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AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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 Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Cloud and Data Center Security (4th), Container Security (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
AWS GuardDuty
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS GuardDuty is 11.7%, down from 13.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 13.6%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew W - PeerSpot reviewer
Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues
Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.
Terence Dube - PeerSpot reviewer
Comprehensive threat detection simplifies security management
GuardDuty is limited to AWS environments. While incorporating Amazon Detective for detailed investigation can be useful, including more granular details in findings, such as specific user actions or historical comparisons, would be beneficial. Furthermore, managing global AWS environments requires setting up additional tools for viewing GuardDuty findings across multiple regions. A unified dashboard that aggregates findings across all regions without requiring manual aggregation could enhance convenience for users.
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"The UI is very good."
"The ease of use of the platform is very nice."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is excellent, and I highly recommend it."
"We like the platform and its response time. We also like that its console is user-friendly as well as modern and sleek."
"The most valuable aspects of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security are its alerting system and the remediation guidance it provides."
"It used to guide me about an alert. There is something called an alert guide. I used to click on the alert guide, and I could read everything. I could read about the alert and how to resolve it. I used to love that feature."
"The most valuable feature is the notification system, providing real-time alerts and comparisons crucial for maintaining security."
"One of the advantages of cloud services is the ability to use them on demand. There's minimal installation involved; you can check the latest offerings and make new deployments while dismantling the previous ones. This approach keeps you ahead of potential services, showcasing the agility of AWS."
"The correlation back end is the solution's most valuable feature."
"The out-of-band malware detection from the EBS volumes. It's really cool. No agents or anything needed, it automatically finds and correlates based on malware."
"What I like most about Amazon GuardDuty is that you can monitor your AWS accounts across, but you don't have to pay the additional cost. You can get all your CloudTrail VPC flow logs and DNS logs all in one, and then you get the monitoring with that. A lot of times, if you had a separate tool on-premise, you would have to set up your DNS logs, so usually, Amazon GuardDuty helps with all your additional networking requirements, so I utilize it for continuous monitoring because you can't detect anything if you're not monitoring, and the solution fills that gap. If you don't do anything else first, you can deploy your firewall, and then you've got your Route 53 DNS and DNSSEC, but then Amazon GuardDuty fills that, and then you have audit requirements in AU that says, "Hey, what are your additional logs?", so you can just say, "Hey, we utilize Amazon GuardDuty." You're getting your CloudTrail, your VPC flow logs, and all your DNS logs, and those are your additional logs right there, so the solution meets a lot of requirements. Now, everything comes with a cost, but I also like that the solution also provides threat response and remediation. It's a pretty good product. I've just used it more for log analysis and that's where the value is at, the niche value. Once you do threat detection, it goes into a lot of other integrations you need to implement, so threat detection is only good as the integration, as the user that knows the tools itself, and the architecture and how it's all set up and the rules that you set within that."
"GuardDuty is extensive in terms of configuration and security compliance."
"GuardDuty's comprehensive threat detection does not only monitor data - it also detects a wide range of security threats."
"Since our environment is cloud based and accessible from the internet, we like the ability to check where the user has logged in from and what kind of API calls that user is doing."
"The solution will detect abnormalities in the AWS workload and alert us so that we can monitor and take action."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is its ability to assess an environment and give us a clear idea of what security components are lacking and which are not."
"It alerts us to our vulnerabilities and ensures compliance by marking off a compliance tool checklist."
"Technical support is helpful."
"The most valuable feature is the comprehensive overview across different workloads. It allows us to see protection not just across one workload, such as virtual machines, containers, infrastructure, or data, but across all our workloads. This overall visibility is really helpful."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
"The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites."
"Defender for Cloud provides a complete DevOps security package for cloud services."
"It offers virus management and addresses threats such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other critical security concerns."
 

Cons

"There is no break-glass account feature. They should implement this as soon as possible because we can't implement SSO without a break-glass feature."
"Maybe container runtime security could be improved."
"The areas with room for improvement include the cost, which is higher compared to other security platforms. The dashboard can also be laggy."
"Once all components, including the cloud piece and container runtime piece, integrate further and incorporate an AI layer for better comprehension, it will greatly enhance the utility of Singularity Cloud Security."
