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Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Orca Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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

SentinelOne Singularity Clo...
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
6th
Ranking in Container Security
3rd
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
3rd
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (4th), Compliance Management (2nd)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
7th
Ranking in Container Security
4th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
2nd
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
4th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (9th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th), Compliance Management (3rd)
Orca Security
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
8th
Ranking in Container Security
10th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
6th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
6th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
API Security (5th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.8%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 10.2%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 6.5%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrew W - PeerSpot reviewer
Tells us about vulnerabilities as well as their impact and helps to focus on real issues
Looking at all the different pieces, it has got everything we need. Some of the pieces we do not even use. For example, we do not have Kubernetes Security. We are not running any K8 clusters, so it is good for us. Overall, we find the solution to be fantastic. There can be additional education components. This may not be truly fair to them because of what the product is going for, but it would be great to see additional education for compliance. It is not a criticism of the tool per se, but anything to help non-development resources understand some of the complexities of the cloud is always appreciated. Any additional educational resources are always helpful for security teams, especially those without a development background.
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
CHINTAN MEHTA - PeerSpot reviewer
Consolidating security tools with comprehensive cloud visibility
The documentation for Orca Security could be improved. The compliance framework also needs enhancements, especially concerning integrations with other tools like ServiceNow's vulnerability modules, which are not as mature as expected. It should also increase its capability to ingest data from other security tools like CloudSight for endpoint detection and provide real-time monitoring.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cloud Native Security helps us discover vulnerabilities in a cloud environment like open ports that allow people to attack our environment. If someone unintentionally opens a port, we are exposed. Cloud Native Security alerts us so we can remediate the problem. We can also automate it so that Cloud Native Security will fix it."
"It used to guide me about an alert. There is something called an alert guide. I used to click on the alert guide, and I could read everything. I could read about the alert and how to resolve it. I used to love that feature."
"Our organization is growing steadily, so our infrastructure is expanding, and we're managing more technical resources. Singularity Cloud Security helps us track our resources so that we don't get lost in the overwhelming volume of things and ensures we follow best practices. The solution gives us better visibility into our resources and enables faster resolution."
"I rate SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security ten out of ten."
"We use the infrastructure as code scanning, which is good."
"It saves us time based on savings on manual activities."
"The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best features."
"The mean time to detect has been reduced."
"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the vulnerability assessments and the glossary of compliance."
"When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard. This gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about the email, sorting out the email, or looking at it through an ITSM solution, whey they have to look at the description and use cases. Efficiency increases with this optimized, ready-made solution since you don't need to invest in something externally. You can start using the dashboard and auditing capability provided from day one. Thus, you have fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution, providing operational efficiency for your team."
"I find Microsoft Defender for Cloud's KQL very flexible and powerful. It's really easy to search through with KQL queries to find the security breaches and incidents and to track down the breach itself."
"The technical support is very good."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud monitors our entire cloud environment. It enables conditional access and incorporates features like number matching and single sign-on for all our cloud apps. It is great for protecting against ransomware and various security threats."
"Most importantly, it's an integrated solution. We not only have Defender for Cloud, but we also have Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Identity. It's an integrated, holistic solution."
"Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful."
"Orca's SideScanning is the biggest feature. It's the 'wow' factor... With Orca's SideScanning, they just need permissions for your account and that makes it so simple."
"I find Orca Security's CIEM feature invaluable, as it focuses on entitlement and posture management, identifying assets with older OS versions, and asset misconfiguration."
"Orca's dashboard is excellent. My team needs to be able to focus on specific areas for improvement in our cloud environment. And most recently, we've started to get good use out of sonar, the search capabilities, and the alert creation."
"There are so many valuable features that I could list, but one that I appreciate is the PCI DSS compliance report."
"Orca gives you great visibility into your assets. It shows you the issues and the things that you need to attend to first, by prioritizing things. You can see a lot of information that is not always visible, even to DevOps, to help you know about the machines and their status. It's very easy to see everything in a single dashboard. That makes it a very useful tool."
"The best features of Orca Security include its ability to perform a lot of security controls without requiring any installation of agents, making it very easy to set up."
"Orca Security has helped reduce the time it takes to address cloud security alerts."
"I would rate the quality of support as nine stars out of ten due to their quick and helpful responses."
 

