We compared Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps and Netskope CASB based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Microsoft Defender is the preferred option over Netskope due to its integration with other Microsoft tools, user-friendly interface, and affordability for smaller businesses. Netskope has a large client base and impressive features like cloud app authorization and regulatory classification, but lacks integration and has reporting and support limitations. Microsoft Defender offers superior threat protection and coordination for detecting and responding to threats.
"The protection offered by the product is the most valuable feature. It detects vulnerabilities or traps on our users' phones and then prompts them to clean up their devices. Tools we used previously would only discover, which required us to gather information on the backend, so Lookout is a welcome upgrade."
"On the outside, the main differentiation is because Lookout ingest. They have ingested basically all of the apps for the last ten years and all the versions of all the apps, and we have that in a corporate database that allows us to do very large-scale machine learning and analysis on that data set. That's not something that any of the competitors really have the capability to do because they don't have access to the data set. A lot of the apps you can no longer get them because that version of the app is five or six years old, and it just doesn't exist anywhere anymore, except within our infrastructure. So, the ability to have that very rich dataset and learn from that dataset is a real differentiator."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features are the antivirus as a whole, the anti-malware, and all of the protection features that scan our enterprise devices."
"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."
"It does a great job of monitoring and maintaining a security baseline. For us, that is a key element. The notifications are pretty good."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is to stop shadow IT."
"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... That feature is very useful for investigation purposes."
"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."
"All of the features are valuable because all of the features are related."
"The most valuable feature is the seamless integration across different clouds."
"If your business requirements are relatively simple, it can get the job done."
"It's a comprehensive security portfolio solution."
"The most useful feature of this solution is Cloud Control, which allows me to schedule cloud uploads."
"Its deployment is very easy and quick. Their technical support is also very good."
"The initial setup of Netskope CASB is easy, it is not complex."
"Netskope is an efficient, reliable, and easy-to-manage solution."
"The product's analytics part is pretty fine."
"It has hundreds of features and many of them are useful."
"Their technical support is very good."
"The stability depends on the service from where you access it. Because sometimes, the place you are in, you have Gateway. You don't have Gateway. The gateway is overutilized. At the end, you need to go through their gateways. And this is the key point here. You have a tracking point. If it's not well orchestrated, and it scales up as you add more to the existing team, you will suffer"
"Lookout was moving into the SSE space. And so their work on SecureWeb Gateway and SD-WAN is still sort of evolving."
"From the analysis that we've done, they do seem to be maybe a step behind in trying to enter the market with a new solution. But when they do pick up, they do come out with some good products."
"We just submitted an enhancement request reflecting the main area we want to see improvement in; the APIs. Currently, we're able to build dashboards, but it's somewhat backward because we use our MDM API to create them. Lookout should provide API to customers so we can query our data and use it in our cloud, and this is the only outstanding area for improvement with the product right now."
"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."
"I want them to enhance in-session policy."
"There are challenges with detection and there are challenges with false-positive rates."
"They need to improve the attack surface reduction (ASR) rules. In the latest version, you can implement ASR rules, which are quite useful, but you have to enable those because if they're not enabled, they flag false positives. In the Defender portal, it logs a block for WMI processes and PowerShell. Apparently, it's because ASR rules are not configured. So, you generally have to enable them to exclude, for example, WMI queries or PowerShell because they have a habit of blocking your security scanners. It's a bit weird that they have to be enabled to be configured, and it's not the other way around."
"Sometimes the support is actually lacking."
"They should continue integration with all other Microsoft security-related products. The integration with all the other products is still ongoing."
"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."
"The technical support team has room for improvement."
"The initial setup is complex and should be simplified."
"I deduced two points: one for their feature modification and one for the feature maturity of the solution."
"Compatibility with other proxy polars would be helpful."
"The solution's implementations can be made much easier because, currently, it is complex in nature."
"It needed some fine-tuning on core business sites that we used, which were sensitive to what we term a man-in-the-middle certificate by design. Some sites were not tolerant because they presented as potentially malicious. So, we just had to make some tweaks so that it would bypass or interpret it."
"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Setting up policies is something that we having been doing, and if the vendor were to provide example use cases that included different implementation options then it would be very useful for us."
"There should be some granular custom roles that are not available. However, this is on the road map. There are many devices that do not have the Zero Trust feature and other enhancements available which they should have."
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Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is ranked 2nd in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 30 reviews while Netskope is ranked 4th in Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) with 35 reviews. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is rated 8.4, while Netskope is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps writes "Integrates well and helps us in protecting sensitive information, but takes time to scan and apply the policies and cannot detect everything we need". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Netskope writes "Network proxy that provides visibility during deployment and allows you to control PII". Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps is most compared with Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Qualys VMDR and Microsoft Defender for Identity, whereas Netskope is most compared with Prisma Access by Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler Internet Access, Cisco Umbrella, Skyhigh Security and Forcepoint ONE. See our Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps vs. Netskope report.
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We monitor all Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.