enforce certain policies. We had set some policies to audit because we wanted to see what's going on, and we had set some policies to enforce because of regulatory purposes or because of the way the entire network and all the systems were designed. We used Azure Security Center as our central place to administer policies. We had to group all the subscriptions into management groups, and there was a hierarchy of groups. We could apply the policies at one specific level, and any subscription that we would create under that group would have the same set of policies. It helped us in getting a bird's-eye view through dashboards. We could see what was happening across the enterprise.

We started using it for Kubernetes, but it expanded into a wider initiative of more stringent policies across the board. In terms of lift and shift, a lot of people get tempted to go to GCP because it is cheaper, but we were primarily using Microsoft products. So, we started adopting Azure, and we did not pay attention to Azure Security Center at the beginning. When we looked at Azure Security Center for the first time, it had already been three years, and we had done almost 100% lift and shift, but we could recover from any aspect of security. Azure Security Center helped us in recovering from our mistake. If we had worked with it at the start of our journey, it would have been easier, and even though we were looking at it halfway through our journey, it still helped us. I consider it halfway because lift and shift is only one part of the process. You are saving a lot of money, but you are still not cloud-based. The real power of the cloud comes when you start using the platform services, and before starting to use them, we were able to get into a secured environment. Kubernetes was the first platform that we were looking at, and when we were able to secure it, everything else was pretty simple. That's because, with Kubernetes, there is a shared responsibility model where the cloud provider takes care of some of the aspects, and you have to take care of a lot of things. Azure Security Center helps in ensuring that you have taken care of and secured everything.

Its recommendations are really good. Most of the time, they are appropriate. Azure comes with a lot of default policies that are set to audit only. As the enterprise grew and we started adopting the cloud, initially, we didn't pay much attention to Azure Security Center. For us, Azure Security Center was like an afterthought; it was not planned from day one. In our enterprise journey, when we started looking at it halfway through, we realized that there were so many violations. We started with auditing. We found policies that nobody was using, and then we started enforcing them. It was really good in terms of built-in policies, recommendations, and then applying them across the board with a minimal set of actions.

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.

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.

We were also using it for just-in-time access for developer VMs. Many a time, developers need certain administrative privileges to perform some actions, and that's where we had to use just-in-time privileges. Administering them out of Azure Security Center is good, but it also means that you have to give those permissions to lots of people, which is very cumbersome. So, I ended up giving permissions to the entire Ops team, which defeats the purpose and is also not acceptable at a lot of places.

These were the two use cases where I felt that I really had to get into the depth of Azure Security Center to figure out how I can use it much better.

I have been working with this solution for the last one and a half years. 

I didn't find any issues with its stability. When you start using Azure Security Center to look at your on-prem application or resources, you might have issues with monitoring these on-prem resources, but it is not related to the stability or reliability of Azure Security Center. It has nothing to do with Azure Security Center; it is related to how you have configured, what kind of resources you have, and what permissions you have given. 

Sometimes, the network operations team and security operations team are not in tandem with each other. We had done lift and shift for most of the resources, but there were still some resources that were on-prem. For on-prem resources, people are comfortable with Dynatrace and other similar tools, but they are not really security tools; they come under the observation and monitoring tools. It can be very hard to sell Azure Security Center for something that is on-prem, and because of the corporate silos, someone might not give you access to an on-prem resource. For example, your Oracle Database is still on-prem, and you are systematically strangulating the application and moving it to Cosmos DB or SQL Server on the cloud, but you are not allowed to monitor it. In such situations, Azure Security Center can only report one part of the application, which makes it tough to tell business managers

why this application is down, what went wrong, why there is latency, what is the problem, etc. So, more than the product, it has to do with ensuring that the SOC team works with the NOC team and ensures that they have the required access so that they can also observe on-prem resources from the security aspect. Otherwise, you won't know what's happening. You won't know if any hacking is going on, or if somebody is doing SQL injections to the on-prem Oracle Database. You wouldn't have a clue.

I'm an architect. I don't deal with the regular operations aspects.

