Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
Sponsored
Ranking in Container Security
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
118
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (4th), Cloud and Data Center Security (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd), AI Software Development (1st), AI Observability (2nd)
Aqua Cloud Security Platform
Ranking in Container Security
25th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
21st
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (19th), Software Supply Chain Security (17th), DevSecOps (13th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Security
7th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
1st
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (8th), Container Management (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 4.2%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Aqua Cloud Security Platform is 2.1%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 16.6%, up from 14.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud16.6%
SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security4.2%
Aqua Cloud Security Platform2.1%
Other77.1%
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

SC
Information Security Engineer at DataVigilant Infotech
Enables us to prioritize and effectively address critical security issues
Evidence-based reporting helps us to prioritize and solve critical security issues. The new visualization feature demonstrates how an attacker can enter the system, highlighting the potential path that can be exploited and outlining all the steps the attacker could take. With that visibility, we can ensure the perimeter is strong and attackers cannot enter, thus reducing the risk. It has helped us prioritize issues. The visibility into how an attack could happen is valuable. For example, it highlights the system vulnerability and outlines where an attack could propagate. The visualization helps me to prioritize remediation, and if I don't know where to start, I can check to see the score that enables me to prioritize issues. I am using infrastructure-as-code scanning, and it's one of the useful features. In pre-production, it identifies embedded secrets and misconfigurations, including issues with Kubernetes or some privileged containers. This feature allows us to pass the audit and secure IaC code so that it isn't easily exploitable by attackers. We can more proactively work to identify and resolve vulnerabilities by using the dashboard and the alerting system that SentinelOne provides. It helps us with audits and compliance. We can show the compliance in percentage. We can confidently say that our company or infrastructure is very secure. It has improved our security posture by 30% to 35%. It has reduced our false positives by 30%. It has helped teams collaborate better. The security team manages SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, and when it flags vulnerabilities, they are forwarded to DevOps for remediation. Previously, we needed to identify and report the issues, but there would be lapses in communication. Now, there is a centralized dashboard that anyone can look at and see the open issues and work on them.
Burak AKCAGUN - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at Axoft Ukraine
A robust and cost-effective solution, excelling in scalability, on-premises support, and responsive technical support, making it well-suited for enterprises navigating stringent regulatory environment
The most crucial aspect is runtime protection, specifically image scanning before preproduction and deployment. Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar to a sandbox environment. This feature ensures that customers can identify any potential issues with the image, such as misconfigurations or vulnerabilities, before integrating it into their workloads and infrastructure. In their source pipeline, companies can identify issues before deploying changes. This is crucial because customers prefer resolving any problems or misconfigurations before the deployment process. Software change security, including GSPM Cloud, is a key feature customers seek in their infrastructure.
David Birhange - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Cloud and Modern Workplace at Informanix Technology Group
Brings together cloud security insights through a unified view and supports agentless protection for virtual machines
Copilot and similar features are already being used, though not necessarily for Microsoft Defender for Cloud specifically. We are trying to get more experience before rolling out most of Microsoft Defender for Cloud's AI capabilities. This is definitely on our to-do list, and the priority is urgent as we seek to learn more about these capabilities. The GenAI threat protection from Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not been enabled yet. There are many unknowns with AI applications. AI agents will operate while you're not present, whether you are sleeping or awake, and it's unclear whether there would be any exfiltration of data or how data is being managed. Microsoft Purview is being used extensively, and there is significant development going on with DSPM that will be rolled out to address security concerns. Data labeling and proper demarcation for sensitivity of data before it is received are being actively pursued.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable aspects of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security are its alerting system and the remediation guidance it provides."
"Cloud Native Security's evidence-based reporting allows us to prioritize issues by understanding their impact, helping us resolve the most important problems first."
"The agentless vulnerability scanning is great."
"Cloud Security has provided a single view to observe all workloads, prioritization for handling cloud assets, and reduced noise by distinguishing false positives effectively."
"SentinelOne stands out with its responsiveness to feature requests for Singularity Cloud Security."
"Support has been very helpful and provides regular feedback and help whenever needed. They've been very useful."
"Cloud Native Security has helped us with our risk posture and securing our agenda. It has been tremendous in terms of supporting growth."
"The most valuable feature is the easy-to-understand user interface, which allows even non-technical users to comprehend and resolve issues."
"Aqua Security allowed us to gain visibility into the vulnerabilities that were present in the container images, that were being rolled out, the amount of risk that we were introducing to the platform, and provided us a look into the container environment by introducing access control mechanisms. In addition, when it came to runtime-level policies, we could restrict container access to resources in our environment, such as network-level or other application-level access."
"Customers find it invaluable to have the ability to check for vulnerabilities in an image before deployment, similar to a sandbox environment."
"The solution was very user-friendly."
"The most valuable features are that it's easy to use and manage."
"Aqua Security helps us to check the vulnerability of image assurance and check for malware."
"The most valuable feature is the security."
"Support is very helpful."
"From what I understand, the initial setup is simple."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has helped us manage and secure our cloud environments, and having observability to vulnerabilities is important for us so that we can take actions against any threats."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a valuable tool that integrates seamlessly with Azure Policy and our Security SIEM, simplifying implementation and enhancing security posture."
"The solution's robust security posture is the most valuable feature."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has benefited my organization by reducing the overall cost of the Azure package and providing greater peace of mind during off-hours to prevent problems."
"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."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
"The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative."
"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."
 

