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Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Orca Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 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...
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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
107
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (5th), 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
75
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
11th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
5th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
6th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security is 2.5%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 10.4%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 6.7%, down from 9.0% 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

"The most valuable aspect of Singularity Cloud Security is its unified dashboard."
"We liked the search bar in PingSafe. It is a global search. We were able to get some insights from there."
"We're monitoring several cloud accounts with Singularity. It is convenient to identify issues or security failures in any account. It's nice to have all the details we need to solve these issues."
"It's helped free up staff time so that they can work on other projects."
"It is advantageous in terms of time-saving and cost reduction."
"Singularity Cloud Security's most valuable features are its ease of scalability and comprehensive security measures."
"The most valuable feature of PingSafe is its integration with most of our technology stack, specifically all of our cloud platforms and ticketing software."
"SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security offers valuable scalability suitable for organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises."
"It takes very little effort to integrate it. It also gives very good visibility into what exactly is happening."
"Some of the most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud include its effectiveness in threat detection through unsupervised machine learning, CTI, and advanced sandboxing."
"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."
"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."
"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 most valuable feature is the hunting feature, which integrates well into the entire Microsoft ecosystem."
"Defender is a robust platform for dealing with many kinds of threats. We're protected from various threats, like viruses. Attacks can be easily minimized with this solution defending our infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available."
"With its Cloud Security Posture Management capability, we have the ability to read across all of our cloud-based environments, which includes AWS and Azure. We have visibility into those environments. Seeing all vulnerabilities and configurations is really powerful for us, but ultimately, the ability to use the API to query across the fleet to understand what is the current state, what is the patch level, which ones are potentially exposed for a new CVE that just came out is even more valuable. It allows us to gather really specific intelligence through simple queries."
"The reporting and automated remediation capabilities are valuable to me. They're real game-changers."
"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 provides X-ray vision into everything within the cloud properties, whereas normally, this would require multiple tools."
"One of the valuable features of Orca Security is its design and options that allow flexible filtering and user-friendly visualization."
"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 initial setup is very easy."
"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."
 

Cons

"There's an array of upcoming versions with numerous features to be incorporated into the roadmap. Customers particularly appreciate the service's emphasis on intensive security, especially the secret scanning aspect. During the proof of concept (POC) phase, the system is required to gather logs from the customer's environment. This process entails obtaining specific permissions, especially in terms of gateway access. While most permissions for POC are manageable, the need for various permissions may need improvement, especially in the context of security."
"We can customize security policies but lack auditing capabilities."
"It took us a while to configure the software to work well in this type of environment, as the support documents were not always clear."
"In some cases, the rules are strictly enforced but do not align with real-world use cases."
"I would like PingSafe's detections to be openly available online instead of only accessible through their portal. Other tools have detections that are openly available without going through the tool."
"PingSafe filtering has some areas that cause problems, and to achieve single sign-on functionality, a break-glass feature, which is currently unavailable, is necessary."
"To enhance the notification system's efficiency, resolved issues should be promptly removed from the portal."
"here is a bit of a learning curve. However, you only need two to three days to identify options and get accustomed."
"Most customer teams need more training on this type of product."
"I would like to see more connectors and plugins with other platforms."
"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."
"The documentation and implementation guides could be improved."
"Agent features need to be improved. They support agents through Azure Arc or Workbench. Sometimes, we are not able to get correct signals from the machines on which we have installed these agents. We are not able to see how many are currently reporting to Azure Security Center, and how many are currently not reporting. For example, we have 1,000 machines, and we have enrolled 1,000 OMS agents on these machines to collect the log. When I look at the status, even though at some places, it shows that it is connected, but when I actually go and check, I'm not getting any alerts from those. There are some discrepancies on the agent, and the agent features are not up to the mark."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a six out of 10 due to its lack of necessary features to operate as a standalone solution."
"With the new Copilot functionality available everywhere, it is challenging to pinpoint areas for improvement. If I put in a lot of thought, I might identify things, but right now, nothing significant pops into my mind, but there is always room for more transparency, especially in pricing."
"The documentation for Orca Security could be improved."
"The solution could improve by making the dashboards more elaborative and more descriptive."
"The automatic scan only runs every 24 hours, and if an alert is remediated within an hour, it still remains until the next scheduled scan."
"The interface can be a bit cranky and sometimes takes a lot of time to load."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is fair. It is not inexpensive, and it is also not expensive. When managing a large organization, it is going to be costly, but it meets the business needs. In terms of what is out there on the market, it is fair and comparable to what I have seen, so I do not have any complaints about the cost"
"PingSafe falls somewhere in the middle price range, neither particularly cheap nor expensive."
"Its pricing is okay. It is in line with what other providers were providing. It is not cheap. It is not expensive."
"PingSafe is not very expensive compared to Prisma Cloud, but it's also not that cheap. However, because of its features, it makes sense to us as a company. It's fairly priced."
"Singularity Cloud Security by SentinelOne is cost-efficient."
"It is a little expensive. I would rate it a four out of ten for pricing."
"It's a fair price for what you get. We are happy with the price as it stands."
"SentinelOne provided competitive pricing compared to other vendors, and we are satisfied with the deal."
"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."
"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."
"The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against the importance of what needs covering."
"Its pricing is a little bit high in terms of Azure Security Center, but the good thing is that we don't need to maintain and deploy it. So, while the pricing is high, it is native to Azure which is why we prefer using this tool."
"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."
"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."
"Pricing depends on your workload size, but it is very cheap. If you're talking about virtual machines, it is $5 or something for each machine, which is minimal. If you go for some agent-based solution for every virtual machine, then you need to pay the same thing or more than that. For an on-premises solution like this, we were paying around $30 to $50 based on size. With Defender, Microsoft doesn't bother about the size. You pay based on the number of machines. So, if you have 10 virtual machines, and 10 virtual machines are being monitored, you are paying based on that rather than the size of the virtual machine. Thus, you are paying for the number of units rather than paying for the size of your units."
"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."
"Orca Security charges are based on cloud workloads. So, it's based on workloads. If we look at one feature, it might be 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."
"Orca Security is cheaper compared to other solutions in the same space."
"We have a total of 25 licenses for this solution. The solution is on a pay-and-you-use model."
"Overall, the pricing is reasonable and the discounts have been acceptable."
"The most expensive solution is Palo Alto. They claim to be very robust. The next most expensive is Wiz, followed by Orca and all the rest."
"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."
"Orca is very competitive when compared to the alternatives and is not the most expensive in the market, that's for sure."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
5%
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PingSafe?
It is cost-effective compared to other solutions in the market.
What needs improvement with PingSafe?
In version 2, a lot of rules have been deployed for Kubernetes security and CDR, which makes a lot of issues of criti...
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?
Initially, the cost was reasonable, but additional services from Microsoft sometimes incur extra expenses that seem h...
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 could improve its ticket creation process. Currently, it allows for creating tickets in only one bucket...
What is your primary use case for Orca Security?
I am primarily using Orca Security for cloud security. Being part of the vulnerability management team, I utilize Orc...
 

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: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.