There is nothing in terms of the setup. It comes by default. It is only about paying attention to the Azure Security Center in terms of giving correct roles to subscription owners, security administrators, etc. It is only about properly setting up those roles.

It only required going through the documentation in detail and having a couple of brainstorming sessions. We didn't have to hire any special consultants. We could do it ourselves. We spent a week properly going through the documentation. Having a word with the product managers also helped. Many times, such implementations have more to do with the way organizations are structured in terms of departmental silos. So, it helps to get everybody on board and ensure that everybody has the same understanding. It is related to an organization's culture; it has nothing to do with the product. It is more related to outsiders and insiders and different levels of knowledge and backgrounds, but the product itself is pretty simple to start with.

We did it ourselves.

It is bundled with our enterprise subscription, which makes it easy to go for it. It is available by default, and there is no extra cost for using the standard features.

I don't know if any other solution was evaluated. Most probably, we didn't because Azure Security Center is available by default, and there is no extra charge for using the standard features.

When you're using such platform services, you've got to be a little bit careful because the products are always getting updated. You need to keep an eye on the product roadmap in terms of what's coming up so that you are not duplicating. That's what we had to do with Stackrox. We discussed with Microsoft's technical support team, and we got a confirmation that they're not going to take care of CIS benchmarks in the near future. It was a little bit disheartening, but at least, we knew upfront that Microsoft is not going to look into this area. They were open and candid about what they were going to do and what they were not going to do. So, we started looking at other products. Microsoft keeps on updating its products to keep them relevant. So, you need to know what they are implementing in the next three months or six months so that you can at least tell the security teams that a certain feature is coming up.

We didn't have to do it for Azure Security Center, but for Azure Firewall, we had to request certain features, and there are a lot of features that are still pending. For example, if I use Azure Firewall, just-in-time permissions do not work. If VMs are behind Azure Firewall, then through Azure Security Center, I can't give permissions, but if I use the Palo Alto firewall, I can do the same. So, we had to set up our VMs by using the Palo Alto firewall. Sometimes, Microsoft does strange things, and they don't talk to the Azure Firewall team. After one and a half years of asking for that feature, it is still a no-go. We want to use Azure Firewall because it is not VM-based. With the Palo Alto firewall, I have to provide one more VM in between and start administering it. So, I have one extra resource that needs to be administered, and it is non-Azure or non-Microsoft.

When you start enforcing policies across multiple subscriptions, you need to be very careful. You need to pay attention to the notifications that come out. The notification details were where we had to do some customization. We had to prioritize the notifications and then put them into a group mailbox so that instead of one person, a group of teams gets notified. We could write an Azure function around it to integrate with Microsoft Teams. We could push them to the Microsoft Teams channel. It took some amount of effort. It took about a week of tinkering, but we were able to notify the entire development team. As we started auditing and enforcing from our sandbox to the development environment, we started discovering a lot more things. We got formal requests on why we had to disable some policies. We got more specific feedback. When we are able to catch such things early in the life cycle, it becomes easier to protect the higher-level environments properly. It was very good in terms of the dashboard, converting from non-compliance to audit, or enforcing policies across multiple subscriptions. We had to customize the notifications, and it would've been nice if there was a more intuitive way of customizing the notification, but it might also be because of our knowledge level at that time. We could have also integrated it with Slack because it supports integration with Slack, but we predominantly use Microsoft Teams.

I would advise others to start playing with it. They can start with a sandbox environment. If an enterprise has multiple resources, such as VMs, databases, they should put all of them in different resource groups in a subscription and categorize their resources properly. All resources should be structured properly. Otherwise, it is really difficult to administer policies at the resource level. They have to group them properly so that they are managing resource groups or subscriptions rather than individual resources. So, structuring of the resources is the key to the administration of policies. It took quite some time for us. It was not an easy task. We create Terraform scripts for setting the entire infrastructure. So, we had to reorganize our Terraform scripts to ensure that the resources were created in appropriate resource groups and communication can happen across resource groups. We had to set up the NSGs properly from the network point of view so that they all were accessible. It took us quite some time, but organizing the resources pays very well when it comes to spinning the higher-level environments and ensuring that they're compliant or they work.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

It is our main solution for our Azure cloud infrastructure. We do about 1.1 million dollars in cloud spending every year. It's a quite big infrastructure and pretty much in our main system and we are planning on integrating with Microsoft Sentinel, which is going to be our SIM solution. Right now we don't use a Microsoft solution, however, Microsoft Sentinel is very complete and we're excited to dive into a POC. Right after I joined the company, that was one of the first things that I advised them to do and a couple of weeks later, we caught at least two big vulnerabilities that could have caused a catastrophic problem for our business. That's a true testament to the power of the tool.

