Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Vanta comparison

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Vanta compete in the cloud security and compliance category. Microsoft Defender has an upper hand due to its robust security features and seamless integration with the Microsoft ecosystem.

Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers comprehensive threat protection, advanced analytics, and seamless integration within Azure. Vanta provides automated compliance standards, detailed assessments across frameworks, and audit readiness.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Defender could improve its integration complexity outside the Microsoft ecosystem, its user interface complexity, and costs of additional features. Vanta has room to enhance its security capabilities beyond compliance, refine reporting dashboards, and reduce the learning curve for new users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender benefits from integration within the Azure platform but may be complex for other environments. Vanta offers a straightforward deployment focusing on compliance automation and provides responsive customer support for troubleshooting.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender involves higher costs with its extensive security features, providing significant ROI for comprehensive protection. Vanta is cost-effective with a strong ROI focusing on compliance, appealing to organizations automating audit processes.

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

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Vanta

April 2025

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Helped 851,604 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

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 May 2025, in the Compliance Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 17.6%, up from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vanta is 11.9%, 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

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is its ability to assess an environment and give us a clear idea of what security components are lacking and which are not."

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

"The most valuable features are the security recommendations provided by Defender for Cloud."

"It takes very little effort to integrate it. It also gives very good visibility into what exactly is happening."

"The solution is up-to-date with the latest updates and identified threats."

"Everything is built into Azure, and if we go for cross-cloud development with Azure Arc, we can use most of the features. While it's possible to deploy and convert third-party applications, it is difficult to maintain, whereas Azure deployments to the cloud are always easier. Also, Microsoft is a big company, so they always provide enough support, and we trust the Microsoft brand."

"The solution's robust security posture is the most valuable feature."

"The solution is used for risks, vulnerabilities, and compliance."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"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 is its prebuilt control frameworks."

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

"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."

"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."

Cons

"One of the main challenges that we have been facing with Azure Security Center is the cost. The costs are really a complex calculation, e.g., to calculate the monthly costs. Azure is calculating on an hourly basis for use of the resource. Because of this, we found it really complex to promote what will be our costs for the next couple of months. I think if Azure could reduce the complex calculation and come up with straightforward cost mapping that would be very useful from a product point of view."

"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."

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

"With the new Copilot functionality available everywhere, it is challenging to pinpoint areas for improvement. If I put in a lot of thought, I might identify things, but right now, nothing significant pops into my mind, but there is always room for more transparency, especially in pricing."

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

"When you work with it, the only problem that we're struggling with is that we have 21 different subscriptions we're trying to apply security to. It's impossible to keep everything organized."

"Microsoft Graph needs improvement."

"Integration into other third-party products, particularly those from tier three vendors like ManageEngine and Hexcode, has proven difficult."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

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

"Scalability could be improved."

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

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

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."

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

"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."

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

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

"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

"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?

The cost is generally reasonable. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Plan 2 costs $15 per server, per month. For a normal customer with ten to twenty servers, the cost is about $300 per month, which is a...

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

May 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Download Vanta product report

Compliance Management

May 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