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Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 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 Vulnerability Management
5th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
115
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (2nd), Container Security (3rd), Compliance Management (2nd)
Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto N...
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
34th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
19th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
22nd
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
16th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (13th), Software Supply Chain Security (14th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (9th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (8th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
7th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
1st
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
4th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (9th), Container Security (7th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (8th), Compliance Management (5th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

Mike Bulyk - PeerSpot reviewer
Custom correlation searches enhance threat detection efficiency
Singularity Cloud Security significantly reduced our organization's threat detection time by providing immediate data visibility. This allows our team to analyze telemetry in real-time, query it, and identify anomalies or potential threats using the Singularity platform. We can create rules that automatically trigger alerts based on this real-time data, enabling immediate response. This instant threat detection and response capability is a major improvement over our previous reliance on multiple tools with delayed data flows. Singularity Cloud Security eliminates those delays, saving valuable time in incident response scenarios. MTTR and MTTD are critical metrics for incident response processes. They measure the time it takes to fully address an incident, from initial detection to complete remediation. Minimizing these times is crucial to limit damage, as attackers can quickly exploit vulnerabilities and compromise additional systems. Rapid detection and response are essential to disrupt attackers and prevent further progression within the attack chain. Singularity Cloud helps reduce false positives by allowing engineers direct access to data. This access enables querying, validation, and the creation of correlation searches for improved data analysis. Instead of a black box approach, Singularity provides full visibility into the code and syntax used, increasing confidence in the results. Ultimately, Singularity offers greater control over correlation searches, detection rules, and response scenarios due to the enhanced engagement and control it provides. Singularity's ability to create custom correlation searches significantly reduces noise by avoiding reliance on generic, pre-built searches that often lead to false positives in diverse organizational environments. This targeted approach results in a high positive rate and efficacy, allowing for focused detection and response. By designing and running custom searches, Singularity minimizes the need to sift through irrelevant alerts, unlike systems using default rules that inundate analysts with noise. This translates to a very low noise-to-efficacy ratio, enabling efficient and accurate incident response. Singularity Cloud offers valuable data and capabilities extending beyond security, benefiting various business units. For example, it helped troubleshoot a newly introduced service with limited telemetry. My team created custom correlation searches to track specific event types, confirming the software's functionality. This success garnered positive feedback throughout the company, reaching even the CIO and CSR, as it enabled the business to showcase the software's effectiveness in a way that was previously impossible. SentinelOne improves our regulatory compliance by fulfilling the endpoint detection and response requirements of various frameworks. Many federal regulations require businesses to meet specific security standards, including those related to endpoint, identity, and cloud security. SentinelOne enables us to meet these requirements and assure potential partners that we have a robust security posture. This strengthens our partnerships and streamlines procurement processes, demonstrating how SentinelOne contributes to our compliance efforts. SentinelOne's evidence-based reporting, particularly the CNS reports, fosters trust due to the transparency of the data source and the ability to understand the underlying mechanisms. Knowing the search criteria, data types, and information gathering process, especially when customized for detection engineering, creates confidence in the product and the relationship with SentinelOne. This transparency and customization allow users to delve into the mechanics of the reporting, understand its functionality, and ultimately trust the evidence provided. AI is a crucial consideration for security strategies. While some view AI as a potential replacement for human analysts, others see it as a powerful tool to enhance their capabilities. The latter approach emphasizes AI's ability to accelerate incident response, improve threat detection, and provide valuable insights to analysts. This perspective suggests that AI should be used to augment human expertise, enabling analysts to make faster and more informed decisions, particularly in prioritizing threats and developing a sixth sense for identifying malicious activity. By integrating AI as an enabler, organizations can empower their security teams to become more efficient and effective, ultimately strengthening their overall security posture.
PG
Identifies vulnerabilities and enables proactive remediation through AI/ML capabilities
The solution helps me to understand misconfigurations in AWS or Azure cloud environments. It detects misconfigurations, suggests remedial actions, and helps identify vulnerabilities across cloud platforms. It provides action recommendations for CVEs against particular vulnerabilities The tool…
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

