Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps Reviews

The solution is primarily used for cloud visibility and getting a better understanding of what the data footprint is, including what kinds of files are exposed, and getting our heads around compliance. It's a component that adds DLP. Presently, there are two separate DLP policies between Microsoft's traditional DLP and the MCA DLP. 

The solution is bundled with E3 and E5 licenses. That's the reason it's most commonly deployed. It's part of the bundle. It's not a separate cost.

If your business requirements are relatively simple, it can get the job done. 

If you have more elaborate needs or if you have some more sophisticated use cases, for example, if you need an in-line component, or if you need to distinguish between sanctioned and unsanctioned applications, this solution doesn't cut it. You need to have some other solution.

Microsoft seems to want to mitigate that visible gap by deploying Microsoft DTP Defender for the in-line component. If you consume Microsoft, the more pieces you have, the better it is, although that's not necessarily true, technically speaking. They have limited deployment options. You have limited use cases for an endpoint with the firewalls port for IP tunnels for real-time traffic interception. You have to rule the endpoint. It's a less flexible deployment than the more mature players.

There are challenges with detection and there are challenges with false-positive rates.

They're improving it all the time. I haven't looked at it for six months or so, however, the last time I looked at it, they had to be configured in two different spots.

I've been dealing with the solution for a while, on and off. 

A lot of customers that we work with have the solution installed today and we see them running it by themselves as well.

The solution is stable. I haven't bumped any stability issues.

I haven't tested the scalability. I don't have any opinion on the scalability. It seems to me that it fits the customer's needs from a scalability perspective.

I don't work with technical support directly.

The solution is super easy to configure. All it requires is an admin for the various apps. Once it's authorized it can start the scans. Mainly, you need to be mindful of policies and what you're looking for. Tuning policies and making sure that your policies are set properly is important. It's very easy to do, especially the out-of-box stuff. 

You can buy it alone, however, it's not worth it. Nobody buys it alone as it's not that good as a standalone product. It's better as a part of the E3 and E5 suites. We don't sell it.

We're a Microsoft partner.

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

Mainly you want to just be clear on what your use cases are, and what you're trying to accomplish, as everything's use case driven. If you know what you need to accomplish from a security strategy standpoint, it's better. For example, it might be helpful for compliance or having an understanding of where sensitive data is. It might be part of a broader initiative around classification and data protection. Having those use cases written out first and going from there is better. Then, I suggest taking a measured approach as you go in. Implement it right. Test for or validate that the policies that you have in place are working as expected. However, you have to build out requirements for the policies. 

It's used for data governance and security. It's a cloud security tool providing very good discovery around whatever is happening in your organization, such as what users are doing on the internet and how data is flowing out of your organization. It is then used to put controls around what information can go out, who downloads what, and how much they can download. It helps put controls around these types of things to create secure collaboration between your organization and its partners, customers, and vendors.

It's a SaaS platform. It's not like hardware or software where you install new updates or new versions. It's controlled by Microsoft in the backend.

They have made built-in templates. If you integrate your AWS account with Microsoft MCAS, using the predefined templates it will scan all the functionalities that are available or accessible after the integration. It will then provide security posture recommendations around issues such as how many buckets you have publicly available, what data is not encrypted, what is publicly available and insecure, and which devices are not backed up. It helps you to understand your security posture and to enhance it.

And when it comes to secure collaboration, if you have information that you have already restricted and you don't want it to be shared outside of your organization, with the help of MCAS session policies you can put controls around it. It's integrated with storage solutions and you can put the controls around things using labels such "classified," "restricted," or "confidential."

Another scenario where MCAS is helpful is when people are leaving your organization soon. It can happen that they hide and start downloading certain documents and files. MCAS can help identify mass downloads or mass uploads and what the user is doing. That kind of detailed analysis is available to senior management or the security team so that they can take whatever steps are necessary.

There are a lot of features with benefits, including

• discovery 
• investigation
• putting controls around things.

