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Fortra's Alert Logic MDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

 

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

Fortra's Alert Logic MDR
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
34th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
SOC as a Service (3rd), Managed Detection and Response (MDR) (18th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (7th), Container Security (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (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 Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Fortra's Alert Logic MDR is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 3.6%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud3.6%
Fortra's Alert Logic MDR0.6%
Other95.8%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2191746 - PeerSpot reviewer
President at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It's a highly mature, competitively priced solution that provides total visibility into your ecosystem. FORTRA's Alert Logic has the only Cybersecurity Platform that integrates XDR+WAF+VM+DLP in one.
Alert Logic offers total visibility into the client's IT ecosystem. The solution's intrusion detection system inspects 100 percent of the network packets and installs universal agents on all physical and virtual servers for log collection. Alert Logic also aggregates logs of the client's various 3rd Party security tools into a single pane of glass. All of the analytics from those data feeds got to a 24/7 SOC with sophisticated resources. Alert Logic has massive threat intelligence resources to provide additional context to the incident response declarations. They do all the heavy lifting for clients who lack the technology and resources to operate their own SOC. The client is solely responsible for the incident response component. The macro analytics resides on Alert Logic's cloud. You have the ECM response and business application team on the client side. Everything works in tandem, which is the only way you can deal with the advanced threats we face today, especially the ransomware families. If you don't respond in minutes, you're in trouble.
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 aspect of Alert Logic is its technology platform. They have SOCs in the US and Europe, giving them global visibility of the threat landscape. They detect and respond to threats in minutes. Their biggest value is human expertise. You're being attacked by a human, and you cannot respond to it unless you have a human on the other side. They have the human and technological resources to respond."
"Everything is in one dashboard; I'm notified when there's an incident and advised on what steps to take."
"The quicker implementation of changes to our infrastructure from Alert Logic tell us if there are any problems."
"The solution was consistently available, and I cannot recall any instances where it was down."
"While I still have on-premises appliances, I can remotely monitor everything from the cloud, and Alert Logic's ease-of-access features have helped me streamline my workflow and reduce implementation time."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"It has the ability to install agents. It is pretty straightforward. You can automate the process pretty easily."
"Notifications and the detail of notifications are most valuable. It is a user-friendly solution."
"When we started out, our secure score was pretty low. We adopted some of the recommendations that Security Center set out and we were able to make good progress on improving it. It had been in the low thirties and is now in the upper eighties."
"The features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud that I like the most are the regulatory compliance capabilities; these features have benefited my organization by improving our overall security posture."
"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring of users, endpoint detection and response, and the adaptability of the AI threat intelligence engine, which quickly adapts to customizations."
"One important security feature is the incident alerts. Now, with all these cyberattacks, there are a lot of incident alerts that get triggered. It is very difficult to keep monitoring everything automatically, instead our organization is utilizing the automated use case that we get from Microsoft. That has helped bring down the manual work for a lot of things."
"We can create alerts that trigger if there is any malicious activity happening in the workflow and these alerts can be retrieved using the query language."
"The most valuable features offer the latest threat detection and response capabilities."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a valuable tool that integrates seamlessly with Azure Policy and our Security SIEM, simplifying implementation and enhancing security posture."
 

Cons

"Alert Logic needs to expand its SOCs to serve more markets, such as the Middle East and Asia. There should be infrastructure that covers more time zones. The company should also develop an EDR that is natively integrated into their solution. Currently, a client must buy another EDR solution like CrowdStrike or Sophos. I think Alert Logic is developing this. Built-in email security could also be developed and integrated."
"The documentation, especially with the initial setup, needs improvement."
"This product needs to mature more. While it is a good product, there are some areas where it needs work."
"As a user involved with the user interface, I believe there is a need to continue improving it based on feedback from our customers."
"I would like more data on the alert payload. It would be good to have the ability to customize the alert payload to add whatever data that we want on there. Right now, it is a bit limited."
"I would like to see it do initial scans and start capturing data, which it will truly analyze, not just be a reporting system saying, "Here is an email. Here is an email. Here is an email.""
"The product needs to mature. We don't want to be bombarded with unnecessary issues and have the real ones slip through."
"They have ideas and email you whatever they find, but they don't have a dedicated security team who will work on an attack or a specific security instance."
"As an analyst, there is no way to configure or create a playbook to automate the process of flagging suspicious domains."
"Customer service and support from Microsoft are very poor. Even for high-severity cases, response or resolution time can extend to three or four weeks."
"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."
"The pricing could be better."
"I don't appreciate Microsoft Defender for Cloud because it seems to interfere with many things. That's the problem I've been experiencing with it."
"Azure is a complex solution. You have so many moving parts."
"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."
"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

"Alert Logic has better competitive pricing than some of its competitors."
"Our ROI would probably be zero. We don't even use it. It sits in there. We get emails and just delete them. Around the world, we don't even use it."
"Price of the solution was very reasonable considering the size of our organization at the time, and so it worked out perfectly."
"Almost any product that is on the AWS Marketplace is super easy to subscribe to."
"Its pricing is very reasonable considering what you get for what you pay. There is quite a good value there. Its licensing is also very logical. They've got the licensing price points at a reasonable level. It is on a monthly license but a yearly contract. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."
"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
"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 cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"Pricing is difficult because each license has its own metrics and cost."
"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."
"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."
"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Performing Arts
6%
Educational Organization
5%
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 Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

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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 across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
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 did have a consultation with a third party to go over different tiers and produ...
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 Zero Trust, similar to ThreatLocker software.
 

Also Known As

Alert Logic MDR, Alert Logic Managed Detection and ResponseAlert Logic Threat Manager, Alert Logic Cloud Defender, Critical Watch FusionVM
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 Fortra's Alert Logic MDR vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.