Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs XM Cyber comparison

Microsoft and XM Cyber are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.1, while XM Cyber is ranked #32 with an average rating of 8.5. Microsoft holds a 3.9% mindshare in VM, compared to XM Cyber’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of XM Cyber users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

XM Cyber and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are competing in the cybersecurity space. Microsoft Defender for Cloud seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and integration within the Microsoft ecosystem.

Features: XM Cyber offers advanced attack simulation, breach analytics, and quantifies risks. It provides insights into potential attack paths, enabling effective remediation and risk reduction. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides real-time threat intelligence, integration with Microsoft products, and extensive security management features. It supports compliance policies, incident management, and offers a comprehensive security solution suitable for large-scale deployments.

Room for Improvement: XM Cyber could enhance real-time monitoring and reporting features, improve integration with third-party tools, and expand compliance features. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could streamline feature complexity, enhance support for non-Microsoft environments, and simplify user interface design to aid new users and deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: XM Cyber is notable for its quick setup and efficient customer service, allowing rapid integration and threat insights. Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers a seamless deployment process due to its integration with Microsoft products. Customer service is well-supported, particularly for organizations already using Microsoft services extensively, though it may take longer to fully utilize its extensive features.

Pricing and ROI: XM Cyber generally incurs lower initial setup costs, providing strong ROI through its efficient attack path insights. Microsoft Defender for Cloud, while potentially higher in initial cost, justifies investment through its extensive feature set and integration benefits. XM Cyber offers attractive pricing for effective capabilities, whereas Microsoft Defender provides long-term value due to its comprehensive feature set and integration within the extensive Microsoft ecosystem.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. XM Cyber Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. XM Cyber

January 2026

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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 January 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 3.9%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XM Cyber is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	3.9%
Zafran Security	1.1%
XM Cyber	1.0%
Other	94.0%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Reviewer6233

Works at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal

While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even greater value. One key area for enhancement is the searching capabilities within its vulnerabilities module. By incorporating the ability to create Boolean searches, users would gain the ability to apply more complex filters and customize their search criteria. This would greatly enhance the precision and efficiency with which security teams can identify and prioritize vulnerabilities. Having such tailored search capabilities would save time and resources by narrowing down vast lists of vulnerabilities to those that meet specific parameters relevant to our unique risk environment. Additionally, integrating more robust reporting and visualization tools would be advantageous. Enhanced dashboards that offer customizable visual representations of risk configurations and threat landscapes would facilitate better communication with stakeholders, making it easier to explain vulnerabilities and the rationale behind certain security measures. This would also aid in demonstrating the improvements and value derived from existing security investments to leadership and non-technical team members.

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David Birhange

Director, Cloud and Modern Workplace at Informanix Technology Group

Brings together cloud security insights through a unified view and supports agentless protection for virtual machines

Copilot and similar features are already being used, though not necessarily for Microsoft Defender for Cloud specifically. We are trying to get more experience before rolling out most of Microsoft Defender for Cloud's AI capabilities. This is definitely on our to-do list, and the priority is urgent as we seek to learn more about these capabilities. The GenAI threat protection from Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not been enabled yet. There are many unknowns with AI applications. AI agents will operate while you're not present, whether you are sleeping or awake, and it's unclear whether there would be any exfiltration of data or how data is being managed. Microsoft Purview is being used extensively, and there is significant development going on with DSPM that will be rolled out to address security concerns. Data labeling and proper demarcation for sensitivity of data before it is received are being actively pursued.

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Stephen Owen

Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees

Has significantly improved risk visibility and optimized remediation efforts across dynamic environments

We tightly integrate with APIs, consuming feeds and open source data. We have integrated with XM Cyber, and we are elevating ourselves with AI and MCP tools as we view this as a forerunner to reducing the workload for our agents and IT staff. We're pushing all our security partners to provide AI and MCP tools. Our vision is for them to offer a chat interface where a junior IT or an experienced infrastructure engineer can ask for what needs to be patched next without using an interface. Their current interface is very usable and professional, ranking in the top tier of applications. Their reporting is good, offering custom reports, and their API integration is a new capability that serves us well. We have high expectations for the next generation, such as a chat interface to ask questions. However, everything has been very good. We push the boundaries with digital twins; I understand XM Cyber uses a similar concept of graph databases to map environments. I would like access to that and querying languages, enabling more informed business decisions. XM Cyber sees much of our estate, which is beneficial for making informed decisions, and we can harness those insights and data for business analytics. For instance, it could help us gain insights into change management—if a particular server impacts another and that server is supported by yet another server, we could glean significant insights for change management meetings.

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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

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

"With Zafran Security, it integrates with your security controls, allowing you to take that risk score and reduce it based on the controls in place or increase the risk based on different factors, such as if the issue is internet reachable or if there's an exploit in the wild."