You can't say that you like the investigation part but not the discovery. Everything is correlated; that's how the tool works. Once the discovery of everything you feed into it is done, it gives you a nice dashboard. You can then plan what needs to be controlled and governed, and what should not be accessible in your environment.

It's quite well integrated with all Microsoft services, like Information Protection, Azure Portal, and Azure IoT, among other things. There are also integrations with AWS and Salesforce.

Although they are already doing it, I would like to see more integration with market leaders like Slack.

Another area that can be improved is to provide more reporting functionality. Currently, reporting is not very straightforward and it needs to be enhanced. Specific reports are not included and you need to run a query, drill down, and then export it and share it. I would love to have reports with more fine-tuning or granularity, and more predefined reports.

We have been using Microsoft Cloud App Security for at least the last two and a half years. We are a Microsoft partner. We do everything for their products, from design to implementation.

It's stable. It's more stable than other Microsoft services. In my two and a half years of experience with MCAS, there have only been two times that it went down and was not accessible to us. The services, policies, and controls were there. It was just that we were not able to access them. 

Whatever Microsoft has committed to in terms of stability, "99 point something," is pretty much true.

It's a SaaS solution so the scalability depends purely on the organization: How many applications do they want to integrate with it and do they have the corporate licenses? MCAS itself is scalable. You don't need to deal with servers, or RAM, or finding a new data center. Scaling it is purely up to you and depends on how much data you want to feed it and on the use cases you want to use it for.

I use Microsoft tech support at the highest levels. The experience with their tech support, as a partner, purely depends on what kind of contract you have and what kind of a relationship you have. If you have a very good relationship, you get responses when you need them. But when you talk about bugs or you are asking for a feature, you have to wait for their product life cycle. Overall, their support is good. Not average, but not excellent.

Neutral

The initial setup of Cloud App Security is quite straightforward. It's not complex. Microsoft's documentation around it is absolutely great. It guides you through the settings you need to configure and whatever apps you need to integrate. There is no difficulty in getting it up and running. It is more seamless than any other solution. It is even easier to run on Windows machines because the documentation is very good. They have very clearly described what needs to be done.

Once you have all the requirements, like your user account and license, a person can configure it in a day because it's a SaaS solution. But the time it will take depends on the fine-tuning, and that is determined by why you are using MCAS. That's the important part. If you're looking at user behavior, or if you're looking at data, or if you're looking at infrastructure security posture, each of these will affect the time it takes. If it's just for shadow IT, it will take one or two days to configure. If you're integrating it with AWS to help with your security posture, it will take three or four days.

One engineer who has prior experience is more than enough, but having two guys for setup might be better.

Day-to-day maintenance, again, depends on how you are going to utilize it. If you already have a SOC running with four or five people in it and your environment is small to medium in size, five people can use this tool and get value out of it. If you are talking about an organization like Walmart or Microsoft or a multinational company that has users across regions, you will need more people to support it. MCAS is a tool. It will have the data, but you will need to use it.

I'm not involved with the cost side of the solution so I don't know how much has been invested in MCAS. But where it's adding value is around the controls. I'm sure there are savings in that regard.

I have not implemented any other solutions, but I looked into Zscaler cloud security. Because Zscaler is an independent company, it doesn't have that many solutions with Microsoft. A cloud app security solution should have native products as well as integration with many other products. On that point, Microsoft is way ahead. For example, 80 percent of the world is using Office 365 for email services and 60 percent are using SharePoint for information sharing. Because these tools are Windows products, the controls become easy to implement.

My advice is to use it to its fullest capabilities. It has a lot of features and it is being enhanced daily. It's a full engine that you can use to discover all your assets in the cloud, whether they are on a public cloud or a private cloud. Every month or every quarter, look at what's new and how you can leverage it. You're already paying for those enhancements so use them, fine-tune them, and optimize them. The tool has a lot of capabilities. A lot of people only utilize it for information protection or tracking user activity or for their cloud-based security posture. Use it all. There's a lot in it.

MCAS is not a tool that interacts with end-users because there is no client. They don't know that MCAS is in the picture, so it doesn't impact the end-user.

