HackerOne vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

HackerOne and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. HackerOne is ranked #40 with an average rating of 8.3, while Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1. HackerOne holds a 0.3% mindshare in VM, compared to Microsoft’s 5.6% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of HackerOne users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

HackerOne and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are both prominent players in the cybersecurity domain, with each offering unique advantages. HackerOne appears to have an upper hand in pricing and customer support, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud leads in feature comprehensiveness.

Features: HackerOne provides an experienced hacker community, third-party integrations like Slack, and quick result delivery, which are valuable in vulnerability management. Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers features such as advanced threat detection, security analytics, and seamless integration with Azure services, focusing on holistic security management.

Room for Improvement: HackerOne could enhance its reporting capabilities and integration options. Additionally, addressing invalid issue reports would be beneficial. Microsoft Defender for Cloud may improve in areas like providing more intuitive interfaces, reducing alert fatigue, and making its support services more proactive.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HackerOne is easily integrated into existing workflows and known for responsive customer service, which facilitates swift adoption. Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers streamlined deployment within the Microsoft ecosystem, though feedback suggests its customer support might lag behind HackerOne's in proactivity.

Pricing and ROI: HackerOne offers a competitive pricing structure, making it highly cost-effective for organizations relying on vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty initiatives. Conversely, Microsoft Defender for Cloud incurs a higher setup cost, justified by its extensive security capabilities, providing strong ROI for enterprises seeking integrated, multi-layered security solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed HackerOne vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

HackerOne vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 851,491 peers since 2012

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 May 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.6%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HackerOne is 0.3%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.6%, up from 4.8% 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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Faizan Nehal

dApp Auditor at Hacken

Platform supports skill development with effective vulnerability reporting

Everything has become slower on HackerOne. I have noticed that older researchers receive all the private invites while newer ones receive fewer. The same goes for real-life events, where the same people are invited repeatedly. There are no clear guidelines for being invited to programs and conferences, and the process for receiving invitations appears arbitrary.

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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

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

"Apart from getting all the bug bounty opportunities, we also get the chance to practice in a safe environment, like a demo setup. These features are great for beginners who want to explore bug bounties in the future."

"HackerOne is larger than WebCloud and has a better reputation than BugCloud, which results in a smoother process."

"The most valuable feature of HackerOne is its variety of programs. These programs provide depth into various areas, such as mobile, API, and websites."

"It helps me to get new sales, profits, and other benefits."

"The most valuable feature is the hunting feature, which integrates well into the entire Microsoft ecosystem."

"It takes very little effort to integrate it. It also gives very good visibility into what exactly is happening."

"It has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem."

"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."

"I've seen benefits since implementing Microsoft Defender for Cloud. It's easy to manage for our large organization as an endpoint security solution. It integrates well with Office 365 and Windows 11, which is better than before. Patching, updates, and threat protection are all handled together now. Its AI features help predict threats."

"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."

"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."

"It isn't a highly complex solution. It's something that a lot of analysts can use. Defender gives you a broad overview of what's happening in your environment, and it's a great solution if you're a Microsoft shop."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"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 ability to view the conversation between the triagers and the programs will be really good."

"Everything has become slower on HackerOne. I have noticed that older researchers receive all the private invites while newer ones receive fewer."

"One issue I've experienced is traffic. Many people try to participate when an opportunity with a bounty of around 1,000-15,000 dollars comes up. In this case, the first person to report the vulnerability gets the bounty. If a second person reports the same vulnerability, they are marked as duplicated instead of receiving some recognition. The second person also invested time finding the issue, so I think this can be improved."

"Everything has become slower on HackerOne."

"Response time can be improved. The HackerOne Trust team can be slow to respond sometimes. They're not using AI, which could help reduce the number of duplicate reports."

"I rate Microsoft support five out of 10. It gets better once you're escalated past the first and second levels. It's difficult to get the necessary support when tickets are first opened."

"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."

"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."

"No possibility to write or edit any capability."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

"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."

"The most significant areas for improvement are in the security of our identity and endpoints and the posture of the cloud environment. Better protection for our cloud users and cloud apps is always welcome."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The tool is open-source and free for bug bounty hunters."

"The solution is free."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It has global licensing. It comes with multiple licenses since there are around 50,000 people (in our organization) who look at it."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

14%

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?

I find that the pricing for Zafran aligns well with the comprehensive features it offers. The asset and user-based li...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

Zafran is a new startup. Features are continuously being added or improved. 1) Continued integrations with existing (...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

We connect this to our vulnerability scanner as input, our security tools to better determine risk, and our change ma...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HackerOne?

The cost is rated as one since there is no need to pay anything, not even a fee or commission.

See all answers

What needs improvement with HackerOne?

Everything has become slower on HackerOne. I have noticed that older researchers receive all the private invites whil...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HackerOne?

My use case is similar to DuckTron. The processes I use for DuckTron are exactly the same for HackerOne. Therefore, t...

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

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

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 51% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Bugcrowd vs HackerOne

Compared 42% of the time

Intigriti vs HackerOne

Compared 20% of the time

Synack vs HackerOne

Compared 15% of the time

YesWeHack vs HackerOne

Compared 12% of the time

Cobalt vs HackerOne

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 20% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 14% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 11% 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

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

May 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

HackerOne

May 2025

Download HackerOne product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

May 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

HackerOne Assets, HackerOne Pentesting Services, HackerOne Security Assessments, HackerOne Vulnerability Management

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Demo not available

HackerOne

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

HackerOne becomes your partner who executes all aspects of your bug bounty program, including triage, bounty pricing, and hacker relations, allowing you to fully focus on fixing vulnerabilities.

HackerOne

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

Zenefits, Adobe, Yelp

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

Buyer's Guide

HackerOne vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

April 2025

Free Report: HackerOne vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

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

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