Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Tanium comparison

Microsoft and Tanium are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while Tanium is ranked #24 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 5.5% mindshare in VM, compared to Tanium’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 76% of Tanium users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Tanium and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are competing products in the cybersecurity landscape, focusing on IT security and endpoint management. Microsoft Defender for Cloud stands out due to its extensive features, despite higher pricing, which its overall capabilities justify.

Features: Tanium offers rapid threat detection and response, comprehensive endpoint visibility, and strong integration capabilities. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a robust security framework, intelligent threat protection, and seamless integration within the Microsoft ecosystem, making its feature set broader.

Room for Improvement: Tanium could benefit from a simpler initial learning curve, improved documentation, and enhanced reporting features. Microsoft Defender for Cloud may improve by reducing complexity in its dashboards, offering more detailed customization options, and enhancing its alert management system.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a streamlined deployment process within the Microsoft cloud ecosystem and robust support. Tanium, although flexible in deployment, includes a steeper learning curve for initial users.

Pricing and ROI: Tanium offers competitive pricing and scalable options, appealing to cost-conscious organizations, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud, with its higher cost, promises excellent ROI through its comprehensive value proposition.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tanium Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tanium

July 2025

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Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.9%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.5%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tanium is 2.6%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

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.

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NitinKushwaha

Product Manager at OakNorth

Stable product with an ability to build complex roles

We use Tanium as an EDR solution for managing end-user devices and servers The product is granular and can build complex roles compared to other EDR vendors. Tanium's dashboard UI could be similar to CrowdStrike. We have been using Tanium for two and a half years. The product is stable. I rate…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"The product has given us more insight into potential avenues for attack paths."

"This is a platform as a service provided by Azure. We don't need to install or maintain Azure Security Center. It is a ready-made service available in Azure. This is one of the main things that we like. If you look at similar tools, we have to install, maintain, and update services. Whereas, Azure Security Center manages what we are using. This is a good feature that has helped us a lot."

"The pricing is good."

"Scalability is great, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites."

"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."

"Good compliance policies."

"The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very good."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"I'm not so familiar with the tool but I like the interaction of the console to the picture. Patching is the primary model I have been focusing on for the last couple of weeks. So I have created a proof of concept environment and have been checking the available features."

"Threat hunting is a very good feature on Tanium. We have just started using it and have not used it extensively."

"Tanium's most valuable feature is its instant discovery aspect."

"Tanium has made the process of detecting threats more proactive with its detection. So, the process is easier and more efficient."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the consolidation of all historical data on device endpoints, security drivers, firmware, and Software version gaps."

"When I push a quick update, it's done right away, and I can rescan immediately to confirm completion within minutes."

"The product is granular and can build complex roles compared to other EDR vendors."

"I like the tool's incident response and security patching."

More Tanium pros

Cons

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"No possibility to write or edit any capability."

"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."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

"The pricing could be improved, as it is somewhat high for smaller companies."

"However, some Copilot features aren't available in the GCP environment. This is something we hope will be addressed in the future."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters. It could be cheaper."

"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."

"You cannot create custom use cases."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"I would like to have more integrations and custom plugins to input. Integration is always a big deal in a lot of different environments."

"The performance could improve in future releases. We have had performance issues in specialized web environments, but overall I think the problems are less than 2% of the computer systems being used."

"The solution can give a lot of false positives."

"When working with Tanium, there are some older devices that haven't been patched for a long time, and certain patches are not included in Tanium. I have to search outside to download patches, create bundles, and then perform the task."

"The solution lacks mobility."

"Tanium’s scalability could be improved."

"The most painful thing is the interface. It's a bit unclear sometimes."

"The solution needs to improve the reporting and tracking capabilities."

More Tanium cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Defender for Cloud is pretty costly for a single line. It's incredibly high to pay monthly for security per server. The cost is considerable for an enterprise with 500-plus virtual machines, and the monthly bill can spike."

"We only use the free tier, so we haven't faced any pricing, setup costs, or licensing challenges."

"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 licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against the importance of what needs covering."

"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."

"There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."

"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

"The solution offers value for money."

"Tanium is a more expensive solution in Latin America than some of the competitors, such as BigFix."

"There is an annual license required to use this solution."

"It is higher than some competitors in the market."

"The product's pricing differs from region to region depending on negotiations and the number of endpoints."

"It's an expensive solution. It would be nice if the cost were lower."

"The solution is expensive but it's a good investment."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Government

12%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...

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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...

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What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The pricing is pretty standard.

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What do you like most about Tanium?

Tanium’s linear-chain architecture is valuable.

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What needs improvement with Tanium?

While there is always room for improvement, I am pleased with Tanium.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Tanium?

The primary use case for Tanium ( /products/tanium-reviews ) is compliance, patching, and inventory as part of the co...

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Comparisons

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Compared 37% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 15% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 9% of the time

ServiceNow Security Operations vs Zafran Security

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

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AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 25% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 12% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Orca Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

CrowdStrike Falcon vs Tanium

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Tanium

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Tanium

Compared 8% of the time

ServiceNow Discovery vs Tanium

Compared 6% of the time

BigFix vs Tanium

Compared 5% of the time

More Tanium Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

July 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

August 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Tanium

July 2025

Download Tanium product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

No data available

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Microsoft

Demo not available

Tanium

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Tanium Endpoint Platform reduces security risk, improves agility & increases efficiency, a fundamentally new approach to endpoint security's threat detection, indicent response, vulnerability assessment and configuration compliance & with management's software distribution, asset utilization, asset inventory and patch management.

Tanium

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

JPMorgan Chase, eBay, Amazon, US Bank, MetLife, pwc, Cerner, Delphi, MGM Grand, New York Life

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tanium

July 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tanium

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tanium and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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