The biggest lesson I would take from the use of Microsoft Cloud App Security is that you are being monitored. Do not use your professional device for personal use because there are more eyes and controls around.

In addition, the way you use MCAS is that you discover and then you put the controls in place to govern things. That's how any other security tool works. You first put it in learning mode to see what will happen. For example, If I put in this or that control, how much will it impact my end-users? In those terms, MCAS has been really nice.

If you have a lot in the Microsoft environment or AWS or Google Cloud, it's going to help you a lot.

If there's any data that is taken out from their corporate applications, on their managed devices, and being taken out and stored somewhere else, on an application that is not managed, they don't have visibility on that.

Therefore, with Cloud App Security, the main use case is to identify information about applications that are way beyond their boundaries and to understand what people are accessing them as well as if those applications are safe or not. It's a Shadow IT discovery solution.

Apart from that, it's a solution used to protect corporate data from being taken out of those applications and being shared externally with people who are not meant to have those documents or data. It's a solution designed to prevent exfiltration and data filtration of corporate data from those applications to unknown people that may happen without proper visibility.

Basically, it's used for two purposes: providing control of the data that is in cloud applications, and shadow IT discovery. That's the major purpose of Cloud App Security.

This solution acts as an identity and posture management assessment solution also. When you have your on-prem AD integrated with Defender for Identity, it can understand your identity posture.

It can understand things like your Active Directory spread or the current state of your Active Directory on certain recommended practices. For example, if users in your organization are not using secure log-in methods. If their LDAP authentication is not secure, you'll get that information. That's identity and posture management. For your on-prem AD, if you have the solution deployed, which is Defender for Identity, it'll give you an understanding of your identity state, of your on-prem AD state, and give you recommendations accordingly, on what needs to be changed and managed, to make sure that you're secure.

Apart from that, it also integrates with third-party solutions and services. For example, in an organization with multiple cloud applications. Typically, you don't have visibility over user activities or logs. You don't have control over the data. If a user logs in from one location and then the user logs into that application from another location, you don't have the visibility as you don't have ML and AI capabilities inbuilt. With this solution, once it integrates with those applications, it has inbuilt default functionality of ML and automation. It is able to understand the user's behavior and identify inconsistencies in user accounts, for those applications, and can give you suggestions or raise alerts. 

The solution does not affect a user's workflow. It is not a user-specific solution. Users would not see the change in their usual behavior and their usual activities as such. The user does not really know what's happening in the background. The Cloud App Security is a solution for your whole organization, to make sure that you're monitoring the right activities - for example, those activities that are really uncommon - or specific activities that you want to monitor. The company has the ability to create Cloud App Security policies for sets of users, however, the users themselves do not see or feel the impact. 

An IT administrator manages the solution and it gives them a lot of information. They can see a lot of detail around how other users interact with data and applications across the company, and if anything unusual happens. 

The integration with macOS operating systems needs to be better. The Cloud App Security integrates with Windows Defender for Endpoint, which is able to monitor the traffic from Windows 10 operating systems. When it integrates with Defender for Endpoints, the macOS capability does not let you directly see the shadow IT discovery. You have to be in your network, to be able to see if any activity from a macOS operating system is happening. If you're working from home without a VPN connection nowadays, which is the usual case for a remote workplace, you can't really monitor or track the activities in the shadow IT that users are using offsite on macOS operating systems.

The Cloud App Security integration with external DLP solutions is not so seamless. There are solutions that you can integrate with Cloud App Security as an external DLP solution, however, it's not so seamless that you can have the integration with the endpoint. It's there, yet, it's not so seamless and integrable.

I've been using the solution for the past five years.

It's been stable for the past little while. The improvement has been immense, however, overall, it's a stable solution. It has not changed so much. Of course, the implementation of feature sets and improvements have happened, although they're almost similar. I would say it's a stable solution in general.

