Checkmarx One vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Checkmarx and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Checkmarx is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.3, while Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1. Checkmarx holds a 0.9% mindshare in VM, compared to Microsoft’s 5.5% mindshare. Additionally, 87% of Checkmarx users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Checkmarx One and Microsoft Defender for Cloud compete in the security software market. Based on the features and integrations, Checkmarx One seems to have the upper hand in code analysis, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud excels in security insights and Azure integration.

Features: Checkmarx One offers advanced code analysis identifying vulnerabilities without code compilation, integrates with Jenkins, and supports multiple programming languages, enhancing developers' versatility. Microsoft Defender for Cloud excels in providing superior security insights, seamless Azure integration, and comprehensive monitoring across hybrid environments, making it appealing for businesses within Microsoft's ecosystem.

Room for Improvement: Checkmarx One needs to address false positives, broaden language support, and improve user documentation. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be more user-friendly by simplifying its complexity, providing more detailed recommendations, and improving real-time alerting effectiveness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Checkmarx One is commonly used in on-premises environments and is complemented by knowledgeable technical support, though delays are occasional. Microsoft Defender primarily thrives in hybrid and public cloud environments, with high-rated support despite noted setup complexity.

Pricing and ROI: Checkmarx One is perceived as expensive, but its secure code development capabilities justify the cost, though its flexible licensing model can be complex. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a predictable pricing model attractive to organizations using multiple Microsoft products, yet the cost can escalate for large-scale deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

August 2025

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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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.9%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Checkmarx One is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.5%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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Syed Hasan

Specialist Leader at Deloitte

Partner experiences excellent technical support and seamless initial setup

In my opinion, if we are able to extract or show the report, and because everything is going towards agent tech and GenAI, it would be beneficial if it could get integrated with our code base and do the fix automatically. It could suggest how the code base is written and automatically populate the source code with three different solution options to choose from. This would be really helpful.

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Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"The solution has good performance, it is able to compute in 10 to 15 minutes."

"I have seen a return on investment from Checkmarx One."

"Checkmarx has helped us deliver more secure products. We are able to do static code analysis with the tool before shipping our code to production. When the integration is in the pipeline, this tool gives us early notifications on code fixes."

"The best thing about Checkmarx is the amount of vulnerabilities that it can find compared to other free tools."

"The solution communicates where to fix the issue for the purpose of less iterations."

"Checkmarx pinpoints the vulnerability in the code and also presents the flow of malicious input across the application."

"Apart from software scanning, software composition scanning is valuable."

"Most valuable features include: ease of use, dashboard. interface and the ability to report."

More Checkmarx One pros

"The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very good."

"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."

"The dashboard is very good. It gives our clients a lot of information and allows them to have a complete overview of the system. Everything is visible in one glance."

"The solution is quite good and addresses many security gaps."

"It alerts us to our vulnerabilities and ensures compliance by marking off a compliance tool checklist."

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a nine out of 10."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has significantly enhanced our overall security posture by approximately 20 to 25 percent."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud can find potential phishing links and malicious code in data at rest."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"The resolutions should also be provided. For example, if the user faces any problem regarding an installation due to the internal security policies of their company, there should be a resolution offered."

"Checkmarx is not good because it has too many false positive issues."

"Some were valid and some were not applicable for us based on the scenario."

"Its user interface could be improved and made more friendly."

"The statistics module has a function that allows you to show some statistics, but I think it's limited. Maybe it needs more information."

"Checkmarx needs to be more scalable for large enterprise companies."

"When we first ran it on a big project, there wasn't enough memory on the computer. It originally ran with eight gigabytes, and now it runs with 32. The software stopped at some point, and while I don't think it said it ran out of memory, it just said "stopped" and something else. We had to go to the logs and send them to the integrator, and eventually, they found a memory issue in the logs and recommended increasing the memory. We doubled it once, and it didn't seem enough. We doubled it again, and it helped."

