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Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Sysdig Falco comparison

 

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

Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Security
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Container Management (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)
Sysdig Falco
Ranking in Container Security
19th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.3
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 6.3%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sysdig Falco is 1.8%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Security Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud6.3%
Sysdig Falco1.8%
Other91.9%
Container Security
 

Featured Reviews

David Birhange - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Cloud and Modern Workplace at Informanix Technology Group
Brings together cloud security insights through a unified view and supports agentless protection for virtual machines
Copilot and similar features are already being used, though not necessarily for Microsoft Defender for Cloud specifically. We are trying to get more experience before rolling out most of Microsoft Defender for Cloud's AI capabilities. This is definitely on our to-do list, and the priority is urgent as we seek to learn more about these capabilities. The GenAI threat protection from Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not been enabled yet. There are many unknowns with AI applications. AI agents will operate while you're not present, whether you are sleeping or awake, and it's unclear whether there would be any exfiltration of data or how data is being managed. Microsoft Purview is being used extensively, and there is significant development going on with DSPM that will be rolled out to address security concerns. Data labeling and proper demarcation for sensitivity of data before it is received are being actively pursued.
Patrik Gunnersten - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre-Sales Manager at Conoa AB
Has delivered real-time insights for detecting runtime vulnerabilities and improving response speed
The runtime security part of Sysdig Falco has been the most valuable over the years. They do extensive monitoring, and you can get many insights and an overview and drill down into connections, but it's the runtime security that sets them apart from the competition. Sysdig Falco's real-time monitoring feature for anomaly detection is very high quality. They lean on the Falco project, which is an open-source project that is an excellent source of finding vulnerabilities. They have AI capabilities to set a baseline of the traffic that the client usually has, and then they find anomalies where things start to deviate from the baseline, and they do that exceptionally. The flexibility of Sysdig Falco's rule-driven engine for meeting security policies for customers is very good because you can have the standard features that are already out-of-the-box ready, and then you can tailor your own rules freely and create any type of rules desired.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There is no better tool found to protect workloads in Azure than Microsoft Defender for Cloud."
"Defender lets you orchestrate the roll-out from a single pane. Using the Azure portal, you can roll it out over all the servers covered by the entire subscription."
"The most valuable feature is the comprehensive overview across different workloads. It allows us to see protection not just across one workload, such as virtual machines, containers, infrastructure, or data, but across all our workloads. This overall visibility is really helpful."
"DSPM is the most valuable feature."
"The solution is used for risks, vulnerabilities, and compliance."
"We can create alerts that trigger if there is any malicious activity happening in the workflow and these alerts can be retrieved using the query language."
"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a ten."
"The technical support is very good."
"We've had incidents with clients where high-impact CVEs were published, and I know comparisons where one client said if they didn't have Sysdig Falco in place, what took them about a day would have probably taken one or two months to resolve."
 

Cons

"They could always work to make the pricing a bit lower."
"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."
"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."
"It needs to be simplified and made more user-friendly for a non-technical person."
"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."
"The range of workloads is broad, but we'd love to add more workloads and make it a single security solution that covers all those workloads. Covering more would allow us to see and protect more workloads from a single pane of glass. Additional features should include protection for more AI workloads as it currently focuses primarily on OpenAI."
"The cost is always a concern, but overall, it's not too bad because it is easy to use and pretty friendly."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud can be improved because many of the functions involve multiple places to accomplish the same task, which can make it convoluted."
"One area for improvement would be having predefined security standards for measuring compliance reports."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing. If you have Cloud for Key Vault, the pricing is different than it is for storage. Every type has its own pricing list and rules."
"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."
"Our clients complain about the cost of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."
"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."
"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."
"Defender's basic version is free, which is good. Many of our teams are evaluating the paid version against third-party products."
"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."
"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."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise49
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud was pretty straightforward. We did have a consultation with a third party to go over different tiers and produ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
Microsoft Defender for Cloud can be improved. An additional feature that should be included in the next release is Zero Trust, similar to ThreatLocker software.
What needs improvement with Sysdig Falco?
Sysdig Falco is probably the most complete security solution for container-type workloads today. One area for improvement would be having predefined security standards for measuring compliance repo...
What is your primary use case for Sysdig Falco?
The primary use case for Sysdig Falco is to find vulnerabilities in real-time. It helps us find CVEs in the runtime part of a container environment, so not just scanning the code before it's deploy...
What advice do you have for others considering Sysdig Falco?
I work with many different products in the open-source world relating to containers and Kubernetes, not just Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. We work with the big ones, such as Red Hat, VMware, ...
 

Also Known As

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

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Information Not Available
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