Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Reviews

We help develop and mostly support applications for clients. It creates reports for clients. It works with Microsoft SQL Server and can tell clients if they need some governance standards for user security profiles. For example, if they are using Linux VM, then there are some security updates that come up. If they haven't been updated, they get a prompt telling them, "Look at this CSV security vulnerability. It should be updated as this part of your application."

We have our main office in Lagos with other offices in the UK and America. Due to COVID, we are mostly working remotely and having meetings online. There are 55 endpoints.

Due to COVID, most of my users are remote. Because of that, we need to manage their applications and let them log on from home. They also have their own personal devices that they are using. So, we have to give them access to those.

My staff uses personal devices that seem to always have issues with malware. So, it notifies me if there is an issue. I can check their usage and the audit logs, e.g., when people logged in last and if they are logged onto a tenant, to see where the issues are. We might tell them to change their login details or reset their two-factor authentication if there is an issue.

They don't have access to the desktop Microsoft Defender Antivirus suite. I need to manage it from the cloud, where I restrict access to the account. They can download a zip file to a folder, then do whatever they want, but I don't give them freedom anymore because the users are always having issues.

When our CEO travels, someone is always trying to hack into his account. We have banned Russian IP addresses, as this is where most of the threats are coming from.

There are security settings that report and advise you on your security settings. The governance reports give you guidance on security vulnerabilities and how to remedy them.

It tells you whether something is high, middle, or low risk, giving you a risk profile. It lets you know which one to handle first.

Everything from Microsoft is integrated. You receive regular reports on them all. You can push your reports, logs, and security alerts, which are all integrated. It is crucial that these solutions work natively together to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment.

This Microsoft security solution has helped eliminate the need to look at multiple dashboards and given us a single XDR dashboard. This is one of the main features that we like about the solution. We have one dashboard. Anybody who is a part of the security team can look at it and say, "Okay, this is what I noticed." Then, we can have a short discussion on how to remediate or enhance services.

I would give the comprehensiveness of the threat-protection that these Microsoft security products provide a high score. 

Sometimes, Microsoft sends us information and recommendations about changing all our configurations due to something they noticed. So, their reports improve our uptime availability and provide a seamless service for our clients. 

The visibility is 85%. Sometimes, it takes too long to load your page because Microsoft is having issues. There are a certain amount of hours in a day to solve and rectify issues. If you deploy this solution for a client, you need to be able to respond or rectify issues. Because if the solution goes down, your clients won't be happy with you.

We would like to get more information from the endpoint. I don't get enough detailed information right now on why something failed. There is not enough visibility.

The cost could be improved when you need to pay for anything. For example, refreshing files takes time to load, though it may be my Internet. To improve the refresh time, Microsoft says that we need to pay for a Premium license, and I don't like paying for things that help make a solution better.

I have been using it for three years.

The stability is about 95%. I have called and complained to Microsoft about the downtime.

It doesn't require any maintenance.

Sometimes it will take time for Microsoft to respond to technical issues. However, once they start working on an issue, they will try to resolve it. I would rate the technical support as eight out of 10.

Positive

We didn't use another solution prior to this one. We have always used Microsoft.

The initial deployment was straightforward. Afterward, there were issues due to licensing issues moving from Google to Microsoft. It was not free.

It took a couple of hours to make everything work to our specifications. I tried to automate as much as I could with scripts.

I migrated my clients from Google to Microsoft.

Our reaction time is now faster when eliminating problems. We see the generated reports and logs much faster than before when we have to go to different places.

It reduces support calls for internal users. For example, it reduces the number of times that internal callers contact support for password issues.

Issues that frequently used to take support an hour are now only happening every blue moon. This is largely due to the predictive trend reports from the solution.

We have seen a 35% to 45% cost reduction with this solution.

You can activate a free tier of use for a period of time.

When the SolarWinds vulnerability came up, that caused a lot of issues. Our clients got regular updates. It did a scan for them, so they didn't have to start worrying. That was the free tier. 

With the other tiers, you pay more for each feature it gives you, e.g., the security push or regulatory compliance, without you paying extra for that too, which has been advantageous.

We also use Microsoft Defender for Cloud. With other models, you need to pay for an agent, and there is a cost. I don't like spending money. So, we use the free ones a lot. We evaluate the solutions that we need to pay for on a case-by-case basis, then we can decide if we really need them at all.

Sentinel would probably be the cheapest of all SIEM and SOAR solutions. I am not paying for everything because it is hosted by Microsoft. I am not paying the infrastructure costs. The app of this solution is updated regularly. I don't have to worry about that. So, the cost is very cheap for me, except when I have to pay for specific agents. Then, I have to think about the cost.

There are costs associated with SQL Server and Linux as well as their agents.

Microsoft makes sense because it integrates with many applications and provides. However, it depends on your infrastructure.

Endpoint Security is part of the Microsoft Defender suite. We use it to manage systems and force them to update. They can also revoke access to a tenant.

Microsoft Sentinel logs all our reports. This gives us better visibility. This enables us to ingest data from our entire ecosystem. It also allows us to provide security posture reports to our clients. Before starting a contract with a business, we create a report and give that to clients, showing how we handle and solve problems. The report shows our environment and uptime. 

Sentinel enables us to investigate threats and respond holistically from one place. From there, we can now troubleshoot where the issue is coming from. This is for our endpoint or when my external users are trying to access the service. This is very important to us because it makes life easier. We don't have to start running around checking this interface with another interface and a third or fourth interface. It is a single interface and we can get more raw data than what we configured Sentinel to ingest.

