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Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Morphisec comparison

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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

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
11th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (11th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (7th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
6th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (6th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (3rd)
Morphisec
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
57th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
34th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) (45th), Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) (30th), Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) (59th), Threat Deception Platforms (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 2.5%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Morphisec is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud2.5%
Qualys TotalCloud1.2%
Morphisec0.9%
Other95.4%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
RW
Head Of IT at Cirrus Response
Cloud security has cut investigation time and now reveals threats faster but needs simpler oversight
When deploying AI applications, my key security concerns with Microsoft Defender for Cloud are data loss, leakage of data, and guardrails around the actual AI, and I am hoping that this is going to help me put those guardrails in place and identify data exfiltration. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not helped me manage and secure multi-cloud environments, as we are 100 percent Microsoft and have not really got it in any other environment at all. I am not yet using the unified AI-powered security feature offered by Microsoft Defender for Cloud, but that is coming. I am not yet using the integrated XDR feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, but that is coming. I am not yet utilizing the GenAI threat protection features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. That is also coming and a lot of that will come from learning it here. I have enabled the agentless scanning in my cloud environment with Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Assessing the impact on my workload protection without needing to install agents with Microsoft Defender for Cloud makes it a lot easier, but it also identifies a lot more, which puts more load on me sometimes. I would advise another organization considering Microsoft Defender for Cloud that it is the most logical route to follow if their whole ecosystem is Microsoft. It is easy to implement and it is very self-explanatory when doing it, making sense to just follow the steps as it is too simple, really. I would rate this review a 7.5 out of 10.
Rick Schibler - PeerSpot reviewer
VP of Information Technology at Kentucky Trailer
Offers in-memory protection at a lower price than competitors
Morphisec's in-memory protection is probably the most valuable feature because it stops malicious activity from occurring. If something tries to install or act as a sleeper agent, Morphisec will detect and stop it. Morphisec's Moving Target Defense is critical to hardening our attack surface. If it detects something, it indicates whether it's valid. That means you've got a breach requiring investigation. It detects anomalies but doesn't necessarily point to what caused them. You still need to do that work. The solution is reasonably easy to administer. They made some changes last year, adding a cloud-based monitoring solution that makes deploying and monitoring our endpoints easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Qualys TotalCloud provides a single, prioritized view based on requirements such as identifying the most vulnerable assets and calculating the average time to remediate vulnerabilities."
"Qualys TotalCloud helps you not just to identify misconfigurations, but you can actually also fix issues."
"I would recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other users because it is cost-efficient and has a good return on investment."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution."
"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."
"I would definitely recommend it because it is easy to handle any cloud resources."
"If someone were to ask me to review Qualys TotalCloud, I would summarize it as an end-to-end solution for cloud security with visibility and governance-grade controls without needing to manage multiple disconnected tools."
"In my opinion, this is the best tool."
"The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative."
"The main feature is the security posture assessment through the security score. I find that to be very helpful because it gives us guidance on what needs to be secured and recommendations on how to secure the workloads that have been onboarded."
"Defender is a robust platform for dealing with many kinds of threats; we're protected from various threats, like viruses, and attacks can be easily minimized with this solution defending our infrastructure."
"This solution is stable, it's 100% guaranteed and I've never had any problems with it other than some planned IT downtime."
"It offers virus management and addresses threats such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other critical security concerns."
"Overall, Azure Security Center has greatly improved our company's security posture."
"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture, providing us with a prioritized list of security issues to remedy, which improves our security operations because we know what to tackle first."
"The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very good."
"Morphisec provides full visibility into security events from Microsoft Defender and Morphisec in one dashboard. Defender and Morphisec are integrated. It's important because it lowers the total cost of maintenance on the engineer's time, more or less. So the administrative time is dramatically reduced in maintaining the product. This saves an engineer around four to five hours a week."
"Morphisec as the last line of defense is as good as you can get."
"Morphisec is quite an important tool for us in terms of security and InfoSec because of the malware protection."
"If you have the ability to get Morphisec into their environment, it's going to be a hundred percent return on investment."
"The biggest feature is that it hides everything from your operating system that's running in-memory from anything to try to run against it. That's the most unique thing that's on the market. There's nothing else out there that's quite like that. That's a big selling point and why we went with it. It does exactly what the design does. If you can't find it, you can't execute against it."
"We haven't had any cybersecurity incidents on machines running Morphisec."
"The ability to stop attacks without having to detect or have a signature for the attack is the most valuable feature."
"What's valuable is really the whole kit and caboodle of the Morphisec agent. What it does is genius, in a way, until the bad guys get wise to it. You set it up and then you watch the dashboard. There isn't really much tinkering."
 

