Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs The NodeZero Platform comparison

Microsoft and Horizon3.ai are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while Horizon3.ai is ranked #43 with an average rating of 5.0. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Horizon3.ai users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and NodeZero Platform are competing products in the cybersecurity space. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has the upper hand in pricing and integration, whereas NodeZero Platform stands out for its advanced threat detection capabilities.

Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrates natively with Azure, offers automated security management, and provides continuous assessment tools. NodeZero Platform focuses on advanced threat detection, real-time monitoring, and AI-driven security analysis, with a strong emphasis on predictive analytics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft's deployment is smooth for Azure users, backed by extensive documentation and integrated support channels. NodeZero Platform emphasizes a dedicated support model, offering flexibility with cloud and on-premise deployment options, particularly beneficial for those needing customization.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers competitive pricing, especially for Azure customers, offering a solid ROI through its integration within the Microsoft ecosystem. NodeZero Platform, though potentially higher in setup cost, delivers significant ROI through its superior threat detection, valued by enterprises with high-security needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Vulnerability Management Report (Updated: March 2025).

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Vulnerability Management

March 2025

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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

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at Novartis

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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reviewer2331969

Director, Engineering at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Doesn’t identify threats and vulnerabilities, and the reports are quite useless

We run the penetration testing and look at the reports. The reports are quite useless. We are looking for a different product. The tool did not help enhance our organization's cybersecurity posture. The reports had a lot of false positives. They didn't detect anything. The tool didn’t identify any vulnerabilities. The solution must detect threats and vulnerabilities.

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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 has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"One important security feature is the incident alerts. Now, with all these cyberattacks, there are a lot of incident alerts that get triggered. It is very difficult to keep monitoring everything automatically, instead our organization is utilizing the automated use case that we get from Microsoft. That has helped bring down the manual work for a lot of things."

"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."

"The most valuable features offer the latest threat detection and response capabilities."

"It has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem."

"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a valuable tool that integrates seamlessly with Azure Policy and our Security SIEM, simplifying implementation and enhancing security posture."

"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive."

"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."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"Overall, I'd rate NodeZero at nine to 9.5 out of ten."

"Penetration testing and scans are useful features."

Cons

"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."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is not compatible with Linux machines."

"The pricing could be better."

"It's hard to reach someone who understands my problems. I haven't had many issues, so I haven't called them."

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

"From a compliance standpoint, they can include some more metrics and some specific compliances such as GDPR."

"As an analyst, there is no way to configure or create a playbook to automate the process of flagging suspicious domains."

"We haven't experienced issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud for our company size of about five hundred people. However, I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises."

"Microsoft sources most of their threat intelligence internally, but I think they should open themselves up to bodies that provide feel intelligence to build a better engine. There may be threats out there that they don't report because their team is not doing anything on that and they don't have arrangements with another party that is involved in that research."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"The reports are quite useless."

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The solution is expensive, and I rate it a five to six out of ten."

"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."

"Microsoft's licensing and pricing are sometimes complicated. If someone is new to Microsoft's licensing, they might have difficulty with it."

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

"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 is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."

"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."

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

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

University

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?

Pricing for Zafran Security is not expensive. We have a contract for five years, and the cost is lower than other too...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

I would like to see an integration with Check Point firewalls. It's essential for us and they are currently working o...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

We use Zafran Security for threat prioritization. We establish priority to understand which risks should be patched o...

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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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

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

See all answers

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...

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What do you like most about Horizon3.ai?

Penetration testing and scans are useful features.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Horizon3.ai?

We run the penetration testing and look at the reports. The reports are quite useless. We are looking for a different...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Horizon3.ai?

The solution is used for penetration testing.

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

March 2025

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

March 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Vulnerability Management

March 2025

Download The NodeZero Platform product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Horizon3.ai

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Zafran Security

Microsoft

Demo not available

Horizon3.ai

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

NodeZero Platform empowers businesses with dynamic cybersecurity solutions and innovative threat detection capabilities, enhancing existing security protocols.

NodeZero Platform offers a comprehensive approach to cybersecurity, focusing on real-time threat analysis and risk management. Its advanced features provide users with tools to respond swiftly to threats, ensuring data integrity and security. The platform's intelligent algorithms and user-centric design cater to the needs of informed cybersecurity professionals.

What are the standout features of NodeZero Platform?

Real-time Threat Detection: Allows for immediate identification and neutralization of risks.
Automated Risk Analysis: Simplifies the evaluation of potential threats.
Scalability: Adapts to the growing needs of any organization.
Customizable Alerts: Tailors notifications to specific security requirements.

What benefits can users expect from NodeZero Platform?

Increased Security Efficacy: Enhances threat response times.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces need for extensive manual oversight.
Improved Compliance: Ensures alignment with industry regulations.
Resource Optimization: Allocates cybersecurity focus effectively.

NodeZero Platform's implementation in sectors such as finance and healthcare highlights its versatility and adaptability. Organizations benefit from integrated solutions that address specific industry challenges, providing peace of mind and operational security through advanced threat management and preventative strategies.

Horizon3.ai

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

Information Not Available

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