The comprehensiveness of Sentinel’s security protection is very high. We don't really use other providers. We use it to connect to AWS or Google Cloud Platform infrastructure to get information on how deployed loads are performing.

I would rate them as nine out of 10.

We primarily use Defender for Cloud Apps to authenticate users of our cloud applications. Defender validates the identity and allows the user to access the application. 

Defender helps us automate routine tasks. We can use templates to deploy various security solutions. It also consolidates our dashboards, so we can view everything from one console. 

Defender saves us time when responding to critical incidents. Typically, it takes about two or three days to find the root cause, but we can do this in four or five hours with Microsoft security solutions. Our detection time remains unchanged, but the response time is much faster. 

Defender's integration with our Identity solutions is critical in our current setup. It also integrates with Microsoft Sentinel to provide threat visibility. However, there's a delay of about 10 to 15 minutes from when Sentinel detects an incident, and it appears in Defender. We're trying to fix that. 

Defender allows us to prioritize threats across our enterprise, which is crucial. It's easy to integrate Defender with other Microsoft solutions. For example, we use Defender with Sentinel and set conditional access policies in Azure Active Directory. We're currently participating in Microsoft training to learn how to utilize these solutions better.

Defender could integrate better with multi-cloud and hybrid environments. It requires some additional configuration to ingest data from non-Azure environments and integrate it with Sentinel.

We have used Defender for Cloud Apps for a year.

Defender is stable.

Defender is scalable.

I rate Microsoft support eight out of 10. 

Positive

Defender is a cloud-based solution, but our deployment was complex because we have a massive environment. It took us about a month to fully deploy it, including testing and evaluation. I had a five-person team, including engineers, administrators, and management. There is no maintenance after deployment because it runs on Azure infrastructure.

We haven't saved money, but we save time because the integration with Microsoft products is seamless. 

Defender is costly. Still, we get a lot of features, and it's easier to integrate with our other solutions, so it's worth what we pay for it.

I rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps nine out of 10. As a security architect, I would generally recommend a multi-vendor solution with a zero-trust model. However, if you are mostly using Microsoft products, it might make sense to use the Microsoft security suite because of the native integration.

We have multiple virtual machines that we utilize in the cloud space with different applications on them. We utilize Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps to monitor those individual application VMs as well as, along with Sentinel, our entire Azure ecostructure.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps me, on the executive team, to have awareness and knowledge of what is going on in the environment. If a new administrator is created or one is trying to change their authentication types when they log in, or if new software gets put in there that should not have been there, we will get notifications on that.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helps automate routine tasks and the finding of high-value alerts. We depend a lot on automation. Some of the things I saw with the XDR window at this Microsoft Event are beautiful. I would like to see that. It ties in Defender, Sentinel, and all that into one pane of glass, which has been a problem at times. We see that as moving in the right direction.

It has helped us meet compliance requirements and has saved us costs. What we have now is an acceptable value.

Cloud Apps helps with detection, but I do not have metrics for how much time it has reduced.

It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notifications are pretty good. These are the things that are very useful.

I would like more customization of notifications. Currently, you either get everything or you get limited information. I would like to have something in between where we can customize the data that is included in notifications. That is one thing. 

The comment field also needs improvement. If you want to generate a workflow within the organization for a notification that occurs, the comment field is not visible to the next person who logs in. They should make that a little more visible. They should make the history more available to the next person I assigned a task to.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for just over a year and a half.

It is very stable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.

It is scalable. I would rate it a ten out of ten for scalability.

It is deployed across multiple locations and teams.

When we get a hold of the right people, it is great, but we are still trying to get a hold of the right people.

We were using another solution. It was not Azure. We switched in large part because that was a region-based company, and they ran into some issues, so we were left for a little while without a cloud environment. When I was comparing this with AWS, as an example, I picked Azure because of the general acceptance of the product in our market and in our space. I felt pretty comfortable going into it knowing that it would be there in five years or ten years as we grow.

I was involved in its deployment from an executive managerial position. It was complex. 

There were a lot of elements that were not obvious even to the point where the documentation was not keeping up with the production. So, we would hit a learning page, and the learning page would be about a prior product than the one we were looking at. It was not relevant to what was in production. My biggest recommendation for Microsoft would be that the learning pages need to be kept up-to-date and relevant to what is current in production.

We started with an integrator. We had challenges with that integrator, so we brought it in-house and finished it ourselves.

We have seen an ROI. We are a cloud service provider, so it is necessary.

Where we are right now, this is an acceptable pricing. I would like to see more transparency given to the end user. The end user given to us is via the cloud service provider. 

There are different programs and license models. Some include this, and some include that. It is all over the place. There can be a little more consistency or simplification in the pricing so that your parts list is not ten pages long, and you are not trying to determine, "If I have an E3, does this cover that?", or "Do I need to pay separately for the license?" Simplification would probably be better. 

To those evaluating the solution, I would advise knowing the goals they want to get to before they start. It can grow very quickly if you just build, but if you have a concept of where you want to end up and you stay within those constraints, then it is a great way to get there.

In terms of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps helping us to prioritize threats across the enterprise, we prioritize a little differently. I do not know if the solution helps with the prioritization of that, but prioritization is always important.