Cons

"I chose a rating of nine out of ten because there is a complex interface that sometimes overwhelms new engineers."
"Regarding technical support from Qualys, they respond, but the response time can be too long. Sometimes we need to wait weeks for solutions to simple questions."
"TotalCloud could improve its scanning of niche devices like Wi-Fi dongles and USB modems because they are often untested. It covers everything else, like laptops, mobile devices, and Bluetooth IoT devices. They can improve on the small IoT devices because hackers and testers use these."
"In my opinion, what can be improved in Qualys TotalCloud includes pricing and container scanning."
"Qualys TotalCloud needs to enhance its scanning capabilities in the IP domain, as it currently lacks the functionality to resolve IPs to their corresponding domain names."
"To be honest, I would move out from this tool because it does not give a full view of vulnerability."
"The vulnerability part is good, but the policy compliance module needs improvement because it involves a lot of manual work. Specifically, the remediation part of the controls requires enhancements."
"From a downside perspective, the UI is not user-friendly and feels dated compared to other tools like Prisma Cloud."
"I would suggest building a single product that addresses endpoint server protection, attack surface, and everything else in one solution. That is the main disadvantage with the product. If we are incorporating some features, we end up in a situation where this solution is for the server, and that one is for the client, or this is for identity, and that is for our application. They're not bundling it. Commercially, we can charge for different licenses, but on the implementation side, it's tough to help our end-customer understand which product they're getting."
"It's very expensive in terms of the need to maintain it actively."
"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 solution could improve by being more intuitive and easier to use requiring less technical knowledge."
"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing."
"Integration into other third-party products, particularly those from tier three vendors like ManageEngine and Hexcode, has proven difficult."
"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."
"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."
"In the Windows Defender integration, they have put in a report of computers that need Windows Defender updates. If those updates could be kicked off directly from the dashboard, instead of having to go to another system entirely, that would be good."
"We have only had four attacks in the last year, "attacks" being some benign PDF from a vendor that, for some reason, were triggered. There were no actual attacks. They were just four false positives, or something lowly like adware. There have been false positives with both the on-premises solution and the cloud solution."
"Those are some of the features that I was looking for on my on-prem platform that they've already instituted in the cloud and that I'm sure will be instituting on their on-prem platform as well. Having to have an on-prem server required a lot of administration. Being able to push that to the cloud and have it managed up there for us is a real nice addition."
"Right now, it's just their auto-update feature. I know they are currently working on that."
"The only area that really needs improvement is the reporting functionality."
"It might be a bit much to ask, but we are now beginning to use Morphisec Scout, which provides vulnerability information. At this time, it's recognizing vulnerabilities and reporting them to us, but it's not necessarily resolving them. There's still a separate manual process to resolve those vulnerabilities, primarily through upgrades. We have to do that outside of Morphisec. If Morphisec could somehow have that capability built into it, that would be very effective."
"Morphisec is a venture startup. They are still early in their growth stage. They need to get mature on their customer support and on how they interface with system tools. For example, they need to get multifactor in place and an API for the major multi-factor systems, e.g., Okta, Duo, Ping, and Microsoft. They don't have them built in yet. They are working on them. It is just not there yet. Also, their stability, customer support, and processes need improvement, which is just part of maturity."
"Some of the filters for the console need improvement. There are alerts that show up and just being able to acknowledge that we've seen those and not turn them off, but dismiss them, would be a huge benefit."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"TotalCloud's price is about right where I would expect it to be."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"I am not sure about the pricing. From what I understand, it is a bit on the higher side, but I do not have the exact numbers."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"The pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."
"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."
"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."
"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."
"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."
"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
"Pricing is difficult because each license has its own metrics and cost."
"Compared to their competitors, the price of Morphisec is not that high. You can easily deploy it on a large-scale or small-scale network."
"Licenses are per endpoint, and that's true for the cloud version as well. The only difference is that there is a little extra charge for the cloud version."
"It is a little bit more expensive than other security products that we use, but it does provide us good protection. So, it is a trade-off."
"It is an annual subscription basis per device. For the devices that we have in scope right now, it is about $25,000 a year."
"The pricing is definitely fair for what it does."
"Price-wise, it's on the higher side. A traditional antivirus solution is cheaper, but in terms of security and manageability, its ROI is better than a traditional antivirus. I would recommend it to anybody evaluating or considering an antivirus solution. If your system gets compromised, the cost of ransom would be a lot more. This way, it saves a lot of cost."
"Morphisec is reasonably priced because our parent company's other subsidiaries use different products like CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike is four or five times more expensive than Morphisec. The competitive pricing saves us money in our overall security stack."
"It does not have multi-tenants. If South Africa wants to show only the machines that they have, they need their own cloud incidence. It is not possible to have that in a single cloud incidence with multiple tenants in it, instead you need to have multiple cloud incidences. Then, if you have that, it will be more expensive. However, they are going to change that, which is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise34
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise49
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
In terms of improvement, remediation still belongs to the cloud team, which is one of the issues we faced with Qualys...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is regarding the cloud visibility that we were not having previously. Previous...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was that the license cost was the only consideration. Setup an...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
To improve Microsoft Defender for Cloud, I think pricing-wise, the license price is a little bit higher from an inges...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
Morphisec, Morphisec Moving Target Defense
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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.
Lenovo/Motorola, TruGreen, Covenant Health, Citizens Medical Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Morphisec and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.