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Cyera vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

 

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

Cyera
Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (18th), Data Governance (18th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (8th), Container Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) category, the mindshare of Cyera is 7.9%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 12.4%, down from 14.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2688711 - PeerSpot reviewer
Inbuilt policies and analytics provide clarity on data security posture
There is room for improvement in making Cyera more user-friendly. Some parts were difficult to navigate, especially for those new to the IT industry. Cyera could be more intuitive, and the UI could be more appealing and easier to read. Additionally, promoting the concept of Cyera to a wider audience, including schools and universities, could increase awareness.
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 like how they model the data. They find data in different places that we didn't know, and they can give us a good idea if it's sensitive or not. They understand whether or not something is in the right region because, with the cloud posture management tool, we could see certain things in the infrastructure, but the way they dig into the data is what we like."
"Cyera has an inbuilt set of policies implemented towards data security, especially cohering with Data Security Posture Management (DSPM)."
"The data discovery, data classification, and CSPM features are most valuable."
"Technical support is helpful."
"I find Microsoft Defender for Cloud's KQL very flexible and powerful. It's really easy to search through with KQL queries to find the security breaches and incidents and to track down the breach itself."
"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."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud can find potential phishing links and malicious code in data at rest."
"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the remote workforce capabilities and the general experience of the remote workforce."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its support for cloud-native services like Kubernetes, containers, managed storage, and databases. Protecting these without Microsoft Defender for Cloud would be extremely challenging. For threat protection specifically, I find the signature-based detection and heuristic detection features very effective."
"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security. It has made the cloud environment more secure, thanks to all the recommendations we can get."
 

Cons

"They need to add a few things in the UI from an enterprise perspective. It's more along the lines of being able to self-service, have integrations, build alerts, and things like that. Outside of that, they work with us on the API and getting alerts into our SIEM and things like that. There's always a way to do something, and they're always available, which is nice."
"There is room for improvement in making Cyera more user-friendly. Some parts were difficult to navigate, especially for those new to the IT industry."
"As a startup company, there is a long way for them to go in terms of scalability."
"I felt that there was disconnection in terms of understanding the UI. The communication for moving from the old UI to the new UI could be improved. It was a bit awkward."
"Microsoft sources most of their threat intelligence internally, but I think they should open themselves up to bodies that provide feel intelligence to build a better engine. There may be threats out there that they don't report because their team is not doing anything on that and they don't have arrangements with another party that is involved in that research."
"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."
"Most of the time, when we log into the support, we don't get a chance to interact with Microsoft employees directly, except having it go to outsource employees of Microsoft. The initial interaction has not been that great because outsourced companies cannot provide the kind of quality or technical expertise that we look for. We have a technical manager from Microsoft, but they are kind of average unless we make noise and ask them to escalate. We then can get the right people and the right solution, but it definitely takes time."
"The pricing could be improved, as it is somewhat high for smaller companies."
"The pricing could be improved, as it is somewhat high for smaller companies."
"Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts."
"The initial setup is not actually so complex but it feels complex because there are many add-ons. There are many options and my team needs to be aware of all of these changes happening on the backend which is a distraction."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to the competitors, they are very reasonable."
"I don't know how much exactly it costs, but I know that it's a yearly thing. It's something that will cost money for any company because they're storing all this information. They're doing all this machine learning, and there are a lot of services on their backend that they got to pay for. I'm sure it gets translated back to the customers unless you have everything completely on-prem. If you're not doing much in the cloud, then I could see how it'd be cheaper, but if you have anything that's cloud-hosted and does all the work for you, there's going to be a cost associated with it."
"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."
"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters."
"The tool is pretty expensive."
"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."
"The price of the solution is good for the features we receive and there is an additional cost for Microsoft premier support. However, some of my potential customers have found it to be expensive and have gone on to choose another solution."
"Pricing is difficult because each license has its own metrics and cost."
"The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against the importance of what needs covering."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cyera ?
The data discovery, data classification, and CSPM features are most valuable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cyera ?
Compared to the competitors, they are very reasonable.
What needs improvement with Cyera ?
There is room for improvement in making Cyera more user-friendly. Some parts were difficult to navigate, especially for those new to the IT industry. Cyera could be more intuitive, and the UI could...
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 across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
 

Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cyera's customers include the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (Cboe), Granicus, Takeda, LifeLabs, United Talent Agency, ACV Auctions, and Armis
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 Cyera vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.