Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Vanta comparison

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Vanta compete in cloud security management. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has an edge in infrastructure integration, while Vanta is strong in automation and compliance readiness.

Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers threat detection, incident response, and integration with existing infrastructure. Vanta excels in automation, compliance management, and streamlining standards adherence.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Defender for Cloud could enhance user interface intuitiveness, subscription management, and third-party integration. Vanta might focus on reducing initial setup costs, expanding integrations, and improving alert specificity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender for Cloud is seamless within Microsoft ecosystems with strong support, benefiting those using Microsoft tools. Vanta emphasizes compliance automation, offering straightforward deployment processes for enhanced long-term satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers flexible pricing options, appealing for scalable security without upfront costs. Vanta delivers good ROI through automation, with potentially higher setup costs compared to Defender. Cost and automation balance might lean organizations towards Vanta, while Defender suits those seeking scalable security solutions at minimal initial expense.

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

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Vanta

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

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Ranking in Compliance Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (3rd), Microsoft Security Suite (4th)

Vanta

Ranking in Compliance Management

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Compliance Consulting (1st), Data Governance (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Compliance Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 17.3%, up from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vanta is 12.6%, down from 22.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Compliance Management

Featured Reviews

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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Anupam Dutta

Team Lead- Sr. Linux administrator-Kubernetes-DevOps at ExpressRCM

Helps us maintain compliance with standards like SOC 2 and various data policies, but the customer support needs improvement

It helps us track the compliance of the components listed in our partner's directory. We can also check if the password manager, XML, and three log policies have been properly implemented on the desktop. We use JEM Cloud, which is a SaaS solution, and sometimes it experiences access issues. With Vanta, we can work on resolving these issues and ensuring policy compliance. Vanta also helps us maintain compliance with standards like SOC 2 and various data policies, which are essential for our documentation and communication requirements, ultimately ensuring enterprise software policy compliance. In my role, which primarily involves IT responsibilities, I often deal with various policies. There are instances where specific policies, especially those related to quality, may not be implemented correctly. This primarily occurs with mainframes and devices owned by particular users. In such cases, Vanta helps us enable these policies on the devices and assign them to the relevant users. It also highlights when certain policies, such as version 86.x, are not assigned through SAP. Vanta provides guidance on configuring and mitigating these issues. Additionally, it helps us with GitHub account provisioning and deprovisioning, as well as managing GitHub and Google Workspace Flex. We also use the 1Password password manager, which Vanta assists in overseeing.

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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

"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."

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

"When you have commissioned Defender, you have these things visible already on your dashboard. This gives the efficiency to the people to do their actual work rather than bothering about the email, sorting out the email, or looking at it through an ITSM solution, whey they have to look at the description and use cases. Efficiency increases with this optimized, ready-made solution since you don't need to invest in something externally. You can start using the dashboard and auditing capability provided from day one. Thus, you have fewer costs with a more optimized, easier-to-use solution, providing operational efficiency for your team."

"We saw improvement from a regulatory compliance perspective due to having a single dashboard."

"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."

"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."

"When we started out, our secure score was pretty low. We adopted some of the recommendations that Security Center set out and we were able to make good progress on improving it. It had been in the low thirties and is now in the upper eighties."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"The most valuable feature of Vanta is its prebuilt control frameworks."

"Task management and vendor assurance are the most valuable features. It is also an easy tool to use."

"It helps us track the compliance of the components listed in our partner's directory. We can also check if the password manager, XML, and three log policies have been properly implemented on the desktop."

"The most valuable feature of Vanta would be the time savings from the automation and the continuous compliance monitoring once set up."

"They integrate into New Relic as a performance monitoring tool."

"The product has provided automated security controls for our cloud provider. It helps to automate security checks. Vanta offers a list of things that can be done to achieve ISO 27001 compliance."

Cons

"Another thing that could be improved was that they could recommend processes on how to react to alerts, or recommend best practices based on how other organizations do things if they receive an alert about XYZ."

"From my own perspective, they just need a product that is tailored to micro-segmentation so I can configure rules for multiple systems at once and manage it."

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

"The initial setup is not actually so complex but it feels complex because there are many add-ons. There are many options and my team needs to be aware of all of these changes happening on the backend which is a distraction."

"Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government."

"Defender could improve how data is represented. It can be unstructured or slow to load."

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

"Sometimes it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or a special kind of product."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"Some of the tool's automated tests do not work the way it should."

"Currently, Vanta's user access review module is still in development, and we've been giving them continuous feedback to help them improve that."

"There is a delay with customer support and they are unsure of the answers we need."

"They have an AI generator for the system description for SOC 2, however, the outline is a little sketchy."

"The main area for improvement in Vanta is the user interface's refresh rate."

"Scalability could be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters."

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

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

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

"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."

"While we pay for any additional features, the pricing seems competitive, though I am not involved in the specific cost details."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

"Vanta is expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

University

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 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 higher than expected.

What do you like most about Vanta?

The most valuable feature of Vanta is its prebuilt control frameworks.

What needs improvement with Vanta?

Every product has a lot of areas to improve. They have an AI generator for the system description for SOC 2, for example, however, the outline is a little sketchy. The system description has to hav...

What is your primary use case for Vanta?

We're trying to get SOC 2 compliance, and we're trying to get HIPAA compliance.

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Product Reports

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

March 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Download Vanta product report

Compliance Management

February 2025

Also Known As

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

No data available

Interactive Demo

Microsoft

Demo not available

Overview

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

Vanta helps companies scale security practices and automate compliance for the industry’s most sought after standards - SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and CCPA.

Sample Customers

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

Care Directives, Shortcut , Nayya, Heizenrader, Treasury Prime