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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs Symantec CloudSOC CASB 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
7.1
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Secure Web Gateways (SWG) (5th), 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)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (14th), Microsoft Security Suite (12th)
Symantec CloudSOC CASB
Ranking in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
19th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) category, the mindshare of iboss is 2.3%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is 8.8%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Symantec CloudSOC CASB is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps8.8%
iboss2.3%
Symantec CloudSOC CASB0.8%
Other88.1%
Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB)
 

Featured Reviews

Matt Crockford - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless
One aspect we value about iboss is its simplicity. Their customer service is brilliant, and they are super responsive and knowledgeable. It's easy to roll out, and their understanding of our business made it seamless. We were impressed by the solution's mental health function, which can detect if someone needs help. It scans what users are browsing and flags warning signs so we can check to see if they are okay. We've had to use it a couple of times. The user interface is highly intuitive. Our IT team picked it up with minimal training. It's arranged so that it's easy to find where things are. Another advantage is the single pane of glass console, which gives you visibility into what's happening. We're not fully there yet because we haven't implemented zero trust, but we're excited about the possibilities from the demos we've seen. We launched a POC of iboss' ChatGPT Risk Protection feature two weeks ago. AI is a great tool, but you need to be careful what you put into it. My biggest fear is employees inputting sensitive corporate information or customer PII data into one of these chatbots. I was impressed by our trial of the feature. It's exactly what we wanted. Now, when a user goes to ChatGPT, there's a banner warning them not to share information, and we can block conversations containing customer data like bank details and email addresses. I don't want to stop people from using it, but we need visibility. We've only tried it on a test group of 15 people. You can configure it to look for specific keywords or integrate it with your DLP policy if you have that configured
Abdulrahman Muhammadi - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration with existing cloud workflows has simplified compliance and threat detection
Licensing cost is a significant concern. With Defender Plan 1, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps comes with a pay-per-use model. Each feature has its own pricing when activated on VMs. For example, the vulnerability assessment has separate pricing, the base model including encryptions has separate pricing, and the compliance features have separate pricing. This applies to each VM and Azure resource individually. It is not straightforward where you can take one license and apply it to everything. Each feature has its own pricing model which can be tedious, as the costs keep accumulating. The only lacking feature currently is XDR (extended detection and response). Apart from that, I have only positive experiences with the whole Microsoft suite, except for the pricing structure.
cto543714 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works very well in a hybrid environment in terms of DLP policies, but trying to do your own troubleshooting can be a little bit difficult
It does scale. They have different data centers spread out for you to do things. It scales just fine, but it is the setup and configuration that you have to do in order for it to scale the way you want it to. I know that some of the newer technologies, such as Zscaler, are doing SD-LAN type connections and things of that sort to improve performance and scalability. So, things are still evolving in terms of scalability. Depending on how you deployed it, you can run into some performance gotchas. If you take a VPN connection and try to overtax it, you can run into problems. You can't say that it didn't scale. You have to use a different method to get the traffic, or you may have to set up two VPN tunnels or things of that sort. So, if you want it to scale, you have to think it through and make sure you are deploying it in a manner to scale. It can scale, but you have to plan it and make sure you think everything through.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate the technical support of iboss a solid 10 without a shadow of a doubt."
"Granular setup, which was able to set different levels of filters using the OUs in the AD."
"It was a very easy product to install. It can be deployed very fast."
"The iboss system is highly reliable. The false positive rates are small compared to some other systems we've experienced through other partner agencies who use competing solutions."
"Iboss is a solution that prevents advanced persistent threats, and has a zero tolerance for attacks."
"Content filtering is the most useful feature of iboss."
"We chose iboss for both zero trust and proxy (SWG) because their SWG was superior."
"From a use-case scenario, what I like the most is the plug-in. I like the fact that we can do the filtering of these devices offsite independent of the network they are connected to, and we do not have to have traffic coming back inside our network."
"The most valuable feature is its policy implementation."
"Threat detection is its key feature, and that's why we use this tool. It gives an alert if a PC is attacked or there is any kind of anomaly, such as there is a spike in sending emails or we see an unauthorized website being accessed. So, it keeps us on our toes. We get to know that there is something wrong, and we can isolate the user and find any issues with it. So, threat detection is very robust in this tool."
"The most valuable feature is the alerting system."
"The most valuable feature is the seamless integration across different clouds."
"The integration within the entire Defender suite is highly valuable because it allows for communication between different components and offers pretty decent correlations."
"The most valuable feature is the ease of management. It's important."
"Shadow IT discovery is the feature I like the most."
"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."
"The active directory integration is very valuable as we can connect to the list of users that we have and the cloud control, the blocking, the access control of the cloud, can be handled by this product."
"The value in some of these solutions is just the integration of technologies with their on-prem DLP solution. So, you can tie on-prem and cloud DLP policies together. You can apply on-prem policies to the cloud to have consistent policies in a hybrid environment. So, it works very well in that hybrid environment of on-prem and cloud."
"The ability to monitor for threats is the solution's most valuable aspect."
"The monitoring and threat protection were the solution's most valuable features."
"One of the most valuable features of Symantec CloudSOC CASB is its detection functionality. It uses the same base as Data Loss Prevention, allowing for close integration between on-premises DLP and the Symantec CloudSOC CASB. This integration lets you manage policies and incidents across both platforms."
"This solution has improved my organization because it allows us to have visibility and monitoring over our global workforce connectivity to Office 365 and for Service Now."
 