"There's room for improvement in the graphic explorer."
"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."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is an excellent CSPM tool, but the CWPP features need to improve, and there is a scope for more application security posture management features. There aren't many ASPM solutions on the market, and existing ones are costly. I would like to see SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security develop into a single pane of glass for ASPM, CSPM, and CWPP. Another feature I'd like to see is runtime protection."
"The cost has the potential for improvement."
"There is currently no consolidated dashboard for AWS GuardDuty. It would be helpful if they could provide a dashboard based on severity levels (high, medium, low) and offer insights account-wise, especially for users utilizing automation structures."
"GuardDuty is limited to AWS environments."
"For the next release, they could provide IPS features as well."
"An improvement would be to have a mobile version where remote workers can log in and monitor and fix issues."
"The solution has to be integrated with new services that AWS adds like QuickSight, Managed Airflow, AppFlow and MWAA."
"GuardDuty is limited to AWS environments."
"AWS GuardDuty needs to be more customer-oriented."
"It would be great if the solution had some automation capabilities."
"The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome."
"One of the main challenges that we have been facing with Azure Security Center is the cost. The costs are really a complex calculation, e.g., to calculate the monthly costs. Azure is calculating on an hourly basis for use of the resource. Because of this, we found it really complex to promote what will be our costs for the next couple of months. I think if Azure could reduce the complex calculation and come up with straightforward cost mapping that would be very useful from a product point of view."
"An area where Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be improved is in getting away from having multiple menus that do the same thing, which seems imposing when looking at it."
"Support needs to be highly responsive, especially in large enterprise environments."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"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."
"The vulnerabilities are duplicated many times."
"Defender is occasionally unreliable. It isn't 100% efficient in terms of antivirus detection, but it isn't an issue most of the time. It's also somewhat difficult to train new security analysts to use Defender."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SentinelOne is quite costly compared to other security platforms."
"Their pricing appears to be based simply on the number of accounts we have, which is common for cloud-based products."
"Its pricing is okay. It is in line with what other providers were providing. It is not cheap. It is not expensive."
"It is not that expensive. There are some tools that are double the cost of PingSafe. It is good on the pricing side."
"I would rate the cost a seven out of ten with ten being the most costly."
"For pricing, it currently seems to be in line with market rates."
"While I'm slightly out of touch with pricing, I know SentinelOne is much cheaper than other products."
"Singularity Cloud Workload Security's licensing and price were cheaper than the other solutions we looked at."
"I don't have all the details in terms of licensing for Amazon GuardDuty, but my organization does have a license set up for it."
"The pricing model is pay as you go and is based on the number of events per month."
"I have heard that the solution's price is quite high."
"The tool's licensing model is pay-as-you-go."
"80 percent of the customers are using AWS GuardDuty, and we recommend it due to its low cost, especially for small customers, ranging from five to ten dollars a month. In our policies, we enforce the usage of this service, making it a recommended practice for security."
"The platform is inexpensive."
"The tool has no subscription charges."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price, I rate the pricing a four or five, which is somewhere in the middle."
"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."
"There are improvements that have to be made to the licensing. Currently, for servers, it has to be done by grouping the servers on a single subscription... We don't have an option whereby, if all those resources are in one subscription, we can have each of the individual servers subject to different planning."
"The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against the importance of what needs covering."
"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."
"The tool is pretty expensive."
"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."
"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing. If you have Cloud for Key Vault, the pricing is different than it is for storage. Every type has its own pricing list and rules."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 needs improvement with PingSafe?
The price is on the higher side. The dashboard can be more detailed.
What do you like most about Amazon GuardDuty?
With anomaly detection, active threat monitoring, and set correlation, GuardDuty alerts me to any unusual user behavi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon GuardDuty?
GuardDuty is very cheap and operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. It's priced around a dollar per million requests, maki...
What needs improvement with Amazon GuardDuty?
GuardDuty is limited to AWS environments. While incorporating Amazon Detective for detailed investigation can be usef...
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 do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The cost is generally reasonable. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Plan 2 costs $15 per server, per month. For a normal c...
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
No data available
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
autodesk, mapbox, fico, webroot
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 AWS GuardDuty vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.