We get our threat intelligence from multiple sources. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is one input on that, so it is hard to say whether its threat intelligence has helped prepare us for potential threats before they hit and take proactive steps.

I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps a nine out of ten.

We use it for security and compliance. We use it for alert policies on activities happening on some of our on-premises and cloud applications. We also use it to restrict some users from downloading files from OneDrive or from some of the applications that we have. In addition, we integrate it with the Azure Active Directory Conditional Access policy.

It gives our clients a sense of confidence that in case there are activities on some of their applications, they will get an alert and the issue will be mitigated, based on the action that has been set. It gives them a sense of comfort that the product helps them secure some of their applications. It depends on the admin who is managing the product. If the admin is not knowledgeable, it might be an issue. But if the admin is knowledgeable, the organization can rest assured that it is covered when it comes to malicious activities on some of its applications.

I like the alert policies because they are quite robust. It has some built-in templates that we can easily pick up. One of them is the alert for mass downloads when a particular user is running a massive download on your SharePoint site. If a user is downloading multiple files in an unusual manner you get an alert.

Another built-in alert is what we call an "impossible traveler alert." If a user logs on from a US IP address at 10:00 AM and, less than 30 minutes later, the same user shows as being logged on from an IP address in the United Kingdom, there is no way you can travel from the US to the UK in 30 minutes. That alert will be triggered.

You can also input an action to be triggered for an alert. You block the user or just alert the admin or manager of that user.

It also comes with in-depth visibility, whereby it creates a pattern. If a user has been flagged multiple times, you can see that pattern. It shows you the IP addresses from which that user has been signing in recently. And it provides you with the kind of suspicious pattern that this particular user has been using over time. So it has very robust visibility.

It also gives you a graphic interface, which is something that I enjoy. If an alert is a very high risk, you see it in red, while if it's medium, you see it in yellow. A low risk doesn't come with any color. It gives me an appreciable pattern of user activities. It covers one month in case you want to deep dive to see the login pattern for your user.

Also, we currently use Defender for Identity, Defender for Endpoint, and Defender for Microsoft 365. All of them have been integrated into our plans. It was quite easy to integrate them. It's just the click of a button to activate it and then a matter of configuring your alert policies. Defender for Cloud Apps works together with Defender for Endpoint as well as with Azure Active Directory. With the latter, you can use the Conditional Access policy to integrate them so that they work together seamlessly.

The fact that these solutions work natively together gives us the advantage of having multiple security solutions doing different things. It's very important for them to work seamlessly together.

One challenge is integrating the cloud apps with third-party and on-premises systems. We have had some scenarios where some third-party systems were not compatible with them. Apart from that, it's quite easy to integrate.

Microsoft has also been able to bring all the security features to a particular portal, so you don't have to look around. But I've heard about some negative effects as a result, as the portal is now cumbersome. You have a whole lot of products there and it makes the whole portal jumbled. It's not bad for me because I just have to go to that particular portal and check whatever I have to check.

It doesn't actually decrease the time to respond. This has been an issue with Microsoft recently. Sometimes, there is a delay when it comes to getting an alert policy email. I can't stay on the portal all day looking through alerts that have been triggered. So we create a flow whereby, if an alert is triggered, an email should be sent. Sometimes it takes two or three hours for that email to be sent. The response time, sometimes, can be very slow.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for three to four years.

Performance-wise, the stability is good, but I wouldn't say very good because of the email alert delay issue I mentioned. But when you configure action and particular parameters, the option is carried out, more or less like an automaton.

It's scalable. Once you have acquired the license, you can easily deploy it and add more users to the policies you have configured.

We run a hybrid environment. We have four sites on the domain controller. It is deployed both for users on the cloud and on-premises in different locations. We have some located in the US and some in Europe. So we have the product across multiple locations.

Some of the policies we have configured cover 500 users and one of them covers over 500 users.

I've seen an improvement, over time, in the comprehensiveness of the protection our Microsoft products provide. They are improving on the products year over year. I remember quite well when Defender for Cloud Apps started, there were limited third-party applications that you could integrate with it. But now, there are multiple options for third-party applications that you can integrate with. There are also features that have been added to it. Microsoft is working to improve on it.

We did not have a previous solution.

Since it is embedded with some of the Microsoft 365 licenses, it is like an add-on, and you can create robust configurations with it. You're getting an additional value for the license you have. To me, that is a return on investment.

The pricing is fair. One good thing about Defender for Cloud Apps is that it comes with some of the Microsoft licenses: Microsoft 365 E3 and E5. It also comes with EMS, the Enterprise Mobility & Security.

My advice would be to do an assessment of whether you actually need this particular product. Some people confuse Defender for Cloud Apps with Defender for Microsoft 365, but they are two different products. You also need to confirm if it supports the applications you want to protect because there are some applications that have yet to be integrated with it. Apart from that, it's a good product for any security admin to use.

When it comes to helping prioritize threats, it depends on the angle you're looking at the results from. It can help 50 percent. When you look at the pattern of alerts over time, it can help you prioritize. But if you're looking at it in general, it is not going to give you that visibility into prioritizing.

Defender for Cloud Apps has a little bit of automation for routine tasks, but it doesn't really give an admin automated processes. And when it comes to taking proactive steps, it's more Defender for Endpoint that helps there. Defender for Cloud Apps doesn't help you to prevent an impending attack.