Cons

"The area I would like to see improvement in is the ability with in the reporter to navigate directly to the content the user is traversing. It is kind of there, but it's not perfect. Quite frequently, I receive links that lead me to pages with error messages."
"Their on-premise hardware's network interface is capped at one gigabit, which is sort of a problem. If you stand a filter up where all traffic flows through that, according to them, in order to go above a gigabit, you have to have multiple devices, which in today's IT seems a little bit silly. They could easily put in an SFP port into their device that could accommodate 10 gigs or at least offer a box."
"I'd like to see them accelerate development on the security side, particularly around data loss prevention."
"For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company ExxonMobil."
"Its pricing could be better."
"The reporting feature needs improvement. It doesn't give you the expected results. It is quite difficult to get the specific reports needed, and it is not as intuitive as the rest of the platform."
"Sometimes when you call in support, you get someone who is just following a sheet. It feels like a runaround. You feel that you are running into that support wall."
"File integrity monitoring would be very advantageous as an additional feature."
"I would like to see them include more features in the older licenses. There are some features that are not available, such as preventing or analyzing cloud attacks."
"The integration with macOS operating systems needs to be better."
"The technical support team has room for improvement."
"The documentation could be improved as it is not updated immediately when Microsoft makes changes. Users must wait a few weeks for the changes to be reflected in the documentation."
"An area of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps that needs to be improved or enhanced is the reporting function. In the beginning, there was a good reporting function which gave us a sort of monthly overview report. But that has gone away."
"The insights could be improved, especially in reporting."
"The insights could be improved, especially in reporting. While it is possible for me to see the usage from different cloud apps, determining if critical data has been uploaded or if it is just normal transport data is difficult."
"Defender could integrate better with multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It requires some additional configuration to ingest data from non-Azure environments and integrate it with Sentinel."
"I would like to see them develop the ability to integrate it with a central management system."
"The data security needs improvement. We should be able to leverage it a bit better for situations where someone may be trying to upload documents onto the cloud application."
"The solution should work to incorporate some machine learning policies like IDM and VML."
"They have some room for improvement in terms of being able to do troubleshooting. If you're trying to troubleshoot it, you have to work a lot with their backend people in order to get to a solution. So, trying to do your own troubleshooting can be a little bit difficult."
"It's a niche product. Not many people use it, and therefore there isn't as much of a knowledge base surrounding it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have not priced the solution recently, but they were competitive with other vendors in the past."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The overall pricing for iboss is very competitive and transparent."
"We utilize the Microsoft E5 licensing, which encompasses the entire Microsoft suite; however, it is costly."
"We have an educational licensing agreement. It's a customer agreement for multiple years."
"The cost could be improved when you need to pay for anything. For example, refreshing files takes time to load, though it may be my Internet. To improve the refresh time, Microsoft says that we need to pay for a Premium license, and I don't like paying for things that help make a solution better."
"The pricing is in the middle. It isn't too cheap or expensive compared to other antivirus or security products. It is priced according to industry standards."
"I'm not totally involved in the pricing part, but I think its pricing is quite aggressive, and its price is quite similar to Netskope. Netskope has separate licensing fees or additional charges if you want to monitor certain SaaS services, whereas, with MCAS, you get 5,000 applications with their Office 365. It is all bundled, and there's no cost for using that. You only have the operational costs. In the country I am in, it is a bit difficult to get people with the required skill sets."
"We are an MST and we do not pay for the solution. However, the price of the solution could be better."
"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."
"Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly."
"It compares well with the competition because they're all priced on a per-user basis. I've seen the rest of them. There is definitely a huge price difference between them."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Healthcare Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with iboss?
For zero trust implementation, we encountered complexity issues, especially with a large infrastructure company Exxon...
What is your primary use case for iboss?
Previously when I used iboss, we did the POC for iboss for ExxonMobil. Four or five people wanted to move from our ol...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for iboss?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, iboss is not cheap, and that's my only concern. There are cheaper alte...
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 do you like most about Microsoft Cloud App Security?
It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notificatio...
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 Symantec CloudSOC CASB?
After integrating the Gatelet with a live environment, users experienced connectivity issues because they were not im...
What is your primary use case for Symantec CloudSOC CASB?
The solution helps detect and control data in the cloud, focusing on Shadow IT and Shadow Data. The audit module help...
 

Also Known As

iBoss Cloud Platform
MS Cloud App Security, Microsoft Cloud App Security
CloudSOC, Symantec CloudSOC
 

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.
Globe Telecom
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Symantec CloudSOC CASB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.