An average organization would almost utilize 100 to over 150 applications. They wouldn't really have an understanding of what activities are happening across those corporate applications. You can integrate N number of applications. There are approximately 16,000 plus applications that you can monitor and integrate with Cloud App Security. Then, based on those applications, you can understand the users' behavior.

The benefit you get is that you are able to monitor all your applications and control the data that goes out of those applications. You can also control any sort of activity, which you feel should not be happening on that application. The user can be prevented from doing certain activities. Cloud App Security helps you do that across as many apps as you want.

In terms of users. the default Cloud App Security is just a license-based solution. As long as you have users in your organization, you just buy licenses from Microsoft and assign those licenses to your user accounts. It's very scalable. 

There are a few parts to it. For example, shadow IT discovery, which is an added feature that allows you to be able to implement additional users in your organization. The Cloud App Security will also require additional infrastructure. Let's say if the data set that Cloud App Security is absorbing at a particular time span, if it increases, then you probably have to implement additional on-prem resources or cloud resources for it to be able to track all of the network data.

Depending on the data set that you're ingesting in Cloud App Security, you might have to increase your workload on-prem. Other than that, Cloud App Security itself is a very scalable solution.

When it comes to the size of organizations I've worked with, I should note I am personally a Microsoft consultant only. I work on Microsoft projects and with Microsoft's clients only. I've worked with organizations with 15,000 users and an organization that has approximately 6,000 users. I've worked with organizations that have 500 users. The size of the company varies.

Microsoft has different support tiers. If it's Pro support I would rate it at a seven or seven-and-a-half at a maximum. There are Premier support services and there are Professional supports, another type of support service. Premier support service is very good. I would rate that at an eight-and-a-half or nine. 

Pro support is if you buy a basic license for an organization. It's not so great and yet still good. For Pro support, you usually do not get routed to Microsoft people. Those are generally people who are third-party support service providers.

The problem is, specifically in India, it's also specific to locations, as sometimes if you're working in a different location, you get different support. As I mentioned, it's third-party support usually that you get with Cloud App Security or any Microsoft solution Pro support.

The level of knowledge you get is totally dependent on how the organization and how the third-party service provider is. Usually, there are time delays. Sometimes their initial response will happen, and then they will take time in responding back and/or aligning a resource. Sometimes that resource is not technically advanced or technically skilled and can't fully understand the problems at hand. In that case, they require escalating most of those cases to the technical consultants. If it's a typical question, a typical scenario, I would say it's good. Cloud App Security is a beast of a product, so the major issue is with the Pro support.

If it would have been directly with Microsoft, this help has been really good, however, it's a third-party service provider who's helping you out, and they just don't have the insights an actual Microsoft user has. 

I don't have any experience working with a third party or a competitor of Cloud App Security, however, I know there is one called McAfee, which is supposed to be equally good.

McAfee offers a cloud app security service that is very, very good and close to what Microsoft offers. That is what I understand from customers and the discussions I've had surrounding it, though I have not really worked on McAfee. What I understand from customers is, Cloud App Security, the integration, the capabilities that it has to offer, are much more advanced. For example, Microsoft's identity posture assessment. There is no solution in Europe, anywhere, which offers such a capability. It's an integrated solution with Defender for Identity, however, it's a service that Cloud App Security at least offers, which otherwise would not be available.

Similarly, integration with the number of applications, as I mentioned, is great with Microsoft. The capability for you to monitor and route your traffic for all of these different applications, and to be able to analyze the traffic from those corporate applications is important.

The reverse proxy capability that Microsoft Cloud App Security offers is really good. It lets you track anything in real-time, and monitor all those things, which is not possible using other solutions.

The initial onboarding of Cloud App Security with Office 365 is pretty straightforward. For an organization that does not use Office 365 as its primary SaaS application, you will still have to follow a few steps, however, those are also straightforward steps.

In general, I would say, Cloud App Security implementation, within the initial adoption of an application, is very seamless. 