If you are looking to protect your environment, you need to spend more money. I wouldn't say that this solution helps to save money. But by protecting your financial documents from fraud or from an angry worker that is about to leave, it helps in saving money, but not in terms of cutting costs.

The maintenance is not significant because you don't need to update anything. All you have to do is go to your portal and check for and investigate any alerts. Maintenance is handled by Microsoft.

And in the "best of breed versus a single vendor" debate, you should just have a single vendor. In this case you know, "Okay, it's Microsoft," and it's best to just stick with what you know. It depends on what works for you though. For somebody who is comfortable using third-party products with Microsoft, maybe that will work for them. But for me, what is comfortable is using Microsoft products.

We have several use cases including file monitoring, unusual travel activities, user investigation, and activity. It pretty much covers every activity based on the cloud.

It helps prioritize insider threats. You can take the necessary actions once you get the logs. And when it comes to malware, if a file is uploaded that potentially has malware, the solution is also very useful. It gives you an alarm on the basis of the hash value of that file.

It is very useful for investigating file exfiltration threats. When it comes to data that is stored in the cloud, you really need to know what is stored there—the contents. You can create many protocols or rules in the tool to know the contents and who the owner is of a file. If we are investigating a threat or alert, it has a really good scope. You get really good details from it.

Overall, the solution has saved us time. For malware, it has an automated investigation feature integrated with Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. If there is suspicious behavior or a malicious file in your computer, it will give you a complete timeline showing how it behaved, how it was executed, and how the file has interacted with the other entities on your machine. You don't need to hunt for the logs. You can just look at the storyline of execution and that saves a lot of time.

It provides real-time detection, most of the time, for malware and other threats. Sometimes, the automated investigation takes some time, although not too long. It provides a smooth flow of investigation, giving you precise data. It saves time compared to manual investigation and the precision is good. On average, it will save one or two hours compared to a manual investigation, depending on the experience and proficiency of the analyst who would do the manual investigation.

In Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, there is an option to enable files. Once you enable that, it will give you all the files in your organization and where they are located in the cloud. If you are investigating a data breach and you want to get ahead of the investigation, the first thing you can do is a filename search: Where was it located? What was the file movement? What activity happened with the file? You get all the logs. That feature is very useful for investigation purposes.

It also shows user activity. If we are investigating a user for possible data breaches, we can enter the user's name and see the activities that the user has done. Based on that, you can take the necessary action. It gives you all the logs for that particular user. That feature is also very interesting and useful.

I use more than one Microsoft security product, including Defender for Endpoint as well as the Microsoft compliance portal, which is called Microsoft Purview now. It is integrated with Microsoft Data Loss Prevention. I also use Microsoft Defender for Identity. It is used to see if there is any suspicious traffic coming through your domain controller. In total, I use four Microsoft tools and all of these products are integrated. Internal integration of Microsoft products is quite simple. You just need to create one instance and that's it.

They are like the same product. Whatever information you'll get from one tool is the same information you are going to get from another tool. There will be no inconsistency in the data. They are getting logs from one place, not from different sources, so they are coordinated. If they did not work together, there would be a lot of confusion. If one tool is sent an alert and another sent an alert for the same file, that would be a complete ruckus. It has to be well coordinated.

These solutions are quite comprehensive. Most of the time, they provide alerts in a very detailed manner and it is very easy to investigate. While there is some scope for improvement, it is a very good tool for investigating the security threats we are getting. It's quite comprehensive and really good.

The visibility it provides is quite good. You get all the logs for investigation purposes. But there should be more clarity on what is happening with a file. Sometimes, we'll get false positive alarms. For example, when a SharePoint path has no file sharing, but there is an external user, it will trigger an alarm that the file has been shared with an external user. It happens because an external user has access to it but, in reality, he doesn't access it. But you need to check whether anyone has accessed the file and that takes some time. While giving the alert, if it could be more precise in terms of what happened with that file—why it is giving the alert—it would be more convenient for the investigation and save a lot of time.

The alerting mechanism should be more precise when giving you an alert about what activity has been done with the file, whether it was shared or whether it was in a path where an external user had access to it.

Also, Microsoft should provide more automation features. At this time, they are limited.

We have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for about one and a half years.

There is no downtime. The tool is always available.

It's scalable. You need to purchase more licenses if you want to deploy more.

Microsoft technical support depends on the individual who responds. Some Microsoft SMEs have the knowledge and some don't, to be very frank. They'll just go according to a template but they don't have really good investigation skills.

Microsoft could offer much more proficiency in terms of support. They need more individuals with the ability to resolve issues. At the moment, I would rate it as average.

Neutral

I did not work with a previous solution for cloud apps. For antivirus, I worked with McAfee.

I didn't deploy it, but in my experience, it takes time to learn how the features work because most things are not covered in the Knowledge Base that Microsoft has provided. They don't mention what these things are and how they work in the background. It takes an appreciable amount of time to understand how these tools work.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is only deployed through the cloud. You need to integrate your Azure AD with Cloud Apps. Once you have done that, you don't require a separate deployment model.

In terms of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, you need to onboard it to your devices through a script. To do that, you can use Intune, SCCM, or many other tools. Intune is native to Microsoft, but SCCM is a third-party tool. You can even deploy it manually.

There is some maintenance involved. The onboarding package can have communication issues and sometimes the antivirus services stop due to malfunction. There are many things that require maintenance. The number of people needed to handle the maintenance depends on the volume of devices you are maintaining.

