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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 7, 2024

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

iboss
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (6th), Internet Security (3rd), Web Content Filtering (1st), ZTNA as a Service (8th), Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) (8th)
Microsoft Defender for Clou...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (13th), Microsoft Security Suite (10th)
Proofpoint Cloud App Securi...
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 4.0%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 5.6%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker is 0.9%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps5.6%
iboss4.0%
Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker0.9%
Other89.5%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

Ashok Ananthula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant Proxy Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Cloud gateway has strengthened remote web security and now needs better Mac and ISP support
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent for the Mac agents. That is where in 2025, we had to migrate to the Palo Alto-based platform. If your use case is for just Windows laptops,you can consider this platform as an option One issue is the data center resiliency part. In India especially, they are not tied up with the Tier 1 ISPs like Tata or Airtel; they were having Tier 2 ISPs and encountered many issues reaching few major sites that my organization depends on, and they were having problems that they could not fix quickly. They also lack a mechanism to route that traffic within their data center; rather, they ask customers to make a pac file change to route it to Singapore explicitly. It would be better if they route from their backend , i mean even if I send it to India DC, they should be able to route it internally to make that work; however, they fail to do that and ask the customer to route it in the pac file. Another suggestion is that in China, they do not have the proper setup; they used to have numerous problems with slowness and lack of premium circuits in China as well. That leads to multiple sites working slowly with latency-related issues. So the main issue is the ISP-related problems that need to be solved.
FV
Security and Continuity Manager at Rolinco NV
Deployment has been seamless with insightful data categorization and enhanced control
The features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that I have found most valuable include the overall portal view, with bubble graphs which give us insight into what goes where in the categorization, nowadays with Generative AI but all kinds of categorization, collaboration, etc. That central view of the portal is very useful for us. The impact of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps on our organization's ability to assess and manage app related risks has been significant because we have more visibility. Therefore, we can add more control, and we have already done so. This was not possible in the old solution, in the old CASB solution with Netskope. We now can see on the spot, and we do that almost weekly, what the end users are utilizing, which cloud providers or cloud apps they're using. The visibility into OAuth apps provided by Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very good. The visibility into risk and risk management of our organization's Generative AI apps is very nice, as you can choose the category Generative AI and then see exactly what traffic has been going to and from Generative AI in the cloud. This makes us very insightful on what is used within the company. We have some policies on blocking specific Generative AI, and we use within our company one particular AI part, which is CoPilot of Microsoft. In this way, we can see what the end users are using other than CoPilot, and that makes us more in control. The effectiveness of the integration of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps with Defender XDR and defending against SaaS attacks is very intuitive. It works immediately if we create a new policy or in Purview or in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, or when we make an app unsanctioned by blocking it, then it is almost immediately, or at least within a couple of hours, effective on all the endpoints where the EDR is running. This gives us much better control over things than before.
Kamal Kumar Verma - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Consultant at Genpact - Headstrong
Stable product with essential document tracking features
In my organization, we worked with around ten to fifteen different technologies, including Bitglass, and CASB was not among our top priorities. While CASB might benefit some organizations, it was optional for our specific setup, considering the other security measures and technologies we had in place. I found no particularly valuable features regarding CASB resolutions. There are other tools available that can achieve the same functionalities and perform similar tasks. For example, I can accomplish tasks like encryption or secure data movement from our office to the internet using alternative services like Zero Trust solutions. Because of this, our organization considered removing it from our system due to its limited benefits compared to other products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"iboss is among the few products providing inline filtering where no application is needed on the device. It operates on the network side and is not device-based. This feature was one of the main reasons why we stayed with them for so long."
"This product is solid, fairly easy to use, and reliable."
"Our primary use case for this product is DLP,"
"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"Technical support is pretty sharp and very responsive."
"I would definitely recommend iboss for web filtering purposes to other organizations or individuals."
"Because of iboss, I did not have to assign web filtering tasks to my techs on a daily basis."
"The solution has massively improved our security posture, giving us full visibility into what our staff does online."
"It is very easy to use, which is what we look for in these types of solutions."
"From what I've seen, it's a good product."
"I would rate it a ten because I have not experienced any stability issues so far with Defender for Cloud Apps."
"After creating the policy you can be assured that a user's data is being protected."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is that we are primarily using only the Defender for Cloud on the Azure Cloud."
"The ability to prevent users from using certain applications is one of the most valuable features. It doesn't require any configuration for implementation from the client perspective. It just works right away and gives you the information you need."
"Defender for Cloud Apps has given us good visibility regarding what we've allowed into our environment until now."
"There are a lot of features with benefits, including discovery, investigation, and putting controls around things. You can't say that you like the investigation part but not the discovery. Everything is correlated; that's how the tool works."
"The product is stable."
"The quarantine feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The tool's most valuable feature is reporting. It helps us understand what's going on in our environment."
"The quarantine feature is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"From stability and availability standpoints, it is pretty good."
 