The solution has improved how our organization functions. For example, the security score is the biggest improvement, as it's a compilation of all the results. That's where we have been doing established goals. When I joined the company and when we first implemented the product our secure score was about 35%. We are now sitting at 71%.

That gives us a clear direction as that's the most difficult issue. Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts. If you say "I want to improve my security posture," it's hard to know where to start. That metric's going to give you an idea. You're going to take a look at your identity and access management strategy. You go there and you fix those issues.

Once that's done, you can take a look at your malware protection, so you see all the machines. You have the ability with this product. All of these actions compile percentages on a score and they drive up the score. That way, you know how good you're actually doing and how you can continue to progress.

We do a lot of mergers and acquisitions. 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.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is visibility. You truly have visibility. That’s the first thing that you're going to have in the cloud.

The solution’s capabilities of assessment and real-time assessment is another big thing for us. In terms of remediation and capabilities, most of the time, I even have a quick fix, a quick button that I click and they're going to fix it for me, where they are going to provide me with everything that I need to do to fix that.

The main thing that I like about the tool is that Microsoft collects trillions of data points across their cloud and they leverage that threat intelligence to teach the machine learning AI-driven models to assess for security. We can even see across the cloud, and it’s so much better than going with a third-party product, where you don't have that advantage.

The solution has features that have helped improve our security posture. The security score is one of the biggest pluses. They do have a series of metrics that combine into a security posture score. Netsecure started giving me a good snapshot of where we are when it comes to security posture, and then we can drill down.

If you click on your secure score, you are going to be able to see why you have that calculated score. They have very good documentation surrounding how, for example, if you have 74%, why you do. You are going to be able to drill down and see where your weaknesses are and then you can address those items directly.

The compliance policy feature is great. They do offer support, such as PCIS. You have access and they can compare to your security posture and they can give you your score based on that, for example, how compliant you are with those tenders. That's another great aspect of the tool as well. That's all visual and on a dashboard.

The solution positively affected our end-user experience, however, not in any shape or even form that they can notice. They're getting all the benefits from it in the background. For example, security alerts are one of the main values about the users that I like. You have access to security alerts and those security alerts are giving you a real-time type of reading on how you are doing when it comes to threats. If there's something that can affect a user negatively, you have access to fix it before it becomes an issue. Therefore, while it has affected them positively, they never had to change anything that they're doing.

In the past, when you wanted to compile a list of resources that effected a vulnerability, it was kind of hard to do that. You had to use the graphic interface and write some queries for you to get that information from the Microsoft Graph API. Right now, with Microsoft Cloud Defender, they actually have that and you have access to that. Therefore, for me, it's pretty much a problem that has been solved. That was pretty much the only thing that I thought we could use. Then, yesterday, I saw that they included it. Therefore, as of now, I don't have any big issues with the product.

In the beginning, the score was shown using a points system. Now they made it into percentages, which is way better. It's hard to show you your C-level points. It required some explanation. For example, if you show them 2000 points, they're going to ask, "Okay, is this bad or good?" If you show them 75%, on the other hand, that they can understand. That's another thing that they made better as well.

Within this company, I've used the solution for about 10 months. I was also using the solution with my previous company for around a year and a half.

The product is pretty stable. The only thing that you've got to remember is that it takes some time. Some of the variabilities, for example, the remediation processes, when you apply them, it takes a bit. The remediation in order to count it has got to run the vulnerability assessment agent. Sometimes it takes a couple of hours for some resources. That said, it's pretty stable. I've never had any problems. It runs very well.