The E5 license offers everything bundled. People are moving to Microsoft because you buy one license and it gives you everything. That's the reason many companies are attracted to these tools. That is much more beneficial than buying all the suites separately. It's quite economical.

If you are keen on keeping your enterprise safe from external users, so that your files are confidential and external users don't have access to them, you can create a rule in Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps. If it detects an external user has been added to that file or is collaborating on it, an automated governance action can remove that access in near real-time. We are not using the automation feature at the moment because it can create unwanted results. The scope of the exclusion is very limited in the policy.

In terms of a single dashboard, you need a SIEM tool like Microsoft Sentinel to integrate everything into a single dashboard. But at the moment, without that suite, we need to look at our four tools separately.

Potential threats are mainly detected in terms of hash values, malicious IP addresses, and malicious domain names. If you are looking to protect your environment, you can enter these details into Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. Microsoft Defender for Endpoint enables you to add indicators of compromise and it will protect against those entities.

Regarding going with a best-of-breed strategy rather than a single vendor security suite, both have pros and cons. It's not a black-and-white area. If you are going with one vendor, it will collect the logs in a single way. Everyone who looks at them will say, "This is the issue." It won't give you a different point of view. But if you are using another security product, it will have another methodology to collect and integrate the logs and present the information to you. One security tool can miss something that another security tool will catch. Having more than one will give you diversity in terms of alerts and analysis. But on the negative side, when you have more than one solution, you need to purchase separate licenses and spend some more money.

It depends on the budget of your organization for the security team. If you have a big budget, of course, you can diversify. You will benefit more from having different tools as they will, obviously, decrease the chances of getting hit by malware. But it will cost you more. If you have a limited budget, then you should go with a single tool. If you take the financial considerations out of the discussion, Microsoft pretty much covers everything and you should go for a single solution.

Overall, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is very convenient for investigation, in terms of security breaches, or if there is file exfiltration. It's a handy tool.

One thing our clients want to know is what cloud applications their users are using. When you enable Cloud App Security, you can sweep up all the applications that the endpoint is using, such as Dropbox, Box, or OneDrive. 

At Microsoft they use OneDrive and would probably want to restrict it to just that, unless there was a compelling reason to use a third-party application. With Cloud App Security, you can find all the users who are using Dropbox, for example, and then you can sanction those applications and prevent users from using them.

We also use that for alerting and creating policies for notifications and alerts.

The ability to prevent users from using certain applications is one of the most valuable features. It doesn't require any configuration for implementation from the client perspective. It just works right away and gives you the information you need. There are other features that you do need to configure. For example, the capability of the solution to discover the apps.

Another helpful feature is that you can add some connectors, not only from Office 365 and Azure, but external connectors. If you have logs from Palo Alto or Cisco, from  Barracuda, Checkpoint, or SonicWall, you can ingest them into Cloud App Security. It integrates well with third-party vendors.

There were things that were lacking but they are available in the newer version, such as an integration with the threat protection that Microsoft has with Microsoft Defender. However, I believe it's only set to be integrated with Microsoft Defender for identity and identity protection. I would like to see it available for use with something like Office 365 Defender. I don't think it's integrated with that yet.

I have been working with Microsoft Cloud App Security for three or four years.

We're a Microsoft partner, so we do pretty much anything Microsoft, including security, endpoints, and cloud. We don't do website or application development. We focus on architecture, infrastructure, security, and delivery.

It is stable. I haven't seen it go down.

You don't have to worry about the scalability because it's a SaaS application. As you add logs and data sources, it builds up. But you don't have to worry about the scalability because it's in the backend.

It's a little bit hard to deal with Microsoft tech support, especially on Cloud App Security. It's hit and miss. It depends on your type of support. If you have premier support, you get an okay type of response. They definitely need to up their tech support. There should be some improvement in that regard.

The initial setup is simple because it's software as a service. You don't build a server and you don't do upgrades. There is no OS. It's built into the cloud. All you have to do is purchase the license.

In terms of maintenance, it's all Microsoft. All you need it to do is configure it so that it will work for your unique environment, according to your organization's requirements. There is nothing else to worry about.

It comes as part of a bundle. If you have the Microsoft 365 license called E5, it comes with that. Otherwise, if you're going to buy it a la carte, the pricing can vary. Because we're a Microsoft partner, we get discounted pricing.

It doesn't require a long configuration process. There's no testing. You just need to tailor it to suit your organization's needs in terms of the data and the information that you want to get. In terms of discovering apps, it works pretty much out-of-the-box. It presents you with the data. The only decision that you need to make is whether to sanction an application. And then you have to sanction it and set up an alert if users are using a sanctioned application.

We use it in our company for threat detection. My company is into manufacturing, and our IT support is within premises. We don't do client services.

It is a SaaS solution. It is not supported on-premises. The deployment that we have is purely cloud-based.

Cloud App Security is an ever-evolving technology. It is based on artificial intelligence. It uses some data sets that capture all the tools within Office 365 package. It collects all the data majorly in the Office 365 space, and it understands the usage. Across the globe, there might be millions of Microsoft users, and it tries to capture all the data cumulatively and see any anomalies. That is how Microsoft gives you the data. They study different types of organizations in terms of how they behave, what kind of security loopholes can be found in them, and then they give you recommendations. You just implement these recommendations to secure the environment. So, what you get is a tailor-made solution where you can find all recommendations because it is based on artificial intelligence. They give you a tailor-made recommendation to improve your environment. They might recommend multifactor authentication, role-based access, etc. They provide you the classical representation on which users we can target and safeguard more.  All these things are very useful. That's how this tool is helping Microsoft customers, and this is how we have also been using it.

