We performed a comparison between CrowdStrike Falcon and Microsoft Defender for Cloud based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: CrowdStrike Falcon stands out for its minimal impact on system performance, optimal resource utilization, and precise detection of threats. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is highly regarded for its automated processes, advanced threat analysis, and extensive security measures, including protection against ransomware and access controls. CrowdStrike Falcon could benefit from adding a sandbox feature and more detailed firewall management options. Microsoft Defender for Cloud could use enhancements in automation and ease of use.
Service and Support: CrowdStrike Falcon's customer service has been commended for its promptness and assistance. Some Defender for Cloud users reported positive experiences with Microsoft, while others complained that the solution's outsourced support lacked technical knowledge.
Ease of Deployment: CrowdStrike Falcon's setup is considered to be simple and efficient, with varying deployment times ranging from a few days to a month. While there may be some challenges during installation, they are generally manageable. The initial setup of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is described as straightforward, but the deployment time may vary depending on specific requirements.
Pricing: Some users find CrowdStrike Falcon costly and think the price should be lowered to make it more competitive. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is in the mid-to-high pricing tier. While some users find it expensive, others believe it offers good value.
ROI: CrowdStrike Falcon offers cost savings by decreasing the required number of engineers and eliminating the necessity for onsite servers. Microsoft Defender for Cloud streamlines security tasks and saves users money by consolidating various solutions.
Comparison Results: Users prefer CrowdStrike Falcon over Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Users like CrowdStrike Falcon's effortless setup process and lightweight design. It provides an in-depth analysis of endpoint devices, precise threat detection, and robust defense against cyberattacks.
"The console is easy to read. I also like the scanning part and the ability to move assets from one to the other."
"Fortinet FortiEDR made our clients feel secure and more at ease, knowing that they had an EDR solution that would close the gap in their security posture."
"The product detects and blocks threats and is more proactive than firewalls."
"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."
"Forensics is a valuable feature of Fortinet FortiEDR."
"It is very easy to set up. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a ten out of ten, with ten being very easy to set up."
"The main thing is that I feel safe. Because the processes that have been used to get a handle on the attackers are much better than other competitors"
"The features that I have found most valuable are the ability to customize it and to reduce its size. It lets you run in a very small window in terms of memory and resources on legacy cash registers."
"One of the most valuable features of CrowdStrike Falcon is when there are upgrades there are no additional fees."
"As an EDR tool, we can integrate log management and event management. The solution deals with threats automatically, that's the advantage."
"The detection is very reliable. Also, OverWatch is a great feature."
"The most valuable features are the complete IPS and IDS."
"The EDR is amazing and ease of integration with Splunk is a big plus. Integration with BigQuery is also a plus for me and workflow creation is easy. Overall, CrowdStrike Falcon is a great product."
"Overall, what I found most valuable in CrowdStrike Falcon is its good mechanism. It also has a good reporting feature. CrowdStrike Falcon is an invaluable tool because, through it, you can take quick action, for example, when an OS is missing specific patches."
"It has definitely minimized resources. When everything was on-prem, there was a lot more work maintaining it. One of the big value tickets: I don't have lists of hundreds of exceptions for certain applications that I have to maintain, add, delete, and move. The very nature of the product has lessened my workload considerably."
"I like the Overwatch feature the most."
"Defender lets you orchestrate the roll-out from a single pane. Using the Azure portal, you can roll it out over all the servers covered by the entire subscription."
"The security alerts and correlated alerts are most valuable. It correlates the logs and gives us correlated alerts, which can be fed into any security information and event management (SIEM) tool. It is an analyzed correlation tool for monitoring security. It gives us alerts when there is any kind of unauthorized access, or when there is any malfunctioning in multifactor authentication (MFA). If our Azure is connected with Azure Security Center, we get to know what types of authentication are happening in our infra."
"We can create alerts that trigger if there is any malicious activity happening in the workflow and these alerts can be retrieved using the query language."
"With respect to improving our security posture, it helps us to understand where we are in terms of compliance. We can easily know when we are below the standard because of the scores it calculates."
"The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites."