The scalability potential is one of the biggest aspects that I like, as it works with Microsoft, as an Azure back lane. As you add more subscriptions, all you have to do is just go and enable Azure Defender - in this case now, Azure Defender for all the consumer subscriptions that I have. That's it. It's free scale. It scales out very, very well. You don't have to do anything and you don't have to install anything on the Azure portal - it's already there. That said, you do have to deploy vulnerability agents, however, Azure does that for you due to the fact that the VMs are already being managed by Azure. You have all the security in place. It will deploy the agents and it's going to be seamless. You don't have any downtime either.

Right now, we have about 7,000 users. It's quite a good number, however, we are growing. We're adding companies every month. We're adding tons of companies and plan to expand usage as we grow.

I've been working with Microsoft technical support for more than 15 years. We have really good support, always. We do have an enterprise agreement with Microsoft, which makes support very easy. If you have Azure, you probably have an enterprise type of support. Every single interaction that I have had with them was pleasant. They were very, very precise and effective. We've had no problems.

We never had a different cloud solution. For us, choosing this solution right off the bat was a no-brainer.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It comes with the free version. It's out-of-the-box and already enabled for users for the most part. It gives you just a little bit of visibility, so you have to go with the paid version and the cost is not that bad. 

It's pretty much diluted into your Azure bill. It is totally worth the price. You basically go to the portal and choose the option and just enable online subscriptions and give it some time so that it can gain visibility. After that, it's going to deploy the agents. It takes 24 to 48 hours. After that, you're going to have tons of visibility and data coming back. It's pretty straightforward, very simple to set up. For me to roll out was about an hour tops.

You do not need a big maintenance team. I'm an architect and I'm also a very hands-on type of engineer. In most cases, I would say it's good to have at least two people especially if you have a global infrastructure. That way, you can have people in different time zones, such as Europe central time, for example, and in US Eastern time. For most aspects you have auto-remediation and you have automation that you can implement, which is great. I would say that two people would be ideal to manage the solution, especially for the remediation process. With the remediation process, you can engage other people from other teams as you're going to have to talk to the operations guys to say, "Guys, you've got to fix this, this is a liability." Therefore, two people dedicated to Azure would do it. It doesn't need to be dedicated to security, to Defender in this case.

I was reading some studies that the ROI is 200%. It's really good, due to the risk prevention and threat remediation processes.

I like the licensing due to the fact that it's simple. In terms of pricing, there's a very good ROI. The ROI is pretty great, and everything is diluted into your overall Azure costs. It's not a product that you buy, it's a contract. If you want to stop using it, you can stop. It's an on-demand type of product. I like that as well. 

It's very cost-effective if you compare it to other products, especially if you want to combine other features from a licensing standpoint. You're going to spend a lot of money if you try to implement various other options.

We do have some security, other security that is still in place. For example, we work with CrowdStrike. We work with a team solution. We have another team solution, which is not an apples-to-apples comparison. What Azure center does is very specific. It's very large. For us to do the same thing with any other security solutions out there, would mean we're going to spend a lot of money. Azure does not have competition per se. You would have to onboard tons of other products to do the same thing that they do. It's also simpler than the other solutions. The orchestration features that you have access to are great. It doesn't make a lot of sense to combine several other solutions and try to protect all your resources.

I am just a customer and an end-user.

I'm using the latest version of the solution, which is now the Microsoft Cloud Defender. They just changed the name of the product. They combined Azure Security Center and Azure Defender into Microsoft Cloud Defender and that's the version that I'm using.

For now, we are cloud-only, however, we have plans to enroll our on-prem devices as well, including servers, especially through Azure Arc and we are also looking at Azure Sentinel. We are going to have a complete ecosystem, similar to a Microsoft XVR, truly for our Cloud environments.

I was working with Sentinel in the past with my previous company, however, I was not able to fully roll out the product. Here, we're planning on having a Microsoft partner that's going to help us to onboard our Azure infrastructure and Sentinel, however, we are going to be enrolling a POC first.