My company relies upon this technology. For us, it is very critical to know any attack beforehand and be prepared for it. In our environment, there are many endpoints, and many devices interact. We have an email system, a storage system, and other systems. The beauty of Cloud App Security is that it can learn data from different applications. For example, Adobe is an application that I'm integrating with Office 365. So, I can expand my horizon of search to that tool and see how that interacts with us. I will get more real-time data, and I will know more use cases about it.

Threat detection is its key feature, and that's why we use this tool. It gives an alert if a PC is attacked or there is any kind of anomaly, such as there is a spike in sending emails or we see an unauthorized website being accessed. So, it keeps us on our toes. We get to know that there is something wrong, and we can isolate the user and find any issues with it. So, threat detection is very robust in this tool.

We can integrate any SaaS-based application with it. It can scan your network and physical devices and the software that you're using. It tries to fetch cumulative data when there are any authentication-related attacks or any network-related attacks and gives us some kind of intimation. We get real-time graphical data, and then we need to do our work to solve the problems.

The product is great. The major benefit is that it is a Microsoft tool. So, if you're in a Microsoft ecosystem, this is the best tool that you can get in the market. In terms of experience, it is unlike any other tool. It is good enough to do all the jobs that other tools are doing. So, you don't need any other tool if you are using it in a Microsoft ecosystem. 

The response time could be better. It will be helpful if the alerts are even more proactive and we can see more data. Currently, the data is a little bit weak. It is not complete. I can't just see it and completely know which user or which device it is. It takes some effort and time on my part to investigate and isolate a user. It would be great if it is more user-friendly or easy for people to understand.

If it is an Office 365 product, I expect it to be in the admin center. That way I would know that this is a part of Office 365. It feels like there is a mismatch, or they are trying to separate the product or do something like that. They should have streamlined the product.

It is not always accurate. Sometimes, there could be some hiccups, and you see false positives, but security is not always reliable, and you cannot depend on one tool to give you all accurate results. It gives me a report that I can see, and if needed, I can act proactively on something. If it is a false positive, it is fine. If it is not, we know that we have done something about it.

We implemented it probably in 2019.

It is a new thing for Microsoft, and it still has a lot of room to improve.

It is completely scalable out-of-the-box. It is completely in interaction with Office 365 services. It can go up to as many users as you have. So, if you have 100,000 users, it is capable of supporting them. I have some 50,000 users, and I'm happy that it is capable of doing that. We have implemented it 100%, and we are happy with what we have got.

It is good for an enterprise company. It is not for a small-scale business. 

We don't require support frequently. I would rate them a seven out of 10. If you have a critical situation, you cannot expect them to give you a call immediately. My experience has not been so great with their paid support in terms of time. Sometimes, they don't even call you back, but when you do get support from them, they are excellent. So, you can't rely on them, and their response time can be improved, but their documentation is good enough. We can read the documentation and help ourselves.

Before this, my company had some tools, but I'm not sure about them. They probably heavily relied upon Splunk and other APM tools. They have had this tool from the time I have been here. Personally, I haven't worked on technologies outside of Microsoft.

It is very easy if you know what you're doing. You just click on the Next button multiple times, and it is complete. It is well-documented in the sense that we know what we can expect from the tool. The documentation is great, and the support is also excellent. So, my experience was very smooth, and it was done in a day.

It does not work on every license. You have to be an Enterprise customer, and you have to have a specific license to have the full benefits of it. So, you require the correct license, and you also need a certain amount of time for it to propagate. It is not immediate. Based on what we were told by Microsoft a few years ago, it takes 24 to 48 hours. They might have improved upon that. It tries to capture the complete environment details, and then it gives you a cumulative experience.

We work around the clock. We have six admins at different time zones who work with this solution.

Its pricing is on the higher side. Its price is definitely very high for a small-scale company.

As an enterprise client, we do get benefits from Microsoft. We get a discounted price because of the number of users we have in our company. We have a premier package, and with that, we do get a lot of discounts. There are no additional costs. It only comes in the top-tier packages. Generally, the top-tier license is the best license that you can get for your organization. If you want, you can buy it separately, but that's not a good idea.

This tool alone is not a great investment, but when you get it as a part of the package from Microsoft, it is good. Along with Microsoft Teams, Office, Exchange, SharePoint, and other solutions, this added feature of an extra layer of security makes a lot of sense. If you are only using this tool, and it is not in a Microsoft ecosystem, then it is not worth it.

For Office 365 environments, there is a great add-on benefit that comes with the Microsoft licensing package. If you have a Microsoft ecosystem, you can get it, and there is no need for any other tool. If you're not in a Microsoft ecosystem, don't bother buying it. It is a good competitor to other products such as Splunk. 

It has not affected our end-user experience in any way. The reason being this is an admin-oriented program, and it does not involve any end user. It just collects data from end-users and gives it to us. After that, it is up to us to act upon it. It does not do anything on its own. It is a threat detection tool, and it doesn't do anything on its own. We have to act to resolve a problem. For example, it will only say, "There is a user who is doing this. Do you want to act upon it? Yes or no?" Based on that, as an admin, we can do certain tasks remotely. The end-user will not know about it. We will see if there is a real threat, and we'll act upon it.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10. It is improving, but it still needs more improvements.