"Support has been very helpful and provides regular feedback and help whenever needed. They've been very useful."
"We really appreciate the Slack integration. When we have an incident, we get an instant notification. We also use Joe Sandbox, which Singularity can integrate with, so we can verify if a threat is legitimate."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security can integrate all your cloud accounts and resources you create in the AWS account, We have set it up to scan the AWS transfer services, EC2, security groups, and GitHub."
"It saves time, makes your environment more secure, and improves compliance. SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security helps with audits, ensuring that you are following best practices for cloud security. You don't need to be an expert to use it and improve your security."
"For Singularity, the task capability is easy to use and it has a very intuitive dashboard, which streamlines the processes."
"It is advantageous in terms of time-saving and cost reduction."
"We like the platform and its response time. We also like that its console is user-friendly as well as modern and sleek."
"It has a user-friendly dashboard that I can access without any difficulty."
"Overall, Cortex Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a technically strong product, and I rate it ten out of ten."
"Defender for Cloud provides a prioritized list of remediations for security issues, reducing risk and improving security operations."
"My favorite part of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the compliance features. Defender covers a wide range of workloads, on par with competing products on the market."
"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a ten."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has definitely helped us manage and secure our multi-cloud environment by providing ease of use."
"It works seamlessly on the Azure platform because it's a Microsoft app. Its setup is similar, so if you already have a Microsoft account, it just flows into it."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"Most importantly, it's an integrated solution. We not only have Defender for Cloud, but we also have Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Identity. It's an integrated, holistic solution."
"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."
 

Cons

"One of the issues with the product stems from the fact that it clubs different resources under one ticket."
"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."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is on the costlier side."
"The reporting works well, but sometimes the severity classifications are inaccurate. Sometimes, it flags an issue as high-impact, but it should be a lower severity."
"In the Analytics section, there is a tab for showing the severity of open issues by day. There are three options: by week, by month, and for more than thirty days. However, despite being aware of many issues open for more than thirty days, it shows no data available."
"The categorization of the results from the vulnerability assessment could be improved."
"I would like additional integrations."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is an excellent CSSPM tool, but the CSC CWPP features need improvement."
"Some aspects of the GUI can be confusing and make it difficult for me to find certain options or navigate where needed."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"When you work with it, the only problem that we're struggling with is that we have 21 different subscriptions we're trying to apply security to. It's impossible to keep everything organized."
"Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts."
"The documentation and implementation guides could be improved."
"The cost is always a concern, but overall, it's not too bad because it is easy to use and pretty friendly."
"I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets."
"I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers robust protection, its high cost may be prohibitive for small and medium-sized businesses."
"Their pricing appears to be based simply on the number of accounts we have, which is common for cloud-based products."
"It is cost-effective compared to other solutions in the market."
"We found it to be fine for us. Its price was competitive. It was something we were happy with. We are not a Fortune 500 company, so I do not know how pricing scales at the top end, but for our cloud environment, it works very well."
"The pricing is somewhat high compared to other market tools."
"As a partner, we receive a discount on the licenses."
"PingSafe is priced reasonably for our workload."
"The pricing for PingSafe in India was more reasonable than other competitors."
Information not available
"Understanding the costs of cloud services can be complicated at first. As with a lot of things in the cloud, it can be quite hard to understand the end cost, but it becomes clearer over time. Early on, the lack of transparency is a challenge. Microsoft does not tell you the cost when they launch something. It is clever marketing, and there is room for improvement there. There should be clarity from the start."
"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."
"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."
"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."
"There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."
"Defender for Cloud is pretty costly for a single line. It's incredibly high to pay monthly for security per server. The cost is considerable for an enterprise with 500-plus virtual machines, and the monthly bill can spike."
"The product's pricing policy is generally favorable."
"The pricing and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud have been good for us. We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Performing Arts
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise53
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise45
 

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?
I don't handle the price part, but it isn't more expensive than Palo Alto Prisma Cloud. It's not cheap, but it is wor...
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
There is scope for more application security posture management features. Additionally, the runtime protection needs ...
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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.
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
No data available
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

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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 Microsoft, Wiz, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP). Updated: August 2025.
868,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.