I would advise other potential users that they need this, absolutely. If they have Azure, they need this. It's going to give them the visibility and the remediation capabilities that they're looking for and it's going to make them aware of issues that they are not even seeing. 

If a company has resources exposed to the outside, chances are that people are trying to get in. I'm catching people every single day trying to get in. It's really amazing what you see when you have visibility. Businesses that bring this on really need to involve the team. It's got to be a team project. Everybody's got to be playing on the same team. That way, a company can make sure they have effective implementation.

I would say, a company has got to watch very carefully the recommendations and the security alerts, especially recommendations, which is pretty much what's going to drive the score up and increase the positive security posture.

The alerts are going to give them real-time insight, like a temperature reading on security, including what's happening, who's trying to get in, who reports or attacks you and weren't successful, and how many times did they try? What kind of accounts did they use? Recommendations are going to help you look for activity and the security alerts are going to help you with the reactivity. You can react to events that are happening, however, you can't remediate issues that haven't happened yet. 

Overall, I would rate the solution at a ten out of ten. I'm a big fan. It makes my life way easier and gives me some peace of mind so I can sleep at night better.

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 am from a Citrix background and in our organization, we implement solutions and provide them to end-users. In our past couple of deployments, we have been using hybrid cloud scenarios where the complete workload is on the Azure platform and the management is done on the Citrix cloud.

The workloads include tasks for Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10 devices, and they are all running on Azure. We have to make sure that they are compliant with our organization's security standards, which is why we are using the Azure Security Center.

We integrate each workload with the Azure Security Center, where we can use things like Azure Defender and use the Azure Log Analytics Workspace.

Our environment is completely virtual. We have a virtual desktop infrastructure, like a Desktop as a Service.

Azure Security Center has helped to improve our security posture. Before we implemented it, we used to have to install the agent manually for each and every workload. For example, if I have 40 machines in my environment, I have to go to all of them and install the agent. This manual process not only required a lot of human effort but created more opportunities for error. By using the Azure Security Center, I can integrate it just by selecting the subscription. It will take care of everything.

This solution has improved our end-user experience in cases, for example, where Microsoft Defender is not implemented, Azure Defender can be integrated. When an end-user runs an EXE file or any malicious activities are running on the device, Azure Security Center will capture them and send an alert to the administrator.

The most valuable features related to my involvement are Azure Defender and enabling log analytics on the workloads. This helps to integrate the workload suite with the analytics repository. For example, if I want to capture any logs from a Windows 10 workload, then this allows me to do so.

The Log Analytics Workspace acts as a repository where it captures all of the data from Windows 10 and Windows 8 workloads. In order to implement it, an agent needs to be installed. With Azure Security Center, we can configure a policy that accounts for different subscription levels. It automatically installs the agent and begins capturing data.

This product provides us with many features including auto-provisioning of dependency agents for Azure Log Analytics, as well as for Azure Defender.

We can create alerts that trigger if there is any malicious activity happening in the workflow and these alerts can be retrieved using the query language.

Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender. It has most of the features for monitoring end-user machines for security updates or malicious activity but, for example, the latest DAT files are slow to arrive compared to Microsoft Defender.

I would rate the stability a four out of five. Once we enable it, the Azure Security Center will push security updates to all of the end-user machines and start capturing the logs. It helps in many ways.

There is no limitation to the scalability. For example, if I have 10 subscriptions in my Azure environment, it is my choice if I have to use five in production and five for non-production. If I require more, I can upgrade it as needed. It's very flexible.

The people who work with this product hands-on are our administrators. Apart from them, nobody has the access required to make changes.

If we face any issue with Azure Security Center, where we are unable to solve it ourselves, we raise a support ticket with Microsoft directly. We describe the issue and they will come back to us with support.

Usually, we are happy with the support that we receive.

Prior to this product, we worked on a solution from McAfee. However, it was a legacy application and when it came time to upgrade, we opted to use one from Azure because we were using Azure already.

In the case of an on-premises workload, we instead use a SQUAM solution by Microsoft.

The initial setup is a straightforward process. We just need to go into the security center and select the substrates. The deployment takes less than one hour to complete.

