Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Tenable Security Center comparison

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center

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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 June 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.7%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.7%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Security Center is 4.9%, down from 11.0% 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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OndrejKOVAC

Solution engineer at EXPERTience

Empower clients with risk-based vulnerability management through continuous workflow and valuable insights

Tenable Security Center could improve by implementing more dynamic data displays and translating reports into European languages. This is especially relevant in Central Eastern Europe, where clients often require reports in local languages. Additionally, the licensing model could be more flexible for managed security providers, similar to a pay-as-you-go model.

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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."

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

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

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

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

"The solution's coordinated detection and response across devices and identities is impressive because it is complete."

"My favorite part of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the compliance features. Defender covers a wide range of workloads, on par with competing products on the market."

"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."

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a ten out of ten."

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

"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."

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a nine out of 10."

"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"We use Tenable to scan all of our environments and plugins for vulnerabilities. Tenable helps us discover network vulnerabilities to threats and piracy."

"The tool gives us fewer false positives. Compared to its competitors, the solution’s reports are more accurate."

"The scanning part, the agent part – that's the valuable aspect."

"The most valuable feature is the automatic and periodic management of security scans, along with the ability to consolidate all information into a single dashboard."

"The solution is very intuitive and the dashboards are simple to use."

"The most valuable features in Tenable SC are scanning and analysis."

"The usability is really good. It's very easy to use and a good platform. It is scalable and very stable. The technical support is fine and the setup is super easy."

"It's a very useful tool."

More Tenable Security Center pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"If they had an easier way to display all the vulnerabilities of the machines affected and remediation steps on one screen rather than having to dive deep into each of them, that would be a lot easier."

"My experience with Microsoft Defender for Cloud has been largely negative due to a poor user experience."

"The most significant areas for improvement are in the security of our identity and endpoints and the posture of the cloud environment. Better protection for our cloud users and cloud apps is always welcome."

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

"The documentation and implementation guides could be improved."

"While we are satisfied with Defender for Cloud's features, an AI enhancement could potentially provide better advice and adapt more effectively to our environment."

"The product was a bit complex to set up earlier, however, it is a bit streamlined now."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"The tool's initial configuration is not so easy."

"It could be more user-friendly for creating custom reports."

"Current web page needs improvement, slows down processes."

"In terms of configuration, there is some level of flexibility that we are not able to achieve."

"The vulnerability scan does not work correctly until the access privileges are set by the system administrator."

"There's a lot of information being streamed out of the reports. What would be nice, and maybe we just haven't found it, would be more of an executive-type view. We still expect it to collect all this information, but we would like a feature that would allow us to show it to an executive or a director or someone like that and give them some type of high-level overview but not get into the nitty-gritty."

"For downloading reports, we have to go to the scan and then we have to go to the reports and download the Excel or CSV or PDF. I think these menus and clicks can be minimized."

"If I want to have a very low-managed scan policy, it's a lot of work to create something which is very basic. If I use a tool like Nmap, all I have to do is download it, install it, type in the command, and it's good to go. In Security Center, I have to go through a lot of work to create a policy that's very basic."

More Tenable Security Center cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"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 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."

"The pricing and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud have been good for us. We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license."

"The pricing model for most plans is generally good, but the cost of the new Defender for Storage plan is high and should be revisited, as it could lead to disabling desirable security features due to cost."

"The cost of the license is based on the subscriptions that you have."

"Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services."

"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."

"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

"We're a Fortune 500 company... our licensing costs [are] in the seven figures."

"This solution's price is quite high."

"I rate the solution's price as seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive. The tool is quite expensive."

"The pricing depends upon the number of IPs."

"The price of Tenable SC is expensive, we pay approximately €70,000 for the license annually. We have to pay for each IP test. The cost of other solutions is far less, such as Nessus Professional, which is €3,000 annually."

"The price can start at €10,000 ($13,000 USD) for between 500 and 1,000 assets, and the price can climb into the millions as more assets are added."

"It is slightly more expensive than other solutions in the same sphere."

"Tenable is open-source."

More Tenable Security Center pricing and cost advice

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856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

11%

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?

The current pricing of Zafran Security is fair overall. They were good to work with to accommodate our organization w...

What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

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

What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

Zafran Security is helping reduce the amount of critical vulnerabilities in our environments that require prompt reme...

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 pricing is pretty standard.

What do you like most about Tenable SC?

The tool's dashboard and reporting capabilities match our company's needs since we are able to modify the basic view ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable SC?

Tenable Security Center is quite expensive, particularly for the CEE region, causing us to lose cases due to its pric...

What needs improvement with Tenable SC?

Tenable Security Center could improve by implementing more dynamic data displays and translating reports into Europea...

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Comparisons

Compared 43% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 18% of the time

ServiceNow Security Operations vs Zafran Security

Compared 10% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 8% of the time

Nucleus vs Zafran Security

Compared 7% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 20% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 14% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Orca Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Qualys VMDR vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 12% of the time

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 11% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 11% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 10% of the time

Forescout Platform vs Tenable Security Center

Compared 3% of the time

More Tenable Security Center Competitors

Product Reports

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

June 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Tenable Security Center

Download Tenable Security Center product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Tenable.sc, Tenable Unified Security, Tenable SecurityCenter

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Microsoft

Demo not available

Tenable

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

Get a risk-based view of your IT, security and compliance posture so you can quickly identify, investigate and prioritize your most critical assets and vulnerabilities.

Managed on-premises and powered by Nessus technology, the Tenable Security Center (formerly Tenable.sc) suite of products provides the industry’s most comprehensive vulnerability coverage with real-time continuous assessment of your network. It’s your complete end-to-end vulnerability management solution.

Tenable

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

IBM, Sempra Energy, Microsoft, Apple, Adidas, Union Pacific

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Tenable Security Center