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

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

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the regulatory compliance aspect, where we utilize predefined initiatives like NIST. Alert management is another useful feature. Alerts are directly integrated with our email or DevOps board for easy viewing, allowing us to identify problem areas efficiently."

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

"I have not experienced any difficulties or issues with the stability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud."

"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."

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has made our environment more secure."

"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."

"Using Security Center, you have a full view, at any given time, of what's deployed, and that is something that is very useful."

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

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"Since implementing XM Cyber, we have improved the way we are doing patching, focusing on the choke points in our patching cycle, and it improves the way we assess the risk."

"XM Cyber made it clear that browser vulnerabilities were the top priority because the platform was able to examine how vulnerabilities within our estate could be exploited and what the path would be from some bad actor in order to exploit those vulnerabilities."

"What I personally like very much, from my experience, is that it is very reliable."

"XM Cyber permits us to identify if a zero-day vulnerability can affect our infrastructure; it helps me understand the company's total risk that we have in our infrastructure and workstation vulnerability, and it permits us to identify the real impact when we have a vulnerability."

"Six weeks into using XM Cyber, we saw a compelling return on investment—primarily in risk reduction, with a specific issue our other security tooling did not pick up but XM Cyber did, reducing IT remediation time and saving over 60,000 US dollars per year while significantly lowering our loss exposure amount."

"The platform's most valuable feature is attack simulation."

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."

"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."

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

"The solution's portal is very easy to use, but there's one key component that is missing when it comes to managing policies. For example, if I've onboarded my server and I need to specify antivirus policies, there's no option to do that on the portal. I will have to go to Intune to deploy them. That is one main aspect that is missing and it's worrisome."

"The solution is quite complex. A lot of the different policies that actually get applied don't pertain to every client. If you need to have something open for a client application to work, then you get dinged for having a port open or having an older version of TLS available."

"There are challenges with the licensing policies, which are quite complicated."

"We would like to have better transparency as to how the security score is calculated because as it is now, it is difficult to understand."

"The cost is always a concern, but overall, it's not too bad because it is easy to use and pretty friendly."

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

"The solution could extend its capabilities to other cloud providers. Right now, if you want to monitor a virtual machine on another cloud, you can do that. However, this cannot be done with other cloud platform services. I hope once that is available then Defender for Cloud will be a unified solution for all cloud platform services."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"We have high expectations for the next generation, such as a chat interface to ask questions."

"We have not saved any time or effort, but we can prove that the effort involved around vulnerability management has been better spent to greater effect, and we've been able to demonstrate that vulnerabilities that do represent a high risk have been remediated more rapidly and more effectively."

"They could improve support because when we need to create a super case and escalate to resolve with technical support, they resolve our ticket in approximately two weeks."

"There are many interesting things about XM Cyber, but the part that can be improved is the mobile exposure and the IBM i specific equipment."

"We'd like to see a cheaper price."

"XM Cyber could identify all areas of vulnerability. They could expand the identification span for different areas."

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."

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

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

"This solution is more cost-effective than some competing products. My understanding is that it is based on the number of integrations that you have, so if you have fewer subscriptions then you pay less for the service."

"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."

"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."

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

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

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

"We have to pay standard licensing fees."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	27
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	49

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

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud was pretty straightforward. We...

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What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

Microsoft Defender for Cloud can be improved. An additional feature that should be included in the next release is Ze...

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What do you like most about XM Cyber?

The platform's most valuable feature is attack simulation.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for XM Cyber?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that we have a large, complicated estate, and in the licens...

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What needs improvement with XM Cyber?

There are many interesting things about XM Cyber, but the part that can be improved is the mobile exposure and the IB...

See all answers

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Tenable One Exposure Management Platform vs XM Cyber

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

January 2026

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

January 2026

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

XM Cyber

January 2026

Download XM Cyber 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

XM Cyber

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

XM Cyber is a leading hybrid cloud security company that’s changing the way innovative organizations approach cyber risk. Our attack path management platform continuously uncovers hidden attack paths to your critical assets across cloud and on-prem environments, so you can cut them off at key junctures and eradicate risk with a fraction of the effort. This overcomes the big disconnect that security teams experience when they’re presented with endless alerts, yet can’t see which exposures impact risk the most, how they come together to be exploited by an attacker, or how to efficiently eliminate them. This approach is a complete game-changer, which is why some of the world’s largest, most complex organizations choose XM Cyber to help eradicate risk. Founded by top executives from the Israeli cyber intelligence community, XM Cyber has offices in North America, Europe, and Israel.

XM Cyber

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

Hamburg Port Authority, Plymouth Rock Corporation

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. XM Cyber

January 2026

Free Report: Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. XM Cyber

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. XM Cyber and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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