In terms of an implementation strategy, we simply follow the Microsoft documentation.

There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions. 

My advice for anyone who is considering Azure Security Center is that it has similar features to the on-premises Microsoft Defender, as well as other software security tools. If you are already using an Azure environment then I recommend implementing Azure Security Center versus having security solutions from different vendors.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use case is for cloud endpoint IoT security and overall cybersecurity implementations. We handle aspects from presales, installation, post-sales, and ongoing consulting to optimize customer security.

Implementing Microsoft Defender for Cloud has helped our organization in terms of providing robust cloud workload protection with minimal false positives. It also allows us to integrate with other tools like Splunk for observability and Qualys for vulnerability assessments, ensuring comprehensive security for our clients.

Some of the most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud include its effectiveness in threat detection through unsupervised machine learning, CTI, and advanced sandboxing. These features have consistently minimized false positives. The rich history of signature-based technology from Microsoft also adds to its reliability.

Integration into other third-party products, particularly those from tier three vendors like ManageEngine and Hexcode, has proven difficult. While there is ample documentation from Microsoft, the company needs to improve on making their integrations less challenging.

I have been working with Microsoft products for six to seven years.

We used to resell CyberX before it was acquired. The switch was made to enhance our security offerings with more comprehensive solutions.

The initial setup of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is manageable. Our team handles the presales, installation, and post-sales, ensuring the customer achieves a level of compliance with their security and regulatory needs.

We perform the presales, installation, and post-sales for clients. For compliance and consultancy, a dedicated consulting team works with the customers.

The pricing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very expensive. Although it is overpriced, many of our enterprise customers have a Microsoft ELA, making it the solution of choice.

Our customers also use products like CrowdStrike, Cyber Reason, TrendMicro, and AllGuard. Many are on Microsoft Azure, while some also use OCI and AWS.

The primary piece of advice would be to improve third-party integrations, especially with products from tier-three vendors. This would make the overall solution more versatile and easier to manage for diverse customer needs.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

Security is at the forefront of everything that we have been doing, fundamentally. Both in my previous organization and the current one, Azure Security Center has given us a great overview of the current state of security, through the recommendations given by Microsoft. There are potential situations where risk exists because you're not compliant with a specific recommendation, or to specific regulatory compliance. Such guidance is critical for us.

We implement a wide range of solutions in our environment. We have solutions that are purely SaaS. We have some things that are just purely IaaS, and, of course, we have PaaS for services as well. So, we really have a wide range of deployments on all services as a service.

Overall, Azure Security Center has greatly improved our company's security posture. At a very quick glance, you can see where you are the most vulnerable. I'm greatly oversimplifying what the tool does, but at the very minimum, at a quick glance, even if you are not an expert, or even if you have just started using it, this tool will give you a basic idea of where the biggest problems are.

Security Center has not affected our end-user experience in a negative way. To my thinking, security is something that if your users don't experience it then it's great because there are no problems. Since I have been in this company, there have not been any security incidents. The only experience that the end-users have is the fact that there have not been any disruptions due to security issues. We have been monitoring what has been going on.

The most valuable feature is the recommendations. Azure Security Center is a product that can be useful in various grades and stages, depending on the state of maturity of both your application and your organization.

The alerts are also valuable, and they go hand-in-hand with the recommendations.

With respect to our security posture, there are at least two features that have been very useful. The first of these is the inventory section, where you can quickly see everything that you have. Especially in a larger organization where there have been mergers and acquisitions, it can be difficult to readily see everything that has been deployed. Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful.

The security score has been very useful. This is another numeric metering system that basically tells you how well you have been doing.

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. You can create exemptions, but not everywhere are the exemptions the same. In some areas, we can do quick fixes, but that is not true across the board. So in general, consistency is the number one item that needs attention.

We have been using Azure Security Center for approximately three years.

With respect to stability, so far I have not encountered any specific issues with the way it behaves. I cannot say that it has performed badly in any way.

It's a really scalable product, fundamentally, the way Microsoft designed it. I don't think that scalability is an issue at all.