MCAS was onboarded for the purpose of detecting shadow IT. As the organization moved towards more SaaS solutions, we wanted to make sure that there is a way to monitor and govern the IT services coming up as shadow IT. We are a very big organization where a lot of services get onboarded, and some of the things may go unnoticed. We wanted to detect the shadow IT software being installed or shadow IT happening within a department or business unit.

We also wanted to make sure that the cloud access security broker provides a DLP kind of solution for Office 365. For example, if I am uploading a document with PI data, MCAS should scan and make sure that the right classification is applied. When the right classification is applied, the document gets encrypted, and relevant information protection is applied. If the right classification is not applied, the users are alerted to make sure that they go and remediate the document, task, file, etc.

This is how we started with this solution the last year. Going forward, as a strategic solution, we are also looking at using MCAS to govern the Office environment. We have started onboarding solutions like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, and Exchange Online. 

Our setup is a mixture of on-premises and cloud solutions. At this point in time, the major cloud providers are AWS and Azure, and we also have on-premises products such as Symantec DLP, Doc Scan, etc.

There are certain regulatory requirements in our bank for personal data and confidential information that need to be monitored from a security standpoint. It is a regulatory and standard requirement to have such a solution in place. 

MCAS is a dedicated solution for Office 365 and other productivity-related solutions, and it really helps to automate some of the processes. It would have been difficult for us to find a similar product. It gels well with some of the solutions or technologies that we have, especially with Microsoft Azure and Office 365.

From a security monitoring perspective, there is a productivity improvement and fewer human errors.

In terms of user experience, if users mistakenly put PI information or some kind of data, it can detect and alert them. From that aspect, it is doing the job, but we are using it from a security standpoint. I'm more from a regulatory environment, and there are security requirements that are enforced by regulators. So, we cannot provide some of the end-user experience features, and there should always be a balance between the end-user experience and the security standpoint. MCAS is more of a backend security posture product. I won't position it as enhancing the user experience.

The feature that helps us in detecting the sensitive information being shared has been very useful. In addition, the feature that allows MCAS to apply policies with SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive is being used predominantly.

It is a kind of unified solution. As compared to other solutions such as Netskope, Symantec, or McAfee, it provides a more unified reporting structure.

It also integrates with other technologies. We have Azure Information Protection, and it goes well with the solutions that we are already using.

It takes some time to scan and apply the policies when there is some sensitive information. After it applies the policies, it works, but there is a delay. This is something for which we are working with Microsoft.

It cannot detect all the things that are required as per our bank's standards. We are working with Microsoft to see how they are going to help us resolve this, and based on NDA, which new features are coming in because we require a unified solution. We have other security solutions that are working on top of it, but we don't want to use multiple solutions and then end up with a human error. From a security perspective, the weakest link is human error. If certain features are monitored by MCAS, certain features are handled by Zscaler, and certain features are handled by Symantec DLP, it becomes difficult to synchronize from an operational standpoint. This is the situation we are in currently, but these issues come with new products or new cloud solutions. We have to slowly orchestrate and see how to unify the solutions. So, at present, it doesn't solve all the problems. There are many problems, but at least, we have other solutions that are currently providing some mitigation.

It doesn't provide any way to scan Microsoft Teams when an external exchange of images is happening. You can always do the filtering on the documents during the chat, but if there is an image, then some kind of OCR capability is required to detect it. At present, there is no way MCAS can go and detect those kinds of images and alert us. They can maybe integrate it with an existing OCR-capable product. This is something that we are absolutely looking into. There should also be a feature to immediately increase the time to detect some PI information being exchanged via chat.

Its reporting capabilities can be better. Currently, to generate reports, you need to have Power Automate in place. If such capabilities are built into the product, it would be easier because when we bring in Power Automate, we need to make sure that Power Automate also gets monitored from the DLP and governance standpoints. MCAS doesn't have many reporting capabilities, and it's really an operational nightmare to get all these things done at this point in time by using MCAS. These are some of the operational capabilities that our engineers require from this solution from the reporting perspective. Symantec and other solutions are more mature in this area. It could be because MCAS is still an upcoming product.

We onboarded Office 365 and cloud services less than two years ago. MCAS was one of the strategic and DLP kind of solutions for Office 365 and other productivity products. Because the onboarding of the cloud services is in phases and not everything can be onboarded at the same time and it requires the involvement of different security and project departments, MCAS was onboarded last year.

From an enterprise perspective, it meets most of the interoperability requirements. So, scalability is there. I don't see an issue from the scalability perspective. Only features are missing here and there.

Currently, it is almost serving the entire bank. In terms of the SaaS products that MCAS is monitoring and the number of users it is serving, we have onboarded around 40,000 users for Office 365 and other SaaS products. Eventually, it will be serving the entire bank, but at this point in time, it is only serving all Office 365 and SaaS product users. 

It is more of a cybersecurity solution for the bank to comply with all the security requirements and meet the security quotient. The end users don't see MCAS as a direct solution, but MCAS is providing security services for the bank behind all the services.

We have proper help desk support. For example, if someone uploads a document that has PI data and there is an issue, it is highlighted to the user asking them to remediate it. The manager is also copied. The help desk takes care of such things. 