Cons

"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security takes four to five hours to detect and highlight an issue, and that time should be reduced."
"The cloud-based operations might pose challenges in areas with limited or unavailable internet connectivity."
"For SentinelOne, improvements could be made in managing Internet dependency as cloud-based operations can pose challenges in environments with limited connectivity."
"There can be a specific type of alert showing that a new type of risk has been identified."
"We are experiencing problems with Cloud Native Security reporting."
"While it is good, I think the solution's console could be improved."
"The price is on the higher side. The dashboard can be more detailed."
"I would like to see the map feature improve. It's good, but it isn't fully developed. It lets us use custom resources and policies but does not allow us to perform some actions. I would also like more custom integration and runtime security for Kubernetes."
"One of the main challenges that we have been facing with Azure Security Center is the cost. The costs are really a complex calculation, e.g., to calculate the monthly costs. Azure is calculating on an hourly basis for use of the resource. Because of this, we found it really complex to promote what will be our costs for the next couple of months. I think if Azure could reduce the complex calculation and come up with straightforward cost mapping that would be very useful from a product point of view."
"The user interface of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, like many Microsoft portals, undergoes frequent changes and feature relocation."
"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."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"I recommend that they extend the scope for legacy infra assets."
"It's hard to reach someone who understands my problems. I haven't had many issues, so I haven't called them."
"The pricing could be improved, as it is somewhat high for smaller companies."
"Support needs to be highly responsive, especially in large enterprise environments."
"I would like to see better customization options for security frameworks and better integration with reporting tools like Power BI or Grafana dashboards."
"The main drawback in an agentless approach is that if the solution detects a virus or malware in the environment, we need to manually remove it. But from my experience with other production environments, it's not straightforward to install agents in the hope they will automatically remediate viruses, even from production environments... Ultimately, the ability to auto-remediate is something that I would like to see."
"The solution could improve by making the dashboards more elaborative and more descriptive."
"I would like to see an option to do security checks on a code level. This is possible because they have access to all of the code running in the cloud provider, and combining their site-scanning solution with that would be a nice add-on."
"I would be happy if they offered more automatic remediation options. They're working on that, but the more the better. For example, if they want you to harden a server, they would offer a hardening script that would be more aware of what's going on."
"The documentation for Orca Security could be improved."
"The documentation for Orca Security could be improved."
"We are PCI DSS compliant, so we need to scan our environment externally with tools vetted by the PCI DSS organization. Orca doesn't scan the environment externally. It only scans what's currently in the cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-effective compared to other solutions in the market."
"I would rate the cost a seven out of ten with ten being the most costly."
"Its pricing is constant. It has been constant over the previous year, so I am happy with it. However, price distribution can be better explained. That is the only area I am worried about. Otherwise, the pricing is very reasonable."
"We found it to be fine for us. Its price was competitive. It was something we were happy with. We are not a Fortune 500 company, so I do not know how pricing scales at the top end, but for our cloud environment, it works very well."
"PingSafe is less expensive than other options."
"For pricing, it currently seems to be in line with market rates."
"I am personally not taking care of the pricing part, but when we moved from CrowdStrike to PingSafe, there were some savings. The price of CrowdStrike was quite high. Compared to that, the price of PingSafe was low. PingSafe is charging based on the subscription model. If I want to add an AWS subscription, I need to pay more. It should not be based on subscription. It should be based on the number of servers that I am scanning."
"SentinelOne provided competitive pricing compared to other vendors, and we are satisfied with the deal."
"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
"It is bundled with our enterprise subscription, which makes it easy to go for it. It is available by default, and there is no extra cost for using the standard features."
"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."
"The price of the solution is good for the features we receive and there is an additional cost for Microsoft premier support. However, some of my potential customers have found it to be expensive and have gone on to choose another solution."
"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."
"Azure Defender is definitely pricey, but their competitors cost about the same. For example, a Palo Alto solution is the same price per endpoint, but the ground strikes cost a bit more than Azure Defender. Still, it's pricey for a company like ours. Maybe well-established organizations can afford it, but it might be too costly for a startup."
"I am not involved in this area. However, I believe its price is okay because even small customers are using Azure Security Center. I don't think it is very expensive."
"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."
"The price is a bit expensive for smaller organizations."
"Overall, the pricing is reasonable and the discounts have been acceptable."
"Its license is a bit expensive."
"While it's competitive with Palo Alto Prisma, I think Orca's list price is very high. I would advise Orca to lower it because, at that price, I might consider alternatives like Wiz, which also offers agentless services."
"The pricing depends on how many assets you have running in your cloud and how many environments you have. If you have a dev environment, test environment, and a production environment then it's really important that you have coverage for all of them."
"I think their pricing model is aligned with market demand. Of course, Orca could probably better align their pricing model with the needs of smaller businesses as well as some larger-scale enterprises with millions of assets. But in all fairness, I think the Orca sales team has been accommodating and ensured that we're happy with the pricing."
"Orca Security charges are based on cloud workloads. So, it's based on workloads. If we look at one feature, it might be expensive."
"It is the cost of the visibility that you get. When you really sit down and think about what do you need to do to secure an environment with a low impact on the business, and you take a look out into the world, I think this tool is well justified around cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about PingSafe?
The dashboard gives me an overview of all the things happening in the product, making it one of the tool's best featu...
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
The price is on the higher side. The dashboard can be more detailed.
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 do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
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...
What do you like most about Orca Security?
It's for protection. It's an agentless tool. We don't need to install anything at a customer's premises. We can just ...
What needs improvement with Orca Security?
Orca Security can be improved as there should be some kind of central pane of glass. Similar to how cloud management ...
What is your primary use case for Orca Security?
Our clients use Orca Security for various reasons. We implement it for the clients.
 

Also Known As

PingSafe
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
No data available
 

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.
BeyondTrust, Postman, Digital Turbine, Solarisbank, Lemonade, C6 Bank, Docebo, Vercel, and Vivino
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Orca Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.