We have implemented this solution in environments that differ quite significantly in terms of scope and in range but, given the way that it works, within 24 hours it discovers everything in the environment, no matter what it is. 

We only used technical support once, and it was for an item that was behaving in a strange way. It ended up being a known issue, and they said that they were going to fix it. Overall, it was a very good interaction.

In both companies where I have used this solution, there was no other cloud-based tool that was handling security. It was done using traditional security products that basically examined the logs and raised alerts.

We switched because it gives us an expansive view of everything which is deployed. It is really unparalleled by anything else that you could potentially use. The moment you turn it on for a subscription, it will identify, almost immediately, every component that you have. From there, it will also identify what is at risk in that component.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward, although I came to this product from a network and security background. When I started working with a Security Center, it was not like a tool that I had never seen before.

Fundamentally, it takes 24 hours before you start to see everything accurately. From the moment you turn Security Center on for your subscription, within the 24-hour range, you have a full view of what's going on.

Our implementation strategy includes turning it on for every subscription that we have. Security is critical for us, so the cost, in this case, was not a factor. The benefit was definitely outpacing any potential financial cost. Once we turn the feature on for a subscription, we look at every recommendation that we see in the list. In cases where it is not compliant with our security policy, we fix the issue and have been doing that ever since we started using it.

My in-house team was responsible for the deployment, and this was true for both organizations where I have used it.

On average, three people can deploy it. There should be an architect and principal engineers.

Although I am outside of the discussion on budget and costing, I can say that the importance of security provided by this solution is of such importance that whatever the cost is, it is not a factor.

Microsoft does a good job with respect to the pricing model, so anything comparable will cost almost the same. I don't think that there is really an alternative.

We are perfectly satisfied with what this product gives us. So, there's really no reason to even look at anything else.

The first piece of advice that I would give somebody who's going to try to use Security Center is to try to understand their environment as much as possible, and then try to match their environment with the recommendation section of the tool and start remediating from there.

There are going to be recommendations in Security Center that will make sense if the team looking at the security infrastructure understands what is going on. If the team does not have a full understanding then it will be very difficult to know what to do, or how to remedy it.

The fact that I had to deal with many components, of which I don't know very much about, has been really great because it forced me to learn about their security. Typically, I don't have to deal with that. My learning has definitely increased, and of course, that's always good.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

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 use it to keep our Azure infrastructure up to date with the security best practices that Microsoft suggests. We also use it to have better visibility into changes in our databases.

It helps me know if a new virtual machine or an app gateway or a functional service has come online that doesn't have the best security practices enforced on them. The impact we've had is a better security posture being enforced throughout our Azure environment.

The solution has also simplified management of endpoints and servers and gives us visibility in a single pane of glass. And it's easy to identify security corrections in the environment.

It has helped save us SOC time and increased their efficiency. While we haven't measured by how much, we see it in their day-to-day activities. And it has likely improved our time to detection, but we just haven't had anything to detect.

The most valuable features of the solution are the insights, meaning the remediation suggestions, as well as the incident alerts.

We have also integrated Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Defender for Cloud with Microsoft Sentinel and the integration was easy.

In addition, it's good at helping us proactively discover unknowns and defend against threats.

I would like to see better automation when it comes to pushing out security features to the recommendations, and better documentation on the step-by-step procedures for enabling certain features.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud on a day-to-day basis for about a year.

It's quite stable. We don't have many problems.

The scalability is very good.

We have 100 internal users and we are deployed across multiple sites. It's 100 percent cloud and our infrastructure handles API responses for our clients.

For the cloud infrastructure, their technical support is good.

Positive

In my previous company, I used the native portal, which is pretty much what Defender does, on AWS.

The intelligent threat hunting provided by Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Sentinel based on the alerts, incidents, and logs passed along by Microsoft Defender for Cloud is moderate.

The ability of Microsoft solutions to work natively together to deliver integrated protection as well as coordinated detection and responses across the environment is improving a lot, but it still has a ways to go.

Overall, if you are worried about security, you should have Microsoft Defender for Cloud. It's the minimum you should have.