Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs XM Cyber comparison

Microsoft and XM Cyber are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while XM Cyber is ranked #30 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 5.6% mindshare in VM, compared to XM Cyber’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 94% 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 Apr 6, 2025

XM Cyber and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are competing in the cybersecurity space. XM Cyber is strong in pricing and support, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud takes the lead in features that many consider worth the price.

Features: XM Cyber is proactive with risk management, breach-and-attack simulations, and identifying exposures. Microsoft Defender for Cloud integrates with Microsoft services, offering threat protection and compliance management. Its extensive integration is a competitive feature.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: XM Cyber has a streamlined installation with flexible options, noted for excellent support. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is integrated within Azure, favored by existing Azure users for a seamless experience.

Pricing and ROI: XM Cyber offers an affordable entry and robust ROI with strategic tools. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has a higher initial cost but provides long-term value for those using Microsoft solutions extensively.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. XM Cyber Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. XM Cyber

February 2025

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Helped 846,617 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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.4%. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.6%, up from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XM Cyber is 1.1%, up from 0.7% 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 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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HolgerHeimann

Ffounder at It.sec

Reliable with no false-positives and helpful support

There's a lot of improvement possible, however, most of it is in the details. I personally like the concept, as it's pretty straightforward and the product is not trying to overload functionality. It's a clean and straightforward approach. You know what you get. Most of the improvements are detail improvements. They're pretty open to future requests as well, so we send them a lot of suggestions. For example, at the moment, they have something called Battleground. That's a visualization of the network, and it's a visualization of the attack paths that are possible. The program uses so-called scenarios, and we say, "Okay, I'm watching traffic for maybe 24 hours," and then you get a result for that scenario, what happens in that time with what the attack paths are, et cetera. The result of the same scenario yesterday or tomorrow may be different as something might change. In that, one of the things I'm currently missing, which is on the list to be added, is some kind of diff visualization. For example, showing a two-screen split of activity. On the left side of the screen, that's how it was yesterday; on the right side, that's how it is today; and here are the differences. We'd like to see a cheaper price.

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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."

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

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

"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security."

"One of the features that I like about the solution is it is both a hybrid cloud and also multi-cloud. We never know what company we're going to buy, and therefore we are ready to go. If they have GCP or AWS, we have support for that as well. It offers a single-panel blast across multiple clouds."

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

"Defender for Cloud is an improvement over Trend Micro, our previous solution. We like integrating our endpoints and visualizing everything in one place. It provides comprehensive coverage for endpoints, servers, and overall environmental security."

"It works seamlessly on the Azure platform because it's a Microsoft app. Its setup is similar, so if you already have a Microsoft account, it just flows into it."

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

"Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."

"It is very intuitive when it comes to policy administration, alerts and notifications, and ease of setting up roles at different hierarchies. It has also been good in terms of the network technology maps. It provides a good overview, but it also depends on the complexity of your network."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

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

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

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."

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

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

"Although Microsoft Defender for Cloud is based on security, I wish it went beyond providing assessments, reports, and generic steps. More detailed procedures would be helpful, especially for lower-level support staff."

"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."

"The user interface of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, like many Microsoft portals, undergoes frequent changes and feature relocation."

"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."

"For Kubernetes, I was using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). To see that whatever is getting deployed into AKS goes through the correct checks and balances in terms of affinities and other similar aspects and follows all the policies, we had to use a product called Stackrox. At a granular level, the built-in policies were good for Kubernetes, but to protect our containers from a coding point of view, we had to use a few other products. For example, from a programming point of view, we were using Checkmarx for static code analysis. For CIS compliance, there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, we had to use other plugins to see that the CIS benchmarks are compliant. There are CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes on AWS and GCP, but there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product. We ended up with two different dashboards. We had Azure Security Center, and we had Stackrox that had its own dashboard. The operations team and the security team had to look at two dashboards, and they couldn't get an integrated piece. That's a drawback of Azure Security Center. Azure Security Center should provide APIs so that we can integrate its dashboard within other enterprise dashboards, such as the PowerBI dashboard. We couldn't get through these aspects, and we ended up giving Reader security permission to too many people, which was okay to some extent, but when we had to administer the users for the Stackrox portal and Azure Security Center, it became painful."

"Most of the time, when we log into the support, we don't get a chance to interact with Microsoft employees directly, except having it go to outsource employees of Microsoft. The initial interaction has not been that great because outsourced companies cannot provide the kind of quality or technical expertise that we look for. We have a technical manager from Microsoft, but they are kind of average unless we make noise and ask them to escalate. We then can get the right people and the right solution, but it definitely takes time."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"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

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

"It is bundled with our enterprise subscription, which makes it easy to go for it. It is available by default, and there is no extra cost for using the standard features."

"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."

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

"The tool is pretty expensive."

"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."

"I am not involved in this area. However, I believe its price is okay because even small customers are using Azure Security Center. I don't think it is very expensive."

"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."

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

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

University

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

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?

I find that the pricing for Zafran aligns well with the comprehensive features it offers. The asset and user-based li...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even ...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

Our primary use case for Zafran involves leveraging it to enhance our vulnerability risk scoring methodology. In toda...

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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 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 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?

We have to pay standard licensing fees. There are no additional costs. It is an expensive product. I rate the pricing...

See all answers

What needs improvement with XM Cyber?

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

See all answers

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 23% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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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

Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)

March 2025

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

February 2025

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: February 2025.

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