AWS CloudTrail vs. Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management

AWS CloudTrail

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
AWS CloudTrail	Score 8.8 out of 10	N/A	AWS CloudTrail is a service that enables governance, compliance, operational auditing, and risk auditing of an AWS account. With CloudTrail, users can log, continuously monitor, and retain account activity related to actions across AWS infrastructure. CloudTrail provides event history of AWS account activity, including actions taken through the AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, command line tools, and other AWS services. This event history simplifies security analysis, resource change tracking,…	N/A
Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management	Score 9.7 out of 10	N/A	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management is a service available on Microsoft's Azure, that provides insights into vulnerabilities, risks, and exposures for web-based resources. It defines an organization’s unique internet-exposed attack surface and discovers unknown resources to help users proactively manage security posture.	N/A

Pricing

AWS CloudTrail

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management

Editions & Modules

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
AWS CloudTrail	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management
Free Trial
Yes	No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

You can view, filter, and download the most recent 90 days of your account activity for all management events in supported AWS services free of charge. You can set up a trail that delivers a single copy of management events in each region free of charge. Once a CloudTrail trail is set up, Amazon S3 charges apply based on your usage. You will be charged for any data events or additional copies of management events recorded in that region. In addition, you can choose CloudTrail Insights by enabling Insights events in your trails. CloudTrail Insights analyzes write management events, and you are charged based on the number of events that are analyzed in that region.

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More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	AWS CloudTrail	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management
Considered Both Products	AWS CloudTrail AS Anton Smyslov Product Owner Chose AWS CloudTrail We mainly needed to focus on logging and auditing of AWS services and activity, while Datadog & New Relic are more about performance monitoring and analytics. Moreover, AWS CloudTrail has a seamless integration with AWS, since it's coming from one bucket of products. So having … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose AWS CloudTrail For this specific functionality, I am not aware of any other product that can do what [AWS] Cloudtrail does. We did not evaluate any other products. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose AWS CloudTrail Our company has not used any alternatives. Within our industry, it seems that AWS CloudTrail is the defacto standard for this type of functionality within the AWS environment. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose AWS CloudTrail I think in the end, CloudTrail has more features and you can dive deeper inside the logs so it depends on your usage and what you expect in the end to make the right choice, I would say that both tools are really useful and bring a lot of benefits to I.T. companies. Incentivized Helpful?	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management SZ Sarai Zambrano Moreno Process Engineer Chose Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management Because Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management is part of the broader Microsoft Defender family (including Defender XDR, Entra ID, Azure Security, Sentinel, etc.), it: Incentivized Helpful?

Features

AWS CloudTrail

Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management

Threat Intelligence

Comparison of Threat Intelligence features of Product A and Product B
	AWS CloudTrail - Ratings	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management 9.7 Ratings 19% above category average
Network Analytics	00 Ratings	9.00 Ratings
Threat Recognition	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Vulnerability Classification	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Automated Alerts and Reporting	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Threat Analysis	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Threat Intelligence Reporting	00 Ratings	9.00 Ratings
Automated Threat Identification	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings

Vulnerability Management Tools

Comparison of Vulnerability Management Tools features of Product A and Product B
	AWS CloudTrail - Ratings	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management 9.4 Ratings 13% above category average
IT Asset Realization	00 Ratings	8.00 Ratings
Authentication	00 Ratings	9.00 Ratings
Configuration Monitoring	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Web Scanning	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings
Vulnerability Intelligence	00 Ratings	10.00 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	AWS CloudTrail	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management
Small Businesses	Armor Score 6.0 out of 10	Action1 Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Druva Security Cloud Score 9.4 out of 10	Action1 Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises	Druva Security Cloud Score 9.4 out of 10	CrowdStrike Falcon Score 9.1 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	AWS CloudTrail	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management
Likelihood to Recommend	8.0 (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)
Usability	- (0 ratings)	10.0 (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	AWS CloudTrail	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management
Likelihood to Recommend	Most probably it would be suitable for Finance industries, where security is at the head of the table. However, in our case for E-commerce, it's also quite suitable, since we have quite a significant amount of data and usage of AWS services. Especially with usage of AWS services, AWS CloudTrail comes into play as a heavy plus. For instance, troubleshooting any issues in AWS services is really nice. Therefore, it would be less appropriate with a small amount of AWS service usage and some basic web hosting. Incentivized AS Anton Smyslov Product Owner Read full review	Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management is particularly well-suited for discovering, inventorying, and continuously monitoring the external attack surface, especially in environments with heavy Microsoft adoption. It is less suitable as a standalone solution for internal scanning, real-time attack detection, automated remediation, or advanced application testing. Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management es especialmente adecuado para descubrir, inventariar y monitorear continuamente la superficie de ataque externa, sobre todo en entornos con fuerte adopción de Microsoft. Es menos adecuado como solución única para escaneo interno, detección de ataques en tiempo real, remediación automática o pruebas avanzadas de aplicaciones. Parts of this review were originally written in Spanish and have been translated into English using a third-party translation tool. While we strive for accuracy, some nuances or meanings may not be perfectly captured. Incentivized SZ SARAI ZAMBRANO MORENO Process Engineer Read full review
Pros	Logs details Easy implementation Great support Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Lack of visibility of external assets Reduction of the risk of external attacks Falta de visibilidad de activos externos Reducción del riesgo de ataques externos Incentivized SZ SARAI ZAMBRANO MORENO Process Engineer Read full review
Cons	Delay User interface, must send logs elsewhere to view them Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Asset Attribution and Ownership Clarity Risk Prioritization and Business Context Noise and False Positives Incentivized SZ SARAI ZAMBRANO MORENO Process Engineer Read full review
Usability	No answers on this topic	We rate Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management’s overall usability as 10 out of 10 because it delivers a strong balance between depth of capability and ease of use, particularly within organizations already operating in the Microsoft security ecosystem. Incentivized SZ SARAI ZAMBRANO MORENO Process Engineer Read full review
Alternatives Considered	For this specific functionality, I am not aware of any other product that can do what [AWS] Cloudtrail does. We did not evaluate any other products. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Because Microsoft Defender External Attack Surface Management is part of the broader Microsoft Defender family (including Defender XDR, Entra ID, Azure Security, Sentinel, etc.), it: Shares identity, endpoint, and threat context across tools Reduces the need for custom integrations or connectors Works in a “single pane of glass” experience for SOC analysts Why it matters: Organizations already invested in Microsoft security tools gain greater contextual insight and lower operational overhead. Incentivized SZ SARAI ZAMBRANO MORENO Process Engineer Read full review
Return on Investment	Saved us from purchasing and managing 3rd party solutions Satisfies Security/Governance requirements No upkeep/maintenance Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Reduced Business Risk from Unknown External Assets Operational Efficiency and Cost Avoidance Faster Risk Identification During Change Events Incentivized SZ SARAI ZAMBRANO MORENO Process Engineer Read full review
ScreenShots	AWS CloudTrail Screenshots