The time it takes to deploy depends on the use cases. If you're talking about a simple activation of Cloud App Security, and enabling and monitoring the activities of certain basic applications, it shouldn't take more than a few hours for integration. If there are more complex situations, more complex scenarios, depending on what the scenarios are, then there may be a little bit more effort and time required. Other than that, if the default integration with applications is already there, it should not take more than a few hours to have it up and running.

I've worked with almost eight to 10 customers using Cloud App Security. This is Microsoft Cloud App Security. Cloud App Security has two offerings. One is Office 365 Cloud App Security, which is a basic cloud app security. Then there is Advanced Cloud App Security which is called Microsoft Cloud App Security.

The Office 365 one, the one which you get with E5 licenses, it'll give you basic Office 365 monitoring and snapshot reports, but not a whole lot of capabilities.

That said, I don't have any information about the actual costs of the license themselves. 

I deploy this solution. I don't utilize this solution as a solution for my organization, and instead, deploy this solution for clients. I'm a consultant for this product. My company is a Microsoft partner. 

This is a SaaS application.

I would advise new users to first try to identify the applications which are corporate-owned applications, be it if it's an on-prem application or if it's a cloud application. Once you identify all those applications which you're using in your organizations as a whole, you should try to integrate all those applications with Cloud App Security. 

Once you've started integrating and planning ahead what applications are needed to be monitored first, start integrating those applications and monitoring them. Slowly, integration after integration, all the monitoring will start happening.

Once the integration for those applications has happened, you should go ahead and start implementing what kind of policies you want. If you want activity monitoring policies, then you should start creating those activity monitoring policies. Let's say you want to apply DLP policies for third-party applications. You will need to reach out to those different teams who'll be able to give you better answers as to how to approach the data that is being shared or being uploaded from those applications to any other applications.

Based on that, create those policies in Cloud App Security. The correct and the right approach is to use the network appliances that you have in your organization. Once you have identified that information, you can go ahead and start implementing the Cloud App Security and start integrating those network appliances and those applications with Cloud App Security.

Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

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.

We are using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for different purposes and one of them is for ensuring there is no shadow IT.

The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is to stop shadow IT.

I have been using Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps for approximately three years

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is a stable solution.

The scalability of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is good.

We plan to increase the usage of the solution.

I found the support to be satisfying.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps' initial setup was quite technical but we were prepared. The time of the implementation depends on the job and how many users are being set up.

We did the implementation of the solution. We used two engineers and one project manager for the deployment and maintenance.

We are an MST and we do not pay for the solution. However, the price of the solution could be better.

I would recommend this solution to others.

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

We use it for security alerts for any possible trouble for users. 

In terms of deployment, we have on-prem servers for now for one of the customers. We also have several customers on the Azure cloud.

I like the web GUI/the management interface. I also like the security of Microsoft. As compared to other manufacturers, it's less complex and easy to understand and work with.

There are some features, such as user navigation content filtering, that are disabled by default, and it probably makes sense to enable them by default.

I have been using this solution for about six months. 

It is stable.

It is scalable. We have 100 licenses for one company, and we probably have 1,000 licenses for another company.

I haven't used it yet.

The customer with 100 licenses used Sophos EDR. Microsoft Defender is more manageable. Sophos EDR is not a bad product. It is a complete product, but the Microsoft Defender is better.

It was more or less straightforward. 

It was implemented in-house.

It is a little bit expensive. When you want to have the complete package with Office 365, Defender, and everything else, it is expensive.

My advice would be to try it first and compare it with other solutions.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Our primary reason for implementing this product is to deal with spam email.

In general, this product helps to best secure our network.

It has features that help to improve our security posture that include better logging and better detection of threats. Since implementing it, we have been finding more malicious emails and files. Better logging allows us to find problems and take appropriate steps to lock them out.

We really like the fact that we have a single web-based pane of glass for administration. We can use our Azure Active Directory accounts to access it, and we don't need a local application.

The most valuable feature is the anti-spam capabilities.

Since implementing this solution, we have had more support calls regarding false positives. This means that we have had to do a little more work finding these issues, although it is getting better. It is just a matter of fine-tuning the system at this point.