Cons

"One potential drawback is the cost of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, which may be prohibitive for smaller businesses or startups, particularly those in regions with lower average incomes, such as India."
"The Singularity Cloud Security console is experiencing delays in clearing resolved issues, which can take over an hour to be removed from the display."
"The Infrastructure as Code service available in SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security and the services available in AWS cloud security can be merged so that we can get the security data directly from AWS cloud in SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security. This way, all the data related to security will be in one single place. Currently, we have to check a couple of things on SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, and we have to validate that same data on the AWS Cloud to be sure. If they can collaborate like that, it will be great."
"The cloud-based operations might pose challenges in areas with limited or unavailable internet connectivity."
"I personally use the SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security daily, and I have noticed that the dashboard occasionally gets stuck, potentially due to internet issues. It could benefit from enhancements to be more robust and smoother."
"For vulnerabilities, they are showing CVE ID. The naming convention should be better so that it indicates the container where a vulnerability is present. Currently, they are only showing CVE ID, but the same CVE ID might be present in multiple containers. We would like to have the container name so that we can easily fix the issue."
"I have noticed that the dashboard occasionally gets stuck, potentially due to internet issues. It could benefit from enhancements to be more robust and smoother."
"One of our use cases was setting up a firewall for our endpoints, specifically for our remote users... We were hoping to utilize SentinelOne's firewall capabilities, but there were limitations on how many URLs we could implement. Because of those limitations on the number of URLs, we weren't able to utilize that feature in the way we had hoped to."
"Aqua Security lacks a lot in reporting."
"Since we are working from home, we would like to have the proper training for Aqua."
"The solution could improve user-friendliness."
"It's a bit hard to use the user roles. That was a bit confusing."
"Aqua Security could provide more open documentation so that their learning resources can be more easily accessed and searched through online. Right now, a lot of the documentation is closed and not available to the public."
"The integrations on CICD could be improved. If Aqua had more plugins or container images to integrate and automate more easily on CICD, it would be better."
"I would like Aqua Security to look into is the development of a web security portal."
"We would like to see an improvement in the overview visibility that this solution offers."
"The solution is quite complex. A lot of the different policies that actually get applied don't pertain to every client. If you need to have something open for a client application to work, then you get dinged for having a port open or having an older version of TLS available."
"It's really hard to get ahold of Microsoft support. When you buy a product, with the M365 portal, you're given the option to chat with somebody, and normally you don't hear back immediately."
"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."
"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."
"Another thing that could be improved was that they could recommend processes on how to react to alerts, or recommend best practices based on how other organizations do things if they receive an alert about XYZ."
"If they had an easier way to display all the vulnerabilities of the machines affected and remediation steps on one screen rather than having to dive deep into each of them, that would be a lot easier."
"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 haven't experienced issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud for our company size of about five hundred people. However, I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Their pricing appears to be based simply on the number of accounts we have, which is common for cloud-based products."
"The licensing is easy to understand and implement, with some flexibility to accommodate dynamic environments."
"While I'm slightly out of touch with pricing, I know SentinelOne is much cheaper than other products."
"It's a fair price for what you get. We are happy with the price as it stands."
"I would rate the cost a seven out of ten with ten being the most costly."
"Singularity Cloud Workload Security's pricing is good."
"Singularity Cloud Workload Security's licensing and price were cheaper than the other solutions we looked at."
"PingSafe is less expensive than other options."
"They were reasonable with their pricing. They were pretty down-to-earth about the way they pitched their product and the way they tried to close the deal. They were one of the rare companies that approached the whole valuation in a way that made sense for our company, for our needs, and for their own requirements as well... They will accommodate your needs if they are able to understand them and they're stated clearly."
"It comes at a reasonable cost."
"Aqua Security is not cheap, and it's not very expensive, such as Splunk, they are in the middle."
"Dealing with licensing costs isn't my responsibility, but I know that the licenses don't depend on the number of users, but instead are priced according to your workload."
"The pricing of this solution could be improved."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters."
"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
"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."
"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."
"While we pay for any additional features, the pricing seems competitive, though I am not involved in the specific cost details."
"Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."
"The pricing model for most plans is generally good, but the cost of the new Defender for Storage plan is high and should be revisited, as it could lead to disabling desirable security features due to cost."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) solutions are best for your needs.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business48
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?
The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?
Regarding the pricing for SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security, I do not think it is something I can compare.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
Regarding the downsides of cloud security, I do not have much negative to discuss about cloud security, because it is...
What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?
Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valu...
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening acros...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud was pretty straightforward. We...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
Microsoft Defender for Cloud can be improved. An additional feature that should be included in the next release is Ze...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
Aqua Security Platform, CloudSploit, Argon
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
HPE Salesforce Telstra Ellie Mae Cathay Pacific HomeAway
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Aqua Cloud Security Platform vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.