Cons

"Our biggest problem with their service was it did not recognize the device and filtering did not always work correctly."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"It is stable, but due to growth, it can sometimes be less stable than wanted."
"Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern."
"To scale up, a new iboss Node Blade Chassis must be purchased."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"Sometimes the agent stops working in iboss, and we have to reinstall the agent."
"Sometimes, obviously, there are bugs."
"There could be more granular roles that are out of the box included in the product."
"Sometimes the support is actually lacking."
"We would like to get more information from the endpoint. I don't get enough detailed information right now on why something failed. There is not enough visibility."
"Sometimes, we'll get false positive alarms. For example, when a SharePoint path has no file sharing, but there is an external user, it will trigger an alarm that the file has been shared with an external user."
"The Cloud App Security integration with external DLP solutions is not so seamless."
"They should continue integration with all other Microsoft security-related products. The integration with all the other products is still ongoing."
"Generally, the pricing can always be improved along with the management system."
"There are some features, such as user navigation content filtering, that are disabled by default, and it probably makes sense to enable them by default."
"Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker should be cheaper."
"I think some of the hiccups that we had were with the number of domains that we had and how that had to be implemented in Proofpoint."
"The TLS encryption needs to be improved. It's not state of the art."
"They are priced significantly higher and less cost-effective than alternative options."
"The TLS encryption needs to be improved. It's not state of the art."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"It is not expensive, and it is also not cheap. iboss is priced right in the sweet spot for the number of features it offers."
"It is expensive compared to one of its competitors."
"It is probably in line with other solutions, but I do not deal with the financial side."
"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"We had the cost of purchasing a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs. However, the following year, the cost of just licensing was similar to what was paid the previous year for a new appliance along with the implementation and licensing costs."
"It has fair pricing. You pay for what you get. As far as I know, there are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"The pricing is fair."
"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."
"We are an MST and we do not pay for the solution. However, the price of the solution could be better."
"We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly."
"This product is not expensive."
"The pricing is a little bit high but right now, we are okay with it because of the compatibility with Office 365, Teams, and Azure AD."
"The product's pricing seems fair."
"We had an enterprise contract with them for about 32,000 users at that point, which has now grown."
"The tool's most valuable feature is reporting. It helps us understand what's going on in our environment."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise19
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
The problem our organization had is that iboss failed for the Mac devices. It is not able to give a successful agent ...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
We used iBoss mainly for Internet Access by having an Agent on Windows laptops Primarily because when we try to use i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
I am not involved in pricing, but as per the information I have, during that time, the Blue Coat proxies we were usin...
Which is the better security solution - Cisco Umbrella or Microsoft Cloud App Security?
Cisco Umbrella is an integral component of the Cisco SASE architecture. It integrates security in a single, cloud-nat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Cloud App Security?
At the time of implementation, when the size of our organization was small, it was a more affordable product. Since a...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Cloud App Security?
The fidelity of the signal in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps has been a challenge in some areas. There have been i...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
FireLayers, PCASB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss Cloud Platform to support their modern workforces, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies.
Customers for Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps include Accenture, St. Luke’s University Health Network, Ansell, and Nakilat.
Emerging Technologies, HP, CSA, Perion
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Proofpoint Cloud App Security Broker and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.