The false positives we have experienced so far are rare and have come from customer-specific programs. I can't say that it would be easy for Microsoft to solve them. Fortunately, we have not had any false positives for known software.

In the future, I would like to see more plug-and-play capabilities that use AI to tell you what needs to be done. It would be helpful if it scanned our devices and made security suggestions, on a configuration basis. For example, it could make more suggestions that include specific points, or offer to have something configured in the standard way.

We have been using Microsoft Cloud App Security for approximately three months.

Stability-wise, so far, I'm satisfied and it works well. We haven't had any issues that I attribute to Microsoft. There were a couple of days where we had problems logging on but I think that it was related to an issue with SolarWinds. My understanding is that some sites were shut down and a lot of companies had the same problem.

At this point, we have not had the need to scale up or scale down. We have approximately 250 devices that we are protecting.

We have not needed to contact technical support.

We were using F-Secure before implementing Microsoft Cloud App Security, and we are still using it. In fact, it is just another layer of protection. If in the future we see that the Microsoft product is good enough, then we might stop using F-Secure. However, that is not the plan at the moment.

The main reason that we chose this product is for its good compatibility with Office 365 and Azure Active Directory.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. There were some Azure Active Directory options that we needed to tweak before we got everything running properly.

Our deployment took approximately one month to complete. Part of this time was spent adjusting for false positives.

We followed a step-by-step process for deployment where we started with the computers in our location, then moving to other devices. After our location was complete, we moved to other offices.

We set it up with the help of an external consultant. The company sold us the product, set it up, and we use it. We have an ongoing support contract with them. Our experience with them was good and the consultant's knowledge of Microsoft products was very good. They are a Microsoft partner.

We are still learning the product and over time, we are getting more versed in it. There are two of us, myself and my colleague, responsible for the maintenance. We are both system administrators.

The pricing is a little bit high but right now, we are okay with it because of the compatibility with Office 365, Teams, and Azure AD. These features make it worth the cost.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this one.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to get assistance with deployment from somebody who can help you. Don't do it by yourself, if you're not a reseller for it. As a company, get somebody who has experience with the product.

In summary, we have just begun using this product but so far, it works well and we are satisfied with it.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The use case is for getting visibility over cloud applications that our users are consuming, how they consume it, and using the protection which comes with Cloud App Security with that visibility. It provides monitoring and visibility into cloud apps that our users are using and has ;a layer of security wrapped around that. It identifies malicious activity, if it's occurring, and provides overall protection of our company data from things like data exfiltration and all the other integrations that it has with other Microsoft security products.

It is protecting approximately 800 users. We have four other sources feeding into it from other products that we use. We have several thousand applications for which we get reports and visibility.

It is one of our core tools for monitoring and managing our security posture. In the future, I don't see that changing much. At this stage, I think we are at a good level of how we are using it.

It has helped identify areas where we should improve, make changes to improve, the reason why we should make a change, and the impact of making the change. So, it helps drive us to make changes and see the benefits of those changes.

We have become more aware of what services our users are using, how often they are using them, and what data is being sent out of the organization and to which services. So, it is really a lot about visibility and helping us make decisions based on that. It drives some of our policy decisions for adding extra security controls.

It has all been very seamless to our users. It indirectly positively impacts them because we are keeping them more secure. No one has been saying, "Because we are using this product, it is slowing me down or causing me problems." As standard users, they wouldn't really need to know that this solution exists. They just rely on us to keep them safe.

• Helps us have a view into our overall security posture and how we can improve it. 
  
• The ability to perform investigations is very useful. 
• Identifying the number of applications, particularly connected via OAuth. 
• Has great, general overall visibility of who is using what and how. 
• We are using it as an indicator for any indicators of compromise that might be coming up.

Identity security posture points out a preset number of security posture improvements, or areas of focus, and whether they are being met. It also points out what changes need to be made in order to meet them. Therefore, we can have better security posture.

There is a feature called security configuration. This is across the whole Microsoft set of products regarding what changes can be done. Specifically within a product, we use it to improve the security posture by making changes.