"With Checkmarx, normally you need to use one tool for quality and you need to use another tool for security. I understand that Checkmarx is not in the parity space because it's totally different, but they could include some free features or recommendations too."

More Checkmarx One cons

"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 cost is always a concern, but overall, it's not too bad because it is easy to use and pretty friendly."

"The product must improve its UI."

"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."

"With the new Copilot functionality available everywhere, it is challenging to pinpoint areas for improvement. If I put in a lot of thought, I might identify things, but right now, nothing significant pops into my mind, but there is always room for more transparency, especially in pricing."

"The documentation could be much clearer."

"The solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge."

"Defender could improve how data is represented. It can be unstructured or slow to load. The recent update allowing policy grouping into control groups is beneficial, but further enhancements for speed and clarity are needed."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"We have purchased an annual license to use this solution. The price is reasonable."

"Before implementing the product I would evaluate if it is really necessary to scan so many different languages and frameworks. If not, I think there must be a cheaper solution for scanning Java-only applications (which are 90% of our applications)."

"The pricing is competitive and provides a lower TCO (total cost of ownership) for achieving application security."

"This solution is expensive. The customized package allows you to buy additional users at any time."

"Checkmarx is comparatively costlier than other products, which is why some of the customers feel reluctant to go for it, though performance-wise, Checkmarx can compete with other products."

"Its price is fair. It is in or around the right spot. Ultimately, if the price is wrong, customers won't commit, but they do tend to commit. It is neither too cheap nor too expensive."

"If you want more, you have to pay more. You have to pay for additional modules or functionalities."

"The license has a vague language around P1 issues and the associated support. Make sure to review these in order to align them with your organizational policies."

More Checkmarx One pricing and cost advice

"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."

"This solution is more cost-effective than some competing products. My understanding is that it is based on the number of integrations that you have, so if you have fewer subscriptions then you pay less for the service."

"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."

"The solution is expensive, and I rate it a five to six out of ten."

"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."

"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."

"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."

"There are two different plans. We're using the secure basic plan, but we have used the end security plan as well. There are additional costs, but it gives us more functionalities compared to the basic plan."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...

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What alternatives are there for Fortify WebInspect and Fortify SCA?

I would like to recommend Checkmarx. With Checkmarx, you are able to have an all in one solution for SAST and SCA as ...

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What do you like most about Checkmarx?

Compared to the solutions we used previously, Checkmarx has reduced our workload by almost 75%.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx?

The pricing is relatively expensive due to the product's quality and performance, but it is worth it.

See all answers

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...

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What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The pricing is pretty standard.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 37% of the time

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ServiceNow Security Operations vs Zafran Security

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

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SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs Checkmarx One

Compared 40% of the time

Veracode vs Checkmarx One

Compared 9% of the time

Checkmarx SAST vs Checkmarx One

Compared 7% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Checkmarx One

Compared 5% of the time

OWASP Zap vs Checkmarx One

Compared 5% of the time

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AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 25% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 12% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Orca Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

July 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One

August 2025

Download Checkmarx One product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

August 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Demo not available

Checkmarx

Microsoft

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Checkmarx One is an enterprise cloud-native application security platform focused on providing cross-tool, correlated results to help AppSec and developer teams prioritize where to focus time and resources.

Checkmarx One offers comprehensive application scanning across the SDLC:

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
API security
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Container security
IaC security
Correlation, prioritization, and risk management
Codebashing secure code training
AI security
Tech partnerships extending AppSec into runtime analysis
Developer tool integrations including: CI/CD tools, development frameworks, feedback tools, IDEs, programming languages and SCMs

Checkmarx One provides everything you need to secure application development from the first line of code through deployment and runtime in the cloud. With an ever-evolving set of AppSec engines, correlation and prioritization features, and AI capabilities, Checkmarx One helps consolidate expanding lists of AppSec tools and make better sense of results. Its capabilities are designed to provide an improved developer experience to build trust with development teams and ensure the success of your AppSec program investment.

Checkmarx

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

August 2025

Free Report: Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about Checkmarx One vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: August 2025.

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