Once the solution is implemented, it is almost auto-run. From the support perspective, it is mostly about why did I get this alert, what was wrong with this document, etc. Such things are usually taken care of by the user because users are responsible for what content they are allowed to load on a particular website, SharePoint site, or software. A robust change management process and help desk are already in place, and I don't see a big concern on this aspect.

Previously, we didn't have any cloud product. We only had on-premise products. Our organization joined the cloud around one and a half years ago mainly because of this pandemic situation.

It depends on the requirements. Certain requirements are really complex. The deployment itself is quite fast because MCAS is on the cloud, but there are a lot of requirements from the regulations and the bank's standards perspective.

It took us one week for the architecture and to decide things like whether we need a reverse proxy. To have all the requirements and get all the things done in an enterprise environment, typically, a simple product like MCAS can take three to six months. That's because there are a lot of governance requirements, and we need to make sure there is no PI data, and the keys are encrypted somewhere in the user ID part. 

In terms of the implementation strategy, at the high level, for Office 365 and SaaS solutions, we wanted a unified product to replace our existing one. From the strategy perspective, we wanted to go to the cloud. MCAS was able to integrate with most of our Office productivity tools. We procured the licenses and then went through the strategy of the bank and how the product can meet the needs. This was at a very high level. Of course, when we go into operations, we get operational challenges. That's why we need to have a longer time period to make a product coexist with the existing products.

We have our own department, and they are trained in it. We also engage all sorts of vendors to provide us the results. At least for the interiors, we do not engage a third-party reseller or contractor.  

It was more of an in-house implementation, but Microsoft helped us in coming up with a service design for Azure-related products including Office 365. Based on our requirements and infrastructure, they provided high-level architecture and design documents and told us about the things to be included or considered. We took that service design document and built our operations based on that and got it to work. So, the service design came from Microsoft, but hands-on was by our bank.

In terms of maintenance, this is actually managed by security folks and cybersecurity services. Currently, it is being managed by three people. There are only three operators. Of course, when there are new things to be implemented and new policies to be created, it goes to engineering. For changes, we need one more person on average. So, there are a total of four people.

I can't give a specific number. One of the returns on investment is that we will soon be getting rid of our on-premise infrastructure and maintenance. The CapEx costs and repeated hardware refresh cycle are gone. From that perspective, there are savings. All we need is the skill set to maintain and manage a particular cloud access security broker. Today, we have four people, and tomorrow, it could be eight people because of the increase in the number of applications. The bottom line is that we will get rid of all operational issues in terms of patching and fixing different systems. We don't have to patch the Windows systems, Linux systems, etc. All these are taken care of and are maintained in the cloud.

I'm not totally involved in the pricing part, but I think its pricing is quite aggressive, and its price is quite similar to Netskope. 

Netskope has separate licensing fees or additional charges if you want to monitor certain SaaS services, whereas, with MCAS, you get 5,000 applications with their Office 365. It is all bundled, and there's no cost for using that. You only have the operational costs. In the country I am in, it is a bit difficult to get people with the required skill sets.

I have been here for just around one year.  When I came, they were already using MCAS. In my previous organization, I made the decision to use MCAS for Office 365. For the entire cloud, I decided to use a dedicated cloud access broker like Cisco. It really depends on the organizational requirement and how they want to size their IT department. 

There are pros and cons. If you are totally on Microsoft products, MCAS has an integration. Otherwise, there are other products that may work better. Of course, you may still be dependent on some APIs from the cloud providers. It really depends on the organization's strategy.

My advice would be that an organization should assess where they are today and then map out what do they want from a cloud access security broker product. After that, they should decide whether MCAS or another product meets their requirements. This is important because you may have all the things in terms of interoperability and a solution may be the best fit from an operational perspective, but if all of the requirements are not met, you may end up using multiple products. Therefore, an organization must assess its current IT infrastructure, where do they want to go, and what are the key requirements from a regulatory and IT governance standpoint. They also have to make sure they have the right skillset in the market. For example, in Singapore, if I want to implement Google Cloud, the skillset is very less as compared to the skillset for AWS.

From a vendor perspective, you should assess the reputability of the vendor and what kind of capability the vendor provides. For example, it's very obvious that Microsoft is very good at integrating its own products. They have now also started to integrate with others. These are some of the aspects you should consider before making a decision between product A or B. There is no magic silver bullet.

From a security standpoint, overall, it has satisfied 80% of our requirements in terms of regulatory and bank standards. For 20% of our requirements, we still need additional products or features. They are currently not really there, and we are trying to find the solution for those gaps. In general, MCAS has a long way to go. It is definitely a good product that integrates with Office 365 Suite very well, but from a capability perspective, other products such as SkyHigh, McAfee, or Symantec have more features. It has the potential. A lot of features are lined up in MCAS, and eventually, they'll be there. These features are mentioned on Microsoft's website, and they are in development. I am looking forward to those.

In terms of data governance, we have a very good tool, and we just need to focus on how to govern the data, DLP policies, etc. We don't have to bother about the physical data center, physical network, or physical host. The entire layer below the server is gone, and we just have to focus on the identity and security aspects. We just need to focus on what kind of security we need to put and which policies do we need to implement. We get better visibility by focusing on the key client endpoints by using MCAS. The team is now really focused. Previously, every day, teams used to come up with issues like, "Network has this problem. Data has this problem, and Host has this problem." Now the focus is, "Hey, this MCAS DLP isn't doing the job." The focus is more on the product's capability.

I would rate Microsoft Cloud App Security a seven out of 10.