"Microsoft Defender has a lot of features including regulatory compliance and attaching workbooks but the most valuable is the recommendations it provides for each and every resource when we open Microsoft Defender."
"Most importantly, it's an integrated solution. We not only have Defender for Cloud, but we also have Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Identity. It's an integrated, holistic solution."
"It is very intuitive when it comes to policy administration, alerts and notifications, and ease of setting up roles at different hierarchies. It has also been good in terms of the network technology maps. It provides a good overview, but it also depends on the complexity of your network."
"I would like the solution to extend beyond endpoint protection and include other attack surfaces such as other network components."
"The security should be strong for the cloud. Some applications are on-prem and some are on the cloud. Fortinet should also have strong security for the cloud. There should be more security for the cloud."
"ZTNA can improve latency."
"Integration with Azure and SaaS provisioning tools could improve Fortinet FortiEDR."
"The EDR console should have more extensive reporting. You shouldn't need to purchase FortiAnalyzer. It should be included in the EDR part. The security adviser cloud platform could be improved with more options for exclusive or intensive rules for devices."
"FortiEDR could add a separate scanning dashboard. In incident management, we prefer to remove the endpoint system from the environment and scan the system. We typically use Symantec for that, but if we want to use FortiEDR for that, then we need a scanning tab to clarify things."
"It takes about two business days for initial support, which is too slow in urgent situations."
"The solution is not stable."
"In the future release of CrowdStrike Falcon, they should add a sandbox feature."
"Forensic controls have room for improvement."
"The malware analysis could be improved, as that's what we use the solution for the most and that change would make it a better EDR tool."
"CrowdStrike Falcon could improve the logs by making them free to the API."
"They should provide us with good visibility for everything."
"The support for different OS versions needs improvement because sometimes due to business conditions, updating our OS is impossible."
"I think there's an opportunity to enhance the AI or at least the traps to say, if something changes from this baseline, let us know and flag it."
"They don't really have anything when it comes to scanning attachments."
"After getting a recommendation, it takes time for the solution to refresh properly to show that the problem has been eliminated."
"Azure's system could be more on point like AWS support. For example, if I have an issue with AWS, I create a support ticket, then I get a call or a message. With Azure support, you raise a ticket, and somebody calls back depending on their availability and the priority, which might not align with your business priority."
"Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government."
"Agent features need to be improved. They support agents through Azure Arc or Workbench. Sometimes, we are not able to get correct signals from the machines on which we have installed these agents. We are not able to see how many are currently reporting to Azure Security Center, and how many are currently not reporting. For example, we have 1,000 machines, and we have enrolled 1,000 OMS agents on these machines to collect the log. When I look at the status, even though at some places, it shows that it is connected, but when I actually go and check, I'm not getting any alerts from those. There are some discrepancies on the agent, and the agent features are not up to the mark."
"Customizing some of the compliance requirements based on individual needs seems like the biggest area of improvement. There should be an option to turn specific controls on and off based on how your solution is configured."
"The solution could extend its capabilities to other cloud providers. Right now, if you want to monitor a virtual machine on another cloud, you can do that. However, this cannot be done with other cloud platform services. I hope once that is available then Defender for Cloud will be a unified solution for all cloud platform services."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"Microsoft sources most of their threat intelligence internally, but I think they should open themselves up to bodies that provide feel intelligence to build a better engine. There may be threats out there that they don't report because their team is not doing anything on that and they don't have arrangements with another party that is involved in that research."
CrowdStrike Falcon is ranked 3rd in Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) with 107 reviews while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is ranked 3rd in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) with 46 reviews. CrowdStrike Falcon is rated 8.8, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of CrowdStrike Falcon writes "Easy to set up with good behavior-based analysis but needs a single-click recovery option". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud writes "Provides multi-cloud capability, is plug-and-play, and improves our security posture". CrowdStrike Falcon is most compared with Microsoft Defender XDR, Darktrace, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint, Trend Micro Deep Security and VMware Carbon Black Endpoint, whereas Microsoft Defender for Cloud is most compared with AWS GuardDuty, Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft Defender XDR, Wiz and AWS Security Hub. See our CrowdStrike Falcon vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud report.
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