They should continue integration with all other Microsoft security-related products. The integration with all the other products is still ongoing. However, the solution has already begun scaling to meet the needs of getting visibility through from other products as well.

About three years.

The stability has been fantastic. I have no complaints at all. It has been 100%.

The scalability is really good. It has improved while I have been using it. It definitely appears to be able to scale easily and well. 

The technical support is very good. They are responsive, knowledgeable, and skilled. We have great communication with them.

This is the only CASB product that I have ever used.

Anecdotally, I believe the initial setup is quite straightforward.

According to the person who originally set up the solution in our organization, but has since left, it was originally straightforward to set up.

My colleague and I share the day-to-day maintenance for one person. It needs only a few hours a day to get a lot out of it. 

We have seen ROI. Its main capabilities are:

• The protection that it gives.
• Visibility
• The protection for cloud products. 
• It helps with the improvement of our overall security posture.

Make full use of all the options available and focus a lot on policies. There are a lot of policies and alerts available which might not be used to their fullest extent. 

We are pretty happy with how it all works and fits together.

I would rate this solution as a solid nine (out of 10). The product is constantly improving. It has a low amount of false positives, i.e., true alerts identified as requiring attention.

We are a consulting firm and we configure this service for our clients.

Our clients use it for Shadow IT systems and processes. It is used specifically for cloud services, such as services that reside in Microsoft Azure.

It is very easy to use, which is what we look for in these types of solutions. 

This service would be better if it had a separate license, only for this service, that could be used to track usage. 

We have been using Microsoft Cloud App Security for the past month.

This is a stable product.

This solution is scalable. You simply buy licenses and access the platform.

Currently, we have five people in the company who are using it. With new clients using our service and other clients moving to the cloud, I want to have a security broker in place so I expect to increase our usage.

I have not contacted technical support yet.

As a cloud-based service, there is no installation.

Our clients normally use the Microsoft E1 licensing, which is renewed yearly. It gives them access to many Microsoft services, and one of them is Microsoft Cloud App Security.

We are currently evaluating other products such as Netskope, to see what it can offer us. We primarily want to see if it is easier for our clients to use. It seems that the integration with the cloud service is much more difficult.

Licensing for this product is not as expensive as Netskope.

This is a pretty good service and I definitely recommend it if you are using Microsoft Azure or Microsoft services.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use it to protect our organization's data. It has the ability to create and can copy-paste for the end-user. You can take a screenshot from your mobile devices and download some confidential things. After creating the policy you can be assured that a user's data is being protected

We give devices access within a particular device that the user is accessing. We are also certain that there is no chance of scamming or that an email account can be hacked.

We also create a password policy. Whenever the end-user wants to download anything or wants to access anything there has to be some security. It secures the customer's data in their organization. 

All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related. 

I would like for it to be available on Mac and for it to support all of the features of Microsoft financing products. It is really for Windows.

I have been using Microsoft Cloud App Security for the last three years. 

The stability is good. 

It is very easy to expand it and it is also very easy to manage because it has a centralized dashboard. You can see all of our teams and activate the software. Any person can export a report. It's very easy to access for me.

Our clients are enterprise-size. 

Support is very good. If we have any problems, Microsoft will drop us an email and suggest that the server cannot be accessed due to some maintenance.

The initial setup is straightforward. You only need to set up the policies. The devices need to be compliant and particular applications have to be protected. 

It generally requires two staff members to deploy but it depends on the management. It depends if the IT staff or the customers understand the process. The only difficult part is pairing it to a mobile device. To my understanding, it's the only part that the IT staff has to handle. 

Setting up the policy is easy and then it's easy to replicate the policy. It takes maximum two hours. 

Customers are looking to protect their data and to protect their organization's files. For this, we offer them a package but the price is very high. This particular product, the Indian product, is running very well in the US and UK. 

It is certainly a good product. It is important to get a cloud-based product so that if you want to manage it remotely, you can work on a PC that is ready for that mission then.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.